Amberin Huq - Illustration Blog

AOI Images 36

2012-01-27T12:13:00.000-08:00

Also I have some other news. Just before Christmas I recieved an email from the lovely people at AOI images informing me that the piece that I submitted had gotten through the judging process and will be appearing in the next AOI Images - Best of new british illustration publication. Quite chuffed and excited to hear that my work was liked enough to put it in the annual :)

AOI images selected entrants

When clouds attack!

2012-01-27T12:01:00.000-08:00

This is the second part of my project, the bigger part, the part that almost broke me.

It's a 32 page picture book/comic. Target market was me and people like me. I don't think I could ever pitch this as a children's book seeing as the main character, which is a cloud, get's so sick of being treated badly that he eventually snaps and floods the world. Thats the basics of it! Here are some double page spreads from that nightmare project.

It's not how I normally work, this is all pretty flat and 2 dimentional where i usually try to create a bit of depth in my paintings. I guess I wanted to try something different while also finding a time reducing way of working. I think it works here and there, the third spread is my favourite. The actual book needs alot of development but I think I might leave that task for a rainy day!

Let me know what you think please :)

Characters

2012-01-27T11:52:00.000-08:00

So I haven't updated in a while mostly because I have been living a hermit like existance trying to keep up with all my MA work. But I'm finally taking some time out to put up some work.

So over the Christmas we were given the option of doing this character design project. We basically had to take 10 sheets of a3 paper and fill them with 16 characters on each. It was a bit of an undertaking and because I was working on a larger project as well as this I only managed to finish 5 opting for quality instead of rushed characters. When i saw quality, you can be the judge of that but mostly i was trying to create characters that were completely different from each other and looked like they had their own story attached to them. Many of them do in my head and i tried to get that across however i don't know how well i've done this. Also some of them are just filler (guess which, it's pretty obvious) which usually came about when I my breaking point and couldn't take any more!

Out of the 5 I've only 2 to show as the others are wrapped up in a folder and hopefully being assessed.

The first page is full of messengers

And the second page is full of figures of authority.

These pages are a little ropey coz they're the first ones I did. So let me know what you think. I'll put the rest up when I get a chance.

Who am I?

2011-10-15T05:56:00.000-07:00

So I've started an MA in illustration and animation at kingston university. We were given a summer project to do, an icebreaker. This icebreaker was used to introduce ourselves to our tutors and the other students, i hope it went well. I can't really remember, it was just a whirlwind of questions and my quivering nervous face....attractive.

Anyway, the subtitles are 1) where i come from 2) who i am and 3) where i want to be. It needs some major work and there are things i would love to have done differently. Maybe in my next life. CLICK!

My First Sleeping Beauty

2011-08-31T16:28:00.000-07:00

So for the last week i've been working on the brief set by the english national ballet through Talenthouse to design for their new run of children's ballet; the first of which being Sleeping Beauty. I thought I would give it a crack and see what I could come up with. Take a look below and let me know what you think.

Also if you could take the time to vote for my entry it would be most appreciated! Voting begins September first but if you go to this link here !!!!!!!!! and click on the button to the right hand side it will kindly remind you when voting opens. If you do take the time to vote I appreciate it muchly.

Storybook idea

2011-08-20T12:35:00.000-07:00

A picture book concept. the idea has moved on a little since this....actually might have completely changed but who knows!

ABC cards

2011-08-20T12:31:00.000-07:00

So a long long time ago i was asked to create some spec work for some architectural abc cards. I didn't get the job but that's life. Here's a couple of what i created....

As always let me know what you think!

London Love is.....

2011-08-20T12:00:00.000-07:00

So what have i been up to? it's been a while since i updated my blog.....oopsie! so let me update it now.

For the last couple of months I have been working with Vipul Bhatti who has launched his social art movement London Love is... where he aims to connect people through human chains in and around London. Check out the facebook page to see the various collaborations London love is... has already done with other organisations seeking to keep London connected through positivity, hope and happiness. And don't we need it after the last couple of weeks.

As part of the launch i worked with Vipul and graphic designer Joe Serhan to create a postcard design that would be distributed around London and at the launch. Below is the fruits of our labour. The logo created by Joe and the characters and general design by myself.

Let me know your thoughts :)

Islington Arts Salon

2011-07-07T15:10:00.000-07:00

Hey all! I haven't updated in a while but I can assure you I have been scribbling away on various things that can't be named just yet. However I bring you news as I am exhibiting a piece at the Islington arts factory starting tomorrow.

