Hello folks, and apologies for my absence. The blog has been a barren wilderness for over a month now, as what I anticipated to be a relaxing start to summer rapidly became a busy introduction to working life.

So what’s been happening Dave? I hear literally two of you (hi Mum and Dad) cry out in delirious excitement. Well when I last wrote I was whining about the anti-climax of university life and the absence of new challenges on the horizon. As it turns out, I was holding the binoculars the wrong way around, and the new challenge I sought was soon staring me in the face.

And that challenge is New Designers2009! Yay, good times!

For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, New Designers is a big graduate showcase where young creative folk can go and meet big important people in suits, which is brilliant because big important people in suits sometimes give young creative folk jobs and money and stuff.

So essentially I’ve been busy preparing; designing business cards, writing a resume, assembling press packs, making work and organising things with the lovely people who invited me to tag along.

Aside from that I officially finished my degree, and came out with an overall 1st. Most importantly this means that father Booth lost his bet and now has to eat a minimum of five portions of fruit and vegetables every day for eternity. Oh yes!

Oh, and I also sold my Phobia book to the Ministry of Books which will hopefully give me enough money to survive in London for four days in July. Time will tell…

Right I think that’s covered everything, it was nice to catch up and I’ll endeavor to update more regularly from now on!

‘Til then, night all, and thank you for reading.

Yesterday was the deadline for our final degree show to go up; the culmination of a years worth of hard toil, panic and sleepless nights came and indeed went without incident. Save one twenty minute Viva presentation on Monday, that’s it, degree’s done and essentially, I’m happy.

Happy, but deflated. I feel like I spent a year scaling an unconquerable mountain, only to find a remote Himalayan branch of McDonald’s at the summit serving Yak McFlurry to chubby Americans. A terrible analogy I realise, but I have had about seven hours sleep in the last two days so forgive me.

Perhaps I’m just feeling a bit lost at the moment. Having spent my life in sketchbooks for the best part of three years I’ve forgotten how to be a normal person with free time to fill. I’ll get used to it eventually.

I just need a new mountain to climb.

On a more positive note, however, the exhibition looks great! Everyone has produced some incredible work so congratulations fellow illustrators. If you want to see for yourselves, the Portsmouth University BA (Hons) Illustration Degree Show will be held at the Eldon Building, Winston Churchill Avenue, Portsmouth and is open to the public from the 8th-12th of June. Worth a look I’d say!

Since insomnia has me in it’s maw, and while I remember.

I submitted a design to a Threadless Tee competition last week, and now it’s up for scoring! I’m told by the good people of Threadless that if I want to see it printed, I need to create some kind of self promotional hurricane to suck up everyone I know and dump them unceremoniously on the scoring page, where their bewildered state will cause them to dish out a high rating and post lovely comments with lots of smiley faces 🙂

Being a realist I know this will never happen, but if you do get a spare minute I would appreciate your honest feedback on the design. I might even shower you with flowers and cookies, you never know.

Thanks folks!

I thought it fitting to Christen the new news page by heralding a grand site re-launch. The poor thing hadn’t seen a single update since last summer; the wallpaper was stained and peeling, the galleries were gathering dust and a funny smell began to emanate from the html code, dead links the suspected cause.

So to the old brown theme we bid a fond farewell, rest in pixels old friend. I think the new look is probably a lot fresher, and serves to mark the slightly frightening transition between being a penniless student and (let’s face it) a penniless illustrator.

Anyway there are a lot of new images of everything I’ve done over the last 10 months, so have a good look around and tell me what you think. I’m off for a quiet panic about Friday’s deadline, nighty night.