#NextGenFest

This month I've been lucky enough to get the opportunity to do some promotional design work for mac birmingham, starting with a flyer for upcoming Next Gen Fest. Aimed at directly involving 16-24 year olds within the midlands arts scene, Next Gen Fest has been created by the Cannon Hill Collective, and boasts theatre, dance, visual arts, music, and not least, partying. I wanted the flyer to depict an uplifting celebration with a springtime fiesta vibe, the balloons representing the individual's creativity being 'set free'. Pure cheese, but it really is going to be a bloody great bash.
They even let me hand draw the trusty mac logo.

What's This Story?

I rustled up this zany illustration in support of What's This Story?, a growing interactive narrative made up of words, pictures, music, and moving image. In fact, pretty much anything can be contributed to the continuous story online. This great multi-modal project by Rosalyne Norford is open to everyone and the best bits will be exhibited at mac birmingham in April as part of Next Gen Fest, a unique event created by and for young people.

Join in!

DAN001

Much to my delight I was commissioned to draw a large iconic Bowie this week. Here he is, ethereal and vibrant, from the famous Aladdin Sane cover. I loved drawing this so much that it has sparked a desire to create further drawings capturing some of the many faces of David Bowie, and subsequently forming a range of prints.
Watch this face. I mean space.


Ps. The post title refers to the reference of my first ever invoice. I'll never forget it.

P A L E S E A S

A while back I was asked by illustration comrade Josh Whettingsteel to draw young Southampton upstarts Pale Seas for a zine he was putting together. And so, that is exactly what I did.
Happy to be restricted to the monochrome (as lately I've been going utterly colour bonkers; grabbing any crayon I damn well please) I used it as an opportunity to try and achieve more detail with a finer pencil and I'm quite intrigued with the atmospheric results. A pleasure to draw, I love the band's distinctive look, and their sound is also definitely one to "watch".

Some abstract sketches I created after visiting Mike Nelson's M6 exhibition at Eastside Projects, Birmingham, are also set to adorn the article. These warped ragged tyre forms looked like something that the sea would bring in, weathered and strangely alien, and fitted in nicely as the extra bits of mark-making that Josh was looking for. Really looking forward to seeing what he puts together!

Just Like Hats.

Having promised myself I would enter Secret 7" this year, I created this little hat design with just hours to go! Torn between Elton's Bennie & The Jets and Laura Marling's The Beast, I surprised myself and went for classic track Harder Than You Think by Public Enemy. My design came out of trying to draw the caps featured in the video each time they appeared, to mixed results. Wanting the sleeve to remain humble and unedited I left the drawings laid out just as they appeared on the page. Hopefully this simple little idea acts as some form of testament to just being yourself and trying until you get something right.

Good luck to everyone who entered and you can vote for you favourite design over on Talenthouse.

And Now Here's Byng With The Weather.

The dawn of March meant it was my turn to pick a theme over on After School Club. Perhaps atypically British in my decision, I decked out the blog with all things weather-related, as we really do seem to have had an awful lot of weather lately. I brought in Michael Fish and his reassuring forecast that there will be NO hurricanes, as well as making a rather strange 'Sunny With a Chance of Cher' background and giving our very own chair a spot waterproofing.

You can read the full story over at my After School Club theme intro post.
Just make sure you wear galoshes.

Let's Draw.

I woke up on 8th Jan to hear the world whispering about David Bowie. Why isn't every day like this? I thought, to find the tweets and articles had been triggered by Bowie's return to releasing tunes at the age of 66. Needless to say this prompted a drawing, hoping to capture his chiseled, now aging, face as well as the colourful character(s) to be found inside him.

Viva la Bowie.

SOI ILLUSTRATORS 55

Miraculously my entry into the Society of Illustrators illustration awards was successful, meaning I had to have faith in Happy Birthday, Bill to travel across the miles to New York in good shape! Ever the showman, he made it in style. Here are some photographs of him in The Big Apple at the ILLUSTRATORS 55 exhibition!

If only I could have made it myself; alas, I had to make do with staying home watching the SOI's flickr set. Huge thank you to lovely fellow winner Annelin Fagernes for getting Bill's close up.

