Matthew Lyons

Matthew Lyons is a 22 year old Illustration and Animation student.
I like his work, simple as. Especially the top one.
http://matthew-lyons.blogspot.com/

Erase: The Lust For Logs


Harvest


Snow

Ellyphant loves Tapirs

I love Tapirs! The one above is an adult Asian Tapir (also known as Malayan Tapir), I think Tapirs look a bit like clangers. There are four species of tapir: Asian, Lowland, Baird's and Mountain.

My favourite is Asian because of the two tone pattern all three others are brown. Asian are also the largest. Baird's, Lowland and Mountain Tapirs inhabit the Americas.

Mountain tapirs are the smallest and the oldest of the four types. Mountain Tapir are also woolly which is where they get the nickname 'Woolly Tapir'.
Baird's and Lowland Tapirs are quite similar, both are a brown colour and neither have thicker hair. However you can tell between them; Baird's are larger and Lowland Tapirs have a thicker neck.

Tapirs evolved from about 55 million years ago after the demise of the dinosaurs, but their ancestors didn't evolve such long snouts until a few million years ago.

Tapir young have a good form of camouflage when they're born; they have stripes in order to blend in. And are completely adorable.

These are some Lowland Tapir that I saw in Twycross Zoo (Warwickshire), I was very excited to see them.


Tapirs are some of my favourite animals and so I made this:

Biro Brilliance...

This is Andrea Joseph. She has skills in biro drawing which I wish I had.
Where I found her: http://2photo.ru/2008/08/04/illjustracii_andrea_joseph.html

Brian Wildsmith

Brian Wildsmith is amazing. I discovered him in the Seven Stories Gallery in newcastle. There was a room with his paintings covering the walls and his books all along the surfaces. He is really good with paint and I love his work. He is my new favourite illustrator.

Headcases, Marketing

The Second part of our Paper Toys final project of the year... Marketing.

For this part we had to find a partner with similar toys and then market them together. My partner was Grace who had Graphic Design Joke toys who sit on your Mac. My toys were the Headcases (see previous blog for more details on this). The only connection between them is their decorativeness.

We decided to create a shop called Hunkydory...


Which would be online and highstreet but thats far to complicated for a two week project so it became an online shop.
This is the Website homepage I designed for our assessment.


I really like this and think I may do something similar when I create my own website but using all of my own photography instead of sourced off of the internet like in this image here.
I love the till and wish as one of my tutors said that there was a mobile phone in the same style, I'd definately buy it.

Headcases, Paper Toys

Our two final projects of the year involved Paper Toys... Toys that come in nets online and can be printed off on a4 sheets and then put together at home.

We could do anything...

Anything...

and so I went for something entirely crazy that has been obsessing in my head for months.

To explain I must show you the original inspiration:

The concept was take a word from the dictionary, read the phrase and illustrate it.
This was: Escapism - the inclination to retreat from unkind reality through diversion or fantasy.

So for the paper toys I decided to make a Paper version:

These are the Headcases: (from left to right)

- Terry the Vicar who's secretly obsessed with violent video games

- Bobo the Clown who's terrified of children

- Gruesome Greg the Pirate who often dreams of gardens with flowers and butterflies

- Lumberjack Mac who cross dresses and bakes cupcakes in his spare time

- Burgular Bobbie who only steals ladie's shoes

- and Doctor Thompson who practises the Dark Arts and writes a Book of Shadows

My favourite is Lumberjack Mac

might be something to do with the beard but I also think he's got the strongest personality.

And now to travel back in time...

To a project from before Christmas... Close Cropping!

(if you wonder why it's a before Christmas project; it is because I have only scanned them recently (as in today).)

For our Close Cropping project we were given a list of phrases, for example: 'All the Fun of the Fair' and 'Second Hand Bookshop'. We had to choose 4 phrases and then do two final pieces for each phrase; one realistic and one abstract. Here are two of my final pieces:

This is the realistic piece for 'Autumn Leaves'


and this is the realistic piece for 'Childhood Memory'.