Collaboration with City Edition Studio

Here is a special collaboration for Jono Lewarne at City Edition Studio - Jono's girlfriend Amy never quotes this famous mariners proverb quite the same way each time she says it, so for Christmas he asked me to draw some sea-farers and their ships to produce a series of prints to surprise her with at Christmas! Printed as a set of 2-colour Risographs.

Buckminster Fuller - 5 part interview on 'Psychic Phenomena'

Buckminster Fuller states that "man must learn to think for himself, rather than follow blindly what he has been taught." "As the astronauts stated, the words 'up' and 'down' have no meaning. The correct words are 'out' and 'in'. This was confirmed when mankind learned the Earth was round, not flat." Buckminster Fuller Archive

The Life Aquatic

After finishing the book cover for The Bloody Chamber i really wanted to explore that way of working; summarising themes in a limited amount of space and also the opportunity to use hand-drawn type. A lot of illustrators have produced responses to The Life Aquatic which made it more of a challenge and also like I was becoming part of a special underground club at the same time.



And talking of, Wes Anderson - check out the trailer for his new film Moonrise Kingdom - as if you haven't seen it already, internet.

Abelha Cachaça

This is a label I designed a few years ago for Abelha Cachaça, an organic cachaca brand from Bahia, Northern Brasil, which you can read all about here.

Silence

I saw The Artist directed by Michel Hazanavicius at The Barbican last night. I enjoyed the self-referential moments where the idea of the silent film filters into the script itself (the heavy feather, the relentless noise of the public...) but ultimately I thought it was an incredibly tragic film; not so far from the truth, with an end which left me feeling defeated.



Another great silent film and inevitable love story, from 1925, this time by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle which I was lucky enough to catch last year, performed with a live score.

The Bloody Chamber (sketchbook)

I thought it might be interesting to post some photos of my sketchbook for The Bloody Chamber project. I tried to make the most of the long deadline and was working on this for quite a while, on and off, between November and January; as such I ended up with loads of loose ends and which was a real luxury, and not really possible on short projects.

I used the time to draw and re-draw things observed and imagined, celebrating the imperfections which appear in drawings when making a copy of the previous one.

The Bloody Chamber for The House of Illustration & Folio Society

Cover illustration.


'Then out into the cold morning, harking after that black, vague shape...'


'A dozen husbands impaled a dozen brides while the mewing gulls swung on invisible trapezes in the empty air outside.'


'If you spy a naked man amongst the pines, you must run as if the devil were after you.'

I decided to enter the Folio Society competition run by the House of Illustration, to illustrate three scenes and a cover for The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter.

I became interested in acknowledging the different levels of translation required between text and image, and dealing with different levels of abstraction. It was also important that they worked sequentially, even if they will not be seen directly side by side, so working all four up at the same time and reassessing them as a collection became an important part of my working process.

Figures

A collection of illustrated figures from various projects I have worked on.

Finnhamn

After my trip to the Swedish island of Finnhamn in the Stockholm archipelago in December, I started to illustrate some of the buildings we found there; shops and houses abandoned for the Winter; swept up by ice cold howling wind and damp, these huts and homes stay strong for the intervening months. I love their simple construction and the shapes they make.

Annie Hall by Woody Allen

I saw Annie Hall at The BFI last night as part of their Wise Cracks: The Comedies of Woody Allen series.

His mum's right, Brooklyn is not expanding, but it doesn't stop me using the ultimate apathy of the universe (or watching films I've already seen and then blogging about them...) as a way out of doing January's tax return.

The Lady

The story of pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi and the academic and writer Michael Aris; a true story of love set against political turmoil. Directed by Luc Besson.

I saw this at The Barbican last night and it's really sticking with me.

Zdeněk Miler

I was introduced to the mole-based films of Zdeněk Miler via Alice Stevenson's wonderful blog earlier today and I can't stop watching. I have been teaching on the Motion Graphics pathway at WSA this term so I have been thinking a lot about illustration as sequence; one informing the next, or in this case, the next informing the previous.

I love the way Miler uses clever framing to tell a story; first you see the underside of an elephant - an abstract brown mass - then he elaborates by switching to a zoomed out side-profile. To top it all his visual language is rich and gorgeous and makes me want to live in a forest more than ever.

You can watch the full collection of mole stories here.

Wrapping Paper

I have made some winter-influenced wrapping paper for disguising gifts under the tree this Christmas. It was screenprinted with Bobby from Telegramme at OPEN. I decided to experiment with a split fountain gradient between a darker, teal blue and a bright blue, which gives the effect of a 3-colour print. Each sheet measures 50x70cm and is printed onto recycled newsprint.



I produced a very small run of these sheets for wrapping up presents for my family and friends, but there are a small number available to buy for £1 per sheet. Please let me know if you would like one!

The Seven Seas

Some drawings of ships and their sailors from my sketchbook for a very special collaboration...

Snow Problem @ Catch on Tue 13th Dec

Flat-e / NCC Xmas Party @ Catch - 22 Kingsland Road, 13 th December starts at 8pm with bands Kurtz, Details, Carl White - DJ's Solution vs Problem - Visuals Straight2video.

Come join us and get christmassy! Flyer by Neasden Control Centre

PROFIT Magazine

I did these illustrations as part of a pretty quick editorial job for Canadian magazine PROFIT, which looked at employees getting bored in meetings, managers inspecting new business ventures for flaws and the cost of exporting goods.

Stockholm to Finnhamn

At the weekend we took a boat two and a half hours from Stockholm to the archipelago island of Finnhamn, and I drew all the things I saw along the way, as the houses spread out and the huge rocks grew out of the water. It felt good to catalogue and organise these things in the order they appeared, with a time limit on each drawing because the boat moved so fast.

