Happy Beltane

The doors of Summer are open!

Illustration Friday - "Ahead" #2

It was ever thus....

Click on the Image to Enlarge

Pick Me Up - "Oranges & Lemons" (details)

Here is my design for the Pick Me Up graphic fair at Somerset House.

I choice as my subject matter an older and longer version of the children's nursery rhyme 'Oranges & Lemons' as the church of St Clement Danes is only minutes away from Somerset House.

The lines and images connected to each bell refer to trades and events local to each parish - Old Bailey (St Sepulchre) because it stood by the debtors' prison at Newgate, Stepney because it was always associated with sailors and seafaring, St John's chapel in the Tower of London because of its torture chambers and dungeons, Etc., Etc..

I have shown the image in sections so you can see some of the detail.

Click on each image to see it big if you like.

Restaurant magazine - May 2010

A piece about the 'chubby grocer' Waitrose's take-over of High Street sandwich chain EAT.

Click on the Image to Enlarge

Illustration Friday - "Ahead"

My own, personal Janus
Looking back with regret
Looking ahead with trepidation
Suspended uneasily between what has passed
and what is yet to pass.

Illustration Friday - "Linked"

These two pillars of the Kazimirovjan royal house are linked by more than just the ties of duty and kinship. Unbeknownst to each other they are both lovers of the Catalan beauty, courtesan and operatic diva Doña Soledad Pujol-Reales. She has been living in Klodznán since the war between Kazimirovja and neighbouring Havakistan where she worked for the resistance, for which she was later awarded the medal of St Vyttus.

Click on the Image to Enlarge.
Click on my name to view other examples of my work, including further tales from the streets of Klodznán.

Illustration Friday - "Dip"

Another episode from Klodznán life.

Bartok the young gardener must hide in the reeds during his morning skinny dip as the Sisters of St. Veronika Malgoszka's covent pass by on their way to St. Vasyllis' cathedral. He is quite a shy fellow and remains behind the mooring post until long after the last nun, Sister Tekla, is out of sight along the footpath that runs along this quiet part of the Vrstula.

Happy Easter (belated)

An Easter card image just done ( after Easter!) illustrating the pertinant perils of paschal millinary. This is why the bonnet was banned.

Click on the Image to Enlarge

Illustration Friday - "Expire"

This venerable old fellow is Otyk Pregheim. We see him here just at the point as he passes from this world to the next. He has had a good life, and, at 98, a long one too. Sitting in his favourite old chair on the veranda of his woodman's shack on the forested hills above Klodznán he fell gently into a warm and pleasant dream of girls he had known once in a Rigan bordello. Buxom, lime-scented and doe-eyed, they lead him through their curtained door and up the winding staircase, never to come back down ever again.

Click on the Image to Enlarge

Sorry I know this was last week's theme, but last week I was mad mad busy and didn't get a chance.

Sinner Man

A conversation based on the lyrics of Nina Simone's 'Sinner Man'

Yes, that's supposed to be me!

Click on the Image to Enlarge.

Bill Stickers

Another unselected entry to an online competition

The Ghost of a Flea

An unselected entry for an online competition.

Illustration Friday - "Rescue"

This poor fellow is the Director of Klodznán Art Gallery, Prof. Buroslav Krampf. When fire tore through the building in the winter of '23 ( alledgedly started accidentally by the janitor Karyl Aptetski when he left the Hunter's Stew his wife Yankska had made to heat up on the small stove in the kitchen in the gallery basement and then fell asleep in his chair after 3 bottles of rowan beer) Buroslav, who lives in an apartment in the gallery grounds, ran in without a thought for his own safety and grabbed from the wall Edouard Amiot's famous 'Nude II' ( also known as the 'Barbary Madonna'), the gallery's finest and dearest acquisition.

The painting, the Director and the janitor all survived the night unscathed - although Mrs Aptetska's almost constant criticism of the event is said to have contributed to her husband's untimely death fifteen years later.

Another image from my fictional eastern European capital, Klodznán. You can view others here, here, here, here, here and here.
Biro, etc then PS

April Fool's Day / Poisson d'Avril

Beware to-day of japes, pranks, jesting, joshing and outrageous canards.

Some say it is to do with changes to the Calendar in the 1500s, when they moved the New Year from March 31st to the beginning of January - those who resisted were April Fools. But much further back the Romans celebrated their feast of Hilaria at this time, an orgy of mischief and mayhem.

Click on the Image to Enlarge