No matter how hairy, cold, lonely, poor or greedy you might be, the best present you can give to someone is your fluffy arms and (hairy) chest.

In one word, hug.

In two words, hug, love.

Crazy alien bear by juliendecaudin

New song! New song! New song!

As shown in the picture it’s about a bear, a crazy crazy bear, a “different” bear, and has been made for and through very positive life vibrations.

 
The official lip-syncing session

 
The uncensored bear

The outrageous lyrics

This summer I walked behind a waterfall. And it was pretty damn good. So good that it became the theme of my next personal illustration project, named “fall” as summer should go retreat.

After a serie of competition-related illustrations (with some very nice surprises like this, this and that), I felt in need of going back to good old-school improvisation with a very little brief (“my experience of waterfalls”) and potential time to develop-it-as-it-goes.

As the following first steps show up, it’s been everything but obvious to start with, but it ended up somewhere I connect with and I vibrate for (it’s ok to vibrate). WTF man? Waterfall man.

Unsolicited + illustration = Ullustration: the latest entry in my imaginary dictionary.

So here is an ullustration based on an old New Scientist’s article, and illustrating how full access to amazing technology tends to make people unhappy. So it’s better not to forget that, the elephant, is very important (this is metaphorical and deep so I’m sure it makes sense).

The hacked article

Here is the latest bit of my summer competition frenzy: an illustration of the word “space” for the Space Exhibition which will be part of the Cardiff Design Festival 2011 this October.

It might be obvious but, in case it isn’t, the idea is to illustrate the constant need of urbanisation to take over space and potentially over our beautiful nature. As a result many happy mountain sheep ended up drunk in the big smoke. One interpretation out of many I hope (hint: keep mind wide open).

A busy inspiration board:

My process, step by step:

Based on my early idea of breaking into hat fashion here is a three animal-hats set done for the Stereohype badge competition 2011.

Cathat

Octopushat

Elephanthat

My last night’ spontaneous submission to the Booooooom + Poketo “Before life” project. Totally free to interpretation!

I met a dog. A Greek dog. And I’ve been tempted sketching about his pace of life. Meanwhile I found out about PeculiarBliss latest call for submission with a theme matching flawlessly what this dog – let’s call it Pluto – inspired me: “Pastime”.

Me and Pluto met at Jimmy’s in the village of Pelekas, Corfu. As most dog he was mainly chilling out, but he had this powerful expression on his face translating many years of an extremely peaceful life. Another definition of time for Pluto then, so far away from our busy and hyper fast pace of life of over-connected people.

This is Pluto having a nap:

A bunch of pictures to pimp up the idea:

And 18 steps of the doodling, sketching & painting process:

This is definitely a sheep playing banjo, one of those exciting creatures you will be able to find at the most exciting music festival this summer: Farm Festival.

I’m honoured to contribute to such a nice event (had a first shot last year, 200% worth it, tickets are here). This illustration is part of this year festival visual identity, and will show up on the brand new Farm Festival website in daily rotations among a bunch of sweet farm animals characters.

A hairy character inspired from my recent trip in Greece (only the duck is British).

I didn’t eat any octopus there but squids, the fried ones. Octopus and squids are pretty close in my mind so I really need to share the best lunch I had in Corfu, fried squids (this is the picture before it disappeared)…

…has been also the worst when I gave it another try in an unfortunate restaurant thinking that, extremely large amount of greasy fried squids and fries don’t need any greens to be appreciated. Rant over, the first one was delicious and it happened near Liapades beach.

Still, I understand why some people fight to save octopuses (AND squids) to be eaten by British ducks. Here is another proof of what seems to happen everyday on Greek beaches: