Morning comes whether you set the alarm or not, and is a PRECIOUS privilege.

Hello friends,

there are a few things I want to blog. Being busy in the manner of bee this blogging episode of mine should be brief. But also given my propensity to a longer length of wind, no promises. 

Firstly, while it is still running (until the 30th of April) I wanted to share the drawings I did of the play Radioman at the Old Red Lion Theatre and a recommendation to catch the show while you can because I enjoyed it a lot. It's a marvel of sonic storytelling and magical realism, written and performed by Felix Trench with live soundscaping. In my drawing the man with the beard is doing the soundscaping. It's really very good. Go see it. 

I've been doing a multitude of fun things in recent months, including some NHS academic cartoons

Some wedding invites and romantic comic commissions.

I've also been having some collage fun, which I wanted to share with you.

A while ago I was sitting on the sofa assembling love zines, as is my wont. I was talking to my hugsband Alex, about how much I love collage and putting together the colours and patterns to make yummy compositions. He challenged me to do more collages that focused on this, WITHOUT WORDS. Which is a big deal because words are kind of my thing, collage wise. I have envelopes and folders and a big puzzle mat full of nice words and phrases I have collected and putting together sentences from found text is the foundation of a lot of my work. 

But I am up for a challenge so I gave it a go. I made some small collage compositions. I was not forbidden from using any of my other go to collage elements such as roses, googly eyes, or things cut out of old field guides. Oh god I love cutting things out of old field guides. Is there a name for that? Eiji Watanabe syndrome perhaps? Anyway here are some.

I managed to make 5 without words, one of which doesn't scan well because it has reflecty bits (technical term). The other 3 I had made just didn't seem to come together until I had added words. I TRIED. FOR AGES. Well, for a bit. They needed words. 

The second two quotes are both from the packaging that came with our Eve mattress. They have good branding. And good memory foam. This is not sponsored. And yes Mother one of the quotes is from Ursula LeGuin and that one has already sold but I'm happy to send you a print if you want one (she's my mum's favourite). 

I spent most of the Easter holidays doing some sloooow interior decoration and writing two big scary pitches, one of which I already know I didn't get. Fingers crossed for the other one. If not, it's all still good. It's a PRECIOUS privilege to be alive as Marcus Aurelius reminds us, To me he will always be the mouse daddy in Magnus Powermouse, but apparently he was also an Emperor. 

Quotes are good. I enjoy how much the internet is full of them. Although I think a lot of the graphical presentations of quotes are ugly. So we must all practice responsible typography. I'm working on a new typographical piece right now, see my instagram for sneaky work in progress. 

I have done a few more Real TV Wisdom pics since the new year too, quotationally. 

That's all the things I have to say for now. 

Except I might be getting a cat.

If I do. Expect a LOT of pictures. 

Brown paper packages tied up with strings

You know my favourite things include but are not limited to, raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens, hand drawn lettering, exciting fonts, maps, birds, fish, old cameras and people asking me to design their wedding invites using some or all of the previously mentioned. Horay!

Katie and Elliot came to me with the concept of the brown paper and mix of hand drawn fonts, and also with a lot of cute ideas for fitting in mini illustrations that relate to them and their interests - like the SLR camera film venue name because Katie is a photographer, and the oar and brown trout that reflect Elliot's rowing and fishing. I sketched out all the words and pictures separately, which made for easy editing to make different versions for the different time slots on the day.

some of the original drawings pre-photoshop.

I also got to do this great map design with detailed ink drawings of the key venues, hotels and local landmarks (like the pub where the couple met)

Some of the original drawings for the map. 

And here's our invite package unpacked, the concept for the talking heads image was slightly cheekily lifted from this design, but I replaced the 50s illustrations with portraits of Katie and Elliot, to make it more personal again. 

In fact the best thing about this project (apart from getting to do all of those favourite things) was how personal to the couple the designs were able to be. It was a great working process and we chatted a lot about ideas and layouts. Apologies for obvious sales spiel - but that's what you can get when you work with someone to design your own unique stationary rather than picking an existing template. 

IF you know what I mean. wink wink.  

The invites came out really well and I'm looking forward to doing some more work for this lovely couple for their big day this summer. In some ways similar, but so different from the designs I did for my own wedding stationary, which were also grounded in a big mix of lettering styles, but much more collagey and colourful:

If you think you might be interested in having me design some celebratory stationary for your event, please do drop me an email with your ideas and I'll make you some quotes. 

Strangely, I'm not that big on bright copper kettles or warm woolen mittens. 

Also, if anyone actually wanted to commission wedding invites that included drawings of kittens and roses, that actually would be the best commission ever. 

blogety blogety blog blog

I have too many things to write about. one big blog post or lots of little ones? I'm inclining towards the little ones. maybe because I am little myself. Also because I have to scan things and I can't be bothered to go in the other room and do that. So here is SOME news.

firstly did you see my featuredness on Ideal Bride Magazine?

you probably did, because I have been putting it about a lot. Its all about me drawing people at (or before, or after) their weddings. I'm thinking about posting a special discount code on here soon, so if you do know anyone who's getting hitched - def tell them all about it and say I said hi.

Dave

I'm still drawing Daves in the facebook project, just a few more to go then I get to draw girls again. Not that I've anything against drawing boys AT ALL - did I mention that I also offer a commissionable portrait service? you can probably have a discount on that too. if you tell me a good pun.

Dave

Also and as well. I am so close to completing my teaching qualification I can taste it. It does not taste of chalk dust.

In about 3 weeks at the end of the course we had a visual component thing, so I wrote and illustrated a 36 page book about the internet for art teachers and students that are not so hot on it.

I drew it with birds. Cos I like drawing birds.

I mean, for a complex and pretentious symbolic reason.

If you are inclined you can see it all here if you so desire, I'm happy with the pictures but the words were pretty rushed - so some are a bit mental.

My Summer of Love and Arctic Cod (see above - it's about overfishing - gettit?, makes me sad tho) illustrations were featured in a pop up exhibition in sunny Leigh on Sea by the lovely and talented Annabel Dee. - another serendipitous twitter connection. I was so busy with PGCE stuff that I sadly didn't make it down, but as her plans include many more exciting ventures in her new ceramics gallery on the same spot I'm sure I'll go take a look at some point.

In other news, look out for my contribution to the Creaturemag Endangered Creature Alphabet.

Also in the somewhat more distant future I will be contributing to Solipsistic Pop 4 (awesomeness maximus)

This train terminates at Highbury and Islington, all change I repeat All Change. I moved house again, yes kids, I moved NORTH OF THE RIVER

As I assumed I have instantly become 17% cooler. (and 12% more arrogant). I’ve quit the day job and soon I will be embarking on a full time Art and Design PGCE course at the Institute of education.

So I have to stop swearing.

Blerg.

But it’s the thing again with the waiting for the internets to come in. A month ago I was in Spain for 10 days and internetless proper, it was hard for the first few days but I got into it. Now is not so bad as I have blackberry access and there’s always the option of lugging my novelty oversized laptop to a wifi pub or cafe l’internet. But still. Adds up to a poor online presence and little or no of the blogging.

Here is a painting I did of the house I was staying at in Espagna, it was roughly a million miles from everywhere. Poifect relaxy days and family time.

But just cos I’ve not been around much don’t think I haven’t been, you know, doing stuff. Before I left the South London massive I went to see my old friend Rokhsan at Tracked in Tooting, which was pretty Ace. Because I’ve been meaning to draw her for ages and I know her and stuff the self imposed sub conscious pressure of it all made my drawings a bit crap, this is the best one, I wanted to draw her full length to get in her awesome shoes

You honest to goodness owe it to yourself to check out her music. It’s super catchy and life affirming. I refuse to use any musicy adjectives to describe it because I’ll probably get it wrong, so you just have to listen to it yourselves.

Before she played this band Alms from Bristol were also on. I really liked their song Simply which you can hear on their myspace. They kind of reminded me of Kimya Dawson but I couldn’t tell you why.

Chris

I’ve been pressing on with the facebook project and have now drawn all the Chrises. Although I’m still a way off the end of the Cs. The project was featured by Balled Of Magazine last week as well, they always say the nicest things. It would be enough to make me blush if I were the blushing type and not the alabaster tanless type. I bought some half price Nicola Roberts fake eyelashes, but I havn’t worn them yet.

Forthcoming expect lots of nice fashion stuff as London Fashion Week rolls round again. And some more political stuff should be on the horizon too.

In recent journalising I did a (mostly) nice write up of the Cycling in London Exhibition and I also did an interview of Tigz Rice about her new book Bitten.

Last week I went to the Comica Comiket thing in Battersea Park, I met Paul Shinn and Cliodhna again, made pathetic fangirly conversation with Philippa Rice and oblique zine conversation with Mark Pawson. And I saw Paul Gravett, although I did not speak to him. I only took £10 on purpose so I didn’t buy much.

I had the same issue as with the Zine fairs I’ve been to – trying to judge books by their covers basically, as the likelihood of the actual writing in these things being super cynical and depressing is very high. Because, you know, it’s quite depressing being a massive geek and social outcast I imagine. Ha. But then there are really cool people who do this kind of thing as well, but trying to tell the difference with a quick flick through on a table is hard.

The actual hyper comics exhibition in the Pumphouse Gallery is really good though. I think the idea is all about taking Comics into new directions, literally, like different story strands. You can’t really do this in the book format without the old turn to page 156 if you think Joey should slay the monster, turn to page 178 if you think Joey should have a nice cup of tea format (although that is awesome obviously).

So the comics were all over the walls. Warren Pleece’s Montague Terrace has joyfully unlikely simultaneous timestreams, and Daniel Merlin Goodbrey has big complex multistrand puzzle type stories on big squares that take up the whole wall. There are 3 pieces about 3 aspects of The Archivist’s life, all aspects of which pretty much reflect a trippy yet compartmentalized view of life. Very fitting for the format, very very geeky, most definitely addictive reading in a way which again sort of reflects the total focus that these activities encourage. I think, well, maybe that’s not what he meant by it. I’m going to be an Ace art teacher eh?

The awesome awesome one was Dave McKean’s The Rut though. Well, I was expecting it to be super awesome, so maybe that affected my judgement a bit, but nah. Just Awesome. Really haunting, and evocative, looking at how stories branch in different ways and a moment can effect someone’s whole life, whichever way it pans out. Also. There is a bright red stags head mounted on the wall. You can’t get much better than that.

here is a collage with fish.

Merry!

so i went to the Xmas market a bit, it went variously. met lots of lovely people and saw some awesome stuff like cards by Jamie Littler, and other talented people from soupa and some Brighton people from the Permanent Bookshop - zines woo, and lots of other people who i will maybe talk about here when i get around to going through my little pile of business cards.

I also sent some what birds are really thinking and love books to Southampton zine and craft fair at the art house gallery, which apparently went down well.

things coming in the new year:

-fun times.

-me featuring on the brand spanking new multimedia-ey uber cool website the Sound of the Walls

-Driver Dan's Story Train first airing on CBBC in january - my episode will come in a few months and then i can post the artwork! - be excited and make it your child's - or your new favourite programme!

not quite in the new year but also to be featured on Tigerprint's awesome typepad blog on sunday, hi hi, blue skies if your visiting from the link! - have a look around i especially recomend the love and birds sections.

hope your christmas was merry, or your non-denominational bank holiday was fruitfull and nice.

Joys!