My Year In Illustrations, Murals And Everything Black And White

27/12/2015
Cai Burton

Cai looks back on his year and the different illustrations he’s worked on.

After clicking on Facebook’s ‘Year in Review’ I was feeling nostalgic. 2015 has been a busy year for me, and I realised that I’ve spent a lot of it drawing. So I decided to look back on all the different illustrations I’d created over the past 12 months.

January

I spent the few days between Christmas and New Years finishing this piece off. I’d gotten a timelapse camera for Christmas so was dying to try it out and made a video of it.

February

This was the month that I learned to only accept outside murals when it’s warm. I spent a week freezing my fingers off drawing this private mural of Bristol.

March

In March, Co-LAB asked me to design their window display! Thankfully, it wasn’t quite as cold as the last one, but I was still pretty chilly. They even made a fancy video of me drawing it.

April

Following the Co-LAB love I got from the previous month, they then asked me to come up with a t-shirt design for them. I was just starting to get into mandalas then, so it was fun to create a really big one.

May

In May, I went travelling round Europe. So things were naturally very quiet for me then. Despite drawing an airplane, I travelled mostly by train – didn’t stop me from missing a flight though.

June

Whilst I was in Europe, I collected postcards from every city I visited starting with Copenhagen and I drew mandalas and landmarks on them. I ended up with 11 different postcards from all over Europe. You can have a look at the collection here

July

7July

In Prague, there’s a wall called Lennon Wall where people graffiti messages of love, bright colours and Beatles lyrics. While I was there, I decided to leave my own mark.

August

When I got home, I was really loving the Bristol vibe – especially during the Harbour Festival. I decided to draw 12 of Bristol’s boats floating along the harbourside.

September

I also had fun at this year’s Upfest street art festival. I spent a lovely summer’s day painting this design on a large piece of wood in front of tonnes of people.

October

During October, I learned not to attempt a daily challenge in the same week that you start a new job. I tried to take part in Inktober this year, but only made it to day 11.

November

I was feeling super Christmassy in November because I was delivering my Christmas card designs around Bristol. I just love Christmas jumpers so couldn’t not draw some.

December

Finally, to celebrate Christmas, I was asked by Paper Plane to design their Christmas Window Display. So I covered the front of their shop in patterned baubles of all different sizes.

There were lots of other drawings I did that didn’t make the cut, and you can check them out on my Facebook page, Instagram or Tumblr. I had loads of fun this year and I can’t wait to see what drawings I come up with in 2016.

How has your 2015 been? Have you got any artwork you want to share? Get in touch on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram

Alternatively, you could check out the Emerging Artists’ Exhibition as featured on Rife Guide