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.

MCR Artists Books II : Moments

The second day of the fair was a little quieter, so me and Laurie took it in turns to explore. As an avid people watcher, the fair was like a candy store for me, happy to observe the day unfolding while L circulated the stalls. There were exquisite moments happening everywhere I looked, strange, lovely, sometimes funny, always personal moments between people and each other, as well as between people and paper.

Grabbing the camera to snap up little fleeting events and expressions, I also enjoyed hastily drawing some of the characters to be found at the fair. I sometimes dismiss such swift studies in favour of capturing more detail at a later date, but I think these scrawls reflect the intimacy and pace of the fair as they were made in the moment.

10 points for spotting Frida Kahlo.

MCR Artists Books I : Opening

Finally, I have found a spare moment to collate the thoughts, pictures and artifacts that arose from Manchester Artists Book Fair last month! Me and Laurie Ramsell made the great journey Up North to promote and sell copies of his art & science magazine Synthia at this Hot Bed Press-orchestrated event, with my work and that of talented illustration explorer Kate Rowland also on show as some of Synthia's primary contributors.
Arriving at MMU with some hefty boxes of printed matter, we set out our wares upon our designated table unsure what to expect from the day. Situated next to the kindly creators of Surrealist Editions, we quickly felt at home amongst the table-clothed islands of, well, a rather eclectic collection of... stuff.

Painters, photographers, illustrators, knitters, printers. Doers, thinkers, makers, shakers, binders, finders; I was truly fascinated by the diversity of those displaying. As the finishing touches were applied to carefully tended and slapdash stalls alike, it was clear that visitors to the fair had a rich array of unique objects awaiting them. All were conjoined, simply, by an appreciation of books; whatever form they could take and whatever they could house.

As soon as the event commenced a steady flow of punters traveled in laborious waves around the room, surveying wares slowly with care and caution at first. It soon began to pick up pace, with lots of enthusiastic students / tutors visiting along with those partaking in the fair's spin-off book making workshops, so conversation was lively and very enjoyable from the beginning. This dissolved my nerves about how best to interact with those who came to visit us at stand Synthia, at first wary that I didn't want to disturb them while they were browsing (...but really just wanting a good chinwag). This was not a library, or at least not a conventional one.

There was a great feeling of respect for what was on display from everyone I interacted with, despite such huge differences in approach or interests. Sales were plentiful but more importantly for me; meaningful, with each person who took something away brimming with positivity as they made their selection. The fair had definitely created an environment that I wanted to stay in.
Thank goodness we got to come back again tomorrow.

Crotch: A Teaser.

Too excited to wait. Here's a little teasing pair of legs from my work for upcoming Another Escape 4
-squee-

Millions.

The second poem for Commas & Colons was Millions by Konnor Thorpe. I really enjoyed my first taste of interpreting poetry through drawing, and it is (already) definitely something I want to revisit.

Millions

brutal men dressed in wool and whiskey

and cigarette smoke

talk about their wives

war stories

waiter waits

blue button eyes

didn’t win the jackpot

never do

he says

maybe next week

always next week

ain’t it

twenty million dollars

what couldn’t you buy

- words by Konnor Thorpe.


Again you can find my illustration alongside its muse here as part of the ,&; 'Achoo' issue.

Jalisco.

I was asked to illustrate two poems for Commas & Colons magazine, to be included in their latest edition celebrating short poetry and prose. Both poems were written by Konnor Thorpe, who uses a rhythmic, well-formatted style that I enjoyed responding to. For the first, Jailisco, I drew this little ramshackle taqueria and visiting scorpion under the hot sun.

jalisco

car bombing last week

but the old men still haggle over trinkets

with the gringos in the market

and the young men still exchange fire

in the dust and the cobblestone

leave a van full of heads

and another full of bodies

somewhere out in the desert

scorpion crawls by

translucent in november sun

too small to hiss or sting

or say anything at all

lost again

under the shadow of

a roadside

taqueria

- words by Konnor Thorpe.

You can see my illustration alongside other responses to Konnor's work here.

The Internet Has No Edges.

Internet believer and all-round modern maverick Andy Field visited the mac today. He spoke to us cannon hill collectivers about how to make the most of representing ourselves idiosyncratically online and the www’s potential for dynamic collaborations. Here are the notes I made, including his wise words that the internet is limitless and ‘not finished yet’, an interesting thought that lead me to see the internet in a new way – a vast, albeit unregulated, universe of information that we can find our place within.

Inspiring stuff.
Plus a drawing for good measure.

Another Escape Issue 3.

For those of you who didn't get hold of Another Escape #3 in physical form, it can now be found up on issuu for a flick (click) through at your leisure. Inside my article on the nature of INSPIRATION and how to make the most of it is waiting for you, just as I'm finishing up the next one for issue 4!

Handy.

Queenie.

While in London this week I also visited The National Portrait Gallery and saw The Queen: Art and Image exhibition, inspiring me to draw my own portrait of her when I got home.

The collection shows the diverse representation of "one of the most portrayed people of all time", speaking loudly about the changeable perceptions of the monarchy over the last 60 years. The tones of images range from gravitationally austere to playful, overall showing the queen as a graceful, glamorous and sturdy woman and leader. It was interesting to see just how much she has been used as a symbol throughout her reign, particularly being subject to a treatment of artifice - by Andy Warhol, Cecil Beaton, Gerhard Richter etc. and becoming somewhat of a commodity much like the bank notes she occupies.

As part of a generation who has had little relationship with HM growing up (other than my granny having her on commemorative plates) I think this year her diamond jubilee forged a fresh feeling of affection and association to her as a unique figure who positively represents our country across the world.

My favourite image is this one by Eve Arnold (Queen Elizabeth II, 1968) of her beaming up at the Great British weather. It leaves me feeling largely that she is just a person, much like the rest of us.

Only with more hats.

The Sketchbook Project Comes To London.

Today I went to visit The Sketchbook Project at Canada Water Library. The first time they have exhibited submissions overseas, I excitedly travelled to London and rendezvoused with my auntie to greet my well-travelled sketchbook along with many of its new buddies.
The venue feels like a stage as we enter with its bright spotlights, wooden floor and emotive records, spun by a sweet soul in the corner. People are queuing to search the library catalogue and the sketchbook elves are finding their orders using their iphones / as if by magic.



After registering a library card, I first sought out my own Transatlantic-themed sketchbook which I submitted to the project back in January. It was in good condition and even though I remembered each page well it was nice to physically hold it - curiously akin to seeing an old friend. As my auntie turned the pages for the first time it was nice to see her appreciative reaction and share some of the in-jokes with her. I also secured an olympic stamp to a gap I had left at the time of submission; a tiny yet significant resolution to my first submission.

There was a strong sense of community in the library with people sharing their finds (both good and bad) but the books also seemed to be taking each reader into a world of their own. A highlight for me has been meeting fellow participants and looking through their books whilst they look through mine! Connecting to other people who are part of the project has been an unexpected bonus of the day, and some of their techniques for remastering the original book format have sparked bolder ideas for my 2013 entry.

Here is my stubby little thumb with some of my favourite discovered spreads, including the work of
James Milligan, Swansea, UK
Ina Kuehfuss, Auckland, New Zealand
& Jorji Gardnener, Bridgewater, Australia.