Liberty City

Here's the illustration for this months the Skinny. It's an article about Boston and features the USS Constitution (the world's oldest commissioned warship, apparently) made of various sights in Boston (Copley Square, the old state house, Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum etc). It's proved popular with Bostonians (well, two Bostonians actually) and I've sold some prints!

The Returned Casting Process

I've been watching French zombie drama "The Returned" on Channel 4, it's good but the actors are all very french looking...

Lost in a Box

This is a (very) short story about my adventures in a box. It's largely inspired by Steven Hall's super awesome Raw Shark Texts in which our protagonist is chased by a conceptual shark that eats memories. It's very good, my story isn't.

(If you can't make the story out on the picture, here it is in text form too:

So there i was, alone on the living room floor, in a box, the clear and unbroken horizon stretching out to all around me. At first i just sat there, bobbing gently on the imaginary waves, the ceiling light beating down on my bare neck like a hot unrelenting sun. I'd taken a broom with me by way of a paddle and took a flew exploratory stokes to nowhere in particular. The air was fresh and salty and a faint breeze tousled my hair. I hadn't noticed it at first but the furniture was starting to move away from me, the bookcase and the TV had already nearly drifted out of sight and i could just make out the table and a couple of chair disappearing over the horizon. i watched as my plant and small shelving unit were sucked under by the current leaving behind nothing but a couple of DVD's in the eddy. Panicked, I struck out with my broom towards the sofa but couldn't get any traction on the parquet flooring. I realised i'd soon be stranded if i didn't do something so I tried desperately the think of some real world task to escape the fantasy, dishes, washing, income tax returns,  something solid and banal, something i actually needed to do. But I'm too far out, i won't be doing those things today... )

Jellyfish

This post could have been "The Sea: It's big and cold and everything in it hates you Part II" but idea of a jellyfish hating anything just doesn't quite fit, it's a bit like the idea of porridge feeling resentment or a section of drywall falling in love. They have no brain, no heart, no blood, the fact that they are alive boggles my head.

I'm pretty pleased with how these pictures turned out (i might do a some more, the idea of doing a whole show of jellyfish appeals to me!) and so I've included some pictures of my development. First I pooled water on mount board (you need to use mount board so it doesn't warp), I then added a thin ink solution and drops of ink. I let it dry unevenly, occasionally changing the tilt of the board. I scanned and printed blobs on different sheets of paper and drew over with pencil then a bit of photoshop jiggery pokery and pow, jellyfish.

The Sea: It's big and cold and everything in it hates you

I love the sea. I love living by the sea. I love the smell of salt on the air and sound of crashing waves, I love harbours and beaches and gulls and pretty much everything else about being near the sea. I am not, however, crazy keen about being in the sea. I'm intensely aware that I am a land creature and not well suited to submarine life. I'm slow and cumbersome in the water and it's not my favoured medium for breathing. There are things in the sea which are much better adapted than me, strange alien creatures, cold unfeeling things that circling incomprehensible depths, huge fearsome behemoths that dwarf anything found on the land. They live there, it's their home and you're not welcome....

Raison d'etre

Ich mag Burgenland und Zuege

For those of you whose German is even worse than mine, that translates as "I like Burgenland and trains", which is true. Burgenland is much maligned as a destination but it's actually really beautiful. It's not as spectacular as the alps or Vienna but it's a lovely quietness with it's rolling hills and vineyards, a good place for 'gemuetlichkeit'

I also like trains (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHkKJfcBXcw)

Seex Sells

Lord Of The Flies

Ok, confession first, I've never read Lord Of The Flies. My information on the book is largely based on people saying things like 'it was like something from Lord of The Flies" etc. I know it's about some kids that get stranded and kind go all tribal (I'm pretty sure one of them gets killed in some brutal manner, no doubt to illustrate that deep down no matter how innocent set out, we're all asshole in the end [or something]) 

No tribe mask repeats it's self.

Good But Hot

Antoine de Caunes is better known as the presenter of cheeky 90's channel 4 show, Eurotrash. A surreal mix european weirdos, comedy voice overs and gratuitous nudity, Eurotrash was a guilty favourite of my mine during my teenage years (remember this is when the internet was slow and untrusted and we didn't get Channel 5 very well) and so I was interested to discover he'd written a book.

Good But Hot is actually pretty good. It's a sort of noir detective novel that follows Sam Murchison, a  morose, alcoholic PI hired to find a wealthy industrialist daughter. It's not spectacularly orignal but i love a good detective novel and thoroughly enjoyed it. 

The original cover (or at least the copy i had) was rubbish (really, very awful) and didn't do the book justice at all so i've tried to capture the feel of the book a bit better myself. It's pulp, but maybe that's a good thing.

Burning Sky

Artwork for A Fight You Can't Win's new single Burning Sky

AFYCW's new single Burning Sky (out 13/05/13) is about all about doctors handing out anti-depressants like they were sweeties. I worked with some initial ideas around this sweet/drug motive but i felt like i'd seen it all before. I did a really simple, graphicy one we quite liked but the guys decided to go with this one. (There's something about hyena laughs/false laughter/anti-depressants there but truth is, i just really like drawing hyenas) 

Seex at Home

A friend asked me the stencil her blinds and I'm pretty pleased with how they've turned out although it was a tricky wee job. I've never done anything on that sort of scale before and everything took longer than I'd expected. I'm used to working on a computer where if you make a mistake you just hit cmd Z and everything's ok but when you're working on someone else's blinds there's a bit more pressure and not a lot of room for error. The birds are stenciled on both sides with some of them only on one side so there's a different effect depending on whether you're inside or outside and whether the sun is shining through them and there's a red, rose and lilac bird (one on each blind) to represent Shauna's 3 girls. 

Special thanks goes to Mum for helping me and letting me make her house smell of spray paint.

Probably 'bout time you gave your hair a wash, hen.

Today's post is once again inspired by Japanese queen of sugary surrealism Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, she's an odd chick but she does inspire you to do something wacky. I've also been very much inspired by Yuko Shimizu (not the one that invented hello kitty), her mad skills and east meets west style makes her one of my favourite illustrators.

I decided to turn this picture of her with hair menagerie into some fan art for the Bronx second album, self titled. I suppose this is as good a time as any to get this off my chest but I fucking hate when bands self title albums. It just means you have to come up with some rubbish disambiguation term for it (ie "the Bronx, second album" or "Blur, the one with the yellow cover"). That said, this is an mind bendingly awesome album and they can call it what they like.

If you are unfamiliar with the Bronx, apologise to your ears right now. 

Illustrate you point

Har har, pun.

Seven Psychopaths

I watched Seven Psychopaths while I was on holiday and decided to do a wee fanboy poster. If you haven't seen it, it's a clever little film by In Bruges director Martin McDonagh. If you haven't seen In Bruges go have a word with yourself then watch In Bruges. Then watch Seven Psychopaths. Cause they're good.