Alexander Wells Illustration

the more we look the less we see

2012-02-17T15:02:00.001Z

personal piece

The Tiger of Summer

2012-02-15T10:07:00.004Z

Had this guy inked for ages but completely forgot about it until I went through a couple of folders yesterday and couldn't resist colouring it.

The name comes from a character in the amazing book series 'The Malazan Book of the Fallen' by Steven Erikson - read it.

Originally thought about this being a T shirt design? Who knows maybe I'll try to submit it somewhere :)

From harpies to spies

2012-02-14T10:37:00.007Z

Here are some of the pieces I have done recently for the Guardian. The turn around's are usually 1-2 days so It's a pretty fast process.

We have... Mayawati Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, India. The talentless harpy, Miranda Hart, Gary Oldman from Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and finally Xi Jinping secretariat of the communist party of China.

HAIL! The Fox King

2012-02-04T16:15:00.004Z

Finally one of the many personal pieces I have had on the back burners managed to get completed!

Foxes are great.

Guardian Profiles

2012-01-18T10:50:00.006Z

Here are a couple of profile illustrations done for the Guardian Newspaper this week. One is of Alexei Navalny the Russian protest leader and the other was Ron Paul the Republican candidate.

Hopefully I'll be doing a weekly profile for the time being so expect to see lots of politicians.

Come get your Athletes

2012-01-12T16:28:00.003Z

I've been recently doing a series of 6 to 8 Athletes every other week for ESPN so while I can't show you the bulk of the new work I've been doing I can show you lots and lots of faces.

These are some of the ones submitted that didn't seem to go bad. If you notice some weeks I'm favouring just the head and other weeks I use more of a bust type - fun facts.

Thanks to art director Munehito Sawada!

January start

2012-01-10T14:41:00.007Z

So I know I haven't been the most active blogger recently. It seems everything I've been working on can't be shown for a while so I thought I'd put up a few pieces of work from various jobs over the last few months during this quiet blogging period.

I'm bursting to do some personal pieces but until I get some free time they'll just stay as sketches and notes.

These two images were part of a set that accompanied a story from the magazine Woman's Weekly. It involved Scottish glens, and handsome men in kilts. A real page turner.

These next two were done a few months back for a custom chocolate company. I admit the concepts for these were strange to say the least...

Promising to get some more interesting work up soon if it kills me!

ESPN portraits

2011-10-05T14:14:00.007+01:00

These were a few portraits done for ESPN magazine. I don't know anything to do with American Football, Nascar or Baseball but they were fun to do regardless.

It was a fairly quick turnaround so I can't help but see mistakes or things I would have done better. Thought I'd share them none the less.

In other news I'm really honoured to have some illustrations featured in Illustrators Unlimited, which is on sale in the UK now and the rest of the world at the end of October. I'll post a photo when I receive my copy. Many thanks for everyone involved!

Got about 4 personal images all at various stages of completion that I'm going to definitely get done very soon.

Glenfiddich

2011-09-01T09:24:00.011+01:00

Back in April I was fortunate enough to work on a project with the creative agency Purple for whiskey company Glenfiddich. The project took me up to the distillery in Dufftown, Scotland and was a great experience to really branch out as an illustrator. The goal was to create an interactive map for the distillery which the public can explore for themselves on the website:

http://www.glenfiddich.fr/la-distillerie/la-distillerie.aspx

The map required close up shots of the buildings and an overview of the entire distillery, as well as rollover images for the buildings insides. Below are some of the close up shots for the various buildings within Glenfiddich distillery. Each one had to match up with the first shot of actual live footage .

The Overview:

And here are a few roughs to show some of the earlier stages:

A steep learning curve but a worthwhile experience. Thanks to Gary Westlake and Anthony Smith for the art direction.

Lord Justice Levesdon

2011-08-04T12:43:00.004+01:00

Editorial for the Observer on Lord Justice Levesdon.

My shortest deadline yet - 24 hours from beginning sketches to delivering the final image!

A winter bird in summer

2011-07-11T16:57:00.001+01:00

A Robin isn't just for Christmas kids.

*Edit - decided to include the original inks*

Oh, Captain!

2011-06-25T16:41:00.011+01:00

Another new piece for my portfolio, working around a different colour palette than I usually use. I was originally thinking of doing a set of three .. Captain, Explorer... Pilot? Something to think about anyway.

Original inks for the captain:

Close up of the ships for all you sailors out there:

The Suburban Adventure

2011-06-24T11:22:00.004+01:00

New personal piece done as I'm getting ready for a website change! Thought I'd try and do a few pieces with a more uplifting colour palette and I seem to be addicted to collecting images with a sunkissed appeal to them.

