Goeiedag, Good News,

Hello hello hello, bonjour, guten tag and indeed goeiedag.

Reasons to be famous, completed projects and all sorts of illustrated high-jinks abound in this springtime season of newness and tidying.

A short while ago I made this first page of a comic about what Europe might be like in the future, and sent it along with a summary of the rest of the story to the nice people at Friedrich Naumann Stiftung for their Europe Fast Foward competition.

Along with six other comic artists I have been commissioned to complete the story and then go to Brussels for an awards ceremony and the launch of the book of our comics. Which is cool.

I'm not going to share the story with you, because I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise of what European culture will be like in the future. Because I am that prescient and clever that I have figured out what that will be. 

ALSO, I want to tell you that drawing lace is really enjoyable and I want more excuses to do so.  

In other comic news you can see a review of the second issue of Meanwhile... featuring my found text comic (Loved and Found, the serendipitous love story) on the Forbidden Planet blog here. Which is quite exciting. 

Also and as well, a somewhat longer time ago, the magnificent Christopher Kear of The New Tabloids commissioned me to produce some collagey artwork and designs for the album Good News including a full colour 12 page lyrics booklet in the found text style.

It is now a real thing in the real world and I went to the launch party although I think I missed my shout out which is a little bit embarrassing. 

The music sounded really good tho, you should check it out. 

Here are some of the lyric pages

I love the mix of serendipity and intention that is in all creativity but comes out especially much in abstract collage. The materials and colours that I used related to the theme and mood of each individual song, with a theme of using newsprint and jagged edges throughout, relating to the idea of the band's name and ethos of fractured journalism, commenting on modern life seen through the bottom of a broken bottle, dancing in the wreckage of the scene. You know, that sort of thing. Right? 

I've been doing lots of other fun drawings for fun and profit, much of which I am not sharing yet. But here are some sneaky, cheeky, peeky work in progress (or #wip to those in the know, or #itk) pictures from the new edition of What Birds are Really Thinking I am working on. 

It is going to be so so so good. Probably.

Hello all.

This week I was commissioned to do a piece in the style of my minibook from 2009 ‘What birds are really thinking’, so here is Penguins thinking about world domination. It’s a Rockhopper penguin.

This has now really made me want to do a whole other books worth of these. Like I’m not already doing enough personal projects! I’m only three Ians into the Is on the facebook project, and I actually started another new project already this month. 

Ian

What was that Mr Internet? I didn’t tell you about my new project on this blog yet? How silly of me.

The new project I have started is a TV drawing project. This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time and the impetus finally jumped me by a combination of factors (I decided not to do a portrait competition because I didn’t have time, and suddenly felt like I had more time, also I have entered it into the Mother brief on Ideastap, so if you could follow the twitter that would really help me out) and I decided to finally do it.

I always wanted to call this project ‘At the end of the day, it is what it is’. This was because of two Big Brother contestants from different series’ catchphrases (Craig, and Siavash) separately, (I really wasn’t sure where to put the apostrophe in that sentence, Mr Gove where are you?). Which were, when combined, I thought the ultimate in meaningless meaningfulness. Which is to say, a cliché which has a universal application. 

But I don’t think anyone remembers those catchphrases except me. So instead I have given it a more descriptive title: Real TV Wisdom

I put it on Blogger, although I may move it to Tumblr, except I hate Tumblr, so I might not. 

Here are some of the pictures I have done for it so far:

I would be very happy to receive suggestions, especially if you live tweet them to @realtvwisdom while the show in question is on. I am most interested in quotes which stand alone (you don’t need any contextual information to understand them) and which are abstractly wise and clichéd.