Post Christmas

So that was Christmas, and what have we done? Well, I done some pictures for my parents.

Here's a picture I drew of the peace statue that marks the Brighton/Hove boundary, an invisible line that harks back to before Brighton and Hove teamed up to become a city. In the background is the skeleton of the West Pier, a popular meeting point for starlings. On the horizon is Brighton Pier where, growing up, I had fish and chips with my grandparents every year on my birthday. That was back when it was called the Palace Pier, which was later deemed too confusing for tourists.


In the foreground is my dad and sister adjusting their rollerblades. My dad bought a Kangaroo Poo brand short-sleeved fleece jumper from a discount store in Cornwall in the early nineties and has worn it almost every day since. He was wearing it when he unwrapped this picture for Christmas on Saturday.


I used a pencil rather than my usual pen which gives the lines an undeniable pencilly quality.

Mother received a screen print I made of some old rope. I later heard her telling her friends that I'd given her "a lovely frame" and so I guess it's not really her cup of tea. She did seem quite pleased with the frame though.

Turkey soup for lunch, Turkey Hash for dinner.

Sweet Relief

It's taken a lot of drawing, a lot of colouring, a bit of fiddly coding and a fair few arguments... but Sweet View is here! We're really proud of the whole thing - the six prints all look great and the website is fun too - do have a look around and possibly buy a print for yourself and everyone you know.



We're on facebook too, so please "like" us.

Stories

Well, I certainly was glad to open my virtual newspaper to see Stephen Collins as this years winner of the X-Factor-of-the-comics-world that is the Observer Graphic Short Story prize. If you ask me, as nobody ever does, no comics person deserves that cool £1000 more. And, as you ask, I'd also say that if you've got a week or two to kill you could do worse than reading through his last four years of funny bloggery. This post is a good place to start "That's if they even have shoulders..." Ah, rofl etc.

And - again, since you asked - I featured alongside him once. In Solipsistic Pop 2, no less. An organ Top Shelf said was "almost all hit" and even went as far as to imply that mine was one of the good ones.

Here's my four page opus in full:

Solipsistic Pop 3 is out now too. I'm not in it but by all accounts it's the best yet, so that's nice.

Ninja XX banners

I made dozens of these lo-fi animated gifs advertising the Ninja Tune XX box set and live shows. They are all strongly lead by the boxset design and the whole XX identity, but I was still proud to do a little bit for the celebrations - 20 years is a long time.

Sweet View

Sweet View (a bold venture from Charlotte and me selling a series of London based art prints online, see here) is slowly taking shape. Eventually we're going to have a print each for 12 inner London boroughs, but we've decided to launch with a select six as soon as I finish drawing them.

It shouldn't be too long now - I've done most of them. Three of them are markets.

The Lambeth one is Brixton:


The Southwark one is Borough:


And the Tower Hamlets one will be Columbia Road:


We also have a holding page and a mailing list - email info@sweetview.co.uk if you'd like to be added to it.

We both saw The Social Network the other day, and it has filled out tiny entrepreneurial heads with dollar signs. "You know what's cool?" we say as we wonder who will play us in Sweet View: The Movie. This is our time, possibly.

OXJAM flyers

Oxjam sounds like something Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall would have on toast, and is actually a month long series of sprawling music events raising money for Oxfam. Think Camden Crawl but good. Felix and Jacob are friends of mine with great names, and are at the helm of this years Brixton event on 23 October.

I helped a little with these plyers (posters/flyers):

Bloody boring

I might start putting some more strips and stuff up here, like I used to.

This one marks a new beginning, and a reason why.

Stinky post

Ah, can you smell it? That's the damp metallic whiff of an unattended blog. A combination of stale J cloth, old milk and burnt out pixels.

Well rest assured that the great lumbering mass that is my life continues apace. Since my last post I've been to spain and italy, a wedding and a funeral, seen a town and a social network and weathered the international storm of Gamugate.

I also drew this picture of Sam Macrory for his 30th birthday. It's him with all the big names he's interviewed over the years.

Can you tell who they are yet? Apparently he showed this to his colleagues and they recognised everyone, so if you don't you have only your own political ignorance and not my bad caricatures to blame. If you're stuck, here is a key.

I played scrabble too. Looking at my letters (and the internet) I see my next move should have been VOLUTIN which is something grainy you find in cells, like porridge.


