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.

AOI Illustration Awards

I'm currently living in a small igloo made of half-drawn comics pages, but I thought I would crawl out from under the Bristol board for a few minutes to write about the AOI Illustration Awards.

I won the New Talent (student and recent graduates) prize for the Editorial section with two pieces from my MA project Capital City. Here's an excellently composed picture by Sally Kent to prove it.

Tuesday night was the awards night so Sally and I went along to Somerset House to hobnob with other illustration types and I picked up my certificate from John O'Reilly, editor of Varoom magazine.

We had a great time and met some lovely people, including Edd Baldry, who won the Professional prize in the same section as me, Anna Cattermole, who won the Professional prize in the Self-Initiated section for her beautifully observed drawings of boat building, and judge, cartoonist, illustrator, author and new dad Stephen Collins.

It was all a bit of an enjoyable blur and as ever with private views I was too busy talking to people to properly take in all the art. My two pictures are in the first room, sharing wall space with Anna's afore-mentioned boat pictures and some striking digital collages illustrating The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat by the sartorially impressive Nate Kitch (he's the one who loos like Jarvis impersonating Elvis Costello in the picture below). I only got a chance to have a quick whiz round beyond our room, but I saw enough to tell that it's a well put together exhibition in a beautiful space, and (as you'd hope) there's a fascinating variety of approaches to contemporary illustration on display.

We're going back to have another look at the weekend and I'm really looking forward to it. Below is a picture of all the winners taken by Sara Thomas. As ever, I appear to be arseing about!

More info on the AOI Awards to be found here and here.

Right, I'm off to draw comics again. The long awaited Hitsville UK 2 is on its way!