This half of the ILLU55 exhibition runs until 26th January, when it is the turn of editorial, book and advertising winners to take over until 2nd March. Definitely get down to the museum if you're in the neighbourhood, and look out for the book!

Eureka! OST

The After School Club january mixtape can now be heard on 8tracks and through our site, complete with my illustrated album artwork. Designed to soundtrack your ideas, the compilation of songs were picked by the four of us under our first theme - Eureka!

An eclectic mix of nostalgic tracks, sweeping electronica and charming instrumentals, this one goes out to any lab technicians called Terry.

hellosheiskate

First order of the club was to make portraits of each other for the ASC members page. Here is the lovely firecracker @helloiamkate ready for the site launch tomorrow. Blast off with us here.

Howdy, we are After School Club.

A new year, a new venture!

I have formed a collective with some of my favourite illustrators: Kate Rowland, Maria Midttun and Nathan Hackett, and together we are now known as After School Club. Having brainstormed and had adventure time last year all in the name of creativity we're ready to get some stuff out into the world as a team.

Our logo is thus; a little drawing of mine. Sure, he's just an unassuming ordinary red chair, but rest assured, he loves to party.

Intending to develop the role of the collective throughout the year, it begins as a platform to create work around a monthly theme and generally have lots of fun meeting up every month for 'business meetings'. We think it's important to see the people behind the illustrations and keep up with what's going on in the world at large whilst we sit scribbing at our desks, so as well as our drawings and makings we will be sharing collective mixtapes, managing our own Book Club, and bringing you a Something of the Month, every month.

Join in the adventure at www.afterschoolclubcollective.co.uk

Reach For The Sky.

After hearing the sad news that Sir Patrick Moore had passed away I felt compelled to make a drawing of him in tribute. Like the spur-of-the-moment drawing of Bill Murray on his birthday, the image quickly took on a life on its own and I was shocked to see Patrick staring back at me.

A great man. Reach for the sky, Patrick.

A Creative Christmas.

When The Young Creatives called out for contributions for their advent calendar I contacted them saying I would fashion them an illustration of creatives at Christmas: Pantone matching food and somebody wrapping a cat. For some reason they went for it, so here it is. I am TYC's December 19th.

Merry Christmas, and to all a good cat.

Movember.

Last month I decked out my portrait with a rather dashing tash of her own, as well as completing portrait requests for those who wanted more top lip action than nature allowed over on Gallery of Mo!
My favourite illustration to do was of pals Rachel & Jody and I found the commissioned portraits to be great practice, each pushing my ability to draw faces a little bit more. I considered each one as an experiment so they certainly all look a bit different, but I want to thank everyone who donated and chose me as their hairy artiste - it was a pleasure to denote each and every.

Below is doe-eyed darling Kate McStraw (my final portrait request) and despite giving her an honorary 70s trucker tash I have to admit I prefer her pretty face without it. This drawing for me also reflects the beginning of a shift in how I deal with detail: hair in particular beginning to grow in refinement as the month went on.

With every face I draw I learn a little more, and it was all for a good cause! Don't forget to get involved next Movember.

For now, don't you all think it's time for a shave?

Beauty in the Beast.

Earlier this month I was asked to take part in a project with Jack In Water in which artists responded to their songs. My given song Beauty in the Beast was beautiful and haunting, yet conjured up imagery of vanity, vice and debauchery.

You can listen for yourself here and here are some of the lyrics that inspired me:

'Eyes are misleading

Forget yourself

But don’t fall asleep

The beast isn’t creeping

You're just sleeping

Forget yourself

And if you do

This place will change

An until you do

The beast stays vain

And the minute she forgets

That they're only friends

It starts to get frightening

And the minute she forgets

This never ends

Their moves inspire me

Have you seen them

What they're doing

In the city while we sleep

Can you feel it

What they're doing

In the city'

Trying to create a roughed up portrait of the beauty, I surrounded her heavily made-up face with angelic loose locks. A soft yet dark feathered mask provides contrast and draws on the idea of darkness behind light to be found within the song.

ORIGINALITY:

"Readily available for us to absorb, extrapolate and borrow, everything from historical documents right up to celebrity musings from a few seconds ago is ours for the taking."

