A designer of sorts

Anxious self portrait. Experimenting with illustration style and texture.

Someone once said “Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up, it knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a lion or a gazelle – when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”

I once said here’s the sweaty new run club logo, slightly Nordic, as well as a couple of initial designs. It’s simple. Eat. Sleep. Run.

Back in 2011 I descended on The Big White in Canoobia to gain a qualification as a snowboard instructor. I documented my time there with a drawing of a thought from each day. In 2013 I returned to visit the homeland of my snowboarding education, tough men with beards and the elixir of life, maple syrup. Again I repeated this project.

Seeing as it is super sweltering in Blighty right now I thought this would be a particularly relevant and pertinent time to unleash some of these thoughts from my months stay in this triple frozen environment.

After 10 months of letting my facial follicles run riot and more than a lifetimes worth of abuse, especially off the butcher, the time came for Beard and myself to go our separate ways. It had gotten to the point where I couldn’t work out whether I was wearing Beard or Beard was wearing me. I was left with boat loads of fond memories, blunt clippers and have now taken on the appearance of an egg. What have I learnt? Easy, beards attract men and repel women and it is impossible to eat an ice cream with any sort of credibility. So to commemorate Beard I have produced a portrait, drawn with love and influenced by Julian Opie and especially Craig Redman. Consigned to the digital world, I hope he lives forever, or until my hosting runs out.

Remember folks, a beard is a gift you give to your face.

A squirrel, in a hole, in the wall, in the office, watching me, watching him. He chewed through the electrics, he chewed through the water pipes and flooded the kitchen but he made my working day.

During my sojourn at the Big White I scribbled down a thought of the day, every day. Here’s some of my favourites. Dearest diary…

At the start of this year (2011), I tootled off to Canada to gain qualification as a snowboard instructor. I thought I would jump on the info graphic bandwagon, (I like info graphics as much as I like seeing a dog with their head out of a moving car window) and detail a day in the life sliding down the slopes, sometimes on my feet, sometimes on my back and more than often on my face. I used the Ski Tracks app to produce all the data.