Zombies for Wired

2011-06-06T17:28:00.008+01:00

Been a bit of a gap inbetween blog posts recently but I've just come off the back of a very big project which I'll hopefully be able to share very soon!

This was small illustration for Wired magazine (US) on the writer and director Tobe Hooper. His new book is all about zombies so my brief was to get Mr Hooper looking like one of the living dead...Best brief ever?

Below are the sketches and final image:

In the process of working through some personal pieces that I'm excited about and with them will come a new long overdue website facelift.

Busy Bee

2011-04-08T08:53:00.012+01:00

Here are a few images I did a while back but havn't been able to show til now.

This was for Mojo magazine with an article about the British band Elbow. The art director wanted to mimic the old TinTin cover where they travel to the moon which included the orange bubble spacesuits and red and white striped rocket. Also including the original sketch but the there wasn't enough of the suit on show.

These images were for the US magazine Popular Mechanics. The first was for an article about how Police can now catch criminials who advertise their crimes via social networks. The second were a series of illustrations based around a guide to achieving 'extreme' tasks. These two were 'riding a bull' and 'building a monster truck'.

Book 'em

2011-03-12T12:29:00.004Z

Quite a simple piece for today's Financial Times based around a compliation of short stories from the Middle East and put together by editor Reza Aslan.

A sketch which wasn't used featured Aslan reading the complitation with all the crazy elements from the stories forming above his head.

The Sunset Limited

2011-03-10T14:39:00.004Z

Recently watched HBO's new brilliant film 'The Sunset Limited' and got me inspired to draw a scene from it. Seriously worth watching.

Grass, Birds, Masks, Glasses

2011-02-19T09:20:00.006Z

Couple of personal pieces here. Been doing some work for which I can't show til April so I'm working through some drawings I did a while back. Trying to evolve my style a little bit, Kept thinking that it was somehow a bit too sterlie and clean and I'm working on using more brush stroke style colouring techniques and trying to find a balance I like between this traditional brush stroke feel and the precise digital colouring I'm used to.

EDIT: Re-drew the mask for the girl lying in the grass, I don't usually go back to images once they are drawn but I kept thinking something wasn't right with this one. I think the tiger mask captures the feel I was originally trying to go for. Slightly more playful than my usual themes.

Colouring some more Inked pieces I have, ordering some postcards and hopefully re-designing to website next week.

Fireflies

2010-12-30T12:46:00.003Z

Fireflies are just balls of light right?

something for fun

Edit* Decided to make a variant to help promote a friends music http://www.facebook.com/pages/Johnny-Howard/120158048041499

The Longest Mile

2010-12-28T19:56:00.007Z

Eventually I'd like to get into band poster designs as I'm always in awe of Kevin Tong's work (http://www.tragicsunshine.com/) and, well mainly it looks fun to do ;) I decided to produce a few faux posters as examples to send out and see if anyone was interested my work. This image being one I just finished for the band Circa Survive.

I'm pretty sure the house is a bit wonky, even my trusted 'rollar ruler' couldn't help my poor perspective skill set.

As I've mentioned this hasn't in any way been used by the band. Here's the image without the bands name in two hugely different variants:

DUNE

2010-12-24T11:27:00.006Z

Wanted to do a piece for the book Dune which I only read in the last year and It blew me away. This was going to be a book cover or poster idea which I've been working on.

If I'm just working for myself I'll do the worlds most unrecognisable thumbnail for the sketch:

G2's Snow White

2010-12-23T10:06:00.017Z

I was lucky enough to be able to illustrate the Guardians G2 and their Xmas pantomine edition. The theme this year was Snow White and the seven dwarves, with some modern elements dotted in and around the story! I only had 6 days from sketches to finals so it was a bit of an intense deadline, especially since I work at a snails pace most of the time.

For the cover they wanted a traditional Evil Queen using an Ipad! I decided to keep the cowl and crown design that she's most famous for and luckily they liked my original sketches so this one went ahead quite quickly.

These were the sketches I provided for the first image, a 3/4 spread. I always find it difficult to know how detailed to go on the sketches. on one hand if you havn't worked with someone before you don't want them to be dissapointed but as I only had a short time they had to do, tiny pig and all.

Images 2 and 3, including an alternative sketch I did for 3:

Image 4

So I think the project went quite well, I'd like to have had a bit more time tweaking and adding to the images but then I'd also like be able to fly so we can't have everything.

