Jack Draws

Drive

2012-01-16T08:42:00.000Z

A place in the wind

2012-01-15T11:40:00.001Z

Back in October I was lucky enough to get an invitation to a Tuscan villa retreat. Fresconaccia they call it, which Google translates as "Fresh threat" but apparently means something more like "windy place". In fact it was neither threatening nor farty. It was just five days of tearing mozzarella balls in crisp autumn sunshine, like an ad from the Lucca tourist board but with more topless ping-pong and some shameful drunk freestyling.

Whilst there, I drew this:

So that was nice.

Pop strips

2012-01-12T09:16:00.000Z

I made some comics about pop stars of the day.

Actually by all accounts they are nice young boys done good.

Azaelia Banks (who is rude) went to the same NY fame academy as Nicki Minaj. Everyone likes to play up their rivalry, or at least call Banks "the new Nicki" as there can only be one young sass-factory in hip hop at any given moment.

The Weeknd was one of the most buzz-worthy pop people of 2011 because in that one year he released a trio of highly acclaimed and much downloaded albums ... all for free. He also apparently hates the idea of touring so how he will monetize his mega-kudos without completely selling out has become one of the great mysteries of the modern age.
That said, it is a bit nuts how you sometimes hear of him spoken about as a lone wolf creator type when actually there is obviously a team behind him working on (and paying for) his websites and videos etc. so there's probably a business plan back there too, no doubt with a Nike megamix and a Mastercard ad in there along the way.

Jane Airs

2012-01-06T09:07:00.000Z

Sweet View: Kensington & Chelsea + Tweet View

2011-12-08T22:23:00.001Z

As announced last week on our mailing list and our brand new twitter account, we at Sweet View towers have launched our tenth print: Kensington and Chelsea. It's a sweeping panorama of Sloane Square, taking in all from the Royal Court right round to Peter Jones (the corner shop, not the dragon).

It was literally made in Chelsea, with me spending hours leaning against the window of Tiffany & Co. whilst I got the lines down (it took a couple of visits, this one).

The colours - especially the lilac tarmac - are my homage to David Hockney's Garrowby Hill.

Here's a bit more detail: the listed 'Venus Fountain' and an Ocado delivery truck peeking from behind a tree.

It looks great printed, and it's available to buy now from sweetview.co.uk

Tweet View
So yes, there is now a Sweet View twitter account - we are catching up with the world. Follow us! (23 people can't be wrong...) We put up sneak previews and details on our events, like the We Make London Christmas Fair at the Battersea Arts Centre on Saturday 10th December (as seen on the Guardian website).

The next print for Sweet View will be Hammersmith & Fulham. No doubt we'll be microblogging our progress on that one too, as if you don't have enough reason to jump on the @sweet_view_ bandwagon already.

One Green Bottle

2011-12-05T11:50:00.000Z

Platform Bar | Great Little Place

2011-11-28T21:14:00.001Z

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)

2011-11-26T13:00:00.000Z

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

2011-11-11T08:38:00.001Z

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

2011-11-10T08:54:00.001Z

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

2011-11-03T14:04:00.001Z

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.

The eyes have it

2011-10-25T14:00:00.000+01:00

An ophthalmology gif. That’s what people want to see on the internet, right?

How Not to Talk Like an Arse

2011-10-20T08:26:00.002+01:00

How Not to Talk Like an Arse (available now) is the third book in the Richard Wilson's Arse trilogy, and the third one that I've illustrated. This time Richard's turning his grumpy old eye to the modern day vernacular, pouring a bucket of scorn on words like 'Ciao', 'Hurting', 'Staycation' - and then a bigger bucket on the people that say them.

Here are some of the drawings:

This one is Mark Lawrenson and the Chuckle Brothers combining to make a commentary dream team.

And here's "Man despairs as fellow passenger reads chick lit".

Something to do with "Any Time Soon".

An Apprentice contestant type (invariably the worst offenders, apparently) and that great Keysian phrase. The banana is something to do with alpha males (gorillas or penises or both).

An über-mum.

An über-mum sketch from when I didn't understand what we were talking about.

This one's obvious really.

News reader wears a scarf tied in the "new way". My joke headline that got a swift axeing: "SCARF ACE" (fair enough).

Clapham tosser does pistol fingers.

Theresa May in space (please forward on to Political Cartoonist of the Year Awards).

Power lady lulled to sleep by glowing devices.

That great portmanteau that noone has ever said.

And, er, that's it.

Sweet View press

2011-10-03T09:14:00.002+01:00

Quite a few people have said sweet things about Sweet View - in online and print articles, tweets and emails. Now we have now collected most of them onto one very long press page on our website. Do make sure you put aside half an hour today to read through them all in detail.

OxPARC

2011-08-30T09:32:00.002+01:00

I just finished a great project for OxPARC making about a million illustrations for their website. OxPARC is an NHS centre that treats rheumatoid conditions (arthritis, basically) in young people. I worked with their staff, the patients and the patient's parents to develop a cast of kids and teens to populate near every page of the site. They're a diverse bunch, as you might expect, and every one of them has a pet.

There are more illustrations up on my portfolio site, or you can see the full set as nature intended by clicking through the OxPARC site.

The Tiger's Wife

2011-08-25T09:00:00.004+01:00

Child friendly alternative book cover for the Orange Prize 2011 winner (about a mythologised Yugoslavian history, not Tiger Woods' marriage).

What I did on my other holidays

2011-08-17T09:02:00.002+01:00

In July Charlotte and Archie and Charlotte and I took a double-date trip to smug central in the South of France.

We stayed in Charlotte's family house in Le Vernet, a little village up in the mountains. All the villagers hated us immediately because we beat them at pétanque.

After one night we headed south to Sete - "the Venice of Languedoc" - where we set up camp for the weekend. We were there for the Worldwide Festival, showcasing the best music from across the globe - which happens to almost all be made on computers in Hackney and played with the bass turned up to 11.

We were staying in one of those European mega-campsites with big water slides and marauding gangs of children cycling between the supermarket and the table tennis tables. Heaven. (If you're seven).

The daytime section of the festival was based on the beach. It was like we'd wandered onto the set of those super sexy H&M bikini ads. The four of us just lurked on the periphery dragging down the average attractiveness of the crowd.

Back in the house in the hills, we played Scrabble and argued about words.

And on the last night we set up an Excel spreadsheet to calculate our holiday finances.

So that was nice

New site

2011-08-08T22:49:00.007+01:00

I've re-jiggled my portfolio website. Do point your chrome firefox internet explorer at jacknoel.co.uk and tell me what you think.

