Tag: Humour

Recent Educational Illustrations: People & Places

November 17, 2020 by Geo Parkin

Character-based vector illustrations depicting activities or situations in specific locations. Indoors, outdoors, rural, urban, cars, bikes and spaceships. Youngsters, oldsters and in-betweeners, at work, rest and play. All (well quite a lot) of human life is here. These were all produced for a recent series of English-language teaching books, published by OUP. Click on any of the images to enlarge

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, autodesk sketchbook, bicycle, boys, Character design, college, computers, education, educational publishing, girls, Holidays, Home, Humour, Illustration, Interiors, laptop, Lifestyle, Locations, Men, mobile phone, Party, People, robots, sci-fi, Science-fiction, Situations, Travel, university, Vector artwork, vector illustration, Women

Leave a comment

Recent Educational Illustrations: Food & Drink

November 17, 2020 by Geo Parkin

Self-explanatory, really. These were all produced for a recent series of English-language teaching books, published by OUP. Click on any of the images to enlarge.

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, boys, Café, Cartoon, Character design, coffee shop, Cooking, eating, educational publishing, Food, girls, healthy, Holidays, Humour, Illustration, Lifestyle, Men, People, seafood, Shopping, supermarket, vector illustration, Women

Leave a comment

Kamba!

September 29, 2020 by Geo Parkin

In 2019 I worked with Go For It Games on a card game called Kamba. There are 52 cards in all, each with its own illustration depicting a three-word tongue-twister. The brief consisted of little more than the tongue-twisters themselves so it was a great opportunity to run with the madness and get surreal. A lengthy job but great fun! Here’s a selection of the illustrations used on the cards, with their accompanying tongue-twisters.

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Animals, art, autodesk sketchbook, Birds, bizarre, boys, Buildings, Café, card game, Cartoon, Character design, Children, Cooking, Costume, Drinks, Fantasy, Food, Games, girls, Holidays, Humour, Illustration, Interiors, Landscape, Lettering, Lifestyle, Men, music, musical instruments, Packaging, Party, pastiche, Restaurant, surrealism, Transport, Travel, Vector artwork, Wacom Cintiq, Women

Leave a comment

Vector artwork – figures and settings.

June 3, 2020 by Geo Parkin

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, boys, Buildings, Café, Cartoon, Character design, Cooking, Crowd, Family, Food, Games, girls, Holidays, Home, Hotel, Humour, Illustration, Interiors, Landscape, Lifestyle, Men, music, musical instruments, Party, People, Transport, Travel, Uniform, Vector artwork, Women

More everyday people

May 22, 2017 by Geo Parkin

Here’s another selection of recent publishing illustrations in a similar vein to those in the last post. People, locations, and situations pretty much sums it up. Click on any of the images to enlarge.

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, autodesk sketchbook, bicycle, books, boys, Buildings, business, Café, Cartoon, Character design, Children, Cooking, cycling, domestic scenes, Drinks, fire, fire engine, Food, girls, Humour, Illustration, Interiors, library, Lifestyle, Men, Party, Restaurant, sci-fi, traffic, Transport, Travel, urban scene, Vector artwork, video game, Women, workplace

Leave a comment

Everyday people

May 21, 2017 by Geo Parkin

The following is a selection of recent vector-style book illustrations, created for a series of educational publishing titles. The images I’m commissioned to produce usually involve figures in specific settings or situations. The subject matter can be pretty prosaic, but I managed to keep this project engaging from my own point of view by trying out a slightly different technical and stylistic approach to the final artwork. Experimental, but not radically so. It was also very well received by the […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Animals, boys, Buildings, Café, cars, Character design, Children, Cooking, Costume, Drinks, education, Food, girls, Humour, illness, Illustration, Interiors, Lifestyle, Men, music, Packaging, Publishing, Restaurant, Shopping, sport, Transport, Travel, Vector artwork, vector illustration, weather, Women

Leave a comment

The Long Tall Texans: ‘Headless’.

