So back to the word Bubble Head... I’ve been busy working on a new series of lighthearted illustrations the past few weeks done exclusively with stock in mind. As an illustrator I’ve always had a love / hate relationship with stock illustration. I hated it for changing the industry as did everyone else but once I realized it was an evil that was here to stay I wanted to get in on it myself. I have made several attempts over the years and even though I’ve made some money it never really took off as I would have liked. I have a friend who does enormously well with it and he advised me to treat it as a business. He encouraged me to adopt a distinctive style and stick with it. A few weeks ago while I was walking my dog Bingo out along the river I was thinking about my pumpkin men paintings (which I will talk about later) and had the idea to put that same innocent and friendly face on a human head instead of a pumpkin head and so the idea of the Bubble-Head men was born.

I wanted them to be fun and fairly quick to produce; 2 criteria that I think are essential for stock. I also wanted them to look hand painted to seperate them from the majority of stock that is computer generated and in my opinion somewhat stale. They are completely painted in goache which is a medium I am very comfortable with as I do all of my textile design work in it. I got busy straight away and in a frenzy of production finished the first series of 25 and sent them off to Images.com. Since they are a completely different style then my other illustrations I decided to create a new portfolio for them called Planet Bubble-Head so they would stand on their own.