Guardian Work - 20 December 2008

A piece for the front cover of last Saturday's Guardian Work section.

Various industry and government bigwigs were asked their wishes and hopes for 2009.
So here it is, a pantomime fairy godmother granting the wishes of a few well-known panto characters ( Cinderella, Jack, Widow Twanky & Aladdin).

At the 11th hour the space got re-sized and I had to re-jig the whole image, including loosing a trap-door on the stage beneath the jolly boxom Fairy ( to indicate the uncertainty of what's to come). A shame I thought, but that's the nature of editorial work.

Click on the Image to see the Details!

Chardequynce

The label to accompany the quince cheese ( aka quince paste, membrillo and the fantastic Olde Englishe name for it Chardequynce/ Chardquince - literally flesh of quince !) that N and I made as Xtmas presents the other week.

Also tried making Chardewarden or medieval spiced pear paste, but it wouldn't set so couldn't be cut into squares as yuletide gifts. It sits, instead, in a large jar in our fridge and goes very well with blue, salty and goat cheeses. Mmmmmm

December Dissipation

O ye gads
I've been over-doin' it again!

Restaurant magazine - January 2009

An image I've just this minute put to bed for Restaurant magazine.
Here the author argues that in these hard times restaurants, even high end ones, need to learn, albeit reluctantly, a few lessons on marketing and promotion from high street giants McDonalds, who appear to be weathering, indeed positively flourishing during, the current financial storm.

the author says running a restaurant at the moment is 'harder than a woodpecker's lips' - hence the name of the bistrot!

Click on the Image to see the details!

Morning Advertiser - David & Goliath

A piece for pub trade mag, the Morning Advertiser. About how many pub licensees feel their relationship with the big Pubcos is akin to that of David and Goliath, but in which David has left his sling at home.

Organic Gardening - Squirrel Shield

A piece for the Feb/Mar 09 issue of delightful US publication, Organic Gardening. This is the second job I've done for them ( but hopefully far from being the last!)

This one was on how to create a way of keeping pesky varmints like squirrels off of your birdfeeder.

Click on the Image to Enlarge

London Glassworks - Open Weekend

My pal Vicki Rothschild has a glass blowing studio about 5 minutes from where I live. We were at college together, at NCAD, in Dublin, where she hails from.

This weekend the studios are open to the public, with demos, heaps to see and buy and the usual but very welcome mulled wine and minced pies.

Pop along if you can - its well worth a look

Jeune Mec Français

A young snub-nosed Gaul I spied the other day in a cafe on Brick Lane, E2.
And someone else availing of the wi fi.

Click on the Image to Enlarge

Paul Bommer @ the East London Design Show (ELDS)

Check out the ELDS this weekend

You can view, and indeed buy, limited edition prints (giclée and screen prints) of my work this weekend at the East London Design Show (ELDS) at Shoreditch Town Hall on Old Street. The prints are being sold (at very reasonable prices) through Gina Cross's A Little Bit of Art stall on the first floor in the Main Hall, along with the works of 14 other illustrators and printmakers. Also of course, a great opportunity to snap up other exciting and unique Xtmas gift ideas!

Opening times are as follows;-

Public day with late shopping Friday 5th December 12pm - 8pm
Public day Saturday 6th December 10am - 6pm
Public Day Sunday 7th December 10am - 6pm

For more details check out the following links;-

http://www.eastlondondesignshow.co.uk/
http://www.alittlebitofart.co.uk/

Morning Advertiser - Every Little Helps?

A piece for this Thursday's (27/XI/08) pub trade magazine Morning Advertiser. The author here wonders at the drastic dichotomy in this country between those sectors that need to provide excellent service in order to survive ( like Tesco's for example) and the Government's incompetant legislative sectors that are just happy to 'muddle through', wasting resources and failing to deliver on time or within budget. He goes on to wonder what would happen if those running the UK Government and Tesco's were to swap places, and how long it would take the former to run the latter's business into the ground.

So, I've shown a bemused Gordon Brown in Tesco's uniform.

Click on the Image to Enlarge

Daily Mail - Gardening - Winter Digging

Dig your garden over the Winter and Jack Frost will lend a hand breaking down the soil.

Jan 09

Daily Mail - Gardening - Comfrey

Plant comfrey if you want to attract bees to your garden. They love blue flowers the best of all.

Jan 09

Daily Mail - Gardening - Garlic

Plant garlic on the shortest day of the year and harvest it on the longest.

Jan 09

Daily Mail - Gardening - Catnip

Protect your catnip from total feline dessimation by placing a disused hanging basket upside down over it.

Jan 09

Guardian Education -28 November 08

A piece by Phil Beadle for next week's Education section. This was about the futility of pointing the finger of blame and taking responsibility.

Click on the image to Enlarge

Monsters Promo Poster Icons 2

A few additional figures for this forthcoming project.

Click on the Image to Enlarge

Monsters Promo Poster Icons

Here are my contribution to a collaborative poster design that my illustration collective Monsters is putting together. There's 9 of us in toto, so it should look brilliant, with 90 odd characters scrabbling across an A2 background.

Click on the Image to Enlarge

Daily Mail - Gardening - Bird Box

Put up a birdbox this winter and fill your garden with birdsong come spring.

Daily Mail - Gardening - Frogs

Encourage frogs into your garden with a small pond, or even an old sink.

Daily Mail - Gardening - Snails

In the winter months check out and remove slugs and snails from under pots and rocks before they multiply in the spring.

Daily Mail - Gardening - Burgler

Deter burglers from stealing your tools and gardening equipment by marking your name and postcode clearly on them!

Daily Mail - Gardening - GrowBags

When you've finished with your garden growbags, don't grow away - use the compost inside as a mulch for heathers and water in well.

Bonfire Night/ Guy Fawkes' Night

Remember, Remember
The Fifth of November
Gunpowder, Treason and Plot

Jacobean anti-Catholic clampdown, or an excuse for fireworks, bonfires, toffee, oxtail soup and parkin? You decide.

Guy (or Guido) Fawkes, the only man to enter Parliament with honest intentions, some say.

Click to ENLARGE

Labels 2

A couple more labels for booze I have made

Daily Mail - Gardening - Carrot Fly

Protect carrots from carrot fly by putting up a 24 inch high fleece barrier around the crop.

Daily Mail - Gardening - Holly berries

If you want berries on the holly boughs you deck your halls with this Yuletide cover them now with a net to keep the birds off them.

Daily Mail - Gardening - Camelias

Labels

A couple of labels for some booze I have recently concocted/ decocted.
Creme de Groseille - redcurrant liquor - made from vodka, sugar & redcurrants from my friend Posy's garden in Faversham, and
Cherry Brandy, what remained after macerating wild cherries we picked beside the river Lee a few months back in brandy with some sugar.

Lost Food

The names of some foods, mostly Medieval & Elizabethan, lost to the English table and the English language.

I have just made Medlar Cheese, which is a delicious confection.

Click on the Image to better read the Names

Daily Mail - Saturday 8 November 2008

Winter-flowering honeysuckle ( Lonicera Fragrantissima), aka Sweet-breath-of-Spring

medlars

Just back from harvesting a bumper crop of that much overlooked favorite of the Medieval and Elizabethan table, the medlar. Inedible until the first frosts 'blet' them on the branches, they shall be boiled down with allspice and sugar to make a sweet confection known as Medlar Cheese ( a little similar to spanish Membrillo or quince paste I'm guessing).

The fruits are beautiful in an offbeat rusty russety way. In the 16th and 17th centuries, medlars were, in this country, bawdily called “open-arses” because of the shape of the fruits and associated with loose women and prostitution - the french call them 'Culs de Chiens' I believe. Not hard to see why, even if the name could be somewhat offputting.

I shall keep you posted.

Guardian Education -28 October 08

Another Phil Beadle piece for tomorrow's Guardian Education section.

This one was about the use of blackboards, then whiteboards and now finally new digital displays in classroom teaching, where the realtime interactive quality is lost.

I tried here to keep the colour palette very simple/ limited to emphasise the linework.

Restaurant magazine - November 2008

A piece I just finished ( and started in fact!) this morning for my monthly gig at Restaurant magazine. I love this job/ client.
This month the subject was Menu Engineering, the science of distributing incremental increases in retail prices across a menu to cover the increase in cost of various supplies, such as red meat or rice.
Staedtler pigment liner 0.3 plus PS

Click on the Image to Enlarge.

Daily Mail - Saturday 25 October 2008

My first job for the Daily Mail. For a piece on gardening hints and tips. One large central image and four smaller drop-ins.

Click on the Images to Enlarge

Christmas on Cheshire Street, E2

I was asked to do this year's flyer/ invite for the annual Cheshire St mulled wine and mince pies late evening openings, this year with an old East End/ pearly kings and queens/ costarmonger theme.

If you're about, come along, me ol' China!

