Small Beer

A trifle, of no importance, chicken feed

Small beer was the weak beer Restoration chaps and chapesses started their days on, in the days before potable water supplies. Not necessarliy smaller, just weaker...

Pipe Dreams

A wee sketch from my notebook

I have a thing about pipes....

Illustration Friday - "Canned"

My entry this week for IF*

One of my favourite songs -"Going Up the Country" by Canned Heat.

Also my chance to announce that I too am gonna leave this city ( London) - hope to have our place on the market in the next few weeks or so and then its all systems go to find a place out of town!

I'm going, I'm going where the water tastes like wine
I'm going where the water tastes like wine
We can jump in the water, stay drunk all the time

I'm gonna leave this city, got to get away
I'm gonna leave this city, got to get away
All this fussing and fighting, man,
you know I sure can't stay

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Name Cards

These are some name cards I created for a recent dinner to celebrate my partner's sister Lindsay's and dad Chas' 50th & 80th birthdays respectively. Each symbol refers to something about that person.

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Querelle - SuperTrash III

Above is my submission for the SUPERTRASH Film poster competition - my take on Fassbinder's seminal but ridiculous 1982 "Querelle", inspired by Jean Genet's novella "Querelle of Brest".

Here are the Supertrash details;-

3RD SUPERTRASH FEST takes place Aug. 15-17, 2008 at Portland's gigantic Bagdad Theater. Basically it's a film fest that combines fantasy, sci-fi, horror, action, live burlesque and a special art exhibit sponsored by Fantagraphics Books. The first two fests broke records at the Bagdad theater and this one is sure to be a big hit, coinciding with the Hawthorne Street Fair and also including the Floating World Animation Festival. The exhibit will also be on display at Floating World Comics for their Supertrash First Thursday show, August 7th.

Here are the guidelines for the show: using any medium you choose, we'd like you to re-imagine an original 'movie poster' for an existing movie (preferably a movie that is either very trashy or very pretentious). You can send originals to be displayed at the theater, but really all we need is for you can submit the work digitally and we will print it out to display. The best submissions will be compiled in a book to be published by Fantagraphics.

Hold Your Own

My partner Nick and I have formed a company. Actually company might not exactly be the word at this point - collaborative design team might be nearer the mark at this phase.

Our name - HOLD YOUR OWN
A great expression meaning to maintain one's position or to be confident of one own's worth.
Not much to show as yet, but watch this space, there's a lot to come!

Illustration Friday - "Enough", No 2

The little novice Franciscan,
Frere Joseph-Marie,
contemplates,
with the merest whiff of chagrin,
his only meal of the day.

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Illustration Friday - "Enough"

Enough Already!

A very portly Hassidic Jewish chap I passed in Stamford Hill on my bike the other day.
These guys dress the best!
I added the cake box 'cos he was right by a kosher bakery and besides his huge fur hat put me in mind of a large gateau!

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Brazen Head

An image or idea or story that has long long fascinated and beguiled me.
A head of bronze forged over 30 years by friar and alchemist Roger Bacon, constructed with arcane and esoteric craft to speak and predict the future. When the head was ready to speak, it said "Time Is" then "Time Was" and then, because no proper response was forthcoming from Bacon's dimwitted apprentice, the head spoke one last time -"Time Is Past" -before throwing itself from the pedestal on which it stood and smashed into a thousand pieces upon the stone floor.

Also the name of Dublin's oldest pub.

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Promotional Postcard

Here's my latest promotional postcard, Recto & Verso (b/w)
Part of a pack sent out by my collective Monsters
We chose a loose theme of sayings or proverbs
I did "In Vino Veritas" for the front, and "A Cat Can Look At A King/ Has the Cat Got Your Tongue?" for the reverse.

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Radio Times 5-11 July 08

My first piece for the Radio Times. This was for a poll being run by the RT in conjunction with Classic FM to find the nation's favourite Opera, Composer, Soloists &c., &c.

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Guardian Education -15 July 08

Another of my regular (ish) slots, the Guardian Education section.

