I am one of 18 artists/illustrators who has taken part in this wonderful collaboration set up by one of my twitter friends, Kimi Kobashi. Each person has to draw their portrait and surrounding Landscape. The contributions so far have been great and to see them in detail visit Kimi's Blog here.
As an illustrator I am not very good at drawing people or their faces and so I thought to draw myself as a bear with my trademark glasses. I surrounded the bear with mountains.
On the next page I wanted to draw little things that represent me such as compasses and books. I know I did the wrong colours on it but I love video games and had to add my gameboy into the mix. And yes I do still play on it, especially games like Zelda and Mario Bros.
The next spread was my landscape. I had to think really hard about what I was going to draw, but I firstly decided upon 'Hadrian's Wall' as it is such a big part of the North East where I live. My love for Scotland also influenced me to draw it.
Now I have to say I'm not a fan of the 'Angel of the North', but its one of those iconic landmarks of the North East and so I had to draw it. I wanted to tone it down with soft mark-making in black and white. I added the British flag and so the Angel has become part of it.
Each contributor has to add a postcard describing what they have drawn and also to tell a little about where one lives. The postcard obviously had to represent where you live and I found this pretty vintage postcard in Tynemouth Station Market. It shows a part of Jesmond Dene which is a park just around the corner from where I live. It is quite magical when walking through, especially during the Autumn.
I now need to send this all the way to Valeria Poropat in Italy, Rome and I can't wait to see what she does for her contribution. Thank you so much Kimi for letting me be a part of your wonderful collaboration, I thoroughly enjoy'd it.