Sweet View: Islington

2011-07-06T09:02:00.002+01:00

Sweet View #9 is Islington. It shows Camden Passage, that little lane off Upper Street in Angel. The street is home to regular antiques markets and lots of charming cafe type places. (Do check the official Camden Passage website for more info and a thrillingly mundane splash page.)

Here's some detail: the perennial queue outside the Breakfast club and an orange dog without an owner.

And here's an animation to show how the orange and all the other colours came to be. (And I had the gall to call the Camden Passage splash page mundane!)

We launched it on Sunday - in Islington, in fact - at the charming Cally Fest. Here's me feeling awkward behind all my drawings.

The print is available now along with the other 8 boroughs we've done so far at sweetview.co.uk

Beauty and the Beast

2011-07-05T13:42:00.003+01:00

I discovered the Waterstones Picture This competition - in which you compete for the chance to illustrate a Michael Morpurgo retelling of Beauty and the Beast - too late. Entry required a full spread and character sketches and I had just one already packed weekend. I tried to squeeze it in, but failed (still managed to ruin my weekend though). This is as far as I got.

I was basing the beast's costume on this guy, King Hipster (discovered via Jamie Smart's twitter.)

Now - to eBay for dungarees, sock garters and hair grease.

What I did on my holidays

2011-07-04T09:00:00.008+01:00

I went to Spain for a week back in May. The first half of the trip was a romantic city-break thing for Charlotte and me. The second we tried to make the opposite and almost succeeded. It was about as close to all out Skins-on-tour festival hedonism you can get as four quite boring late twenties couples (not that close). Each day I drew a little scene in my little book (click the pictures to embiggen).

We started in Madrid, long one of my favourite cities in the world despite - or possibly as a result of - never having been there before. We stayed in a little twin room in Tirso de Molina with a balcony looking out over an all-night siren testing zone.

We hired bicycles and saw all of the sights in one big sweaty swoop round the city. You can only get so much of a sense of a gallery/church/palace through stolen sideways glances whilst pedalling a 6-lane Spanish highway, but it was enough for us.

Here's Charlotte on a bike by the Palacio Real (the "Real Palace").

We could have done with bicycles for going round the Prado, our token bit of indoor culture. It's vast. Thankfully the guide pamphlet has a check-list of all their masterpieces so we just ran around boshing those off and ignoring all those horrible non-masterpieces. El Jardin De Las Delicias, above, is a masterpiece. Bosch!

And that was enough couple time. Enough Sangria and sunsets. Enough boating and boquerones. Enough sighs and silences.
We flew from Madrid to Barcelona and met our friends and got straight into the sea.

Primavera began that evening. Once inside, we were distressed to discover that the futuristic internet-based bar system had crashed. But we popped out to fill our boots, sleeves and hoods with brandy and all was well again.

We were staying in a small apartment into which we packed 10 sweaty people. It was a bit like one of those jars of hot dogs in brine that I secretly love. We spent the Friday at the site watching The National and Pulp and Battles and generally enjoying ourselves too much.

On Saturday, nearing the end of our trip, we endeavoured to check off a bit of Barcelona tourism. We forced ourselves up and out into the dusty heat to see the Sagrada Familia and Parc Güell, where everyone immediately fell back to sleep. It was all very lovely, even when refracted through our hangovers.

And then on Sunday, home. We missed our flight back because in their infinite wisdom BA changed the flight and didn’t tell us. (Or possibly they did.) Either way, they let us jump on the next one without any fuss. Lovely BA.

So that was nice.

Sweet View: Camden

2011-06-29T09:00:00.009+01:00

Our latest addition to the Sweet View oeuvre is borough number 8: Camden. It's available to buy at sweetview.co.uk now.

This is what the lines looked like.

This is me drawing them. I had to escape the Saturday throngs like a rat in a flood - by clambering upwards. I sat on that lonely wall for four self-conscious hours whilst tourists pointed and laughed and took photos of me.

Sweet View elsewhere

Did you see Sweet View in The Londonist?

And the interview with us on Makerhood?

And our piece about our favourite place in London, Scootercaffé, for This Is Your Kingdom?

And the interview on We Make London about our love of playing chess in the aforementioned Scootercaffé?

Next week we'll be part of the We Make London Summer Boutique in Hampstead. It's a pop-up shop opening for eight days on the 2nd July selling wares from "40 of the UK's most talented designer makers" and us. Charlotte and I are taking the first shift on Saturday - there'll be free flowing wine and Pimms from 6 if you feel inclined to visit us.

And on Sunday, 3rd July, we have a stall at Cally Fest (don't worry - it's "pop-up"). It will see Caledonian Road decked out with bunting and filled with live music, skateboarding, crafts, circus skills and all that stuff that the kids love. They'll also have the Wimbledon final on a big screen so Charlotte will inevitably spend the day hawk-eyeing the tennis leaving me to man our stall alone, no doubt while tourists point and laugh and take photos.

What I wore

2011-06-08T09:00:00.004+01:00

This is what I wore one Sunday a while ago. As submitted to - but not as yet featured on - the What I Wore Today blog.

Bartman, covered

2011-05-21T15:15:00.008+01:00

Another cover. This time I took this Bartman cover:

And covered it - for the Covered blog - to make this:

Reading Bartman comics as a clueless twleve year old in Brighton, I never really understood how he fits in to the Simpsons universe. It's only now with the help of Wikipedia I realise that, well, he doesn't really. Which is fine.

My previous Covered contribution can be seen here.

This Is England covered by me

2011-05-17T08:50:00.009+01:00

I covered the This Is England poster for the Ritzy 100 poster competition. (Prize: 50 tickets to see X-Men: First Class...)

I begun by pencilling a fairly faithful rendition of Woody's round up gang. Then I realised I was being bloody boring and so starting getting a bit "quirky" with the type.

Then I put some hilarious in-jokes that even I don't get into the winners wreaths and replaced the review snippets with quotes from the movie.

Then I coloured it in green and pink. The colours of a sure-fire winner, no doubt. (Click it to embiggen.)

I think I was being a bit literal in my interpretation of the brief ("Recreate a film poster in your own unique style.") The other entrants have all just created a brand new poster, which is much better (well, except for the minimalist ones).

Ninja Tune and Big Dada Showcase

2011-05-16T18:41:00.005+01:00

Here's a poster I made for a Ninja Tune/Big Dada showcase night last week, part of the Great Escape festival in Brighton. I made the type into a box, which is supposed to be a bit like a showcase. Geddit? It's like a basics revisioning of that great Well Deep artwork Oscar and Ewan did a couple of years ago for the same label.