February 23, 2017 by Geo Parkin

There are some jobs you simply have to do. I was contacted recently by Mark Carew, the perma-grinning slap-bass player from local rockabilly legends, The Long Tall Texans, about creating a cover for their forthcoming 10″ vinyl release, ‘Headless’. It was great to learn that they’re still going strong, and I was more than happy to get involved. I did a number of record covers and t-shirt designs for the band back in the early-90s, so it was great to […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Brighton, Cartoon, girls, Humour, Illustration, Interiors, Long Tall Texans, Men, music, Packaging, psychobilly, record cover, Rockabilly, sci-fi, Science-fiction, scientist, Vector artwork, Women

Gentrification and the Hipster Breakfast; illustration for latest Square Meal magazine.

November 10, 2015 by Geo Parkin

Illustration to accompany an item on restaurants and cafés as an instrument of gentrification, for Square Meal magazine. The image is inspired by the recent, high-profile case of Shoreditch breakfast joint Cereal Killer being targeted by Class War demonstrators, which is referred to in the article. Great fun doing this one, and creating alternative versions of Snap, Crackle and Pop. It occupies a full page of the magazine and, at first glance, could easily be mistaken for an ad. Although emphatically NOT […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, breakfast, Café, Cartoon, Cereal, Character design, Cooking, Food, Humour, Illustration, Lettering, Lifestyle, London, Packaging, Restaurant, Vector artwork

Leave a comment

Educational Publishing

September 8, 2015 by Geo Parkin

Educational publishing, in particular English language books for the overseas market, has been a constant source of work from the very start of my career in illustration. It’s an arena that has perhaps unfairly gained a reputation among illustrators for being slightly uninspiring and workaday. While it’s true that these commissions tend to arrive with quite prescriptive and detailed briefs (the images usually have very specific roles to play in support of related text and audio content), and do not provide the ideal platform […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Beach, boys, Buildings, Café, China, Cooking, Family, Fashion, Food, girls, Holidays, Home, Humour, Interiors, Japan, Lifestyle, Locations, Market, Men, Narrative illustration, People, Shopping, Situations, sport, Students, Technology, Transport, Travel, Vector artwork, Women

Animals

September 8, 2015 by Geo Parkin

A selection of animal images created for various clients and mostly aimed at a younger audience. Wrap-around label design for a hanging bird-feeder:

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Animals, Birds, boys, Cartoon, Dinosaur, Farm, Fish, girls, Humour, Insects, Jungle, Vector artwork

Leave a comment

Funberry Farm wall stickers

September 8, 2015 by Geo Parkin

Selected images from Farm-themed large wall-sticker pack aimed at young children, commissioned by FunToSee

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Animals, Birds, Children, Farm, Humour, Nature, Vector artwork, Wall stickers

Leave a comment

Character design

September 7, 2015 by Geo Parkin

There is, of course, some element of character design involved in any figurative illustration. For characters that will be used multiple times, from different angles and in different situations however, special attention needs to be paid to aspects such as recognisability, consistency, distinctness, etc. I’ve had lots of experience of this sort of thing. Sample vector-style character designs for ELT educational title. My line-drawing & colour style was eventually chosen for this project as these samples were considered too different […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Animals, Birds, boys, Brighton, Buildings, Cartoon, Character design, Drinks, Fashion, Food, Games, girls, Holidays, Humour, Men, music, musical instruments, Poster, Students, Transport, Travel, Vector artwork, Women

Leave a comment

Games With Names

September 7, 2015 by Geo Parkin

A packaging design job for the small London-based games company Go For It Games. The brief was to produce twenty-four unique but visually unified pack designs for a name-specific card game, Games With Names. I created a basic template common to every design, then six separate character-led layouts, each in four different colour-schemes, providing an individual pack design for each of the twenty-four names. Here are some of the card characters that were grouped together for the final layouts, plus an example of the […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Cartoon, Character design, Games, Humour, Packaging, Playing cards, Vector artwork