I also watched some people on sofas on computers, and a guy from Lemon Jelly making sweet music under a bridge.


If you want, you can listen to the music whilst looking at the picture for the full immersive experience.

Match of Tomorrow

Match of the Day Magazine asked me to do an audition piece (a pitch, if you will) for a series of double-page comic strip predictions of England's World Cup performances. I poured all my wealth of footy-knowledge (largely based around the 1994 Arsenal squad), a couple of anti-American clichés and some blind optimism into a script and the first page came out like this:



And then the second page was to be a bit like this:



Not exactly what eventually did unfold, but then if they were to all prove accurate it would be a pretty depressing comic series. Sadly they didn't go for me though, which is a shame because I'd love to do more stuff like this. I'm not sure if someone else got the job or not, but if they did I do hope it was Paul.

SweetView

I donated this cover to this weeks Le Cool. I drew it a while back as part of a project called SweetView.

SweetView is eventually going to be a series of art prints designed to resonate with Londoners. So rather than views of the London Eye with Big Ben in the background, or Big Ben with the London Eye in the background - views we only recognise from the Apprentice titles - they will be the crossroads, markets and hidden squares that provide the true backdrop to our lives. I'm running it in conjunction with Charlotte, my very own Lord Sugar, and we will launch it fully in September. There's to be twelve prints, one for each inner borough (Westminster, Kensington & Chelsea, Hammersmith & Fulham, Wandsworth, Lambeth, Southwark, Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Islington, Camden, Greenwich and Lewisham - suggestions for locations in each place would be gratefully received).

If you'd like a friendly email when the SweetView project launches, just email jack@jacknoel.co.uk or put a comment on this post.


The Hackney print will be the one adapted for the above cover.


Right now I'm colouring the Lambeth one - Brixton Market. Here's what the linework looks like:



There's an interview, of sorts, on the Le Cool website.

Spanish in Sketches

I've been learning Spanish for a little while now. I'm not sure why exactly but it's pretty satisfying nonetheless.

In a bid to widen my vocabulary I've been drawing words to cement them into my memory, and then sticking them up on this blog. They say it's a good way of learning as drawing is "a language without code". So for example, the word for shell is concha:


It's a fine trick for words like shell, brick or mouse but sadly I may never memorise the Spanish word for dignity.

GASH! Summer Party

It's summer time, which the Fresh Prince says is when "The weather is hot and girls are dressing less" which can only mean one thing - Gash! Friday is their summer party and I drew this footy inspired flyer for them.

Families at The Dorchester

This is a booklet for The Dorchester and their special offerings for families. They wanted a traditional children's story look so I got to crack out my watercolours and pencils for pretty much the first time since I did GCSE art, which was pretty satisfying. It's like using photoshop but instant.

The booklet stars Doris the duck, the Dorchester mascot, and her 2.4 ducklings.

It's a small A6 booklet that folds out using complicated paper engineering that words can't describe into two big pages that look like this.


I drew a little illustration of Doris for each of the family specific offerings.

Here's Doris having a little me time.

Doris has a princess-themed party.

Doris gets ready for bed her luxury den. Glamping, they call it.

Doris inspired by a trip to the English National Ballet.

It was a really fun project to work on, and I'm definitely proud of how it came out. Thanks to Jade who was the brains behind the whole operation. As I was designing the booklet as well as illustrating it the whole thing is really a product of pretty much just our two little minds, which is pretty satisfying.

Getting Doris' look right took some work though. The family started off like this:


And ballerina Doris like this:


The whole family went from this...

to this...

to this...

to this...

and this before finally ending up as they did - ie. actually looking like ducks. Using paints, pencil and paper mean that these repeated revisions did take a little longer, but I think it was worth it in the end.


And here are some painty type bits I was thinking about throwing in early on.


So that's nice.

Dadtastic

As proclaimed by the poster of a topless hunk holding a baby on display above the greetings cards in my local Esso, Fathers Day is coming. And Dadtastic! - with drawings by me - is out now, ready for the big day on 20 June.


DIY doctor dad
Never reads the bloody manual Dad
Extreme survival Dad
Always trying to teach a lesson Dad
Listens to nothing but Bob Dylan Dad
Wine buff Dad
Can't cook to save his life DadPDA Dad
Always opts for a pint Dad
When I was a lad Dad
Taxi driver Dad

It's available now from Amazon and real book shops. And look at the early sketch version of the cover Amazon are using: