Boot Sale Booty!

A couple of weekends ago I attended a local boot sale or 'Vide Grenier' as they say round here. While trawling through the usual jumble of junk I stumbled across an old portfolio, I am always attracted to old folios stuffed full of secondary school life drawings, pastel still life's and the odd watercolour but there is always the promise of so much more so I can't help myself having a quick flick through.

While doing exactly this I came across two woodblock posters. At first glance they were nothing special, just bills printed to advertise house sales but on closer inspection I noticed that they had hand written dates on the reverse placing them both in the 1800s. I found it amazing that such a piece of ephemera had lasted so long, something that shouldn't have lasted long past the day of the sale somehow has worked it's way though almost a 180 years of incidents and accidents, of births and deaths. How many times have they hovered over a bin to be given a last minute reprieve and placed back on top of a wardrobe or into a drawer only to find its way into my hands and to start another chapter in their long history?

Beck Album Covers.

No I'm not going to discuss the design merits of Mr Hanson's back catalogue but on his latest project which is doing covers of entire albums.

He describes Record Club as "an informal meeting of various musicians to record an album in a day. The album chosen to be reinterpreted is used as a framework. Nothing is rehearsed or arranged ahead of time. A track is put up here once a week. The songs are rough renditions, often first takes that document what happened over the course of a day as opposed to a polished rendering. There is no intention to 'add to' the original work or attempt to recreate the power of the original recording. Only to play music and document what happens."

The collaborations are with artists such as Feist, Devendra Banhart and MGMT and the results are well worth a listen, the pencil drawn covers are a nice touch too.

Hot and cold flashes

Over the weekend while making the rainbow for the Tate illustration I noticed that a few of the off cuts had a nice shape so I played about a bit and took a few pics, it just seemed too good a coincidence not to. I think there could be something worth exploring in this…

Tate update

OK I have just placed all the individual pieces together for the first time and took a pic, next step is the rainbow!

Friday Photo

Lyon 2009

Tate update

A while back I mentioned I would be challenging my paper craft skills by creating a paper Tate Britain, for an illustration to promote a Late at Tate event happening in August, well here's the progress so far…

Math can be fun…

A sneek peak of the latest release from eclectic label Front & Follow. This is a poster for the 'Long Division with Remainders' box set. The look of the release was based upon old analogue computer punch cards and my own memories of GCSE maths.

Painting with Polaroids

I love Polaroids, the ritual, the anticipation, the ritual of waiting for the image to appear,  but sometimes it doesn't come out as you expect. The images above are 'happy accidents' that occurred when I had a few problems with my SX-70 Land Camera. The film was exposed by mistake but instead of throwing it away I decided to play with the small sachets of chemicals that are built into the base of each polaroid.

A dedicated follower of fashion…

I've been asked to come up with some ideas for a tea towel design based on the lyrics of 'The Village Green Preservation Society' for Ray Davies of Kinks fame (strange I know!)

Anyway while developing this project I went a bit off the beaten track and came up with a design for a kids t-shirt as well.

Friday Photo

Fun fair, 2009

One man's rubbish is another man's treasure.

At the moment among other things I'm in the middle of preparing files for a new website, usually this is pretty mechanical but while looking through past projects I came across these images of plastic bags suspended in water and it made me smile.

Paper and penguins

For the new season of illustrations for arctic circle I have been experimenting with paper cuts.
 
It proved to be quite a challenge, not only in creating the elements but in composing them through the lens of a camera, with all the variables of photography (depth of field, lighting, etc) to consider as well. Below is a picture of the 'set' to show the basic set up followed by a test shot and the final image as used by arctic circle.

I loved making this, there is just something liberating about working outside of my computer. It reminds me of preparing for my GCSE in art, sitting in the kitchen late at night lost in what I was doing to the hum of the strip lighting mixing with the shipping forecast piping out of the radio.

Next up is a paper copy of the Tate so stay tuned…

A Friday Photo

Grenoble, Summer 2010

Welcome

Hello and welcome to my corner of the web, where I get to rant and rave about likes n' dislikes, this n' that and anything else that grabs my attention. I'll be posting bits about projects I'm working on, people that inspire me and work that makes my jaw drop to the floor and say "I wish I had thought of that!".

Feel free to join me and post some comments. Look forward to hearing from you and thanks for reading.

Damian