I didn't go, but I do like old Dels.

I made the box-thing by using some high-tech Illustrator techniques, mapping art onto a three-dimensional wireframe structure just like Jeff Bridges in Tron (I assume that's what happens).

Reduced Taste the Difference pizza for dinner, reduced Fruit Loaf for afters.

Sweet View: done market

2011-04-24T18:35:00.000+01:00

We had a great time at that Crafty Fox market (see previous post). Well, that's if you call sitting inside a pub on a sunny day, feeling generally awkward and very slowly drinking a Guinness a great time. Which, of course, I do. Here's Charlotte trying to hide from customers:

It was featured in the Guardian and a fair few other places in the pre-hype, so was duly busy.

We made a little bit of money and one friend, so that's nice.

Marathon

2011-04-18T23:21:00.001+01:00

Sweet View: popping upmarket

2011-04-14T14:13:00.003+01:00

Sweet View is going to be at the Crafty Fox Pop Up Market in the Brixton on Saturday. I'm looking forward to it because this time, unlike our last market stall on the frozen eleventh storey of a Brick Lane car park, we'll be in the Dogstar - a nice place with a warm atmosphere. And a bar. Plus there'll be three floors of great Crafty Fox stuff like DJs and tea rooms and, of course, a letter lounge (a lounge where you write letters).

The Dogstar is almost featured in our Lambeth print.

For more information on the market, click this flyer:

Do come along to see our prints LIVE and say hello (and then possibly write some letters).

Sweet View: Greenwich

2011-04-13T13:59:00.003+01:00

We've just released our seventh Sweet View print: Greenwich - the home of time.
I posted the line work a couple of weeks ago (see here). Now, here are the colours:

See both magically combined on the Sweet View website (and then maybe buy one!).
Here's a bit of detail. We hope you all like it!

A daffodil on a bicycle

2011-04-04T16:38:00.014+01:00

A daffodil because that's mother's flower of choice and a bicycle because on Mothering Saturday I, along with a peloton of other devoted sons and daughters, cycled from London to Brighton to hand deliver my Mothering Sunday card. (With this picture on the front.)
We did underestimate the ride a little - it ended up taking us nine hours. I had printed out Google maps so small that you couldn't read any road names so we were left following homing instincts and using the sun for navigation. We ended up taking our silly London road bikes through a forest and made several fraught crossings of the M25. Not quite the Corinne Bailey Rae video I had envisioned, but close enough.

The route we were trying for is this one. And if you're ever inclined to do a similar journey then I'd definitely recommend a stop at The Bell in Outwood for burgers and pints. It pretty much saved our lives.

As seen on TV

2011-03-31T23:18:00.012+01:00

If you've been watching 'Lily Allen: From Riches to Rags' on Channel 4 (if not, why not?) and reading this blog for the last five years (if not, well, I understand) you may have recognised a framed portrait of a younger Lily as being drawn by a younger me.

There's a lingering shot of it in episode 2 ("The girls hunt for their perfect shop location") which then pans to Lily in the background, possibly trying to leave me a voicemail.

It crops up again in episode 3 ("Opening the shop with a glittering launch night"). This time we can clearly see behind Mary (Queen of Shops) that Lily's print is signed. Not by me though, of course, but by the novelist Nick Hornby. I am indebted to Nick who is clearly happy to sign my work when I'm not around - and I'll be sure scrawl on a couple of copies of High Fidelity next time I'm in Smiths to make up for it.

This story all began back in 2007 when my picture of Lily won a competition for children being run in connection with Nick Hornby's then new novel 'Slam'. This post from back then has more details and plenty of self-conscious witterings, should you be interested.

Sweet Progress

2011-03-21T18:00:00.011Z

Sweet View, the humble print business selling London prints for London people we launched back in November, is kind of flourishing. We've sold a fair few of our maiden six prints through our website and we're also registering a lot of interest for the next six.

Last week I went out to charming Greenwich and drew this, which will eventually be #7:

Suggestions for a colour scheme are welcome. It should be green, perhaps. Or "gren", as the locals say.

We've been getting some pleasing coverage from across the internet and even, once, in print - in the form of that esteemed organ The Irish World. Also notably the celebrated journalist/author India Knight mentioned us on her blog and tweeted to her 33,000 followers that our prints are LOVELY (in capitals, just like that), which was nice.

Before Christmas we made our market debut in the fashionable Truman Brewery. Or more specifically in an unfashionable back room on the fifth floor of the fashionable Truman Brewery. Our table decorations (fairy lights, 8 clementines) didn't go that far to mask the metal cage that was our stall, but it was kind of fun. Next time (and there will be one soon) we'll know better. And we'll bring chairs.

Many thanks to everyone who has bought our prints or said kind things about them.

Sketch dump

2011-03-02T20:34:00.002Z

If for nothing more than to prove I am alive, here's a bunch of drawings.

True Grit

2011-02-15T20:54:00.002Z

Here is a cartoon about watching the moving picture True Grit (click it to embiggen).

I give the movie six cowboy stars out of ten.

Daal saag for dinner, caramel apple crumble for afters.

Lip sinking

2011-02-08T23:20:00.007Z

I started making an epic animated feature because, frankly, if you haven't made an epic animation (preferably at least BAFTA winning) by the time you're 27 then you haven't done much. But after 12 minutes realised I have not the talent, patience, time or ability required.

This is as far as I got.

Stuffed peppers for dinner, cherry brandy chocolate for pudding.

Cheeses

2011-01-14T16:37:00.001Z

Beans and cheddar on toasted pitta for lunch, Soreen for afters.

Haircutting

2011-01-13T21:15:00.004Z

Stuffed crust oven pizza for dinner, Soreen for pud.

My best of 2010

2011-01-01T16:25:00.008Z

The thing about all these dull December best-of-the-year lists is the year isn't over yet. My list too is dull - duller in fact, since I lack both the enthusiasm and the expertise of others, but at least I waited till January 1st just in case something amazing happened at the last minute (it didn't).

Album of the year: Star of Love by Crystal Fighters

Now, I like music. I don't just mean I'll tap my foot along to a T-Mobile ad, I am a proper fan. I briefly even wanted to be a music journalist (I did meet the Sugababes). But either I've lost that passion or perhaps 2010 was a bit of a damp nothing of a year. I mean there was lots of vaguely promising dubsteppy type events but then the James Blake song that everyone really likes is actually just a Feist cover so where does that leave us? As a bunch of flipping Feist fans? At least the Crystal Fighters one has some twinkly guitar bits alongside good old fashioned bass wobble, plus they're obsessed with basque stuff and I for some reason like things to do with Spain so that's something.