I have been busy sculpting another illustrated article for Another Escape, now in its fourth issue! Following my thoughts on inspiration for the last issue, this time I have chosen to tackle the subject of originality; namely whether it really is, as is so often proclaimed: dead. You'll be pleased to hear the conclusion I draw is largely a positive one, centred around the notion that the individual can be empowered by embracing what is around them in the right way, rather than drowning in existing content, or perhaps trying to shy away from its influences altogether.

Despite AE 4 not set for release until next year (in a bigger and better format) I thought I would reward those who follow what I get up to with a preview of the illustrations headed for it, along with snippets of accompanying text. I appreciate AE letting me regularly write and draw for them; a great opportunity as I think all too often an illustrators' voice can be underestimated, put to one side in favour of visualizing the voices of others.

"Instead of drowning in a cornucopia of ‘stuff’, I think it is important to accept that yes, we are bombarded by existing concepts, but we are the filter through which it all passes."

"How we process that which is around us is distinctive; even with identical starting matter people can create completely unique interpretations."

Thanks for looking and listening as always; can't wait to see these scrawls in print!

Love At First Sight.

Yesterday I fashioned a little poster for grad film Love At First Sight: A Romantic Documentary. A call to all those serendipitous lovers out there, the drawing is based on Stanley Kubrick's Life & Love on the New York City Subway, one of my favourite photosets of all time. Can't say I blame the broad in this image; who could resist those charming leg cuffs?

You too can support the film in lots of different ways here.

MCR Artists Books III : People

The little heroes I met at Manchester Artists Book Fair are absolutely deserving of their own post, making this the final entry in an indulgent blog triptych. While Laurie took over manning the stall I went to spend some of my earnings and meet the people behind the books; literally and metaphorically.



One of the first stallholders I visited was Cally Barker, and I instantly fell in love with her knitted book covers. She described herself as the wild knitter of Bedfordshire and I can see why. Taking on classic pieces of design and master's paintings with wool, the other crafters must certainly raise eyebrows over their biege cardigan patterns. I had a lot of warmth for this lady, as she quite rightly declared, "well it wouldn't be a book fair without some penguin classics, now would it?" www.callybarker.com



Next I talked to this chap, Alex Pritchard. No stranger to a book fair it turns out, he was exhibiting thought-provoking books that put the planet we call home into brain-exploding (or imploding) perspective. In front of him you can see his Pocket Orrery (above); that's a book of the planets at relative size to you and me, with removable pages to create your own scale model. He even made the little bags.
Truly wonderful stuff, but his pièce de résistance for me however, was this badboy:

The preface states: "In this book there are 316,227 dots each representing a star. For each 'star' in this book imagine another copy of this book. That is how many stars are within our galaxy. Carrying on this train of thought, imagine that each dot is a galaxy. For each 'galaxy' there is another book of dots. That is the estimated number of galaxies in the entire universe." I walked around the rest of the fair with this information reverberating around in my skull. 'The universe is utterly awesome', I thought.

Without getting mushy about this guy, he really was a bit of a smiling gem. Even reminded me a bit of Prof Brian Cox. You can visit AP's online store here to buy your own paper interplanetary nebulas, etc.

The next illuminating individual I met was Jan Hopkins, the miner's daughter who, amongst other things, wires books with simple yet smart circuitry. Particularly taken with her You Are Here projects (above) in which LEDs are activated by finger pressure, I feel she was the exhibiting artist who most pushed what books could do. Particularly relevant in the age of digital kindle "books", I think I'd choose the hands-on joy of her electronic paper every time. Catch all her works in progress here: www.withdrawingroom.com; who knows what she'll try next.

My personal favourite / the stand at which I parted with most money was that of Café Royal Books, where I picked up 2 issues of publisher & editor-in-chief Craig Atkinson's photography zines.




Inside and out monochromatic scenes of life completely whetted my visual appetite. Reminiscent of the candid photography of Martin Parr, each page hung still in the air like a carefully pitched note. Exquisite, striking, gorgeous, in short all of Café Royal's publications were right up my street, and I will be following them closely from now on.

As a final word, there was one person at the book fair that I never met. Infact, no-one did. The stallholder next to us didn't turned up, generating much mystery and bafflement, with some visitors even asking if I was her.
Forever a mystery, I drew a picture of what I think she might look like. If you see her, tell her Synthia says hi.