Balloon ride

It's been a while in updating. Nothing too much to report just yet. I'm currently working on a drawing for a friend which has been taking up most of my recent spare time. I will post more as I get nearer to finishing it, but for now this is a little snipping:

Talk to you soon and enjoy the rest of your weekend!!!!

Garbage Pail Kids

It's Sunday. I think. This week has been hectic. If you live anywhere in the UK, you'll already know about the weather problems we've been having. If not, then let me explain. Snow. In the middle of going to work, surving the snow, and eating, I've managed to get a bit more drawing done.

I think the idea occured to me on Monday of last week. I was searching eBay for Garbage Pail Kids. If you were born in the early ish 80's or before then you might know about them. If not, I'll explain very briefly. They were a series of stickers originally released in the US in 1985. They were a parody of the Cabbage Patch Dolls which were the current craze at the time, but with a twist. That twist being very sick humour.

...you might be noticing a pattern with things I take an interest in, first Little Dracula, now Garabage Pail Kids...

Back to my idea. When I was little, I remember drawing my own additions to the GPK stickers, but none of them matched even closely to the original style of John Pound's (the guy responsible for drawing a large portion of the GPK stickers). I tried, and tried... and gave up. But now, a good 15 years later I thought, why not just create one in my own style?

It was a small project. 2-3 evenings worth of work. The finished product being below. I've printed and cut a few out and I'm currently using them as business cards. Might print a few off as stickers too.

Please note I take no credit for the orignal concept of the picture. It's a straight up copy of this sticker.

Uncut sheets.

Individual cards.

The finished product!!

Overall I'm pretty happy with it. I've been trying different shading techiniques with this drawing. The hardest part of the picture was getting the colouring in the mushroom cloud right. I tried following the original closely at first, but it didn't look right with my simplistic style. It was far too realistic, so I toned it down a bit, simplyfied it, and voila.

Hope you enjoy it!

If you know me and want a copy, just ask. If you don't know me, and want a copy, just email me! todd at toli.co.uk if you're wondering.

Little Dracula

The past week I've been making several purchases off of Amazon's marketplace. I've been tracking down a series of book I read when I was an ickle kiddy called "Little Dracula".

Currently I have Little Dracula's First Bite and Little Dracula Goes to School in my possesion (still waiting for the other two). Both of these books have this amazingly detailed artwork with so much going on - stuff I love. Not only that but the subject of the images and the morbid ideas used I find absolutely amazing. As a kid I would look through Little Dracula at the Seaside and notice all little details the illustrator had included. The fact that quite often, the pictures were pretty disgusting, made it even more of a treat to find the extra detail!

The illustrator's name (if you're wondering) Joseph Wright. I also spent a bit of time in the second hand department in Blackwells bookstore yesterday and found another book featuring Joseph's artwork too - "What-a-Mess Goes on Television". I've not read the book yet, just looked at the pictures. Again, I love the details!

I highly reccommend you check them out. They can be bought for as little as 70p! Bargains!