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/