Category: Art & Design

Nine Times Nine Pictures to Dispel the Cold

I was read­ing about a Chinese tradi­tion simil­ar to an advent calen­dar that starts on this day. It’s 81 days until the Spring, and that makes a neat grid of 9×9, lead­ing to the tradi­tion of Nine Times Nine Pictures to Dispel the Cold- draw or colour a picture every day to get you through the winter. 

2022 calen­dar

My 2022 calen­dar is now ready – you can order calen­dars and prints of the artwork here.

Vinyl stick­ers redux

I got some vinyl stick­ers of my artwork prin­ted up (after some long twists and turns with print­ing compan­ies and the current goods/​delivery short­ages in the UK). £1.75 each (inc uk post­age), or bundles avail­able.

Margate Activ­ity Books

I’ve made a children’s activ­ity book about vari­ous loca­tions in Margate, with open-ended draw­ing and writ­ing activ­it­ies that encour­age obser­va­tion, explor­a­tion and creativ­ity, with very clear layouts and instruc­tions. Suit­able for age 7+.

Inter­view with Sajan Rai

A short inter­view with my friend, illus­trat­or Sajan Rai. I first met Sajan when we were assigned adjoin­ing tables at a zine fair, and he was offer­ing to draw people as sloths for £5. This clearly being a sign that he was the right kind of person, we became friends.

Axolotls

After multiple people asked me, I did a print design of everyone’s favour­ite neoten­ous, cute but some­what canni­bal­ist­ic Mexic­an sala­man­der.

Green­cheeks

Ruth had a dream that you could buy tins of some­thing called “Green­cheeks” that seemed to be tinned Kermit meat. I had to make this a real­ity in Photoshop using a stock can mockup template.

2021 Calen­dar pre-orders

I’m finish­ing off my 2021 calen­dar artwork – I’ve put pre-orders up.

Calen­dars are £8.50 inc UK post­age and you can also get prints of the artwork

Halloween print

I don’t normally do season­al stuff, but on a whim today I decided to do a halloween themed thing, make the A4 prints cheap­er than usual at £8.50 (uk post­age included) and only do 25 of them.

Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania

MONA was one of my main reas­ons for visit­ing Tasmania. It’s basic­ally in an under­ground bunker like a Bond villain’s lair, and requires a boat ride to get to. The owner David Walsh, is the richest man in Tasmania and a very strange char­ac­ter in his own right- he grew up in a rough area of Hobart, and made his fortune by using maths to outsmart the gambling industry, and then spent it on this museum. He’s simul­tan­eously “math­em­at­ic­al geni­us” and “13 year old edgelord”.

Louisi­ana Art Museum, Denmark

I was tidy­ing up some old photos and found some from my trip to Denmark in 2015 that I never posted. These are of the Louisi­ana Art Museum. It’s a modern art museum and sculp­ture park just up the coast from Copen­ha­gen.

Soph­ie Woodrow sketch­book page

I’ve really been in a creat­ive slump under lock­down. All that time, no motiv­a­tion. I forced myself to do some draw­ing today- just some simple sketches of some ceram­ic sculp­tures by Soph­ie Woodrow that I’d admired. I think it did me some good.

Mycenae­an Grave Goods

I was tidy­ing up and found some bits from art school ten years ago. Here’s some prelim­in­ary sketches I did for a project based on Mycenae­an arte­facts. Rather than draw direct, I drew vari­ous motifs on some acet­ate with mark­er, and then held it on the cyan­o­type paper with glass to expose the pictures. These prints were not the final project, I don’t know where that has gone. They were more prelim­in­ary explor­a­tion work.

Tim and the Hidden People

Tim and the Hidden People is a series of children’s school read­ing books from the late 70s/​early 80s that a lot of schools had. They have a strange, bleak folk-horror atmo­sphere, and the illus­tra­tions in the first three collec­tions are a little uncanny valley. Tim is always walk­ing along lonely canal paths with strict instruc­tions to not look over his shoulder and tie the silver string around a partic­u­lar tree or else.

Ink Master Copies

I had a whole folder full of artwork masters, so I decided to stick them into sketch­books this after­noon (these kraft paper folio-sized books are around £6 from Muji). I tend to draw the line artwork by hand with a non-photo blue pencil and posca mark­er, and correct mistakes/​add the colour digit­ally.

Ivan Bilib­in

I thought while stuck at home I’d do regu­lar posts show­ing things I like which other people may not have heard of. Ivan Bilib­in was a Russi­an artist most famous for his lavishly illus­trated books of fairy tales taking inspir­a­tion from Japan­ese wood prints, Russi­an icon paint­ing and Ye Olde Slavon­ic script.

Street Signs of Vienna

Vienna has strong rent controls for shops, mean­ing that many of them are in the same loca­tion for decades, lead­ing to lots of vintage shop signs around town (along with styl­ish new ones like the brew­ery one above). Here’s a selec­tion of differ­ent ones I spot­ted on this trip.

Architek­turzen­trum Wien

I also visited Vienna Archi­tec­ture Centre- I’d never been inside this small museum before, but the entry was thrown in free with the bundle tick­et I bought for the other exhib­i­tions.

Vienna Academy of Fine Art

On a rare day off in Vienna I went to the Open Studio day at the Vienna Academy of Fine Art. This is the top art school in Austria, and also the same insti­tu­tion that famously rejec­ted Hitler twice for his lack of creativ­ity. The studi­os are in this impress­ive build­ing, the Semper­de­pot, which was origin­ally built to store theatre scenery and props.

Kunsthalle Wien – Nina Vobruba/​Malte Zander + Time is Thirsty

The Kunsthalle Wien holds tempor­ary exhib­i­tions- I caught the last day of this show. It defin­itely isn’t the best thing I’ve seen there- I’ve previ­ously been to block­buster Basqui­at, Haring and Švank­ma­jer shows there, but it was included in the Combi-tick­et I bought for the other museums, so I made sure to see it.

Post Club

Get a nice surprise in the post every month- sent out on the 22nd of each month. Zines, mini-prints, post­cards, stick­ers. It’s a surprise.

Slov­ak Nation­al Gallery

The Slov­ak Nation­al Gallery was also open late- it was free that day too because they were chan­ging the exhib­i­tions and only two rooms were open. From the website it seems like there’s a lot of inter­est­ing stuff in the museum, and it’s a pity I didn’t get to see it, but I enjoyed the small section I did get to see.

2020 Calen­dar

I’ve made an A5 calen­dar of my illus­tra­tions – the calen­dar itself is £7, and the artwork is also avail­able as prints of vari­ous sizes. UK post­age is free, and inter­na­tion­al post­age is auto­mat­ic­ally calcu­lated by weight.

Photoshop Digit­al Colour tutori­al

Multiple people have asked me for a tutori­al of how I do colour in Photoshop. A lot of people think my prints are analogue screen-prints, but they’re actu­ally mostly digit­al. I draw the ink lines by hand, but all the colour and texture is created in Photoshop.

Magic Stor­ies From Around the World (1986)

Here is anoth­er scan of a vintage book I have had since I was a child. This is a collec­tion of myths and legends from around the world. It was origin­ally Czech and trans­lated to English, and has a large selec­tion of cent­ral European stor­ies less known in the UK, along with stor­ies from places like the high Arctic and Poly­ne­sia. There are also lovely illus­tra­tions by three prom­in­ent Czech illus­trat­ors.

Extinc­tion Dome print

Here’s anoth­er print- price in the shop varies from £6-£24 depend­ing on size. You can order one here. Features a plesi­o­saur, a nautilus and a coel­acanth for your pleas­ure.

Nervy Betters poster

I designed this poster for my friend Henry, based on Ware land­mark Scott’s Grotto, but forgot to post it here. It’s tomor­row if you are in the area.

2012 sketch­book

While clear­ing up, I found an old sketch­book from 2012. Here’s some photos of some pages.

Mush­room King prints

I now have prints of this Mush­room King artwork up for sale. A5 is £6, A4 £12 and A3 £24. Find them in the shop.

Plan­et­ary Urban­isa­tion

Yester­day I went to a talk at Well Projects from anthropologist/​sound artist Dimitri­os Borm­pouda­kis from the Univer­sity of Kent as part of A Cut From Sharp Grass, “a visu­al art exhib­i­tion & series of public events developed in response to the increas­ingly urban­ised, networked & tech­no­lo­gic­ally integ­rated land­scape of Kent”. Here’s my sketch­book notes from the talk.

Cake Explod­ing

I had a dream that Cake Explod­ing was a popu­lar hobby, with world cham­pi­on­ships and dedic­ated YouTube chan­nels. Here’s the comic version. Avail­able from the shop for £1.75

Feral Prac­tice

Earli­er this week I went to a free art work­shop hosted by Open School East. Open School East is a combin­a­tion art course/​residency and students are required to organ­ise public art work­shops. This time envir­on­ment­al artist Fiona MacDon­ald aka Feral Prac­tice was the visit­ing artist. There was a talk about ants and fungi and the aim of “meet­ing  with animal/​plant/​place through the processes and reflex­iv­ity of art”, and then we went out into a local park with a wood­land area to do some clas­sic sensory/​location art activ­it­ies. Here are my sketch­book pages and some snaps from the day.