Art direction by Andrew Stocks and Jo Cochrane :)

I'm not dead

2010-12-21T11:51:00.003Z

Havn't been blogging or updating in what seems forever. Been working on some nice projects so I'll post them soon. Going to be a lot more prolific with this blog and write a lot more about the work, how it's done and my opinions of the outcomes etc.

I'm also going to try and use my Twitter more, just so everyone can read my unimportant ramblings :)

P.S http://twitter.com/#!/WellsIllustrate

Updated the website

2010-10-27T17:33:00.003+01:00

I've updated my website go check it out

http://www.wellsillustration.com/

Ok so it's not the complete make over yet but it's a start!

Me again

2010-10-15T09:03:00.005+01:00

Hi there

2010-10-14T21:40:00.002+01:00

Update me

2010-09-04T17:59:00.007+01:00

Been getting longer inbetween posts lately but hopefully they should be coming more frequent soon!

Book jacket design for the novel The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. Here's the jacket layout version:

This is an illustration based around the novel The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov:

:) More Soon.

Science Fiction

2010-08-09T12:42:00.004+01:00

Another piece for the Financial Times about 4 science fiction authors. The art director wanted to show 4 seperate planets referring to the different countries they were from: Japan, Finland, Hungary and Russia :)

The final image size was changed to a letterbox template:

Got some new, hopefully exciting pieces in the works and maybe a blog revamp so watch this space!

Matterhorn

2010-07-31T18:10:00.006+01:00

Just finished an editorial piece of the Financial Times about the up and coming Vietnam War based novel, Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes.

It was a short turn around and a small space to work but I'm happy with what I managed to get done! Below are a couple of my initial rough sketches that I started with focusing on the author, Karl Marlantes himself and 1 other that focused on his novel as a piece of army equipment.

They decided to go with the second idea although I did like the concept of the bullets turning into novel pages myself ;)

Nerds and Websites

2010-06-08T12:14:00.003+01:00

The website is finally online, check it out at www.wellsillustration.com

Also incase anyone is bored in London on the 14th to the 16th of June our degree exhibition is on:

Westminster University 2010 BA Illustration

P3 University of Westminster
35 Marylebone Road
London NW1 5LS

14th - 16th June
10am - 6pm

Private View 15th June
530 - 830pm

The private view isn't as 'private' as it sounds so come along for a drink and some good illustrations.

Bowl full of spider

2010-05-31T17:27:00.002+01:00

Snow Fun

2010-05-01T10:47:00.002+01:00

So this didn't come out exactly how I imagined it in my head but they never seem to anyway :)

Spaced

2010-04-08T18:58:00.004+01:00

Finally some work that's been inked for a while now that I've only just got round to colouring!

Actually really pleased at how the glow came out, I was a bit apprehensive at first.

The next image is a a self portrait (I thought you guys deserved a treat ;) ).

Before and after the zombie apocalypse...

Dazed

2010-02-12T11:24:00.003Z

Competition entry for Dazed and Confused magazine asking illustrator's to redesign one of their favourite covers over the last decade. This cover seemed fun to do!

Cracking on with my 'final major' project for university at the moment, hopefully going to get some nice stuff done for it!

Oh, Wes

2010-01-13T19:46:00.001Z

Amazing director...

Faces

2010-01-12T11:03:00.005Z

Small update!

Trying to fill in parts I feels lacking in my portfolio, bit boring but I don't mind drawing peoples likeness too much. The Obama image was drawn after reading a headline on the BBC website 'Obama Revives Health Care'. There's another Billy Corgan image, what can I say I like the man's music. The last is of Steven Erikson authour of my favourite book series, Malazan Book of the Fallen. Not sure the colours work on this piece...

Don't think the website will be up until summer now. I really don't feel like I have the body of work I like for it yet but hopefully my final major project will fill it out!

Dissertation time :(

The Glorious Nosebleed

2009-11-30T20:17:00.004Z

Narrative project at university so I decided to lend my hand at producing a quick silent comic! I decided to illustrate the time I got a nosebleed and a fish found his way down river. Really pleased with some of the pages, like the first, but I feel a couple of them arn't quite up to standard.

Title page slightly bigger:

Relieved to start something else now, cya soon folks!

Against the grain

2009-11-07T23:42:00.011Z

Decided to have a go at a CD slip and chose to do it on re-designing 'City and Colour's' last album, 'Bring Me Your Love'. Had fun drawing Dallas Green's tattoo's but I do feel the cover piece is by far the strongest.

Front CoverCD inlet
Back Cover

Real website should be up and running soonish... depending on how CSS treats me!

Also if anyone reading this is doing illustration themselves I can't stress enough how useful http://illustrationparty.blogspot.com/ podcasts have been to listen to! Check them out!