Medical myths article

Here are the spreads for an article I illustrated in this months 'Scope' - an Irish medical magazine. The subject of the article was debunking medical myths so it was not only a fun job to work on, but also quite educational :) I learned that for instance, drinking 8 glasses of water a day is really not necessary, the size of a man's feet bears no relation to his other body parts, and swallowed chewing gum doesn't really remain in your system for years. 

7 sins

I've created some new works for the 7 sins contest. The concept of 7 deadly sins seems rather archaic to me so I was keen to interpret them in a way that was contemporarily relevant.

I decided to create a series of landscapes which represented the sins Wrath, Greed and Gluttony. 

I interpreted gluttony as excessive consumption to the point of waste and depicted  a mound of e-waste to represent this concept. Much of the western world's obsolete electronic devices are exported to developing countries for recycling where labour is cheaper. But because of lax regulations in the procedures for this recycling, the process is often extremely polluting and hazardous.

I've got a sort of a fascination with cranes and they're a recurring image in my work. I suppose this may stem from spending so many years living in Dublin during the days of the Celtic tiger economy. They were a regular fixture in the city, appearing like mechanical dinosaurs in the landscape. I've always had mixed feelings about cranes. In one way, the sight of them is comforting - a symbol of prosperity, yet in another way they have an almost spectral presence. The 'renewal' process so often results in the destruction of interesting old parts of the city and their replacement by yet another indentikit block of 'luxury' apartments. Much of this sort of  development is short-sighted and entirely motivated by greed. Many of these dwellings now lie abandoned and uninhabited since the recession hit.

I wanted to express wrath in terms of frustration, a sort of simmering rage. When people feel disenfranchised they get angry and if this anger has no constructive outlet it will find a destructive one.

I had some ideas for the other remaining 4 sins - Sloth, Pride, Lust and Envy so will perhaps continue to develop this project.

a tangent

This post isn't particularly to do with illustration but since I made the beard book, I've acquired a bit of a reputation as a pogonologist (hmmm..maybe I could that on my CV?) And thus friends, acquaintances and sometimes random strangers have taken to arbitrarily emailing me beard related trivia (which is happily of interest to me :). Here is something that was recently featured in the Guardian that my friend Maria kindly sent to me which I thought I'd share. 

Freaky horoscopes

This is a personal project I've been working on lately, it's a zodiac. I didn't want it to be too traditional so some of the references are perhaps a bit of a stretch but overall I'm happy with this freaky assortment.