SO this week I have been doing some journalisting, for Amelia's magazine;
last weekend I went to Southampton and wallowed in nostalgia of various kinds, my review of Ejectorseat festival is up here
this is Baku Bankai, they make minimal dance/electronica, apparently (music talk is all french to me).

I also wrote a bit about the Nancyboy Decade exhibition I went to on Wednesday, I'm more proud of this one, will link to it when it's up.

All these little scenes kind of freak me out tho, I mean, I'm allways banging on about how I think people naturally form social groups of around 100 people and are happier and more productive that way (It's ironic because I'm a massive globalization junkie), so of course I expect people to mark out territory. The problem is that people seem really prone to acting like their mini group perspective is obvious and natural, and anyone coming from slightly leftfield is seen as a bit suspicious. I didn't write about this in the article, I wanted to be predominantly positive, and talk about the work (possibly not what Amelia was hoping for). But I do think it's really interesting. Part of it is a school days echo of desperately hanging on to a feeling of belonging to the cool clique.
Here is a drawing of hipster punters round a unintentionally distorted table at the Book Club, I really liked the venue, and I really like Liat and Klaus altho they were too busy (understandably) to really chat to me.

I'm not saying what I mean, and I worry I'm becoming London centric. If I put a little effort into it I'm at the stage now where I could go to some kind of launch and drink free wine most every night of the week here, it's a big city, there's allways stuff going on. It's not hard to crash things, they put up rsvps to guest lists on their websites, but that's what I'm doing really, crashing. And I'm a little bit over it.

Journalism is hard you know, I'm glad that's not what I want to do with my life.
I much prefer drawing pictures of Nicola Roberts (I super love her), this one is for Matt Bramford's cover of Graduate Fashion Week's Gala Show Finale


I also am very pleased with these creepy arm spiders I drew for Magpie Market's the Spider and the Fly logo competition. I didn't win, but it's the excuse to draw weird things that counts.

adventures

this is me writing on the ceiling at the Pop up Pirates launch party last week. large and less large exciting lettering all over the shop and hipsters a go go.

photo by Amelia Gregory from http://yfrog.com/f/1szrkj/

I snuck in with the alternafashionistasuperethicalsocialite herself, which is to say Amelia, and I introduced her to Derek from the AOI, then we hung out like a load of grumpy old cool kids, complaining about how load the music was. it was a fun night for me, I also met some cool people when i pretended to network after. Including the exciting Klaus from the book club, hopefully I will go see his exciting project next week then I will tell you the story he told me.

Then this week I went to the Oh Comely Launch with Caragh, my lovely illustrator friend who I just drew for my facebook project (yes, I'm on the Cs). I was not feeling the networking so much, probably not enough adrenaline in my bloodstream, but I was definitely feeling the cupcakes, and the band that played who I drew
they are called the foxxbandits, go check out their twinkly tunes.
I also did this drawing of some of the unsuspecting event hipsters, the bearded boy in the top right was the DJ, I don't know his name but if anyone does let me know and I will link to his DJ page or something. If he has one.

In other exciting news, I am featured today on the Ballad Of Magazine Website, it's a really awesome magazine with scary pretty stuff, i mean, do you know what i mean? like, creepy lovely. how good is that? it's pretty good actually. I might even do something for their next issue.

Here is a picture of ME, that I drew. Its a bit pink. It's for online bios and stuff, there should be more of them about in the coming weeks. justsaying.
Yes.

here is a picture of Barny from the facebook project. you may remember I met his brother. well I am going to his not wedding next week. that is all.

I am listening to the Younger Younger 28s to get me in the mood to go dancing, whatever happened to them?

stuff and things.

I finally got round to making one of those facebook fan pages that all the kids are talking about. I'm going to do a silly project based there soon i think, you know like one of those, 365 drawings of my cat, or illustrating every single beatles song using only moulding icing projects. not actually one of those two. a different one.
my Cabal design is being made into one of 8 postcards of the super dog, which should be available in May. woo.

I went to see Chilly Gonzales on thursday and did some drawing. he is a great entertainer and awesome musician, but very tricky to draw as his head is allways moving, hair greasin' and flinging about, fingers flying across the keyboard, that sort of thing. here are the 2 i was happy with.

yeah, he was wearing a dressing gown and slippers, the girl is the one he molested as a finale. guess he wanted to make his audience feel violated. the hipsters were loving it.

I also found one of my favourite band drawings i ever did which i am scanning in for your pleasure here:
it's of a band called Skitanja who i saw in 2007, obviously, they seem to like dressing up.

last night I went to the Little Philistines single launch party in exotic Kilburn. the last time i was out in North London in the evening it turned into a poetry reading. those kids are crazy.
me and fran got there just in time to catch the end of Thom Main's nice guitarry set, he is not, as i had assumed, actually married to David Cronenberg, but is the singer out of a band called David Cronenberg's wife.
the problem with seeing live music, especially in small attractive venues in North London, is that people don't dance till the headlining act comes on and even then they don't dance properly. this is an issue for me because when there is fun music happening, my hips and feet tend to go off of their own accord.
so to avoid embarrasing myself too much i decided to draw the bands instead. i love drawing live musicians, they make awesome shapes and faces. It's a bit attention whorish drawing in public, but what can you do? i networked with some of the nice hipsters. this is the stars down to earth, the drawing is a bit budget because my fineliner was running out. their music was very fun and tuneful, probably my fave after LPs. there was a female drummer, like in FAME. no really, they were good, i'm not a music journalist. thats all i have to say. I was drawing from the balcony and couldn't see half the band, so this is only 3 of them.

next up was Dora Brilliant who were also awesome, great timing, i especially enjoyed the way the songs ended suddenly when you weren't expecting it.
i drew manormouse? in blue fineliner and red biro to mix it up a bit. i'm crazy like that. i remember that i liked them as well, but i didn't make any notes and by this point in the evening i had had quite a few red wine and cokes so i don't remember why.
a kind hipster at the bar impressed me with the ablo aspaniel knowledge by telling me the spanish name for red wine and coke. I have been told before but i can't make the word stick in my head. i forgot it again as soon as he told me.

it was then time for the main event and there was a very exciting video piece shown with paper fire and artistic cutting. disapointingly, the Little Philistines had not brought any of the paper fire with them to decorate their set, but they were very good anyway. got to do some dancing as well. The girl singer is prettier than in the drawing and she had a very exciting orange and black dress which is not featured.
In honour of because he is my friend and invited me i also did this quick drawing of John Riordan playing the trumpet with his head on fire. Horay!

after that some of us lived in south london so went to get the last tube.
when i got home i had a super sandwich with Homous, cream cheese, wafer thin smoked ham, some lamb stew and cucumber in.