Book of the year: Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

Who reads books the year they come out? Maybe if you work at Waterstones or are on the Booker panel, sure. But otherwise, really? Thankfully for me the one book I have read this year is the book of the year. I only read the first 100 pages or so mind, because I had to return it to the library, but once you get the jist you can imagine how it all winds up pretty easily (in my version it climaxes with a sexy alien invasion).

Movie of the year: Good Hair

I didn't pay to see Good Hair, and probably never would have. I mean, I like good things, but hair? I had barely ever considered my own hair - good or bad - let alone the hair of black women and the industry around it. But then for an hour and a bit one Tuesday night I learned it all. I learned what a weave is, where hair comes from and that all those men that hang out in barbers are funny - especially Chris Rock. So whilst it wasn't about how weird dreams are (pretty weird) or how fast Mark Zuckerberg talks (pretty fast) and didn't have a nine year old girl using swear words (pretty rude), it was good. And about hair.

Book cover of the year: The Shallows (designer - Ben Wiseman)

I wish I read more of these pop-intellectual books but I'm too busy reading (and occasionally writing) blogs about the inane lives of struggling creatives with series 45 of The Apprentice streaming in through another window. Perhaps the internet has made my brain shallow.

Viral video of the year: Newport (Ymerodraeth State of Mind)

Well, I only saw it for the first time today on the Guardian's list of viral-videos of the year, but these things aren't supposed to steep in your mind for eternity. They dance in front of your eyes and then disperse seamlessly back to wherever they came from like a flash mob. Plus, at least this one's not secretly an advert (though thinking about it, it could be). You can watch it here.

TV show of the year: Modern Family

Despite being a gentle American sitcom with every episode drooping into a super-saccharine schmultz fest, Modern Family, once you scrape off the sugar, has some sharp writing hidden inside. It's like our own Outnumbered, but with jokes. You can watch it online here (allegedly).

And so on.

Turkey curry and sausage rolls for lunch.

Post Christmas

2010-12-29T13:20:00.005Z

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

2010-11-21T22:24:00.003Z

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

2010-11-13T12:39:00.009Z

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

2010-11-02T14:09:00.005Z

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

2010-10-14T16:01:00.002+01:00

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

2010-10-12T12:51:00.004+01:00

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

2010-10-11T22:05:00.007+01:00

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

2010-10-11T12:48:00.002+01:00

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

2010-07-14T11:39:00.006+01:00

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

2010-07-01T12:36:00.005+01:00

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

2010-06-30T11:53:00.003+01:00

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

2010-06-29T09:51:00.000+01:00

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

2010-06-23T12:32:00.016+01:00

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

2010-05-05T13:13:00.017+01:00

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:

Oxford, from above

2010-04-30T11:54:00.009+01:00

I drew a big cartoon map of Oxford city centre.

Here's some more detail (you click the pictures to view them bigger... you knew that right?).

There's an article about the whole process in B4 Magazine ("your guide to business in Oxford"), which is nice.

EDIT
You can read the article online here, if you want. It's on page 100.

Solipsistic Pop

2010-04-28T15:32:00.004+01:00

Here's the first of my four pages in the latest Solipsistic Pop - my longest ever story by at least 75%.

Solipsistic Pop is "a biannual anthology designed to spotlight the best in alternative Comic art from the UK." It puts an emphasis on quality production and content and features some of my heroes and some other people I've never heard of.

Here's a pretty girl engrossed in my story.
There's a launch party tonight. Sadly I won't be there, but Robin Ince and some bands will be, so that's nice.

Scaredy Cats

2010-04-23T17:18:00.003+01:00

The shortlist for this years Kate Greenaway thing ("the Oscars of the kids book world", they no doubt say) features There are Cats in this Book, which is really very good. And that reminded me: I have my own Cat-based title that I've yet to share with the world: Scaredy Cats.

So here it is.

Like it?

Italia

2010-04-19T16:55:00.004+01:00

All flights are off so here's a chance to travel to the Spaghetti-boot via the magic of a drawing instead. I recoloured this picture of Lily's Italian house I drew ages ago so the colours evoke the national flag, an idea that is completely original and not at all stolen from these lovely book covers by one of my top five Finnish illustrators, Pietari Posti.

Mumtastic!

2010-04-15T10:01:00.006+01:00

Mumtastic is a book about fantastic mums. It's written by Martha Valentine (still not sure if she's a real person or not) and the pictures are all by me (so, so real).

Here's the book artfully photographed on a chopping board.

And here are some of the mums you'll find within...

DIY Mum

Everything-is-under-control Mum

Embarassing-dancer Mum

Home-before-11-or-I'll-send-your-father-out Mum

Baby-photos-always-at-the-ready Mum

Scared of technology Mum.

It was the perfect gift for Mothers Day, but you've missed that now haven't you. Why not buy it now for 2011?

Islington then

2010-04-07T12:47:00.002+01:00

Here's a quick cartoon for Islington Now, "The voice of the borough" - some news website run by City University journalists-to-be. It's to accompany this article. I'm still not completely sure what it's about, but as far as I can tell there is a hospital facing closure and the next nearest one, whilst being geographically close, takes ages to get to because of the labyrinthine local road system (and thus people will die).

Here it is more or less as intended, but do look at it on the Islington Now site to see it horribly squashed and miscredited.

Daily Draw: No more

2010-04-06T10:12:00.003+01:00

Both of my regular readers (mother, girlfriend) will have noticed a lack of posts of late. Not least because I've stopped doing Daily Draw which has made up the bread and butter posts of this blog (boring, of low nutritional value) for the last 15 months: a series of sketchbook spreads in which I drew something every day. A television or a commuter's bald spot usually, though the limited range of subjects belie the strain of deciding upon one interesting enough to draw each day, and it all began to stress me out. So it not being quite worth having a breakdown over, I just quit it.

These are my last few.

Charlotte writing her own diary.

Some Polish guys and the White Cross in Richmond.

The Wrestler, on a laptop and Alexa Chung, on a magazine.

Some soup.

Some vegetables.

Film Strips

2010-02-26T16:32:00.010Z

Little White Lies (you know, the film magazine) ran a competition looking for comic-strip re-imaginations of movies, all to be done within 6 set frames. I went for The Wrestler.

(Click it to make it bigger.)

I didn't win though, this guy did.

I did another one as well but it's not very good.

EDIT (much later)
The one I thought was not very good, about Man On Wire wasn't so bad after all. It features in the "digital magazine" of runners-up they made.