Click on the Image to Enlarge

Baron Munchausen I

The first of a series of images I'm working on for the Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Its a story I love and one that they've made several films of, most famously Terry Gilliam's but also a brilliant ( and indeed much better) German version made during the Third Reich and a fantastic Czech adaptation called Baron Prasíl made in the 1960s by Karel Zeman.

In this scene, the Sultan has asked the Baron to convert to Islam, but the Baron countered that he could not as he enjoyed his wine too much. At this the Sultan admitted to being himself partial to a glass or two of fine Tokaji (Tokay) to which the Baron added that the best was to be found in the cellars of Empress Marie Therese in Vienna. Baron Munchausen wagers that he can get a bottle of the stuff into the Sultan's hands within the hour....

Staedtler pigment liner and brush & Indian ink, worked up and coloured in PS. Particularly happy with the coloured ink washes - they look like watercolour (almost) but with that convenient digital editability.

Click on the image to Enlarge

Drunk as a Boiled Owl

A fantastic expression I stumbled upon in a old copy of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, which I keep on the bathroom window.

A simple sketchbook doodle coloured up in PS.

Click to Enlarge

Restaurant magazine - October 2008

A new client this week - Restaurant magazine.
I've worked a lot for their sister publication, pub trade mag The Morning Advertiser, and Art Director Gary Simons got in touch saying he liked what he'd seen there and would I be interested in illustrating a monthly opinion piece. To which I said "You bet!" ( or words to that effect)

Again the subject matter is the current financial maelstrom, and its implications for the restaurant industry. Ultimately, the article concluded, people want their little luxuries, whatever the fiscal climate - be it a good coffee, a glass of wine or a fabulous meal. The author, Mark Stretton, dubs it the 'Sod it' factor.

Click on the image to Enlarge

Guardian Money -27 September 08

This image was for the cover of last Saturday's Guardian Money section, commissioned by Sarah Habershon who I'd had the pleasure of working for many times before.

The article, like so many right now, was about the Credit Crunch/ global financial crisis, but here looking at one positive - that in a period of reduced lending the bank are offering some very good interest rates to encourage more saving.

Guardian Education -23 September 08

A piece I did the other day for my regular (ish) gig in the Guardian's Education section.
Again a piece by the brilliant Phil Beadle, this time about the need for the choice of 'blue-collar' vocational training in schools and not just 'white-collar' academic teaching.

Fahrenheit E17

A piece I did for the recent E17 Arts Trail.

It was for a group show entitled "The State of the Borough" - the borough in question being the London Borough of Waltham Forest, where I live at the moment.

The council here are a real pack of idiots, horribly corrpt and self-serving, always screwing things up and closing things down - museums, libraries, public toilets, cinemas, &c., &c..

One of the really shocking things that they'd done was to close down one of the local libraries under the guise of regeneration, and spent a fortune on a brand new one with no room for the books!

So here is my piece - Fahrenheit E17 (E17 is the area's postcode) - a localised take on Ray Bradbury's famous novel ( and film) Fahrenheit 415 ( the temperature at which paper burns) about censorship and blind ignorance. Some council tyro lobbing books into a fire. The swatzika-like tree emblem on the banner and arm-band is the symbol for Waltham Forest.

The piece is acrylic and Indian ink painted onto the back of an old 2 volume edition of War & Peace.

Inspired by William Morris

This is an image I've created for a group show I am in this week at the Changing Room Gallery in Lloyd Park, Walthamstow E17, close to where I live. This is a digital version, the one in the exhibition is a slightly cruder ( and non the worse for it!) silkscreen print.

The exhibition is called "Inspired by William Morris", a local lad whose former house stands at the front of Lloyd Park on Forest Road. The man said a lot of great things - this is one of his lesser known quotations.

Exhibition runs 'til this Saturday 20th September.

Angela Hartnett's 40th Birthday

An invite design I did the other day for celebrity (Michelin-starred) chef and personal friend Angela Hartnett's 40th birthday party the weekend after next. Should be fun.

The image was created with retractable pencil, Staedtler pigment liner 0.3 and brush & Indian ink, coloured up and composited in PS. I really like the simplicity of line and the pared down colouring in this image - its a look I want to achieve more and more, definitely one of my favourite recent creations.

Click on the image to Enlarge

Portrait of the Artist as a Buffoon on Wheels

Me
the Sunday just gone
Green Park, London
at Robert and Sara's picnic
on Pat Beirne's foldaway bicyclette
daguerreotype taken by 'is missis
authress, artist and synchronised swimmer
Claire Collinson

The snap makes me feel queasy to look at it
No, not self-hatred
just the motion and angle
plus its blurred my magnificent ( waxed and ginger) moustache