Mac Criggy

I hope you all had a great Xmas and good luck, in the new year. Much respect to all of you who visit my blog and follow my artwork, to those who take time to send me message and give me praise. It really is appreciated and it's honestly kept me going throughout my career.

I will see you in the new year.

Peace Prosperity and Paper

Busy in the Studio

It's been a very busy period for the last couple month and a half, a lot of small commissions here and there with a lot of running about, so I haven't really been in the studio much. Personal sketching has been on lay away. But it been good. There has been one large project that I will reveal shortly.

I am very happy to say that not to long ago I received an order for ALL 5 of the Kush Clouds prints, from a great supporter in New York. So that was sent off along with a 1 off illustration!

There are still some Kush Clouds prints available so if anyone would like any over the xmas period, get in contact.

JEBA X T.O.W.I.C

This weekend had me in Essex painting for TOWIC, a cross fit gym. The ideas and sketch were actually executed a while ago so I waiting very impatiently to paint and it was a great weekend i tell you that. The only requests in the design were skulls, the colours red and black and the quote "Pain is Temporary". From the mention of the first 2 I pretty much had an idea regarding the wavelength of my client.It pretty much fell in line with my own!

Comic characters under my belt!!

If you paint graffiti and mainly concentrate on characters, I think it's almost critical to paint comic characters. So I was quite excited when I was asked to paint some including quite a few Marvel characters for a recent job.

This is probably the first time I've actually given skin tones a proper go. Was quite hard and took some research into paint palettes by other artist's... still working on this but I'll get there.

Being a massive comics fan I was very excited to do a lot of the marvel characters. Also having good references to the characters was a great help.

It's remaining busy in the studio, with some logo work and ideas being mocked up for prints for the new year.

Also working on the updates to the website so do take a look when you can.

Remember you can also link me on behance and on instagram.

Will have more updates coming soon with recent works and sketches. If there is anything you would like to see on the blog let me know.

Yarah Bravo Quickie

Ahh I've been meaning to do a sketch of this cutie pie for a while! Yarah Bravo is a damn good musical artist, lyrically impressive, however also has quite cute features to work with. After 2 weeks of solid sketching for commissions and jobs, was quite good to just zone out and let my hand flow over these lines.

Joelle

It's been a while since I've done a sketch like this. I really enjoyed it and was quite refreshing. Great thing is that somebody already wants to use as a tattoo! 

If you're on instagram you can see the timelapse off the inking. @suspectlondoner

There are quite a few more sketches in my blackbook that I really do need to ink.

1 for the Geez & 1 for the Hustlers

I haven't painted in a while as I took the opportunity to get back to some sketchbook and comp work as I had no commissions on. So today I went out with Tony Riff and threw up some characters. A nice little paint.

Paint/ Study

I really needed to practise some painting, it's been a while. This is actually a portrait of Gavlyn, a lyricist from L.A who I've been really digging recently. Was just a pic with the right tones to paint. 

Rise and Shine

JEBA X TMNT X XBOX/BOXPARK

It's finally DONE!

It has been bloody EMOTIONAL to say the lest but I'm proud of my efforts.

Coming up with the right background was a tackle and it literally came to me while I was snoozing in the morning. I pieced the composition and elements in my head, and people at a time like that you wake up and you get busy. Trust your subconscious.

So details of the exhibition goes as:

Boxpark

3rd-6th October

Drinks and music on the 3rd

6-9pm

This event is sponsored by XBox, Game and Havana Rum

Remember there are 10 artist's involved in this so there will be 9 more prints.

TMNT progress

I've been solidly working on this piece, amongst other sketches I've had to get on with. Right now I'm  currently working on the background, and then there will be some amendments to do on the characters, just to make sure the style carries as best as possible.

A little work process insight.

There's so many times I take screen shots meaning to share a bit of my process... and just never get round to compiling them and showing ye! So I'm just going to post it right now. 

I'm currently outlining the pencils for my TMNT poster, and for this I've opted for illustrator. I did this because I work with a set of custom brushes, some I make up on the go. This gives me the decided effect I want. I have 3-4 that are my go to. I make them plotting out vector points and my main aim of creating them is to achieve more of an inking I'd do by hand.. but in one stroke with the brush tool.

I'ts a great method to try in illustrator. What I will say is do not get upset if you don't get your strokes perfect. There is a lot of room for what some call 'happy errors'. Also when it comes to over lapping lines or 'overshooting' you can amend these if you were to say use the live paint tool at the end so you can then delete different overlaps and lines.

Return to TMNT

Of lately I've had  more chances to get back involved with my sketchbooks. A current project I'm working on is one which I find quite exciting is with XBox and Game. 10 of us including a good friend Wumi Olaosebikan from Beddow 'n' Battini have taken on individual Xbox titles and creating our own prints reflecting on the games.

I previously mentioned that I am a fan of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the animation being one of my favourites growing up. If you're new to my blog or you didn't see the last image I created take a look here.

This time round my main concentration is to communicate the game TMNT Out of The Shadows. Naturally I would jump gung-ho into it and go crazy in exploring a comic inspired inspiration, however I've had to slow myself down and take notice of the character design that has gone into the game. Considering the character design and style of animation I found myself considering a different approach to illustrating from my usual.

There will be more updates and I'm gad to say that there will be an exhibition of the printed work. You will be updated on this too.

In the meantime, I've been very much sucked into the anime 'Shingeki no Kyojin' or 'Attack on Titan.' The cartoon is kind of epic!

Ha I was also quite excited when my baby brother rang me to tell me he was readin Bleach! I don't but it's just briliant!

JEBA X Brownstock Festival

Last week I was invited out to Essex to produce a piece for Brownstock festival. I was given the theme Cowboys and Aliens. This was definitely a totally different experience than previous. I was in the middle of fields painting a 20ft wall in the sun. It was totally serene and peaceful, fresh air and I even had my shoes off! A beautiful experience.

I decided to go with a different approach to style, drawing influence from old Tex Avery animation. Bold outlines and flat fills. After all the conceptual work I've done in the last few months, it was quite refreshing to get concentrate on just this.

The weekend commenced with the Festival which was brilliant. A great Line up and production was on show, with the likes of Benga, Mark Ronson, Krafty Cuts, Jaguar Skills, and Roni Size! I missed Roni but the rest of the sets were crazy! Dubstep and Trap was in full affect!

Danke Schon London..

Shhhh it's a secret...

Difrancesco's Vamp

So as I said previously I've just been given a new mechanical pencil, which I have filled with 2H lead. The terms of receiving the pencil was that I create a sketch for the contributor... simple!

Scanned and going into Illustrator.