Magpies

Here's the magpie birthday card that I made for my superstitious girlfriend.

At first it looks like a most unfortunate situation...

...ah! but it's OK after all, he is not alone.

I might make some more of these. Anyone know any good card companies?

LOOM DOOM!

ATCHOO! How is it possible that I have another cold?! I seem to get them every few weeks. Grrrmble.


Here is the picture that I produced for our exhibition From the Loom Room. Apparently, our studio at Camberwell College of Arts used to be the loom room, hence the name of our exhibition.


This got me thinking about Karl Marx's Capital which I was reading earlier in the year while attending some really interesting lectures at Goldsmiths, given by John Hutnyk. (I got about halfway through the book and the lectures before I had to drop out due to trying to cram umpteen more books into my head for my research essay).


So, my thoughts returned to Marx's descriptions of the exploitation of men, women and children in the dark satanic mills of industry. Loom Room became Loom Doom and my subject became this demonic mechanical monster, garlanded with the hands and severed digits of his servants.

The original's an A3 combo of black ink on acetate and acrylic paint on watercolour paper. Should you want to hang this cautionary picture on your toddler's nursery wall, then it's yours for £150. Alternatively, I can sell you a high quality digital print on A3 (£25) or A4 (£15). 


Ps. One of the best things about Marx's Capital is his footnotes. Most of them are incredibly bitchy and sarcastic, generally ripping holes in the theories of previous political economists. About the only person he has anything nice to say about is Leonard Horner, who was one of the first factory inspectors. Marx made much use of the info about horrific working conditions recorded in Horner's blue books and wrote of him "His services to the English working class will never be forgotten." Mr Horner appears in the bottom left of my picture.

Private/Public

This is a piece that I did for a college brief about the conflict or continuum between the private and public in illustration. It's an interesting area and definitely one that I think you have to think about if you're positioning yourself as an illustrator (whatever that means right now!)

All the stuff in the bottom left is what was surging through my head at the time, so there are glimpses from my Big MA Project in there and Anubis, who is the star of the essay that I should have been writing when I drew this.

I'm not really sure that the picture gets across much of what I intended it to, but then again that's sort of the point, so maybe that's OK in this case. How very meta!

Coupla things...

I did the pic below for the limited edition Illustrated Lyric Book for She Makes War's new album Little Battles.

It illustrates the last song on the album, Disarm, a lovely little tune with the line 'Dreaming Bodies/Are all we'll ever be'.

You can check out She Makes War and buy her album at http://shemakeswar.bandcamp.com/album/little-battles, although it looks like you only get the Illustrated booklet (including other great artists including Viviane Schwarz and Eliot Elam) if you buy the supa-dupa luxury version.

T'other thing is that I'll have a piece in an exhibition From the Loom Room, featuring lots of comrades from the Illustration MA at Camberwell that I'm currently taking. It's at Blackall Studios, 73 Leonard Street in trendy Shoreditch. Private view is Thursday 12 April and then the exhibition runs until 17 April. Come check out the talent! 


http://www.fromtheloomroom.com

Midpoint review debrief...

.... or art in the kitchen.

We had our 'mid-point review' at college on Monday and Tuesday. Out main tutor, Jan, assures us that we are half way through the course, a terrifying thought! (although we think her calculation might be slightly out). Anyway, it was the first chance to see a 'finished' piece of work from each student along the lines of what they are planning for their big project and for them to get constructive criticism from tutors and the rest of the group. There was a bewildering variety of stuff and it was a little hard to keep track after a while.

Here's my piece.

I'm relatively pleased with how it came out, mainly because I was trying to bring together some techniques that are new to me and rely less on the computer for colour. There's digital trickery in there but only to bring the other elements together (printing with acrylics, watercolour and ink on tracing paper). There are a few photos below that show you some of these elements in progress.

Tutor Dave didn't seem to think the composition works. He described it as looking like everything was on a bus, the bus suddenly stopped and everything splurged up against the front! I can see what he means but I think I'm OK with the composition as it's intended to look monstrous and unbalanced, like the city is leaning sickeningly to one side. (Hope I'm not just being stubborn!) I will definitely try some of his ideas though, about working bigger and then cropping in to decide on the composition later.

Still need to work on my drawings of buildings and experiment with how I incorporate text. Lots to do!
Bye then!

Powerpuff Girls!

Illustration's all about collaboration and I'm very excited about this collaboration with my nephew-in-law, Mimmo. We gave our version of the Powerpuff Girls an abstract expressionist slant, think Cartoon Network by way of De Kooning.

Mimmo hasn't actually seen the cartoon yet but has decided that tPPG is clearly the best thing ever. I tend to agree.

COLLEGE PROJECT

Can't say too much about this yet as I don't sufficiently understand it myself, but here's a bunch of sketches etc from my big project for my MA.

It's very much Work in Progress at the moment, and is something to do with the idea of the City as a centre of financial (mis)management.

This is playing with an idea of Debt as some kind soul-sapping louse or parasite.

Sketches from the documentary Inside Job.

LEVIATHAN STRIKES!

This joke is obscure even by the standards of comics geekery, but I had to get it out of my system.

(As some kind of justification, it references two of my favourite writers, from very different forms of comics, Grant Morrison and Peter Blegvad). 


Hm, I'd better do some work for college, eh?

ETCH A SKETCH!

I got to try some etching towards the end of last year, but as the results ended up as Xmas presents I haven't been able to blog about them until now.

I got to try two slightly different techniques, with a soft and hard ground (the waxy stuff that you roll on to the metal plate and actually etch into).

Here's my first go, on a soft ground on a steel plate. The soft ground picks up lots of texture so you can use it to get patterns from material, or, in my case, thumb prints!

It's the legendary and late Humphrey Lyttelton, jazz trumpeter and presenter of I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue. My lucky Dad got this picture.

The hard ground gives you a cleaner, more cross-hatchy style, more like I'd thought of as an etching, so I decided to do an etched interpretation of William Blake, Taxi Driver. This is William on a hard ground on a zinc plate.

I thought it would be interesting to experiment with hand-tinting the Blake prints with water-colours (as Blake did in some of his illuminated books) but it's a lot harder than it looks!

It all went a bit clown colours on this one so I had another go with a calmer palette, thus!

Much happier with this one, so I gave this one to my Mum.

So, a really interesting process. I'm looking forward to getting back in the etching studio, trying out some more and figuring out how to incorporate it into my BIG PROJECT.

Happy New Fear...

I've been trying to think through my BIG PROJECT for college and wound myself up into a bit of a state, something like this:

I think I made a bit of a breakthrough today so should be more positive stuff on its way! Got a lot of drawing to do over the next few days...