Diana Wynne Jones confer­ence notes

A couple of weeks ago I went to an academ­ic confer­ence in Bris­tol focused on the works of Diana Wynne Jones. She is prob­ably best known for writ­ing the book that the Studio Ghib­li film Howl’s Moving Castle was based on, but she has around thirty other books aimed at a vari­ety of ages. Even the ones aimed at chil­dren have a surpris­ing amount of psycho­lo­gic­al and liter­ary depth, and a will­ing­ness to explore very dark issues not usually found in books for that age group, giving her work a huge appeal to adults and academ­ics.

Infrared print

I liked one of the images I got from the Lomo­chrome film so much I decided to offer it as a print in the shop.

Enter the Vortex

So here’s the posters I designed for two gigs I’m help­ing to put on- one in London, the other in Margate. As per the press release “Girl Sweat is the ever-chan­ging garage-noise project fron­ted by the 6ft 5” beast that is ‘Sweat’” along with the fine collec­tion of psych and drone weirdos assembled in support. My brief for the poster was “illuminati/​masons cult shit”. I hope I delivered.

Behemoth Lives!

Margate is currently host­ing a vari­ety of art events related to T.S.Eliot (who wrote the Waste­land here almost a century ago), includ­ing a week­end dedic­ated to cats over East­er. I created this print based on Bulgakov’s the Master and Margar­ita, and a giant painted banner version of it to hang up at the show. It was a bit last minute, but I got it all done on time. The show is on at the Viking Gallery off North­down Rd over the long East­er week­end and until the 7th of April.

Whit­stable print

Here’s an illus­tra­tion I recently did of Whit­stable seafront. A3, A4 and A5 giclée prints are avail­able here.

Prim­or­di­al Soup

Here’s a gig poster I drew recently. I was given free reign to do whatever I wanted, and it turns out what I wanted was to do a fake cyan­o­type of pondscum. Face­book event for the show here.

Dawn­walk­er

So I recently did some artwork for an album cover- Human Ruins by Dawn­walk­er (featur­ing Dane Cross from Sacred Son, who caused an incred­ible fuss last with the Black Metal fanboys with his choice of album artwork). I did the moons and runes, and someone else did the photo­graph and logo. Photos cour­tesy of Mark from the band.

New print- Sheep Skull

So here’s a new illus­tra­tion I did. It’s actu­ally based on a draw­ing I did when I was 17 that I found while sort­ing out some paper­work recently. You can buy mono­chrome and colour prints for £3-£30 over on the shop.

Die grade Linie ist die unschöp­ferische Linie

Just before Christ­mas I ran a Hunder­t­wasser-themed work­shop as a fundraiser for 101 Social Club. (If you are not famil­i­ar with Austri­an artist, archi­tect, envir­on­ment­al­ist and cranky old hippy Friedens­reich Hunder­t­wasser, I have writ­ten about him quite a few times- you can find the entries here) People had food and drink, learnt about Hundertwasser’s work and philo­sophies, and did three differ­ent casu­al art activ­it­ies- collab­or­at­ive line making, resist paint­ing, and creat­ing archi­tec­tur­al models of Hunder­t­wasser-style build­ings out of recycled mater­i­als. All while listen­ing to the fine selec­tion of Can, Neu, Fennesz, Cluster, Faust and other artists from the playl­ist below (I had it on shuffle on the night)

Wooden hands

I got a short notice illus­tra­tion job this week for images for Christ­mas greet­ings from Buil­dopia, an Itali­an eco-build­ing company. They special­ise in wood and their slogan trans­lates as “the build­ing game”.

“I cried for madder music and for stronger wine”

I have Bacchae prints avail­able again. The text says “I caught this young lion myself without a trap”. Based on the scene from Eurip­ides’ Bacchae where Pentheus’ moth­er tears her own son’s head off with her bare hands while under Dionysus’ spell and parades it round the stage. Avail­able from me as a print here for £6 or £12 depend­ing on size. Ideal fest­ive gift for all, look how red it is.

Hobot­nica

And to round off my stuff from Croa­tia, here’s some sketch­book notes from Zadar museum and Trogir. Hobot­nica (pronounced hobot­nitsa) is Croa­tian for octopus. It’s a good word.

Topi­ary

I used to work at Hamp­ton Court. This is a mark­er draw­ing of some of the trees in the gardens there. I earnt a pittance, worked every single week­end for six months, and wore a terrible poly­es­ter uniform. I got very used to being surroun­ded by incred­ible splend­our though, and spent quite a lot of happy hours mind­ing the maze, sitting in a shed read­ing long Russi­an books, listen­ing to whatever mellow music wouldn’t annoy tour­ists (lots of Elli­ot Smith, Fleet­wood Mac, Tortoise and Grandaddy), and making up lies about the maze to tour­ists. (I wrote about being in charge of the maze in issue 22 of my zine). I also used to get a good amount of free glasses of Pimms too from jugs that were left over from the outside bar.

