RAF Phantom FGR.2 (5)

Space infographic

Working on this at the moment, a chronology of events during the cold war space race between the US and the USSR. Lots going on, messing with halftones, recreating an old off set matchbox retro texture and lots of little spaceships.

Le Tour

I like watching the Tour de France, there's no harder test of endurance I can think of than that relentless bike race to Paris over three weeks every summer. Those guys that take part I take my hat off to - crashing in the sprint or sliding off the road in the wet at speed, almost dying of fatigue in the knackers yard of the Alps. This year an illustrator called Neil Stevens has produced a set of great prints of each stage. I bought a print from this chap the other day, check out his site, he has a fine style:

www.crayonfire.co.uk/

RAF Phantom FGR.2 (4)

Some more work on the old Phantom. Started adding weathering to the tail and other bits. Need to push on and complete this as i've missed the deadline I set for myself (which was the start of July!).

Sopwith Pup Profile

And another profile. This time i've been using the gradient mesh tool - probably the most powerful one in the Adobe Illustrator armoury and a real pain to push around. Using symetrical shapes to mesh the straight blends of the stretched canvas on the wings and fuselage here. The roundels started out as rectangles (so I could get the shades in straight) then a lengthy play with the anchors and points to get them rounded. not finished, yet.

Isla with dummy in

Bren Carrier Update

Moved on a bit more with the Bren Carrier. It's getting there. I added the trooper to give it it's sense of scale. I was looking at the old Airfix box artwork for their 1.72 scale model Carrier and the guy peeping over from the drivers position is tiny compared to the Carrier (a little artistic license going on there I think). Anyway, i've ended up messing around with the artwork as some kind of basic model packaging. I added a filtered parchment over the image and filtered it with color burn to scruff the look up a bit more (less computer generated). Text, well just rekindling my fondness for Akzidenz Grotesk as a header font. Lovely.