The private view is tomorrow night but it's a bit touch and go as to whether i'm gonna be able to make it :( However it is running till the end of July so if you're out and about take a look at some real life artwork! There are loads of other exciting artists exhibiting so it's well worth a look see!!

I shall be updating with actual pictures just as soon as i find a scrap of time to put it all together :) but for now ..... ciao!

...

2011-06-01T06:31:00.000-07:00

Meep

2011-05-29T10:34:00.000-07:00

So i've take the plunge and opened an online shop over at Etsy for whoever might like to purchase any products adorned by my illustrations. There's not much on there at the moment but I should be adding more things onto it in the coming months.

Take a look !

hope you're all good people :)

GradGallery Exhibition no2

2011-04-25T10:00:00.001-07:00

So this weekend saw GradGallery taking their work to Bristol. It went well and we had a good turnout for the private view so a thankyou for all the people who turned out fir it. Twas most exciting times. For the exhibition i created mostly new work and i thought i'd share with your for those who couldn't make it over to our exhibition :)

Im quite happy with how my painting turned out, let me know what you think and all that jazz!
We also had the rather fantastic Dave Bain and Henry St Leger live drawing for us at the private view. Take a look below......

Deep into the Woods Timelapse from Henry St leger on Vimeo.

Hope y'all had a great easter :)

GradGallery Presents....

2011-04-17T10:45:00.000-07:00

So what have i been up to all these weeks? Well i'll tell you what! I've been preparing for GradGallerys second exhibition!

Being held at the BV Studios in Bristol from 21st til the 24th. That's next week people. If you're around head down for the private view on the 22nd 6:30 til late. We've got live music in the form of Amanda Lucas and Jamie Fyffe to whet your appetite plus dj's from Dirty Old Town to throw some music in your ears. As well as this we have Dave Bain and Mr Tom Mead drawing live. So theres alot to feast on not forgetting the artwork inconspiculously habitating the walls all weekend :)

Here's a sneak peak of some of the new work i'll be showing. Fingers crossed for likes. If you want to see more, head down.

Gradgallery presents....

2011-02-25T15:48:00.000-08:00

So I'm exhibiting at Montpelier Gardens in Cheltenham as part of the Gradgallery collective. As you can probably tell I didn't create this poster, for the maker of such beauty please head here. So if you're out and about in Cheltenham next week you should check it out. The stuff you'll find there is quite wide ranging and you're likely to find something you like!

My stuff was packed and posted off as I won't be able to make it to the exhibition *insert sad face here* but we're getting together a bunch of us for an exhibition at the end of april in Bristol which im hopefully creating all new work for so im pretty excited for that! And hopefully i'll even be able to make it there. I shall keep you posted on events as they occur.

As for actual work, im working on a couple of projects with some different people so i shall again, have to keep you posted on that front too. Hopefully i shall be able to bring you some doodlings and paintings soon!

Consumed

2011-01-30T14:47:00.001-08:00

Just some spec work I might be working on for a while. More on it later if i ever get round to developing it!

New website!

2011-01-01T10:19:00.000-08:00

Hey kids!

Happy New Year all! I hope everybody saw in the new year with grace and style!

My first order of business this year was updating the olde website with a new and cleaner version. The last one had haunted me for a year and i was starting to go mad with paranoia incase anyone came across it accidentally and thought 'what a loser'. But my brother has come to the rescue and made me a relatively shiney new one which I won't be ashamed to show people. Hooray!

So here it is! Enjoy :)

Christmas is a coming

2010-12-12T15:19:00.000-08:00

This is just a painting i did for my secret santa this year! there's not really anything christmassy about it and really makes no sense at all but the theme was photos and the person i got likes playing music.

Expiration

2010-11-30T09:39:00.000-08:00

I recently did some concept art for a small film. Daniel Etchels is the director. I haven't done any black and white work since university and my colour and composition tutorials. If anyone knows what i'm talking about you'll understand the quite painful memories i was reliving (hours of colouring painting of different blocks of different shades of grey...yeah...i know!) However this brief was a tad more interesting than those tutorials!

Filming is due to start next year.

Waiting.

