Drawn-Together: An Illustrator's life in a recession

It's amazing that you can have a million ideas going through your head and then as soon as you try and get something down on paper it just doesn't happen.... this is a common thing with the human condition proven to myself as I have re-wrote this initial entry about 5 times so far and finally decided 'to hell with it' and start off like this.

So who the heck am I and what am I doing here?
I am a freelance digital graphic designer, which sounds all very interesting and when I start mentioning multimedia, album artwork, viral marketing, cartooning and basically drawing for a living it even sounds like a great thing to do.... well not always... I have found this out the hard way.

THIS IS MY STORY..... I didn't need to say that, but it just NEEDS to be said:)

I started my journey to being a digital graphic artist many years ago in the 1980's when I used to write computer games on a ZX Spectrum with my mother when I was 8 years old, I didn't do most the writing, I was more the syntax and variable string decoder. We won some competitions too which was fun.... I think we won Stickers that went on the audio tapes we saved our games on. FANTASTIC EH!!! Remember this was back in the day when a 48k computer could make amazing games like Manic Miner where as now the advert which is probably flashing on this page somewhere uses up more space... not as fun though.

I guess I wasn't a normal kid at school. I never had the posters of footballers, madonna or Starwars on my walls like everyone else, I had posters of Freddie Krueger and Sir Clive Sinclair, Google him and then you will probably think I was also good at chess and brainy things.... Your VERY wrong. I have a terrible brain when it comes to mathematics, my excuse is that I am a non-liniar pictorial mnemonic mind, my mother would tell you I am just a little thick.

After leaving full time education I ended up in business school in Nottingham studying 'business administration' and 'accountancy' which landed me a job as a PA at Allied Dunbar at a reasonable wage for a 16 year old at the time.

So far so good, I am on my way to being a pencil pusher and doning wonderfull things like reconciling and forms. I had my nice dark suit, pressed shirt, slim briefcase and even a filiofax (Awww memories) Actually it was a digital one Psion XP II Personal Organiser.

::USELESS FACT::
When I was 14 I wrote a bespoke software application on the Psion Organiser for the running of the Tammy Whynette UK Fan Club of which my friends mother was the head of. Tammy used to go to their house every few years you see.

So where was I..... Oh yes.... Everything was looking good for me in life.

It was one of those slightly overcast mornings when I was on my way to the office going past the train station when it started to rain, as I pulled up my slim, black and telecopic umberella I noticed a hord of commuters also heading to their cubicles in various parts of the city. We all had on pretty much the same suits, we had the same briefcases which hold almost exactly one piece of paper and the EXACT same umberellas!!!!

OK... this doesn't sound particulary scary to you now, but to me at that moment it stopped me in my tracks. Images from George Orwells 1984 and Fritz Langs Metrololis and their depiction of the depression of conformity and the structure of sociery didn't go through my mind, I wish they did as that would make me all intelectual. I took my brolly down, let down my pony tail (well I am one of those arty sorts) and I recall saying a couple of expletives and escaped before I was lost in that situation and would loose myself completly.

For the next few years I decided the best course of action was to throw of the scackles of benality and become my own person, an individual, my own person... so I decided to become GOTH like about 2000 other people in the Nottingham area... well being a loner is always better with company.

One thing about the gothic community I have to say is you meet a better class of weirdo, when you go to your normal clubs with your normal people that you would later see either inside Tesco by the frozen peas or outside by the phonebox trying to look hard with their mates. The gothic/metal community is a lot wider, you tend to meet the kind of people your mother never warned you about because she didn't even know people like THAT existed in real life and if she did, she would be more interested in baptisms in general.

I will chop a whole chunk out of my life at this point, not because it wasn't very interesting 'actually quite the reverse' but more to save time for you the reader and to escape public humiliation and probable legal actions:)

It wasn't all late night parties, strange people in strange makeup and a heavy metal soundtrack of drug infested hedonism and rauncyness though..... a lot of it was, but I wasn't invited to those parties that often, which i probably exited stage right.

During all this mayhem I would be at my friends house who had a PC and I would play around with computer graphic programs and image manipulation program, much to his great joy as he got free graphics as I was learning what to do.

My first paid commission was actually on a train trip to Derby. I had a rather funky looking business bloke opposite me for most the trip and to releive the boredom and take my mind of the strange smell from the carriage I started to do a cartoon picture of him without him knowing. I didn;t know it was his wife/friend at the side of me watching all the time. I half expected to be glared at and told off or reported to someone for being odd when he stood up, looked over and asked if he could buy it off me for 20 quid, which was kinda usefull as I only had a fiver on me and not enough to get home anyway. I guess that was the moment I first realized I could get paid for drawing things without the aid of a small cruffy dog and a cloth cap on a pavement.

I always had a passion for the graphic image and computers and I finally got my first home PC in 2001 which had les procesing power than the mobile phone in your pocket as you read this. Held together with lollypop sticks and bits of plastic it was my pride and joy.... well until I got an upgrade when it then became a useles piece of junk which I sold to a mad woman in the Welsh Valley one winters evening. That's a whole story of it's own which I wont go into here.

As my computers slowly got better I pent more and more time learning everything I could about them and how to make them do the things I wanted them too, which was always full of surprises as I have never read a manual or taken a class on anything I have done yet.

As time went on I started getting into website creation, design and implimentation and did everything from logo' through to illustrating a childrens book for a bonsai specialist with a lovable bonsai character 'Bonsai Bill'.

I moved to the London area after meeting my partner Jassie via one of my rather odd goth friends and moved down south from Notingham to live with her, she was a BIG fan of some of my cartoon childrens characters 'The Guins' and has been at my side the whole time since as a ray of hopefull light.

Since moving down south I worked on a mirriad of commissions in the music industry and hundreds of small commisions ranging from cartoons for people through to working in connection with Jeff Wayne who did The musical version of The War of the Worlds.

If you saw the sheer amount of work I have produced you would think I would be rolling in bundles of money, but yet again you would be wrong.... your good at that so far. I should stop insulting the reader really... sorry.

I moved to Linconshire for a couple of years where I worked as a Photographer at Haven Holidays where I would... well take photos all the time. This didn't have much 'Graphic' stuff in it really, but it paid the bills which was handy as Jassie had just given birth to our 1st Son Ethan. She moved back down south and would visit every few weeks with Ethan