Friday Photo

Magilligan, Northern Ireland 2010

Outer Circle

Just finished another papercut illustration and poster design to promote a series of concerts happening in London, Manchester and Bristol in September.

Legen-Derry!

I was in Derry last week when the news came through that it had been selected as the UKs first city of culture. The atmosphere was electric to say the least and if you have never been to this neck of the woods I can't recommend it here enough (as long as you don't mind a bit of rain!).
For a small city it has quite a lot of talent that has passed through its gates, I'm really looking forward to seeing how it grows and develops over the next couple of years and what sort of events, exhibitions and gigs will be on the cards, a specially commisioned poem from 'Famous Seamus' and who knows maybe an Undertones reunion!?Maybe it's just my wishful thinking...

Friday photo

Magilligan, Northern Ireland,  2010

Friday Photo

Bercy, Paris 2009

We can be Heroes...

I'm off to Ireland for a month which is great, not only do I get to catch up with family and friends but I get the chance to take lots of photos of my nephews and neices. The picture above is one from an on going series called 'We can be Heroes' it's based around kids dessing up. The only downside about going back to the North is the weather but I hear all that sunshine is bad for you anyway!

Ahoy!

This year saw the launch of a joint venture between Loaf recordings and Arctic Circle called The Explorer's Club. It is essentially a downloadable record club where each month a link to a set of exclusive tracks by a wide range of great artists are emailed to subscribers along with some nice virtual artwork, a diary excerpt and occasionally subscribers receive a little extra treat in the mail.
I worked on this series with Pika Pika and this months release features a doodle by me!

Tate update

OK it is finally complete and soon to be appearing at
a Tate Britain in August near you!

Friday Photo

The Powerpuff Girls, Ireland

FSC-US Ad campaign starts this week.

This week sees the FSC-US ad campaign go live across the United States. I'm really excited about this as they have been in the pipeline for just over a year and finally they are coming to light.

This is one in a series of four, each one highlights a different product that has the FSC mark and illustrates some of the benefits to the forest and the client.

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