Platform Bar | Great Little Place

Dom and I went to the Platform Bar at the top of Netil House, a big old office block that's now a, um, creative block: full of studios and spaces and lithe extras from Dalston Superstars. We were there on behalf of Great Little Place. Dom, who is my flatmate and a funny writer type, later wrote a "piece" about the bar for them. I drew a picture on the night to capture the "vibe" of the place in my sketchbook, just in case his photos didn't come out right.

His review is well worth a read, click here.

Here are the virgin lines:

And some more sketch book bits from the same night. This is live-looping ukelelist Milly Blue, who closed her set with a stirring acousto-rendition of Beyoncé's Sweet Dreams. It was just different enough from the original to lure the crowd into enjoying it before their anti-pop sensibilities could kick in.

Thanks to the GLP team for having us on board. Hopefully Dom and I will be joining forces for more review type things soon...

Clothes Horse (a poem)

Oh, the humble elegance of the clothes horse.
A collapsible monument.
A quotidian sculpture.
With fine skeleton and rounded shoulders,
like a boy.
And four feet in coloured rubber shoes,
like two boys,
holding steadfast against the dead weight
of wet fabric
so we don't have to.

Pop bitch

This is Char (in Pisa airport I believe) slagging off a young female pop star. For her most recent release, you see, the singer has eschewed her previous creative team and gone out alone to make something a lot more personal and - Char says - worse. I won't name them here though as that would be indelicate.

Oh, alright: it's Laura Marling.

Sweet Preview

Sweet View #10 will be the charming Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea. I finished the linework last weekend. Here's a little taste of it starring a couple of Kings Road mods.

(Sweet View is a series of limited edition London prints, for sale here.)

MoS: How Elvis Pringle Lost His Hairdo

The Ministry of Stories is "an organisation dedicated to the creation of stories by a new storytelling generation." They're pretty great.

I went along with Chisenhale Primary from Bow to illustrate their story of candy, crime and kidnap: How Elvis Pringle Lost His Hairdo. It was my first session at the Ministry (see shaky lines for evidence of nervousness) and it was a real privilege - fun too. You can read their collaborative opening below (feel free to finish it in you own time).


How Elvis Pringle Lost His Hairdo
Author: Chisenhale Primary School

Once upon a time, there was a marshmallow called Mrs. Marshmallow Woman and she lived in the Bermuda Triangle.

She was at the Elvis Pringle concert. Elvis Pringle was giving out Original Pringles when a deep-sea diver took Elvis Pringle hostage.

He took him to a large bag of Walkers’ crisps. The diver was Bob, the normal person. Elvis Pringle was very posh: he lived in a nine-bedroom semi-detached tube. He said to the Walkers’ crisps, “You lot are weirdos. You live in a bag.”

An hour later, Marshmallow Woman came bursting through the packet.

Bob the normal person bought the pack of crisps and ate all of the crisps. “What are a Pringle and a marshmallow doing here?” he said – and he chucked them out onto the floor. But were they all alone?…

So that was nice.