Snow

There was lots of snow down home for Christmas, I think they were the biggest snowflakes I'd ever seen, but it all got washed away come Stephen's Day.

Christmas cuts

Here's some of the cards I did for the Christmas Crafty Market in the Shibeen last weekend.

Bluetit

Keeping up the bird theme here's my granny's 92nd birthday card. I'm thinking of doing a series of bird papercuts, there's such a variety of shapes & sizes all with distinctive silhouettes.

Stork

I haven't posted anything in ages, so here's a congrats card for my friend Erica who had a baby boy recently.

Fastival tv ad

and here's the finished tv ad featuring the characters, as well as a bunch of other guys for the crowd shot including a cameo of myself, Paul the art director & Andres who did a great job animating the piece!

Concern Fastival 2010

here's the final characters that I did for the Concern Fastival tv ad. I drew over the sketches & coloured them in Illustrator and then added texture & shading in Photoshop. Each character's colour palette is based on Concern's corporate colours & ties in with all the other print materials that were done for the fast.

Character designs

I've been working on some illustrations for a TV ad at work, it's still a work in progress so here's a look at some early character sketches.

Leaving Cert Luck

This is the Good Luck card I did for my sister a couple of months ago. I'd seen some pics of some really ornate keys and kind of went with an 'education is the key to your future and opens doors for you' theme.

(she did really well by the way!)

Wedding banner

My aunty got married recently to a flight enthusiast who has flown all types of light aircraft including a hang glider with an engine which he flew over part of the French Alps! (I didn't know what that looks like so I did one of these instead!)

Wolfhound

I hadn't actually done any drawing in a good while so I drew a wolfhound for my dad's birthday, we used to have one a few years ago. I liked the way the hair was blowing out of his eye and across his face in the original photo.

Bon Anniversaire

This is the birthday card for my friend who moved to France recently, based on a cool retro 60's style illustration which I love by Lab Partners.

Bluetit

Did a papercut collage for my girlfriend's birthday card based on some lovely minimalist illustrations by Beethings. They're quite reminiscent of Charlie Harper's work from the 60's in their geometric simplicity.

Hawaiian

Went to a Hawaiian party last weekend, couldn't find a hawaiian shirt anywhere so made this instead & hung it round my neck.

18

This is the card I made for my sister's 18th, I wanted to do an intricate interweaving Rob Ryanesque floral border & then I found a ridiculously ornate Victorian font made from vines and flowers that fitted in perfectly, so I used it as the basis for the numbers.

Acrobat

This is the piece I did for the Tinderbox Circus exhibition that was part of the SoGo festival over the May Bank Holiday weekend. I originally wanted to do a sort of Victorian Freak Show type thing like a bearded lady but decided to go with something a lot simpler and graphic with more elegant lines.

Au Revoir Claire!

My flatmate & best friend Claire moved to France with her boyfriend last week, so this is the farewell card I made for her, full of French clichés & stereotypes! (and a border of croissants!)

I wish them both beaucoup de luck on their voyages fantastiques, I'll miss her lots but at least I'll have une couch to sleep on in Paris maintenant!

Mam's card

This is the card I did for my mam's birthday recently, I added a couple of Rob Ryan birds holding the birthday banner.

More Shaun of the Dead

Here's some better shots & close ups of my Shaun of the Dead papercut. Tyler Stout and movie poster legend Drew Struzan were a big influence on the composition of this, I tried to pick out key characters at iconic moments as well as some of my own favourite moments from the film. cornetto.

Finito!

This is the finished piece. I'll put up some better, non-glary photos when the exhibition finishes next week.

More progress...

Here's a few snaps I took while I was cutting out the final piece. I always like to see the behind the scenes stuff so this shows the process I used to do this papercut.

Work in progress...

This is the layout sketch I've done for my piece for the new Tinderbox exhibition "Picture Show" opening in Filmbase next Monday. I'd originally planned on a trilogy of pieces of 3 of my favourite films - Shaun of the Dead, Amelie & Blade Runner (hence the sketch of Deckard from a while ago) but it's taken way longer than I thought to do just one so the others will have to wait for now!
The final piece is going to be cut out of black, white & red paper so I was drawing it with this in mind, trying to find a way for all the blacks to join up so they'd hold together when cut.

eye of the tiger

This is a drawing I did a couple of years ago that I just found again today, he looks kinda pissed off....I've got that Rocky song stuck in my head now!

Doro's card

A spring weather party for Doro's birthday.

I'll Eat you Up...

This has been in my sketchbook for a while, hand drawn letters coloured in Illustrator, probably need to work on the colours a bit more.

Deckard

Deckard from Blade Runner

Nonna

Here's a sketch of an old Italian Nonna I did for a storyboard at work, even though it was just a rough sketch I like the amount of character it suggests.

Douglas

Test Drive!

I got a Wacom tablet for Christmas so did a sketch of Carol from Where the Wild Things Are to try it out & see how responsive it is. It's fairly intuitive and accurate so hopefully with a bit of practice it'll become 2nd nature. Going to mess around with adding colour to it & see how it goes.