Here Teacher of the Year Phil Beadle (Phil has a new series starting tonight on Channel 4, which should be great) talked about the ridiculous and impossible demands put on teachers, and that the only way to cope was to prioritise those that really matter and let go of the others. The relentless uphill struggle was compared in the text to the Greek myth of Sisyphus, condemned to push for all eternity a huge boulder up a steep hillside .

This was a biro sketch from my notebook, coloured and cleaned up in PS. I was going for something of the look and colours of a French Bande Dessiné (BD).

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Morning Advertiser - Cloud Cuckoo Land

A piece just this very minute finished for this Thursday 24 July 08's issue of my regular client, pub trade magazine the Morning Advertiser.

The article compared the Fair Pint group's chance of convincing whoever it needs to convince that the tie to breweries should be removed from all pubs was comparable to the likelihood of someone being able to strike a match on a jelly.

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Morning Advertiser - 1000 Voices

Another piece for the Morning Advertiser
This one for the 17 July 08 issue, and about the strength and power for change that can be found in individual landlords and publicans standing together and speaking with one voice to get themselves (and their needs/ concerns) heard in WhiteHall.

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Morning Advertiser - Area managers

A piece I did for the 10 July 08 issue of pub trade mag the Morning Advertiser.

This was about Area Managers, whom the author maintained tended to be ineffectual because of a real lack of power, having too much on their plates and torn between the demands of the pubcos and the pub licensees. The headless cock/ chicken is a reference to the average AM's state of mind, but also to their apparent 'emasculation' mentioned throughout the copy.

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Guardian Film &Music, 18 July 08

A piece I did for last friday's Film & Music section of the Guardian.

The piece was entitled ' Life, the Universe and Kensington' and was a Martian's Guide to the Proms.

My original idea was a flying saucer lifting the Albert Hall with a tractor beam, the Martian saying 'Heave' and the audiance inside the RAH replying 'Ho' (a reference to the tradition of the arena shouting one thing when the piano is brought on stage, and the gallery audiance response).
However, the idea was rejected. So here is the final version. Even this met with some resistance as the powers that be/ those upstairs thought my audiance looked too old-fashioned and 'posh', but I stood my ground and argued that that was my illustrative style and besides, this is the Proms, it is old-fashioned and posh ( and none the worse for it!)!

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A Belated Bastille Day

Here's the design for a tea-towel N and I recently cooked up for his skin-and-blister's 50th birthday ( She and her husband have bought a farmhouse in Burgundy with the hope of relocating there permanently within the next few years)

A cock (symbol of France, or Gaul, since Roman times), a bottle of le gros blanc and les bons mots ' Vive La Vie Française' in the colours of the tricoleur. Printed on 2 different grades of slubby linen.

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Owl, by Gerda Mayer

One of 3 images I have created to illustrate a selection of Gerda Mayer's hauntingly resonant poems for an exhibition organized by Waltham Forest Friends of the Earth at the Changing Room Gallery, London e17. The exhibition runs this week until Sunday 6th July, so if you're in the area, do pop by to check it out.

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Hopefully I'll get to meet the lady herself at the Private View, looking forward to that!

Hunger by Gerda Mayer

One of 3 images I have created to illustrate a selection of Gerda Mayer's hauntingly resonant poems for an exhibition organized by Waltham Forest Friends of the Earth at the Changing Room Gallery, London e17. The exhibition runs this week until Sunday 6th July, so if you're in the area, do pop by to check it out.

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Eat It All Up, Darlings by Gerda Mayer

One of 3 images I have created to illustrate a selection of Gerda Mayer's hauntingly resonant poems for an exhibition organized by Waltham Forest Friends of the Earth at the Changing Room Gallery, London e17. The exhibition runs this week until Sunday 6th July, so if you're in the area, do pop by to check it out.

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ZeitGeist

Zeitgeist
n. spirit of the times; trend of thought and feeling in a period [G (zeit time, geist spirit)]

An Image from my current Notebook ( numero 124!) which I used for a screen print workshop in Dalston, East London last week.

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Computing Which? - Car Boot Sale

Long time no post
But no, I haven't been idle, far from it

Here's a piece I did recently for regular client Computing Which? and their September issue.
It was for a piece about how to wipe your old PC of data in order to sell it on, in this case at a car boot sale!

Biro and Staedler pigment marker, cleaned and coloured up in Photoshop.

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