Occasionally people have asked me, "Can I draw?"

Originally I did a Foundation course in art and design, which included life drawing. So whilst I can draw, I don't consider myself as good enough to work as an illustrator.

Back in the day, I did get asked once on a Panadol advertising/marketing pitch in 2003, when I was freelancing at Ogilvy and Mather. Malcolm Berry (one of advertsing Guru David Ogilvy’s older contemporaries. He was looking after the pitch as head creative director - being 'old school’ he wanted ALL the storyboard layouts as drawn illustrations, rather than done in photoshop using pencil/markers. There was one illustrator/layout artist there, but the amount of illustrations needed that evening, it was already six o'clock when we were briefed - 18 different storyboard concepts, six frame layouts on each, for the art directors (108 frames in total to a reasonable standard( - which was way out of his capability. So into the breach I went. I’m used to taking control when needed. Over the next 10 hours (until 4am in the morning) I managed 54 black and white frames, 9 concepts total. I was quite pleased with them, though obviously not to the full-time illustrator's standard. After four hours sleep, I then went in to see what the senior creative’s though. Fortunately they were happy with the concepts and I then had to single-handedly had to do all of the computer work with retouching and storyboarding.

Samples of my basic drawing skill:

Eagle

Battle

Earring

Watercolour

Polar

Amma