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Jan
13

Sailing Boat Watercolour Painting

Sailing Boat Watercolour Painting Commission

Just before Christmas, I was commissioned by a client to paint her husband’s beloved sailing boat. She wanted the boat to be sailing at sunset along the Wells-next-the-Sea coastline, where he loves to sail. She sent me photos of the actual boat in action and I imposed it into the prefered landscape and setting.

It’s painted in watercolours by hand on high quality A4 350gsm watercolour paper. It’s been a while since I’ve worked with watercolours, I forgot how much I enjoyed working with them and I am pleased with the end result!

This project has sparked motivation in me to work with watercolours a lot more, I’m excited to show you all what I’ve been working on since this!

Jan
13

‘Hideaway’ Band Logo Design

Hideaway Band Logo Design

Here’s a recent logo that I designed for the upcoming Central New Jersey indie based indie-pop Band ‘Hideaway’.

They wanted quite a retro feel to their new band logo inspired by neon lights; Here’s what I came up with!

I made a little animated GIF of the logo too, with a flickering light effect, I thought it looked pretty eye catching and effective! You can check out Hideaways musical endeavours by checking them out on social media with the handle @hideawaytheband


Are you in a band and in need of an eye catching new logo to engage with your fans? Please get in touch today to discuss!

Nov
29

‘I Otter Pray’

Wild Minds AU Summer Range

 

It may be the beginning of our winter here in the UK, but down under Wild Minds Clothing have recently launched their summer range, featuring this adorable Praying Otter tank I illustrated, brilliantly titled as ‘I Otter Pray. Grab yours now!

I very much look forward to working with them again in the near future on anther exciting design, this time raising funds for various animal charities based in Australia!

[fuel_button size=”medium” style=”primary” text=”Buy” link=”http://www.wildmindsclothing.com.au/”]

Oct
14

Inktober 2016!

October has been an extremely busy month for me so far! Somewhere in between moving house and existing work, I’ve taken up the Inktober 2016 Challenge.

Rules are as follows:

1) Make a drawing in ink (you can do a pencil under-drawing if you want).

2) Post it online

3) Hashtag it with #inktober and #inktober2016

4) Repeat

If you want to check out what I’ve done so far, head over to my instagram @krys10design – I aim to post daily, but may be like every other day at the minute due to moving house stress! Trying to keep it all animal based as these are my favourite things to doodle by far and my main source of inspiration comes from nature.

I’ll be selling all of the original Inktober sketches on my Etsy for just £20 each, be sure to drop me a line if you want me to reserve one for you though.

Sep
16

‘The Rats in the Walls’ Theatre Production Poster

Theatre Production Poster Design

I recently got asked by Bring Out Your Dead Productions to create an event poster for their upcoming theatre production of ‘The Rats in the Walls & Other Tales’.

Theatre Production Poster

Theatre Production Poster

 

ABOUT ‘THE RATS IN THE WALLS & OTHER TALES’

‘The Rats in the Walls & Other Tales’ is a production being produced for Halloween in the atmospheric setting of Moyse’s Hall.

Adapted from short horror stories by H.P. Lovecraft, M.R. James, and Edgar Allan Poe, it is a disturbing, unsettling, and very creepy night of psychological horror. The main story follows two men, William and Edward, who set up camp in the sub-­cellar of an ancient building called Exham Priory (William’s ancestral home).

Since moving into the recently restored property William has been plagued by the inexplicable sounds of hundreds of thousands of rats crawling in the walls of the building. He has called upon his neighbour, Edward, to help investigate the sub-­cellar, seemingly the source of the phantom rats. As the pair settle in for the night, play cards, and share ghost stories, they gradually move closer and closer to uncovering a horrific and ancient secret.

I combined elements from the different stories and tried to merge them in to one image, the ghastly, ghostly rat being the centre piece. I used various different stock images to create this piece – I love working with photographic montage styles!

If you’re in the area, I highly recommend you go see this – get your tickets now before they sell out!

Theatre Production Poster

Theatre Production Poster

 

Sep
09

SOMETHING IS COMING

AMP Launches with Firebox

SUPER excited to announce that my work will feature with Alternative Movie Poster’s launch with Firebox – A shop for the unusual.bear-hunter

My ‘The Revenant’ inspired poster featuring Leonardo DiCaprio wearing a grizzly bear hide caught AMP’s eye and asked me to put this piece forward for their contest to feature in this exciting launch and it got selected! I have named the piece ‘Bear Hunter’ and will be available to purchase through the Firebox website from September the 15th 2016. Exciting times!

It has taken many months of work but we are very excited to see this project finally get off the ground. We had a lot of submissions for this first stage launch, and we want to thank everyone who took the time to submit work.

You can check out the full article here:

[fuel_button size=”medium” style=”primary” text=”Read Article” link=”https://alternativemovieposters.com/something-coming-amp-launches-new-store-firebox/”]

Aug
23

Fierce Album Artwork!

Bracken Band Album Artwork

Here’s some album artwork I created for Suffolk based band Bracken.

I have previously worked with them to create their band logo too, it was nice to incorporate that in to this project as well.

The band wanted their new album artwork to be influenced by the songs and lyrics that they have written for it, with topics including political class division and conquering/dealing with anxiety and depression (reference to the metaphor: black dog).

They threw some pretty cool ideas at me about what they’d like to see, and also some notable lyrics from the songs that will make up the album that helped me get a feel for the piece:

‘Do you remember a time when giants walked the earth?’
‘We are all slaves to the grind. Our balls in a vice. Work. Breed. Die’
‘Do you realise that the robot invasion is being broadcast straight to your ears’

‘The shadow creeps, cold whispers ringing through my head.
Crawling further from behind, warm breath shivers my spine.
I’m just a broken man, living in this alien world
A new tale of vintage design. The new dogs learnt a few old tricks

Bow to the Black Dog”

Be sure to check out Bracken here.

Please get in touch if you’re interested in commissioning me to design your bands album artwork, I’d love more commissions like this!

[fuel_button size=”medium” style=”primary” text=”Contact” link=”https://krysthecreator.com/contact/”]

Aug
09

Rock and Rollers Vintage Hair & Makeup Design

Rock & Rollers Vintage Hair & Makeup Styling

I recently worked with a local Suffolk based hair and makeup artist, Dawny P., specialising in vintage/retro 40’s & 50’s looks.
She has opened her new beauty business in Bury St Edmunds by the name of ‘Rock & Rollers’ and I had the pleasure of designing her brand.
She wanted the logo to reflect herself, with stylised bright red hair in vintage victory rolls that everyone recognises her by.

[fuel_button size=”medium” style=”primary” text=”Contact Rock & Rollers” link=”https://www.facebook.com/RockAndRollersDawnyP/?fref=ts”]

Rock & Rollers Logo

Rock & Rollers Logo

Vintage Hair and Beauty

Vintage Hair and Beauty

Jul
28

Album Artwork Project

Band’s Album Artwork – (Azmaroth)

I have recently completed a monster of a project for Norwegian based rock band, Azmaroth.

Previously, I’ve worked with them to create their band mascot – a mythical, powerful horned beast character. Azmaroth wanted to incorporate this beast of a character into their album cover, with a good/evil, heaven and hell apocalyptic type theme which I carried throughout the album art.

Also included within the album art is the lyric booklet, which had to be designed.
The band wanted to pick out elements from their lyrics to be illustrated along side the songs in the lyric booklet, too. I think the middle page is my favourite with the crow, simple, but bold and powerful!

Lyric-Booklet Breather Page Design

Also, I sneakily snuck in the Azmaroth Beast character on one of the lyric pages, can you spot him lurking in the shadows?

The process of this album artwork includes photo manipulation combining stock images mixed with digital painting which I completed on my trusty Wacom Cintiq 13 HD Touch on Adobe Photoshop CS6. I highly recommend this piece of kit to anyone working in the creative digital field, it’s an absolute game changer. Pricey, but totally worth it, I’d be lost without it now!

Anyway, please see the finished project below, enjoy!

 

You can listen to ‘Death Crowned King’ on Spotify now:

Jun
15

Little Owl Painting Time Lapse Video

It’s about time!

I always like to show the stages of my work where I can, so I’ve started to do time lapse videos. These videos show the process of how I work from start to finish on a piece.

In this time lapse video, it shows how I created my latest edition to the British bird inspired paintings I am doing. I aim to paint all 259 British bird species, which may take me a long time, but it will be worth it!

Once I have more of a collection together, I’d love display and exhibit them locally and donate 30% of every sale to the Suffolk Wildlife Trust.

Nature gives me so much, it’s only fair I give something back in return and the Suffolk Wildlife Trust is such a great organisation that really cares and helps my local environment and all the glorious wildlife in it.

Please see the video below on how I created the Little Owl painting time lapse style. I’ll be regularly updating my ‘British Bird Paintings’ portfolio on the home page, so be sure to check that out and don’t forget to follow the progress on my Instagram & Twitter, too @Krys10Design, thanks!