2010-10-20T07:43:00.000-07:00

So this is my entry for the 2010 comica/jonathan cape/observer . I spent practically all of four weeks on it non-stop. I initially found out about this competition in July, I thought I had plenty of time so i allocated myself a month after I had seen to all my other illustrative commitments. Turns out painting for 4 weeks straight isn't good for your health, my eyes started twitching and i think my back has suffered irreparable damage but i think the entry is decent enough though i think the story may be shaky (turns out trying to fit a story into four pages isn't all that it's cracked up to be) and i did enjoy finishing something for myself.

Anyway, enjoy and let me know what you think.

The Sketchbook Project 2011

2010-10-20T07:19:00.000-07:00

Why hello there!

I signed up to the art house co-op sketchbook project a couple of months ago and have only just started sketching away the last couple of days. My allocated sketchbook has been buried under a pile of paintings and books. Oopsy! The aim of the project is to get a silly amount of people to sign up to the project, send out sketchbooks, sketch to your hearts desire and then send it back full of sketchy goodness. All the sketchbooks will then be housed at Brooklyn Art Gallery where people can take a look see whenever they wish, but not before they all go on tour. very rock and roll.

anyway. here are the first couple of sketches.

sketchbook purge

2010-10-13T08:05:00.000-07:00

i haven't posted in a while so thought i'd have a sketchbook purge of things that never quite made it to the finish line and some prep work that did! This is mostly to distract from the fact that I haven't posted the work I created in my 3 week non-stop marathon painting sesh but you'll have to sit tight for a while to see that - mostly because I eurostarred it to Brussels straight after i finished and now I'm taking a 2 day holiday to rest my weary paintbrushes...and also because i was ill...on my birthday. On my birthday people. What bad luck eh?

For IF

2010-10-13T07:56:00.000-07:00

It's just a sketch. While trawling through my sketchbooks of olde i found this.

sneak peek

2010-09-12T16:08:00.000-07:00

Just a small peek at something i'm working on at the moment. More to follow soon.

Comic - A Robot's Work

2010-08-04T11:35:00.000-07:00

So for the last couple of weeks on top of various other projects i have been working with a friend to create a 3 page comic...you know...just so see if i could! It's posted below. Let me know what you think. The story is written by Ricky Marcel Pitcher and the images are done by moi!

2010-07-23T11:03:00.000-07:00

So for the past couple of weeks i have been working up some images for an over 60's social club which will be branching into politics for older people. It's an ongoing thing and these images will be used in the social leaflet.

My Stint in Theatre

2010-07-06T07:16:00.000-07:00

So I thought I’d update you guys on what I’ve been up to for the past couple of months as I haven’t tip-tapped away on this blog for a couple of months which adds up to a bajillion years in internet time. I think there could be search parties.

Early this year I was contacted by Chris Elwell of Half Moon Young person’s theatre about their Exchange for Change program. They get together a group of young artists who’ve never worked in theatre before and therefore quite confused, to create a piece of scratch theatre for teenagers about teenagers. So for the past 3 months I have been working with Angela Micheals (Director), Sean Graham (theatre artist/choreographer) and Marv-ill (beatbox/MC).

The question of how I would fit into this whole thing was something that haunted me up until the very last day where we performed our piece but looking back I found that the collaboration between the other artists and I was integral to make the piece work. I ended up working as a concept artist, painter, visual storyteller; I even had to crack out the limited knowledge of Flash that I just about don’t possess. It was interesting seeing the process for working with three other people progress, in the end all our ideas became a massive glowing mountain of inspiration and none of us could figure out which part belonged to who, which was a good thing for team morale, but not so much for when it came to explaining the madness to a room full of people.

We’d also worked with various school, looking for feedback; they were the water to our plants. I found this interesting as I have always created for myself while pretending to care about my target audience (don’t know whether I should admit that) and switching to creating solely for a group of people I didn’t know was new. The experience made me realize the importance of looking outside yourself and I think I shall take this forward in my other projects.

I think we were all quite surprised by what we’d produced, I certainly was. What we were left with was a beatboxing melody of choreographed teenage woes helped along by my illustrative changing projections.

We made bets on how long our piece was (i’d guessed 22 mins) but we’re still not sure as whenever it came down to it everyone forgot to look at their watches. We were all busy you know...performing, pushing buttons, directing and stuff, silly us. I guess we’ll have to wait until the DVD to finally settle that score.

Things I learnt while doing this job was that teenagers aren’t all hideously evil, I’m really good at cowering in corners when needs be and there’s actually a ridiculously infinite amount of fun to be had with a large bouncy yellow ball and four almost adults who barely know each other.

All images are copyright of Half Moon Young Persons Theatre 2010.

PIIIG

2010-07-06T06:56:00.000-07:00

A Blog of Pigs Playing Banjos

2010-06-18T13:53:00.000-07:00

If anyones wondering what on earth i've been up to these past couple of months then just take a gander down over here

http://www.halfmoon.org.uk/theatreprofessionals/exchangeforchange.htm#yeartwo

They have me down as a visual artist as they figured the powers that be wouldn't understand what an illustrator was...but no matter, a rose by any other name blah blah blah....!

Performance day is literally next week and i am overloaded with work so keep watching for any pictures that may be coming this way. once i have time!

Faerie Tales Continued

2010-04-30T15:30:00.000-07:00

Faerie stories revisited

2010-04-20T15:00:00.000-07:00

So these are images i've re-done. They were painted originally a year ago but the more and more i looked at them the more and more i was unhappy with them. They seemed rushed and there wasn't detail where there needed to be. I'm happy the way these have turned out and it seems that patience is something i'm just going to have to practise from now on. Two more to come.

Character Design

2010-04-13T08:52:00.000-07:00

2010-04-06T07:25:00.000-07:00

Illustration based on a personal memory about rather alot of fangirls and a hobbit.

2010-04-06T07:16:00.000-07:00

Redesign of the Girls'/Boys' Book Collection.

2010-02-24T16:31:00.000-08:00

this is what would happen if the world ran out of white paint like it seemed to today and the only option left to me was...photoshop.

this was more or less a doodle in between other ongoing projects. I thought I'd colour him just to distract myself further...the other doodles weren't so lucky i'm afraid.

2010-02-10T09:06:00.000-08:00

Speculative artwork! Nothing more to say really.

do-do-doodle

2010-02-02T15:02:00.000-08:00

I can't decide whether these are fairly boring but at least they're letting me draw everyday instead of staring apathetically into the abyss. It is such a pretty abyss.

a doodle

2010-02-01T14:14:00.001-08:00

2010-01-28T10:33:00.000-08:00

So for the last couple of weeks or months (time means nothing to me nowadays, i barely ever know what day it is anymore) I've been wandering about trying to figure out what to do with my time. It's the new year and all you know? i should be doing something constructive, and i have, i've been making up books and sending them to the relevant people but theres not much to show for it seeing as they're all in their individual envelopes clutching stamp sized tickets to exciting destinations. So i figured i'd put up some pages of my sketchbooks, various doodles i've done in dead time at work and some random character designs that just popped out of my pencil while i've been watching the tennis.

2009-11-10T07:42:00.000-08:00

So over the course of a week i churned out these paintings. They were for a couple of independant filmakers hoping to secure funding for a project. They'd asked me to create 5-10 storyboard images to illustrate the mood and feeling of the film during the pitch but because of time constraints we had to settle for 6. The story is set in exmouth and is centred around the friendship of two young boys.

2009-10-14T06:24:00.000-07:00

So this is what i've been working on for the past month....funtimes

http://www.amberinhuq.co.uk/Larry0.html

2009-10-12T14:58:00.000-07:00

It's time for some Dorian Gray.

Childrens book spread

2009-06-16T08:53:00.000-07:00

So a while back i entered this childrens book competition. Here be my double page spread for it. I should have come up with something a little bit more interesting but i kinda ran out of time due to work and general life-ness. oh well. maybe next time.

Children's Book Character Designs

2009-06-16T08:35:00.000-07:00

Character Designs for said competition.

Pilot Script Character Designs

2009-06-16T06:48:00.000-07:00

So these are some quick character sketches that i did for a pilot script when pitching for a job i never got. As you can probably tell the show was set in a medical clinic :D Best of luck to the dude. The script was a good funny one.

Illustration for short film

2009-06-16T06:31:00.000-07:00

So this is a character illustration i did for a short film to be seen in the closing credits. I was going for energetic and dark. You tell me if i succeeded (is it me or does 'succeed' have too many double letters in it, makes me nervous all those letters). You can find the teaser trailer for the film at http://www.certainthings.co.uk/pages/tse.htm .

2009-06-16T06:23:00.000-07:00

So this is where i'll be putting all the shiney new work that i create whether it be for a client or just for good old personal fun! you can find all my old stuff on my actual website at www.amberinhuq.co.uk. This is just a faster way of getting my stuff online to show to people! Eventually the stuff that i deem worthy will find its way onto my website when i get a second to sit down and battle the crazy that is dreamweaver! Enjoy :)