A magi­cian calls

Anoth­er old sketch­book page I scanned in. This one is from a couple of years ago. I was teach­ing on a resid­en­tial course for teen­agers. It was in an old nunnery in the middle of nowhere, so the staff organ­ised a lot of even­ing activ­it­ies and film show­ings to keep them amused. One night a magi­cian came to do a show, and I made these notes.

Ljubljana Bien­ni­al

This summer I had to chance to go to both Docu­menta in Kassel and the Ljubljana Bien­ni­al of Graph­ic Arts. Here’s my photos from one of the Ljubljana Bien­ni­al exhib­i­tions that allowed photos. The theme of this Bien­ni­al was this poem by Slov­e­ni­an writer Jure Deleta.

Sea Serpent Book­plates

I’ve made these print­able book­plates, in both A4 and US Letter sizes. Four per page. They are for person­al use only- you may not sell copies you have prin­ted, host these files on anoth­er site, or use the artwork for any other commer­cial purpose.

The down­loads are free, but if you like and use them, a pay-what-you-want tip is very much appre­ci­ated.

Metelkova

Metelkova is an area in the centre of Ljubljana that was origin­ally a milit­ary barracks, then was squat­ted in the early 90s when the Yugoslav army pulled out after Slov­e­nia declared inde­pend­ence, and is now full of social centres, work­shops and gig venues. (And a hostel where I stayed overnight before cross­ing the border to Klagen­furt for work).

Margate Zine Club

I moved house last week back to back with coming back from Germany, and am exhausted, but here I am organ­ising events. A little zine meet up in a lovely local cafe/​record shop/​yoga studio- plenty of vegan and gluten-free options. Free entry, and step-free, but sadly no disabled toilet (the toilets are upstairs).

Sick Exhib­i­tion

I’m much more timely with writ­ing about this than I usually am, because the exhib­i­tion is currently running. My friend Zara Carpenter has curated an exhib­i­tion of artworks In Chath­am related to chron­ic illness. It runs from the 4th to 27th August at Sun Pier House, Chath­am. You can find out more about the exhib­it­ors and philo­sophy behind the exhib­i­tion on the website. There are just some hasty phone photos from the open­ing night.

Benesse Museum collec­tion

Benesse House on Naoshi­ma doesn’t allow photos of their modern art collec­tion, so here is a selec­tion of works I like by some artists I saw there. I though the space of the museum was wonder­ful, but the fact that there was no inform­a­tion about the artworks was a letdown. If you didn’t know much about modern art already, you might not have got much out of the visit, which is a bad thing for a museum, seeing as one of the main reas­ons to go is to learn new things.

Naoshi­ma

Naoshi­ma is tiny idyll­ic island in the Seto Inland sea devoted to modern art. The open­ing of the Benesse modern art museum (owned by the same organ­isa­tion as Berlitz language schools) revived the island’s fortunes, although it’s still a small and quiet place with only a few villages and a lot of old people.

Colour me in

Lately I’ve been draw­ing much more, and writ­ing a lot less. I’ve been prepar­ing artwork for a colour­ing book, which I need to get finished by the 12th of Novem­ber, to have ready in print for the Rose Tinted Zine Spec­tac­u­lar in Brighton on the 19th of Novem­ber. So there’s been a lot of 8 hour draw­ing sessions and high levels of caffeine consump­tion.

The riso­graph lives again (after a fash­ion)

About five years ago I did two riso­graph prints, one based on Diana Wynne Jones’ Fire and Hemlock, and the other on Eurip­ides’ Bacchae. Each print was an edition of 50, and I sold all of them a long a time ago (except for a couple of copies I kept for myself). Now I have a giclée print­er though, I have resur­rec­ted them as a new edition. This time they’re prin­ted on Canson Infin­ity rag museum paper, which is an acid free and archiv­al water­col­our paper for fine art digit­al print­ing.

Blogs -vs- zines

People who don’t make or read them much them­selves some­times ask me why I still make zines, even though the inter­net exists, and the world is becom­ing more and more digit­ally-focused, and I have this blog. In short, the answer is for the same reas­on I still have hundreds of records and books, and devel­op black and white film at home, even though I have an ipod, spoti­fy subscrip­tion, e-read­er and two digit­al camer­as, and I’m far from a luddite: I feel the phys­ic­al medi­um offers me some­thing that I don’t get from the digit­al version.

On Light Fest­iv­al

A few weeks ago, Univer­sity College London held a light-themed street fest­iv­al, with stalls run by the differ­ent univer­sity depart­ments with demon­stra­tions and free activ­it­ies. My friend Mel was there to win a Guin­ness World Record for the world’s largest cyan­o­type print (she’s already the hold­er of the record, which she did as part of an arts fest­iv­al in India earli­er this year, but she wanted to beat her previ­ous record).