My Secret 7 sleeve

I just got a lovely email from Secret 7" saying that all 700 sleeves have now been sold (the ones that don't sell on the day go up on eBay) and this reminded me that I haven't posted my sleeve.

So here it is, in all it's bad-pun glory, my design for St Vincent's Digital Witness. See what I did there?

(Alternative title - Something is Amish!)

I also never got round to posting these pictures of my favourite sleeves from this year's exhibition.

Some of these I know the artists, some I'm still not sure about, but you can now check them all out, including artists and track details on the Secret 7" website.

Felt Mistress, if I'm not mistaken

 How rude!

The wonderful Jonathan Edwards

 Love this one!

 Modern Toss?

One of my illustration heroes, Pete Fowler. 

 The very distinct style of Isabel Greenberg

 ...and the equally distinctive Jean Jullien.

 Love this little fella.

Mick!

Shhhhhhhh

I am delighted, nay properly chuffed, to have another record sleeve in this year's Secret 7" exhibition.

I had a good look at the sleeves on display at the private view last night and there's some terrific work  there.

This year's Secret 7" is at Somerset House and is open to the public from 10 April to 3 May. Then all 700 sleeves go on sale on 4 May for £50 a pop, all proceeds to music therapy charity Nordoff Robbins. You'll only get to see whether your suspicions about artist and record are correct once the sleeve is in your hands.

All the details are over at http://secret-7.com and you can see a gallery of all the designs at http://secret-7.com/2015/gallery.php

Obviously I can't show you my sleeve for this year (yet!) but here's my artwork for last year, which was Glam surrealist masterpiece, Virginia Plain by Roxy Music.

Sequential City

I'm taking part in a very interesting exhibition at The Anise Gallery in Shad Thames from 6 February to 15 March.

It's called Sequential City and explores the expressive depiction of architecture in graphic novels and comics. 

I'll be showing prints of my weird cityscapes from Capital City and some of the original artwork that went into making the final pages. This means ink drawings, acrylic prints and watercolour washes and lots of tracing paper.

The Anise Gallery have attracted a very impressive bunch of artists, people who really push the envelope of comics art - namely Owen D Pomery, Alison Sampson, Hannah Berry, Tim Bird and Lando. I'm very pleased to be in their company.

The Anise Gallery is at 13a Shad Thames, London, SE1 2PU (just around the corner from the Design Museum) and there's a not so private view (all invited) on Thursday 5 February, 6 - 9 PM.

More details on the exhibition at http://www.anisegallery.co.uk/portfolio/sequential-city/

Drawing a Blank

I've drawn a comic about meditation for Nomos Journal. It's the first in a new column I'm writing/drawing for them called Drawing a Blank.

It depicts the experience of the beginner meditator – the pitfalls, pratfalls, and thoughts that drift through his head as he sits and does nothing much.

I'm trying to learn to meditate at the moment and I'm finding it an interesting but tricky business. The plan is to create a new comic strip for Nomos every few months, drawing on my meditation experiences and the thoughts that they provoke.

I've long been interested in meditation and buddhism so I'm going to try to use this comic column as a reason to get up off my arse (sit down on my arse?) and explore these areas. I'm by no means an expert on any of this, so we'll see what happens!

You can read the first comic strip in full at http://nomosjournal.org/columns/drawing-a-blank/

THOUGHT BUBBLE 2014

I'll be at Thought Bubble comics festival this weekend in Leeds, Saturday 15th to Sunday 16th November .

Dan and I will be on table 62 in the New Dock Hall, along side our fellow Great Beasts Adam Cadwell, Marc Ellerby, Rachael Smith and John Cei Douglas. Here's where we are on the map. Rest assured that we will be much happier to see you than Gwillum looks here.

We'll have copies of Hitsville UK 3 hot off the press as well as copies of 1 & 2.

We'll also have A3 and A4 Hitsville prints and I'll be selling my AOI-award winning graphic poem  Capital City.

Come and say hi if you're about!

COMICA COMIKET

I'm dead chuffed that Capital City features in the book of Comics Unmasked, the current exhibition at The British Library.

The exhibition finishes this weekend, and on Saturday 16 August I'll be taking part in the Comica Comiket, from 10.30 until 4.30 in the public foyer of the British Library itself.

It's a great chance to meet comics creators and buy comics and prints from the artists themselves. I'll be selling and signing Hitsville UK comics and prints as well as copies of Capital City.

Full details on the event here: http://www.comicafestival.com/index.php/comiket/

It is happening… again

Been meaning to put this up for ages. I did this picture of the giant from Twin Peaks for Ryan Humphrey's  Twin Peaks zine, Flesh World.

There's some really great work in there, not least Ryan's own distinctive drawings. You can see Ryan's stuff here and buy the zine here.

My picture contains a photo I took of David Lynch's spooky house that I took in LA last year when we were induing in a little bit of fan behaviour.

Watch out for those owls...

Culture

I've started a new comic strip, Culture, once a week over on Tumblr.

It's an excuse to make silly jokes about the Arts, as seen thought the eyes (I'm not sure they actually have eyes) of two monocellular organisms in a petri dish in a lab.

It's also something of an exercise in minimalism, as a contrast to the time-consuming baroque of Hitsville UK. It's a bit like that John Lennon quote (that I can't be bothered to find properly) about having an idea at the beginning of the week and recording and releasing the song by the end of the week. Wham, bam, get it out there while it's still relevant.

I talked about Culture to Richard Bruton over on the Forbidden Planet International blog and you can read Culture itself here. This week it's on GODZILLA!

What's her name?...

I can finally reveal my sleeve design for this year's Secret 7" show. (In fact I could a few weeks ago but I've only just got round to writing this.)

My sleeve is a comic strip interpretation of Roxy Music's surrealist corker Virginia Plain.

My story draws inspiration from the song's strange lyrics (General E Lee, blue casino floors, pale horizons, a studebaker) and contains a big nod to  the Big Train sketch in which Chairman Mao (played by the legendary Kevin Eldon) revives from his deathbed to give a spot-on imitation of Bryan Ferry on Top of the Tops. 

I was delighted to be included in this year's Secret 7" and even more delighted when I popped in on Record Store Day to see that my sleeve had been sold. You can see lots of the customers posing with their purchases here, including the chap who bought mine.

In the last few days Secret 7" have announced that they raised £41,500 this year for War Child!

Cover me, I'm going in!

I popped down to the Secret 7” exhibition, Downstairs at Mother in Shoreditch. 700 one-off record sleeves interpreting 7 songs by 7 bands/musicians. The twist is you don’t know who the artist is or which song it is until you’ve bought the sleeve.

All the sleeves go on sale on Record Store Day next Saturday 19th, first come first served, £45 each, with all the money going to the brilliant charity War Child. At that point you’ll find out which artist made 

These are some of my favourites (my contribution not included!) but you can see the whole lot on the Secret 7” website.

Think I know who painted this one…

And I have my suspicions about these two…