Leave a comment

Christmas Cards

September 7, 2015 by Geo Parkin

The following is a selection of Christmas card designs I’ve produced over recent years to send to friends and family in both print and electronic form. I could do the same for you. This one actually worked for anyone with the time and patience (and curious lack of anything better to do) to cut it out: The cut-out Santa and Fairy designs below were intended to be made into tree decorations; if you would like free, print-ready pdf copies to […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Animals, animated gif, Buildings, can-can, Cartoon, Christmas, Christmas cards, Comic strip, devils on horseback, Drinks, gif, grim reaper, Holidays, Home, Humour, Men, pantomime horse, Party, Santa, sketchbook, Surreal, tree decorations, Vector artwork, Wacom Cintiq, Women

Leave a comment

Dinosaur wall stickers

September 7, 2015 by Geo Parkin

Selected images from a Dinosaur-themed large wall-sticker pack commissioned by FunToSee

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Animals, Cartoon, Children, Creatures, Dinosaur, Humour, Wall stickers

Leave a comment

Aliens wall stickers

September 7, 2015 by Geo Parkin

Selected images from Alien-themed large wall-sticker pack aimed at young children, commissioned by FunToSee

Categories: Cartoon • Tags: Aliens, Animals, boys, Children, Creatures, Fantasy, Humour, Science-fiction, Space, Wall stickers, young children

Leave a comment

Football wall stickers

September 7, 2015 by Geo Parkin

Selected images from a football-themed large wall-sticker pack commissioned by FunToSee

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: boys, Buildings, Cartoon, Children, football, Humour, sport, Wall stickers

Leave a comment

Private commission: an illustrated life.

September 7, 2015 by Geo Parkin

Elaborate 60th birthday piece, jointly commissioned by a group of mutual friends and eventually presented as a large-format giclée print. It certainly helped that I personally knew the subject in this case. Good fun if a heck of a lot of work. A step-by-step account of the ‘making of’ this image can be found on my Drawstring blog.

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Animals, boys, Buildings, Drinks, Fashion, Food, girls, Holidays, Home, Humour, Landscape, Lifestyle, Locations, medicine, Men, sport, Transport, Travel, Women

Leave a comment

Music

September 7, 2015 by Geo Parkin

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Black & White artwork, boys, girls, Guitar, Humour, Jazz, Men, music, Musician, Rock music, Rockabilly, Science-fiction, Singer, Vector artwork, Women

Leave a comment

Square Meal Magazine

August 26, 2015 by Geo Parkin

Full-page illustrations for editorial / opinion pieces in Square Meal magazine. This Dick-Whittington-inspired image accompanied an item on the rise of high-end restaurant chains in West London to the detriment of smaller, independent operators: Image to sit alongside outraged opinion piece on Government proposals to include calorie-counts on restaurant dessert menus: Formal vs informal service in restaurants; the evolution of ‘fine dining’: Not all about the food; restaurants with a welcoming ambience: Illustration to accompany an item on restaurants and cafés […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, boys, Cartoon, Cat, Character design, Dick Whittington, Drinks, Families, Food, girls, Humour, Interiors, Lifestyle, Line drawing, London, Men, Neon signs, Restaurant, Surreal, Vector artwork, Women

Leave a comment

The Chilli Pickle Canteen webstrip

August 26, 2015 by Geo Parkin

Website comic-strip for the Chilli Pickle restaurant. Armed with just a few scribbled notes made during my meeting with the owners Alun and Dawn, I was tasked with creating a comic-strip account of the long-debated decision to add a takeaway service to their successful restaurant business. It ended up running to nine quite busy horizontal panels and can still be found on their ‘Canteen’ website. The first commission of what has gone on to become a most enjoyable and creatively fruitful […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Adobe Illustrator, Buildings, Car, Cartoon, Character design, Chilli Pickle, Comic strip, Cooking, Drinks, Food, Humour, Illustration, Interiors, Lifestyle, Railway, Restaurant, Transport, Vector artwork

Leave a comment