Category Archives: Career News

Spring Fling 2013

jonathan-woodward-studio-spring-fling-cover

In October last year, I was contacted by designer Tim Bremner on behalf of Spring Fling, Scotland’s Premier Arts and Crafts Open Studios Event, to Illustrate the wrap-around cover for their 2013 event brochure.

I explored a couple of different directions, but in the end we went with grasshoppers in different colours so they could be used as a branding device to denote the different routes on the open studio tour.

grasshopper animal rough

grasshopper rough

Once the composition and Photoshop colour rough had been approved, I moved straight on to final artwork and began collaging the grass…

spring-fling-grass

…before individually collaging each of the grasshoppers.

yellow-grasshopperflying-grasshopperbrown-grasshopper

All of the grasshoppers and the grass were then pulled together in Photoshop, where subtle shadows were added beneath each of the grasshoppers to ground them in the scene.

Spring Fling 2013 Book Cover

SPRING-FLING-2013-final-crop2

SPRING-FLING-2013-final-crop1

The Illustrations were also used on both the guide map and in the Spring Fling app too.

jonathan-woodward-studio-spring-fling-map

jonathan-woodward-studio-spring-fling-app

The whole project was really fun to work on, with great clients and art direction throughout. Special thanks to designer Tim Bremner and Spring Fling project manager Leah Black.

Here’s what designer Tim had to say about my involvement in the project:

I worked with Jonathan recently for the first time on the brochure cover of the Spring Fling Arts Festival. Having made contact with Jonathan my first impressions were that he was very friendly, enthusiastic and pro-active right from the start.

Once we had agreed on which direction to take, everything went very smoothly and he went straight to final artwork without any further changes.

Jonathan fulfilled the brief perfectly and the client was very happy.

March 2013 Desktop Wallpaper

Download the March 2013 Desktop

TTWN-march-2013-wallpaper-blog

To download your copy of the March desktop, please right click on the version you’d like and select “Save As…”:

The magnificent Atlantic Blue Fin Tuna is one of the main victims of our over fished oceans and due to its popularity, particularly among sushi eaters, it’s numbers have become critically low :(

BBC Wildlife Artist Of The Year 2013 Entry – Work In Progress Pt.1

BBC Wildlife Sketch

For the past 2 years I’ve entered the BBC Wildlife Artist of the Year competition and have been lucky enough to make it through to the finals each time (with my Golden Eagle in 2011 and my Grey Heron in 2012), receiving commendations from the judges.

This year, I’ve really thought about what was lacking in my previous two entries and tried my best to come up with something that would give me the best chance of finally bagging a win. I realised that there wasn’t much movement, drama or story in my previous entries so have tried to incorporate all three elements this year.

For my 2013 entry I’m going to be creating a collage of a Great Grey Owl and so far I’ve finalised my sketch/composition (see above) and have transferred the drawing to the art board ready to start collaging.

BBC Wildlife Collage

You’ll notice that at the last minute I decided to change the right wing of the owl to a more horizontal position rather than vertical. I thought this made for a better composition and also a more imposing figure as he bears down on his prey – I did keep the tilt of the body though to show how he silently corrects his position as he goes in for the kill.

The final collage measures a whopping 80 x 45cm (the largest piece I’ve ever worked on) and the deadline for entries is the 28th February, so I better get my skates on.

I’ll post more pics on the blog as the collage progresses.

90 Animal Collages In 6 Weeks…

After a grueling 6 weeks of furious cutting and sticking, constantly hoovering up tiny bits of paper all round the house and 90+ animal collages later, all the final artwork for my first children’s pop-up book is now with the publishers.

It’s been a lot of hard work and many late nights, but I’ve loved working on such a diverse range of creatures and it will be very exciting to see my first children’s book on the shelves.

The book has a tentative release date of February 2013.

Here’s a look at a number of the original cut paper collages before their digital polish…

I’ll be running a competition to win a copy of the book once it’s released, so keep you eyes out on the blog, facebook page and Twitter for details.

Children’s Wildlife Pop-up Book

I’m currently working on a rather large children’s wildlife pop-up book containing 70+ animals, all of which need to be cut paper collaged.

The deadline is super tight which means a pretty relentless schedule of Illustrating into the small hours every night for the next month, but I love the subject matter and am very excited to be working on my first pop-up book.

I can’t share much due to contracts, but below are a few snippets of some of the animals I’ve been working on so far…

Featured Project: The World Association Of Zoos & Aquariums Commemorative Poster

I was recently commissioned by the World Association of Zoos & Aquariums to Illustrate a commemorative poster to help celebrate their 77th Anniversary.

Other than receiving a list of species to include (some lovely ones I’d not collaged before so I knew it was going to be a fun project), I was given full creative freedom to create the design. After scribbling down a few initial ideas, I decided to make the ’77′ out of trees and then have the creatures interacting with it.

Below is the initial scribble of a sketch and a neater version with rough Photoshop colours that I submitted for approval.

Once approved, it was time to move on to the final cut paper collages – here are a few work in progress pics…

The main body of each of the Illustrations were created using a traditional cut paper collage technique with a few final details being added digitally afterwards (mainly details that would be too fiddly or time consuming to do digitally as I was on a deadline for the work).

Below is an example of one of the collages before and after the digital details were added. This crocodile was probably the one that was enhanced digitally the most, as I ran out of the magazine clipping textures I needed for the tail detail.

Below is a selection of some of the other final creature Illustrations.

And finally, here are the final Illustrated posters (portrait and landscape formats) along with a cover graphic for the WAZA Facebook page.

…and the WAZA Facebook cover graphic

This has probably been my favourite job to date, not only getting to collage a number of my favourite creatures, but working for a great client that does great work for conservation around the world.

The exciting thing from a marketing point of view is that WAZA will be using this image throughout the rest of the year while celebrating their 77th Anniversary (including at their annual conference in Melbourne, Australia later in the year) – which means my name and contact details and a copy the poster will be going out to 300+ top zoos around the world (couldn’t wish for better exposure to my target market than that :) .

“Jonathan designed a stunning illustration to celebrate WAZA’s 77th Anniversary. He worked very hard and very quickly to design a beautiful image that has exceeded our expectations.

This illustration followed us during months, as a beautiful poster but also as a design for our website and a cover for our newsletter.

WAZA was honoured to have this beautiful illustration and is very grateful to Jonathan.

We really hope that we can work together again in the near future!”

Carole Lecointre – World Association of Zoos & Aquariums

I also have prints of the WAZA posters for sale in my Society6 print shop, with 50% of all profits going to WAZA.

Next on the drawing board is my very first children’s pop-up picture book for Quarto Children’s Books. The contract has been signed and page roughs are already in progress. I won’t be able to show any of that finished work for a while, but watch out for a few sneaky snippets here and there on the blog and a new feature project when I’m able to show the final book.

 

BBC Wildlife Artist Of The Year 2012: Commended Finalist

After a busy 2 days with 8+ hours of driving, scorching sunshine and a day out at Peppa Pig World, we finally made our way to Marwell Wildlife to find out how my ‘Grey Heron’ collage did at this year’s BBC Wildlife Artist of the Year 2012…

I didn’t win, but did receive a commendation from the judges.

I was initially disappointed not to win, but after sleeping on it I’m now actually quite pleased with the result, especially as some of the people I was talking to had entered 4 or 5 times to no avail – so to be commended 2 years in a row isn’t bad at all.

It also gave me a boost that Sophie Stafford (Editor of the BBC Wildlife magazine) sought me out personally to say hello and tell me she really liked my entry and the Illustration promos that I’d sent her a few months ago.

Having to drive down to Marwell for the results also gave us the chance to take Mali to the nearby Peppa Pig World too (we’re all big fans of the show).

Seeing her face meeting Peppa and George (two poor souls dressed in huge costumes on a scorching hot day) was priceless and made the long and tiring trip worth while.

This picture of Mali pretty much sums up how we all felt after a busy few days.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their kind messages of support both before and after the results – they really did all mean a lot to me.

Cover for Penguin India

Towards the end of last year, I was commissioned by the Indian arm of Penguin to create a quick Illustration for the cover of a book by renowned Indian poet Vikram Seth.

The brief was pretty strict, with a description of exactly what they wanted, but as I hadn’t collaged water before it was still a fun project to complete.

From receiving the brief to delivery of final artwork, everything completed within 24 hours, so It was also good practice in completing a high pressure job with a very tight deadline.

Below are pics of the printed cover along with the final Illustration I created (the shells were part of the original brief, but they decided to remove them from the Illustration when it went to print).

Got a little kick out of seeing my name next to the Penguin logo too :)

BBC Wildlife Artist Of The Year 2012…Finalist!

I quietly entered my ‘Grey Heron’ collage in to the BBC Wildlife Artist Of The Year 2012 competition in early February and am happy to announce that I got the email today to say that I’ve made it through to the finals for the second year running.

Last year I reached the stage of Commended Finalist with my Golden Eagle collage, so lets hope I can go one better this year and win the British Birds category.

So, it’s off to the Marwell Wildlife Park again on 24th May with my framed collage for final judging – keep your fingers crossed for me.

Here’s my entry – ‘The Grey Heron’

January 2012 Promo Mailers

Trying something a bit different with my first promo mailer of 2012…

Rather than sending a single postcard, I wanted to send a number of images to each prospective client. Taking advantage of their printfinity system to have different images on the front of each card, I used moo’s business cards and selected illustrations from my portfolio that would be relevant to each prospective client (I also created a few new Illustrations where I didn’t have something relevant to use).

Once printed, I placed them in a plastic business card holder strip, trimmed the holder to size (sent 4 cards to some contacts and only 3 to others) and sent them off with a hand written note to each dream client – ensuring that my branding was consistent throughout.

The strategy behind sending multiple, smaller cards was that prospective clients would then have spare copies to pass around to other people in their department and spread the awareness of my work.

Fingers crossed…

Total cost of printing, business card holders and postage to 16 carefully chosen contacts was around £40.

Here are the finished cards showing the 10 images that I chose, along with the back of the card with all my details etc

Here are the wallets for the cards trimmed to size…

And finally, the hand written note along with the relevant set of cards for that prospective client…