David O'Reilly - Vectorpunk Animation

"...so you see there is really no need to mimic other styles and media."

That's all.

Sir Ken Robinson speaks at the RSA

Learning

Figure 24

I was drawn to these structures found in a book in the library, by their names and descriptions as much as their shapes; Single Cables Arranged Radially, Nets With Non Uniform Meshes, Pre-Stressed Systems. I'm also interested in how they are displayed; using grids and systems to display similar objects. I am trying to get away from producing single images for the t-shirt collection and interested in how I can use the format to display things in more than one way...

Encyclopedia

I'm working out some images which will form a new collection of 7 t-shirts to be sold by a new Californian based brand over the next few months. Here are a few things from my sketchbook after having spent the day drawing from my almost-unweildy collection of children's encyclopedias.

Goodbye British Summertime

New drawings.

New patterns

New shape-and-colour compositions from my sketchbook...

How To Keep Your Hired Help

I've had this article from Successful Farming (!!!) for a few years, although I can't remember how I ended up with it; and I've been hooked on what makes a good leader since I found out Tony Blair has the Simian Line on both hands.

Good advice for anyone intending to work with anyone else.

Underwater 35mm

The summer seems already a long time ago, but I found these pictures which were shot on an underwater 35mm camera on our last day in Corsica before we set sail for Toulon; the sun went in, and water started to fill up inside the cheap plastic camera - a combination of which resulted in these hypernatural images... I'm glad I finally got round to editing a series.

Winchester School of Art Illustration Workshop

Today I led a workshop for 100 (!!!) eager first years at Winchester School of Art who I was meeting for the first time. The morning took the form of a series of drawing tasks, completed one after the other, leaving little time for reflection or criticism while making, which can often be a crippling problem. I was interested in demonstrating how putting the same image through different processes takes it somewhere new / changes it beyond your imagination / creates surprise / adds (or takes away) drama / has unique results, to prove that a degree of repetition can lead to new answers just when you think you've exhausted every opportunity...

In the afternoon Mia Frostner from Europa and I ran a lightning-fast speed monoprinting workshop, in which more than 100 prints were produced in less than 2 hours! Well done everyone!

Converse

I produced this image to be printed onto a 140cm wide canvas for a Converse press event, along with Neasden Control Centre and 6 other artists; we were each given a pantone colour to produce a piece of work which would work in a single hue.

Selecting colours is one of the first things I do when working so being force-fed something I wouldn't naturally choose, and then being unable to work with complimentary colours was really challenging; I played with percentages and halftones to reconstruct these parts of these pages from one of my sketchbooks.

Photos from the press event coming soon.

Frieze Family Space 2011

Here is the finished Family Guide I illustrated with friends Europa for this year's Frieze Art Fair. The illustrations are based on artist Pierre Huyghe’s aquarium which was a live ecosystem created especially for Frieze 2011. The walls were really well used and fully populated with millions of new species of sea-monsters by Sunday afternoon!

As usual Europa and I experimented with 4 special pantone colours; this year using a bronze on a bright white matt paper to make the ocean floor sparkle, along with some pretty hot fluorescents.

Each year I have introduced more and more figurative elements into the Frieze Family guides, part in response to the client and part to see how I might treat the composition differently. I went a lot further with this one and while I'm not sure it works in the very detailed parts of the aquarium, I can see how it might work backwards, and abstract elements might help to build up something figurative. I'm going to experiment with this way of working and see where I get...

'75 Peters' opens in Brisbane

To celebrate the wonderful Archigram architect Peter Cook's 75th birthday, I have been invited along with 74 other artists to produce a portrait of Peter for this show in Brisbane.

Thank you Steve Jobs

The Feynman Series (part 1)

What's Next?

Over the weekend, we visited Barbara Hepworth's studio in St Ives. Everything had been left in it's place; from her tiny workclothes hanging on pegs, to work-in-progress frozen in time; dozens of tools left to rust but all more organised and laid out than she may have had them; it was still great to get a glimpse into her world though, and while looking through the library this week, I found an article she wrote for Circle: An International Survey of Constructivist Art, which she illustrates with this picture of Stonehenge. It occurred to me that the thoughts I was having about stiles were similar to bigger questions raised about these monolithic structures on an altogether different scale. Similarities in material, texture and form; it makes me want to ask how should they be used?.

I find a lot of these thoughts keep coming back to the functionality of things; of images. They can no longer be left as they are; enjoyed, or understood over time - they all need to have immediate impact and readability. Are we in a hurry to assign images with a purpose because we want to be able to achieve immediate certainty? Do we cling to the feeling that if we know something for certain we can move on to the next much more quickly?

Stile over Style

A stile is a structure which provides people a passage through or over a fence or boundary via steps, ladders, or narrow gaps. Stiles are often built in rural areas or along footpaths to allow access to an adjacent field or area separated by a fence, wall or hedge. Unlike a gate, there is no chance of forgetting to close it, and should the stile break, the fence remains intact (livestock cannot escape). However, stiles may well be difficult to use for some disabled people and people with limited mobility.




We found this series of stone stiles in Cornwall this weekend while negotiating narrow footpaths with half-height doorways in the hedgerows, presumably for tall badgers or ferrel children.



I like the stile as an object because it is so concerned with function, it forgets the ridiculousness of it's form but in doing so blends seamlessly into it's environment; many of these Cornish stone versions could at a glance be accidental formations; rockfalls at convenient junctions - you're not sure whether the bit you're standing on is an intentional part of the design or a lucky stepping stone; most also have spaces or cavities between the stones which cater for dogs - cleverer than sheep in learning that they can go up, down, under, and over in that order.



Someone should tell them though, that the view on the other side really is this good.