Hemingway Gold

2010-02-05T14:14:00.009Z

My other lifelong friend Justyn was a national finalist in the 2009 Bacardi Legacy Cocktail Competition with his creation Hemingway's Gold. He's a mixologist supreme, by all accounts - he has only recently returned from Tennessee having been flown out by Jack Daniels himself for another competition. I went along to the national Bacardi finals last night and it was a very rum do (geddit!?!!).

As part of the competition entrants have to conceive of a marketing campaign for their drink and I tried to help Justyn by making a soundless animatic for a potential animation. Here it is with embarrassing narration from some mumbling fool.

Justyn unfortunately didn't make it through this time, which is probably all my fault as he usually does.

Now you've seen the advert, why not try the cocktail. All you need is:

50ml rum
10ml amontillado
7.5ml maraschino
25ml lime juice
12.5ml cardamom gomme
2 barspoons of fresh pomegranate pulp

Then just shake it all up and strain it (twice).

Top Five Vibes

2010-01-25T12:10:00.006Z

Top Five Vibes is a daily update on the top five things within some specific category, run by my lifelong friend Dexter. The lists are totally random. I tell you, it's like Shortlist magazine ON ACID. The top five words that every new band needs in its name, for example, or the top five things that sound a lot nicer than they actually are.

I donated the header image. I'm not sure why I plagiarised the 20th Century Fox logo, possibly because I was listening to a cinema programme at the time or perhaps just because I have no original ideas of my own. It looks a bit like this, but in different colours.

And in case you don't own an old macbook, this is what the website looks like when viewed on one.

Daily Draw some more

2010-01-22T10:18:00.005Z

weekend. It was so quiet I can't even capitalise the word. There's nothing like a 30 page form and then a ginormous tax bill at the end of it to suck the fun out of what is already the world's most depressing month.

Like true adults, we went to see a play on Monday. About something to do with the economy. In London's fashionable West End. Sadly unlike adults we both secretly think that the theatre pales in comparison to films, tv or even adverts. I even caught Charlotte putting her head back and closing her eyes to sleep at one point.

Bronson is like a two hour advert for moustaches. They criticise it for glamourising violence but what it does for face rugs is far worse, I'd say.

And I've just realised I haven't posted these two sketch book spreads from last week. Looking at them though, it's obvious why.

Even I can't tell what's going on in this one.

Daily Draw indoors

2010-01-16T14:48:00.004Z

I gather, from the internet, that it's cold outside and so have barely left the house for days. This is good news for the Come Dine With Me ratings but bad for my daily sketchbook - there's only so many angles of the TV one can draw.

To try to break the monotony we did make one excursion: we went on a date to see The Road. Though Charlotte cried for the half an hour leading up to the end of the film and then for about two hours afterwards, which kind of ruined the cheery atmosphere we were hoping for. And to think I was banned from taking my sketchbook to the cinema because it's unromantic.

And here's several bottles of gin on a shelf, which may go some way to explaining those tears.

Ryan Giggs

2010-01-08T15:37:00.004Z

He has scored some good goals, Ryan Giggs. Like that one against Arsenal in 1999. I'll never forget the first time I saw it on youtube about ten minutes ago, with the Killers on backing vocals.

This is a result of me experimenting with pencil meets photoshop techniques, quite unsuccessfully.

Daily Draw with the Simpsons

2010-01-07T10:03:00.002Z

In 2009 in our house we would always watch The Simpsons on channel 4 at 6pm. But channel 4 always show the same old episodes so now, in 2010, every day at 6 we prop a laptop in front of the television and watch a newer episode on the internet instead. So we still get the reassuring comfort of our old 6 o'clock routine but don't have to sit through Treehouse of Horror XIV for the 68th time.

We're working our way through season 21 now. It's pretty substandard, of course, but at least it has references to things from the naughties like Bart gets a Z which mentions facebook, Twitter and all of that stuff that hasn't really been new for quite a long time now.

Daily Draw 2009: all together

2010-01-05T16:47:00.002Z

All my sketchbook pages from 2009 in one flashy thing.

Now let us never mention it again.

Daily Draw 2010

2010-01-05T09:27:00.000Z

So... 2010. The big 2-K-X. I'm going to carry on drawing daily as much as I can, but as this year is officially the future I'm allowing computer tweaking and colouring (last year everything had to be done "in book"). So the pages should be slightly less mundane to look at on here, that's the idea anyway.

Here's new years day. We had to put Glastonbury '09 on coverage as anything with a narrative was too overwhelming.

And then Char made an orzotto. Orzo is Italian for barley, so an orzotto is a risotto made with barley.

Daily Draw: 07.08 - 31.12

2010-01-04T13:13:00.012Z

Back from finding myself in Colombia, I had a lot of Strictly Come Dancing to catch up with.

I didn't actually draw much in December, but I feel compelled to post these pages for the sake of completion.

Actually on this day I lost my sketchbook - I left it, along with the rest of my backpack, on the floor of a Wetherspoons and thought it long gone.

I even began to despair a little bit.

Though in fact some kind soul had already handed it in to the staff.

They eventually contacted me, and I arranged to collect it at my earliest convenience.

But as each day passed, pages and pages were left blank. I kind of hoped it would eventually come back to me filled with exciting sketches of Wetherspoons life, but alas.

Perhaps I needn't have posted all of these...

I got a new watch and some garish new pens for Christmas.

Then went back down to Brighton for the festive period. Going home really means leafing through old copies of the Evening Argus (POSTMAN BEATEN BY LAVENDER BUSH etc.) at the kitchen table whilst mother stands over the hob frying things for me. Christmas is no different.

And we had a nice Christmas day, despite Christmas eve turning out to be a bigger night than New Years.

Something else being fried.

And we're done.

So there you go. A whole year of drawing almost every day. 12 months. 162 backs of heads. 112 tv sets. 7 countries. 3 funerals. 1 operation and not that much more.

I'm going to do the same for 2KX, as the kids probably say, but change the rules a bit ie. allowing myself to do a bit of computer colouring and such. It is the future now, after all.

Happy

2009-12-31T00:53:00.003Z

Having spent a depressing chunk of December 25th checking Twitter and Facebook under the turkey table, I know the internet is already far too awash with greetings for Christmas and New Year and all that, so I won't bother.

It was also Emily's birthday, of course, and I made her a card (drawn quite quickly). The URL is for a Spotify playlist (compiled quite quickly), so if you didn't get a bottle of Sloe Gin from me this Christmas then have a listen and consider that your festive gift from me.

Sloe business

2009-12-22T11:26:00.005Z

In the true spirit of Christmas, Char decided to exploit her friends and family by selling them things they didn't really want. This year: Sloe Gin. As indeed I was with picking the sloes, preparing the gin and pretty much every other stage of the process, I was asked/forced to help out with the packaging.

