No Words Kid

Well, this has been sat on my computer for a while, I'm talking over a year here.

One day I was waiting to get my visa at the Nigerian High Commission.

As I was sitting alone observing everyone, I saw two families, 

one with a girl and her brother, the other with a boy.

The girl was just sitting about super cool, cooler than Willow Smith in her Hair whippin' days, watching her little brother who had just proudly discovered the joys of walking.

The boy from the other family... every few minutes he'd walk up to the girl, she'd smile, he'd freeze, not say a word then walk away. Every single time.

It was a little painful to watch, at the same time extremely endearing.

I remember thinking, 'just say something dude!'

Then I thought about how mentally I've been in that kid's shoes multiple times in recent years.

So yeah, I drew the situation, not sure where I was going with that story. 

I guess slice of life and all that.

Lone Graduate

Hey kids!

I graduated almost a year ago, and boy have I been busy.

I've been lucky enough to do some stuff with WPP, 

Foyles and I'm currently working on a comic strip, which I'll get into later.

Man, the origin of this image is a little lame to be honest. I though of it a little after graduation day. After the ceremony I managed to lose almost all of my friends.

Its silly, but one of the things I was looking forward to was taking the super duper clichéd 'throw your hats in the air' picture with all the friends I'd spent the last 3-4 years with. But i couldn't find them, because I misplaced my phone, and they took one without me.

You know, not the end of the world.

I though about ways of managing to recreate a moment I narrowly missed, 

and ended up drawing this.

So I in a way I did get the photo I wanted,

with all the characters I've created,

who have helped me get to where I am today!

See I told you it was a little sad.

Once you're done laughing have a listen to this!

Redux & Errors

So yeah, I've been gone for a long time. A long long time.
This is just a short message noting that I do intend to return.

Here's a super quick digital sketch, I never do those.

Be prepared, this blog's layout shall be slightly updated, at some point,
so if things appear to just look plain wrong at some point soon, don't worry,
it'll be sorted soon.

If you read that back in a years time and think the same thing,
either I've gone wrong or I'm now insulted.

Also, if you actually know what I've drawn here, you're a certainly a friend of mine.

Hey, we made it through the night!
Cue an added dose of nostalgia!

Degree Show

What could this post possibly be about?

Yeah that's right, the CSM Graphic Design Degree Show is well underway!
The chapter's closing people.

Come along and see some of the best of illustration, design, moving image and advertising!

For more info check out the website:

http://2012.csmgraphicdesign.com/

Also, don't hesitate to say hi!

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On a ever so slightly related note, hells yeah I have a full on website!

And yeah that is a completely new project you can see up there...
For that and a few more unseen projects, have a look!

davidtolugraham.com

Near Killer

Hai thar gauise

As I expressed a few posts ago, I finished all my markable work for my degree.
Man, building up that portfolio was stressful, but hey, it was a mere taster of the rest of my life.

On the road to hand in I was taking work in progress pictures with my phone and tweeting it every other day. It was my way of forcing myself to do work, as in "if I have new stuff to tweet, I've done a substantial amount of work." Sounds a little silly, but I think it worked.

Just over half of the above made it onto twitter,

the rest of the images remained on my phone.

This in a way is a sneak-peek at some of what you'll see from me in my degree show in June.

I'll post the details super soon, hopefully you'll enjoy it.

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Now, because I mentioned twitter,

a shameless plugin for my twitter.

Simply, follow me if you like what you see:

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Oh, and if you ever need calming down, like I do these days:

D&AD: Little White Lies

Back in March I entered the D&AD Student Awards Illustration brief.
This year it was Little White Lies, and the task was straightforward - illustrate a Little White Lies cover based on one of their 5 favourite films of 2011.

I chose Black Swan.

'Black Swan' [Acrylics, Inks & Pencil on HeavyWeight Paper]

The image represents Natalie Portman's character Nina's transformation from the White Swan to the Black Swan, showing how the Black Swan was always within her, and the shattering of her face matching the shattering of her psyche.

Ok, and here's on super-dynamic photo of the cover
on an actual little white lies magazine, pages and everything:

Unfortunately my submission was unsuccessful. Looking back at the painting, I can see some things that probably didn't work in my favour, mainly the sidelining of the lettering, oh well.

I remember, I saw one of the eventual Black Swan winners on the internet before I even started this painting, and it's amazing I managed to convince myself to still take part after seeing it.

If you see it you'll know what I'm talking about.

Birdy, Birdie & Al

Back in January I designed a book cover for William Wharton's 'Birdy'
as part of a live brief set up by HarperCollins.

This is my final design.
This went through a lot of changes, way after the brief was over, and it's way better for it.

If you read the book, this cover shall hopefully make some sense.
It's somewhat literal, yet somewhat metaphorical.

The Work In Progress

This is an image I created as part of my proposal for the identity of the Work In Progress show we had a couple of months ago. It's meant to kinda symbolise how us illustrators were putting the core of our work together, the cores of our own worlds you see. But you know, we can have fun doing it too, hence the Tetris like pieces forming the cosmic egg.

In the end my friend Clara's proposal won in the end.

Clara's was way better.

But hey the image still ended up in the show, so it wasn't for nothing!

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So, my works now been handed in for my final assessment.

For those of you who don't know, that means I've now done all my work for this degree.

Yeah.

Technically everything.

In a little over a month I'll be completely done with education.

That puts me in a rather nervous disposition.