I haven't had much time for watching Big Brother these last few weeks

my boss had me on 9 to 5s at Dayjob#1 - how do normal people do it? guess i'm not normal people tho. who is? oh wait. dolly parton. right.

here's a picture of people, me on the left in the boots, Ali and Anna of TwoMagpiesFind are in the middle, at the launch thing for Fragments. I wrote two journalisms about it, one for Windsor local Beat magazine, which was a bit serious, and about my art and stuff, and another one for Amelia's Magazine which was a bit less serious, and about birds and Windsor and stuff.

this is a super budget phone photo of one of the paintings i did for the show - it has puffins!
Puffins are mental, how have they not died out yet! it's not survival of the cutest!


Also, what has been happening is I have been working on my ethical fashiony stuff for that Amelia's Compendium open brief. its too late you missed it.

I went to The Big Swish (it's where you swap your clothes but not with any naked) last week, (it was very fun, although there was Primark related controversy) anyway, I almost brought home a playsuit. almost. i didn't actually. probably for the best.

I forgot to write in my bit about me for the submission how much I love drawing pitcures of people taking photos of themselves, and of groups posing for photos. They are so ace. I love how you can go out one time, and on facebook there's this photo of you looking well chummy with all these people you didn't even properly meet. And I love everyone pulling thier photo faces, almost as much as i love catching people so not making their photo faces.



anyway everything is ok because i have drawn Nelson Mandelephant
please do not hink there is any kind of political meaning to him, it's purest wordplay. He came up in conversation at a grown up cocktail party come geeky sleepover I attended at the home of my cousin in Coventry. (see i told you I has had exotic adventures) which was awesome.

other adventures I have had recently include going to see some sshhhhhhhhakespeare at the globe theatre which i had not done before. That was Ace. there were lots of fat jokes.

Also I went to see Inception FOR FREE (due to my genius of being the most geeky out of 4 people!) it is super good, i recommend it a lot. love the ending - so cheeky!

Also i made a cheesecake. that was a while ago now but still a first. oh, before that i went strawberry picking as well! that's where the cheesecake had its genesis.

And I went to a pub quiz.

And i went to THE GYM.

that might be all of the adventures.

I am up to the Chrises in the facebook project. there are 8 of them. beaten by Daves with 10 tho.

I also did this interview with the amoresome Tigz for the magazine d'Amelia.

Oh ALSO. I am moving house again soon. NORTH OF THE RIVER. saints preserve us. i shall become trendy automatically i assume.

ANOUNCING!!!!!!!

super special exclusive limited edition postcard set WHOWHATWHEREWHENWHYHOW


available NOW to coincide with Two Magpies Find show at The Mill House in Windsor.

apologies for abnormaly high number of capital letters in the above.

oh wow, i need to blog.
blog blog blog.

i don't actually have time. soooooooooooooooooooooooon.

pictures speak more betterer than words tho right?
here is a cheeky one for the fashionforward

and some creepy as hand spiders i drew for the MagpieMarket competition. i did not win
exciting things on the hosizon and also in the now:

exhibition at the Mill House with TwoMagpiesFind
new postcard set of owl paintings WHOWHATWHEREWHENWHYHOW
swishing
political stuffs
unicorns
more journalisming (and i said i wouldn't)

.

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?

take that the letter A

todays blog post is brought to you by the letter A (and the number 25)
because that's right kids I have now drawn all of my friends who start with this glorious first letter of the alphabet, project stands at 25 down, 299 to go.

you like stats? um, you want more numbers?

ok, i will next be drawing only 4 friends beginning with B before embarking on a mammoth 29 beginning with C, 20 with D, 13 with E, and I'm bored of counting now, plenty more.

of the 25 drawn so far there have been 7 in black and white, 5 painted in watercolour, 2 coloured entirely on the computer,
5 friends are holding drinks (what does that tell you about facebook culture, or is it just culture?) with other props including sword and unicycle.
9 out of the 25 are wearing hats or prominant hair accesories. 11 friends so far have made my drawing their profile picture.
well, thats enough of that anyway.

I definitely am going to draw them all by the way. don't you go doubtin' ya'hear?

what have I learned so far from drawing friends beginning with an A?
well, I have learned that I am really happy to have such awesome friends, even the ones I have blatently lost touch with, because looking at everyone's photos and deciding how to draw them mostly made me think how much i like them and am glad to have met them.

HORAY FOR FRIENDS

i could make observations about how people often pick for their profile pics the photos of themselves that look least like them, or how some people just don't photograph as hot as they actually are, and other people photograph hotter than they actually are. but that's not really anything I havn't thought before.

so far the project is more than meeting its primary objectives. I'm enjoying it, it's helping me to be in touch with people and to meet new people, and enhancing my, you know, web presence or something. I love having a project.

HORAY FOR PROJECTS

in addition and as well, check out this photo of all dissapointed sparrow t-shirts in different colours Michael over at tinyrun sent me. cest magnifuque ne'st pas?

here are some drawings that i did in Paris last week, cos thats where I was, in Paris.
here are some drawings at Musee de L'Orangerie, or De Lingerie as i prefer to call it

these are drawings in the famous cemetery with Oscar Wilde in, we didn't find Oscar, but we couldn't help seeing Jim Morrison, there were flocks of tourists seeking him. including many spanish preteens. just like being in Brighton.

this is a band that were playing in Montmartre, it was funny on me because i said to Alex, I said, i want to draw them they look really french. but they were American. Also the star of my failing at cultural recognition is where I was aproached by a clipboard person near the catacoombs (which were cool) and i panicked and told her i did not ablo a spaniel. which is bad. cos she was french. not spanish. obviously.

on the plus side. I had a macaroon from McDonalds, as featured in The Stylist.

Here are some recent Amelia's magazine pictures I did.

this one is from this article about women and the election and stuff.
this is my fave, see how it looks like i drew London Bridge actually there, but actually I drew it at my messy desk looking at Google image search. that's cos i drew it REALLY FAST.

Anyway its all about how there's these elephants, you know like there was those cows before? the Elephants are all over London, they are a bit too My Little Pony in their original form you know, with big cartoony eyes, what's that about? but the art done on them is mostly awesome, so read Matt's article about it with my picture and loads of other cool ones here.

In a little while there will also be toads. in Hull.
really what's next?

but no, it's a good thing because my amazingly talented and special illustrator friend Sasha Heath
is doing one and you can be a part of it! splains here.

oh yes. also, after the other day when I was bitching and moaning cos I failed to draw Robin Ince, I got to draw comediens for Amelia's article about some comedy thing she went to. Including that Mr Ince, I put him in a Pink Stetson which was a reference to the stuff he said when I saw him not when she saw him, yeah? the best bit is that the visual reference I used for the Stetson was a picture of Borris Johnson
and then also I drew Marcus Brigstock talking about political evolution.

that is all.