I started like this:

And polished one slightly to this:

And then stuck it on the bottles and threw in a tantalising lens flare like this:

If you want to some, well, you can't. It's all sold out. Sorry. Your only hope is that you are my Uncle Coco, in which case you're getting a bottle for Christmas.

Dibujando Diario: 07.09.09 - 06.12.09

2009-12-08T15:26:00.020Z

I'm back now from my gap-month, four weeks of finding myself in Colombia.
I was with Charlotte for the first two weeks, and then all alone for the second two. It worked out a bit like this:

We flew there with Iberia, via Madrid. A pretty painless flight except for the films: 500 Days of Summer, He's Just Not That Into You and Moulin Rouge.

We started in Bogota. It's pretty high up - about 2500 metres - so you get tired walking ten yards. This is La Puerta Falsa, the best place (says the Lonely Planet) to catch your breath with a nice Chocolate Santafereño - hot chocolate with cheese melted into it. Which is pretty much as you'd imagine: like an ovaltine with a dairylea dropped in.

Then we went on to Medellin, Colombia's second city. It's loved by all but we didn't really give it that much of a chance because we wanted to rush up to the coast for the weekend. Plus someone pulled a knife on me in the famously safe Zona Rosa. Luckily I managed to stumble and stutter out unscathed, but still.

So we headed up to Cartagena. By all accounts the jewel in Colombia's crown - the whole of the old town and it's crumbling colonial splendour is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was the weekend of a big independence day festival (they must really love that film) which is somewhere in between Rio Carnival and Brighton Pride in terms of scale and glamour.

Next we went to Playa Blanca, whatever that means. It's a beach that looks like a postcard feels like an island and is actually a peninsula.

The only thing I made up is the friends.

We ended up staying there for four days - this is how long it takes for the idea of a shower to become more appealing than waking up in a hammock metres from clear blue sea.

To the west a few hours is Tayrona National Park: 150 km² of jungle hanging over the Caribbean sea, like the set of Where the Wild Things Are (the book).

It was really relaxing. And we were lucky to go in low-season: we saw more monkeys and lizards than people.

And then we had to go back to Cartagena, because Charlotte was flying home from there. Leaving me in Colombia all alone for two more weeks, with no idea what to do.

More out of a need for a fixed new gang who couldn't escape me for a couple of days than out of a passion for archaeology, I booked on to a five day jungle trek to find Ciudad Perdida: The Lost City. It's a city way up in the mountains dating back to 800AD that went completely undiscovered until the 1970s.

On the way some of us took a tour of a cocaine factory hidden in the jungle and were taken step by step through the production process. It's basically leaves+gasoline+acid=delicious drugs. So now you know.

Poker Face (jungle version)

And then finally back to civilisation in Santa Marta. If you call mullet haircuts civilised, that is.

All that time on the Caribbean coast eventually got to me. It was just too hot. So I went back to Medellin to give it a second chance. It really is pretty nice. This is one of the main squares in the middle of Medellin, full of about 15 sculptures by Botero: the only artist ever to come out of Colombia, it would seem.

Next I went to Salento, a pretty little place in the Coffee Region and back to Bogota. By this point I was sick of drawing.

...and then home.

Here are some actual photos, to prove it's all true. Trekking to Ciudad Perdida, drinking bag water and sunrise over our home on Playa Blanca.

So that was nice. And how have you been?

Daily Draw: 02.09.09 - 06.11.09

2009-11-07T19:29:00.016Z

Sketchbook pages from the last two months: pretty much sixty days of either looking at laptops or looking at people looking at laptops, apparently.

London Zoo.

Into the wild.

Strictly come dancing.

Charlotte's bike: it was stolen from outside Vauxhall station but the next day she found it on Gumtree and persuaded the police to go and get it for her.

Welcome to the dollhouse.

Emma.

Occasionally I have work meetings in pubs, which makes me feel pretty cool.

For some reason I thought Patisserie Paul was the poshest place to buy a croissant in London, until I went inside. It's actually just like an expensive brown version of Greggs.

TV burp.

Curb your enthusisasm.

The thick of it.

Surfing in Wales is probably the most fun thing I've ever done - even in September. And it's right on our doorstep - only 200 miles down the road from London.

Don't tell the bride.

The thick of it.

I passed my driving test, just about. And then, as if to prove a point to myself, the next day I drove 130 miles on my own- 60 miles of which were in the dark- and shat myself so much the whole time I'll probably never get behind the wheel again.

Right then, now I'm off to Colombia for four weeks. And boy do I need a break after this abuse! (In the comments.)

iHasta lluego! etc.

Putting myself on the map

2009-10-30T12:54:00.011Z

I've drawn a big map of Witney, a little town in West Oxfordshire. It took a long time, but it was fun.

Thousands of copies have been printed and are all over Oxfordshire. If you find one, you can see me on it down by the river struggling with the scale of the bloody thing.

Alternatively you can click round the whole thing on this nifty website.

There was a lot to draw. People ~~often~~ never ask me how I draw so many trees and still have time to do so many valid and worthwhile things. The secret is to create a generative system. Simply by combining five drawings of trunks, and five sets of leaves I get twenty five trees. Genius, eh?

Cheesy Gash balls

2009-10-05T17:39:00.008+01:00

Here is my flyer for last week's Gash!.

I didn't go but instead stayed in and made Jamie Oliver's cheesy surprise meatballs (spoiler alert: the surprise is that all the cheese disappears) and ended up cutting my finger really quite deeply. Isn't that ironic, don't you think?

This is my original biro drawing.

A final thought

2009-10-01T09:12:00.000+01:00

Here are some of my favourite illustrations from Don't Even Think About It.

Think About It

2009-09-17T11:43:00.009+01:00

Don't Even Think About It, the Richard Wilson book I illustrated earlier this year (see previously), is out now.

And I only found this out when I stumbled across the book in Sainsburys a few days ago. I hadn't even seen a copy before then. For all I know it could have been released weeks ago amidst a flurry of Dan Brown style fanfare, with copies in guarded cases until midnight on the release date, and me having just missed it all - probably because I've been so busy getting excited about The Lost Symbol.

It's all about Professor Robert Langdon uncovering a secret cult of computer game kids that have discovered the secret to infinite extra lives and then hidden it in a shoebox. From the front, it looks like this:

And from the back, like this:

And the official blurb looks like this:

It started with sketches. I quite like the one on the left, but the middle one was chosen as it strengthens the connection with the first book.

And this was the next step. The young chap looked too ill, apparently.

