Keaton Henson

Update May 2009:
I've been noticing a lot of traffic to this particular page on my blog. Guess Keaton's a popular guy! However this is quite an old post and so doesn't have a lot of relevant, recent information about him. Go to his new website www.keatonhenson.com and have a gander there.
What do you think of Keaton's work? Feel free to leave a comment at the bottom of the page. Alternatively, have a look around the rest of my blog and get involved! Maybe even subscribe, I'm quite interesting! :)

The other day I was wearing an Enter Shikari t-shirt that i bought at Download, and it reminded me that I was going to find out who did the album artwork for Take To The Skies. So I found out. His name is Keaton Henson, and this is his website.

It's not fair. He is a year younger than me. And he's so talented already, no university degree, just went out and did it all himself. You can read about him on his biography page, anyway. It kinda depresses me 'cos here is a guy who knows exactly what he's all about, he's already got awesome commisions, knows his style and just produces this amazing, quirky work. I'm nowhere near that stage yet, I don't even have a style.

It makes me think I should just give up if people are going to be so much better than me, and younger! :(

Ok, self pitying rant over. Sorta. I'm not jealous, I just want to be exactly like that ;)

Here is some examples:
Take to the Skies front cover
Monsterrr Clothing
T-shirt Design
Hearts Under Fire EP cover.


The thing that I aspire to is this:


Having your artwork, like if you were commissioned by a band, up on stage in front of loads of people... god that would feel so amazing. One day.

(All images copyright to Keaton, damn him.)

Download Festival, Illustration Friday and other fun stuff

'Ello all! Just a (not so) quick update on stuff.

I got back from Download Festival yesterday, it was such a great weekend! Saw some really amazing bands and met up with loads of people I haven't seen for ages :) I'm not going into great detail about it 'cos I could go on for hours, but Id say the top 3 bands were Enter Shikari, My Chemical Romance and Linkin Park. I suppose they are also my 3 favourite bands but yeah, they were amazing. Especially Enter Shikari, what a rave! My bag broke and everything but had such a good time.
I met Aiden as well, at a Q&A session thing, that was awesome. I was going to meet Linkin Park but the meet and greet was at the same time as Marilyn Manson, and I'd never seen him before. (I've met LP 3 times now.) So I gave my pass to a friend :) Yay.

So, I never did get the chance to finish last week's Illustration Friday topic, but I've decided to do it anyway because... well I wanted to. But this week's topic is also good. It's 'Suit', and I think I'll go down the 'suit of cards' route :) So after I've finished Your Paradise, I'll do that one too :)

So for the 'Your Paradise' one I really wanted to use Illustrator, as I barely know much about it. So I've downloaded the free trial of cs3 and had a go on it today. This is what I've done so far:
I'm quite pleased with it so far! Obviously it will have some sort of colour/texture but this is just the lines at the mo. Paths are quite fun. Except I can't figure out how to join some of them, it keeps saying something like "paths need to be in the same group or not grouped at all" or something. I dunno. If anyone knows the answer then do tell :)

So yes the basic premise for 'Your Paradise' is a self portrait of me, listening to my ipod. But it's actually me plugged into flowers and nature and stuff. Soon I'll add lyrics and scribbles and inky bits. Basically my paradise is listening to music outside, completely tuned off, doodling a bit and not caring about anything :)

I look a bit moody but i'm supposed to be concentrating =P

The results for the Allmightys t-shirt competition came out today; unfortunately I didn't win :( My average score was 2.02, but I did have 131 people vote for me, so thank you very much everyone!! You can see the winners here.

So that's about all I have to say really. I shall post my finished illustration friday illo when it's done :)

All
works in this post is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.