Cooperation

2009-09-14T10:55:00.006+01:00

Dear blog,
I was commissioned to pitch an illustration for a global-hyper-mega corporation, about working together and growth and that.
This is what I drew. It's people in suits tending a garden ie. growing things. Geddit??!
Hope you're well etc.
Yours sincerely,
Jack

Daily Draw: 19.08.09 - 01.09.09

2009-09-02T15:17:00.008+01:00

This week I moved house, and in the process my sketchbook was sealed in a suitcase for several days with a couple of vestigial power chargers and some wooly jumpers I never wear - that is boxed up with all the other useless tat Im doomed to cart around with me for the rest of my life - and so I didn't draw on those days.

I've moved now, temporarily, into Charlotte's house. I'm not sure if anyone's noticed yet though, since I was always around anyway. Indeed I was on this pre-move Thursday while a lot of attempted guitar playing was going on, as it often does.

When we were on holiday both Charlotte and I read Waste by Tristram Stuart, about the "global food scandal" (summary: everyone's wasting food, particularly supermarkets, and it's bad). The book has changed our lives, not least by making us very bad dinner guests as we doggedly misquote waste statistics at anyone near us. We even tried a bit of freeganing (aka dumpster diving), and managed to liberate a couple of cartons of Orange Juice from the back of the Kings Road M&S.

And look, on the bbq: sustainable fish from a proper fishmongers.

And then the empty days begin...

... and then I'm installed. It's nice here (temporarily).

Loud Story

2009-08-27T09:47:00.010+01:00

Open publication

Loud Story was a book idea I was developing a while ago which pretty quickly ran out of steam. It plays with the neat kind of accidents that can occur when predictive text goes wrong: when pint accidentally becomes riot, kiss becomes lips, baker becomes cakes and all that stuff. Textonyms, these words are apparently called.

Nowadays of course anyone with any self-respect has an iPhone - or at the very least a Blackberry- and so uses a miniature QWERTY keyboard, making the whole idea redundant. Which is a shame.

Daily Draw: 22.07 - 18.08

2009-08-19T14:51:00.012+01:00

A load of Daily Drawings, and a couple of blank pages too- because it is the holiday season after all. I'm allowed to relax for five minutes, right?

I barely drew "for fun" all of this week in fact, because I was swamped, flooded and festooned with work. Mainly with completing 60+ colour illustrations for a pair of books coming out on Mothers Day and Fathers Day next year, which is quite exciting. Probably worth getting pregnant for now, if you're not a parent already, just so you can legitimately enjoy them (or one of them, at least).

I had to get a number of jobs completed before I left for a fortnights jaunt - split between Croatia and Italy - and as my departure date loomed I was working very long days indeed. I was at the desk still at 1am on the Monday morning, and we had to leave at 3am. That is what they call "the joy of freelance".

We stayed in Razanj, a little village about an hours drive up the Croatian coast from Split. In Croatia beaches as you and I know them are yet to be invented: instead they have concrete shelves built into and over the rocky shores. They are almost better though because you can jump off the shelves and impress girls and you don't get sand kicked in your face by bigger boys.

It was just me and Charlotte. We've never really done a couples holiday before. We went to Morocco last year, but then we were too busy fearing for our lives to allow for any romance.

It was pretty boring until we bought a pack of playing cards.

At the end of the week we went back down to Split and took an overnight ferry to Ancona (that's in Italy). I was led to believe this would be the glamour-high-point of the trip, but once we'd finished our warm pre-made bottle gin and tonic on the top deck it was a case of trying to sleep curled up on the floor of the engine room on a bed of towels, which wasn't all that fun.

The Italy chapter, in which we joined Charlotte's whole family and our friends Jess and Sophie, was all based around food: specifically those tomato, mozzarella and basil salads covered with balsamic. BBMTs, the Italians probably call them.

The two weeks were quite different. Croatia was so relaxed we were almost completely still for the whole time. In Italy there were ten of us, almost all teenage girls, and so was lots and lots of fast-talking and high-screaming and sobbing and general drama. There were probably more words machine-gunned out in any given minute of week two than the total that were uttered by me and Char combined in week one.

Ballad of Britain

2009-07-27T17:42:00.005+01:00

Have you seen this book on Amazon?

Yes?
Well you know that guitar/tree thing?
I drew that.
Yes.
Really, I did.
Look:

It's about music and that. Jarvis Cocker is something to do with it, I think. I'm not really sure.
There's a CD too.
There's more information here.

Here are two also rans for my contribution:

Daily Draw: 17.05 - 21.07

2009-07-24T08:38:00.003+01:00

My friends own percolators, my friends are sophisticated

The Apprentice was like a religion in our house, even though it's over-rated

Adam Buxton showed us all the youtubes he enjoys

Charlotte has need to hold on to all her childhood toys

People who live in little villages still get iPods and Apple Macs

I might have a small beer on a small Thursday, to relax

In May there was nothing to do, nothing but barbecue

I am reading proper books, or at least I'm starting to

At Charlotte's house we have to watch Desperate Housewives

At our house we watch what we're told to watch by Guardian Guides

The Apprentice was like a religion in our house, even though it's over-rated

We bought and we watched Twilight just to keep ourselves updated

Eternal Sunshine is not so new when you remember Total Recall

Riddles round the bonfire with stranger gastro-hippy people

I ordered risotto but what I meant was: ravioli

A Jarvis Cocker concert is just slightly rock and rolly

We need a British Simpsons because Homer is not ours

Sunday is for BNP Wives and then it's for guitars

You should always cheer the screen if you're perched on Henman Hill

And cheer the screen if your town's on it, like Bristol in Psychoville

On a Friday we make gnocchi because we are sophisticated

Washing up is part of cooking, so my mum has always stated

Greg moved in and there's always room, even though he's very tall

At Anova they've a ping-pong table in the entrance hall

Venus tells Serena that "the ball is in your court"

Petroleum spirit, highly inflammable: poem of the forecourt

Riding on a tube's like being the prize inside a cracker

To celebrate nothing at all we had lunch out, in Wahaca

I saw a pro-pirate lecture from "Mr. Twitter", Stephen Fry

I saw my housemates watch a film they'd bought called Eagle Eye

At Latitude we saw poets and I thought I could do what they did

My friends own percolators, my friends are sophisticated

The Apprentice was like a religion in our house, even though it's over-rated

An army of frogs

2009-07-06T14:09:00.003+01:00

Slimy, green. Legs strong, eyes round.
A military collective noun.

Gash!: Redacted

2009-06-25T12:15:00.004+01:00

It was fun last time, referencing the news in the Gash! flyer.

For the latest one, I was thinking bigger: the Iranian elections, no less. Perhaps a flyer for a small clubnight in Hoxton would be the straw that would break Ahmadinejad's back and revolution would come. I had an amazing idea for a skeletal jack-in-the-ballot-box that could just do it. It was such a good idea in fact, it could never be mine. When I realised I was just bastardising something from the very-talented Morland, I scrapped it. And I had no other ideas... what do I know about politics anyway? Who do you think I am, Jarvis Cocker?

I was reluctant to go back to the MPs expenses thing, but it has rumbled on a bit and the more recent developments - the distinct graphic black boxes of the redacted expenses forms - apply themselves very easily (and are quick to draw). I based the composition on the House of Commons logo, drew a flyer and then drew black squares over it. I'm not sure how subtle it is - to me it seems bloody obvious what I'm referencing but the two people I've shown it to so far had no idea, so who knows.

Here it is:

There's a round-up of the many more sensible and wittier interpretations of the black boxes in cartoons at The Bloghorn. So this one's not so original either then... still, if I was to do it again now, I'd inevitably do a Michael Jackson skeleton. So it's probably for the best I missed that one.

Don't Even Think About It

2009-06-15T08:29:00.006+01:00

Keen followers may remember that last year I did the cover and twenty-odd interior illustrations for Can't Be Arsed by industry-funny man Richard Wilson (not the I-don't-believe-it one, another one). Some of you may even have been given it for Christmas- lots of people were. It was a best-seller, in fact.
Everyone is keen to follow up the success for Christmas 2009 by reuniting the humour-book dream team that is me and Mr Wilson, and so I've just finished a big load of illustrations for the follow up, Don't Even Think About It. It's a spoofulous take-off of the nostalgic guides to having an old-fashioned childhood you get, by spying on your neighbours, say, or whittling your own bow and arrow out of someone else's bigger bow and arrow. It's as funny as Can't Be Arsed (which is funny) and I'm really pleased to be involved again.

I'll put up more including the cover nearer the "pub date", which is some time in September (this is a teaser, as they say), but here's a sample of the score of black and white interior illustrations.

The Can't Be Arsed illustrations that were least successful were the ones that didn't take into account the page layout, and ignored the fact that they wouldn't bleed off the page. This time I really I tried to bear in mind the layout and the way the type would flow with the illustrations. This one is probably the best one for that: a split illustration of the perils of outdoor swimming with space between for the text to fill. Now I just have to have faith that the designers don't decide to put the swimmer on page 8 and the octopus on page 124, upside down. (The first person to spot the subtle reference to Can't Be Arsed wins 8 blog points.)

And here's a process breakdown for a fight over a Monopoly game. The whole thing is done on my fancy magic tablet these days, you know.

Click on this one for an animation:

Or just look at this and imagine it moving:

In the end it came out like this:

In more book based news, I'm pleased to report my own title, Love Letters, is doing fairly well and is even up for another print run very soon. Hey, why not buy your pop a copy for Fathers Day this Sunday? Maybe it'll prompt that birds-and-the-bees chat you never had, but this time with rabbits and dogging.

Serious post about politics (and Gash)

2009-06-10T13:43:00.006+01:00

Another flyer/poster for Gash! at the Macbeth in Hoxton. As is befitting the ad-hoc-anarcho-trendiness of the night, all the information for the event on the coming Friday didn't come through till Tuesday evening, and then Wednesday saw a volley of emails changing the carefully hand-drawn line up change beyond all recognition.

I tried to make a strength out of the quick turnaround and turn the horrible skeletal Gash lens on to something that's current, like a raisin. So I've got fleshless versions of ducks and their duck island, symbolic of the MPs expenses debacle apparently making the whole country ABSOLUTELY FURIOUS (and more racist). As harbingers of a political, and potentially societal, apocalypse they fit quite neatly with the Gash aesthetic (the gashthetic, if you will).

Here's a fascinating insight into how I build up scribbles into drawings using computer magic.

To pre-empt the torrent of requests for free downloadable Gash-based iPhone wallpaper, here is some. (click on the picture to download it...)

It's black so your battery will last that extra ten minutes, which makes a difference.

Dead Kids

2009-06-08T14:07:00.006+01:00

If creating a poster is like gourmet cookery, then this is the equivalent of running out of the door pushing Flora over a slice of bread with your index finger. That is to say, it was a rushed job.
I scribbled down the elements in less than a minute with my right hand whilst I ate Weetabix with my left, and did the colour and text on the bus the same morning.

It's for one of Charlotte's sisters, Lily. She's at Exeter University and she's producing this play. It's all obscure and mysterious, hence no mention of a time or place on the poster. Kids, eh? (tone: jocular patronising)

Then, on Lily's facebook profile, I saw this:

Kids, eh? (tone: slightly less amused)

Pony tale

2009-06-05T16:00:00.001+01:00

Notes from the Underground, the literary freepaper, is relaunching- and this time they're backed up by The Man, in the friendly form of the Arts Council.

They kindly asked me to help with a cover illustration and sent me a couple of pieces for me to choose between to illustrate. I opted for one called A Shorter Story about a Trade Union Dispute (For Kids). It goes like this: racing horses go on strike, hilarity ensues.

The obvious image is anthropomorphised equine characters waving placards, and so I very quickly made this visual. I just wanted to see if the tone was appropriate really, so I sent it over. And they seemed to like it. In fact, they really liked it. Too much, for a sketch. It was almost unnatural. Like horses waving placards.

They said they like the sketchy feel, which is really the least you'd hope for from a sketch. If you make someone a sandwich and they compliment you on the sandwichy feel of it, you haven't exactly done well.

I got cracking on the final, and this is what came out:

When I finished I was really proud. Looking at it now, I'm not sure why, but I made it my iPhone wallpaper and everything. I sent it off and then kept refreshing my inbox as I waited for the accolades to pour down the internet tubes.

But they never came. It's obvious now why: the illustration is not that great. In fact, it's a bit unsettling. What is that thing on the right? A sock puppet? a worm?

They said they actually preferred the sketch, which is fair enough. And so I did this, a sketchy loose thing which I actually think more or less works.

But no, they said. More like the original sketch, they said. Instantly nostalgic. And so I changed the filename and resent the sketch... and here's the cover:

It is better than the "proper" illustration I did, I must say.

They put all the alternatives up on the official facebook page, which is nice.

It's basically a screen that you draw on

2009-05-27T18:18:00.004+01:00

I've bought a Cintiq. (You know, a fancy tablet that's basically a screen you draw on.)

It has changed my life, and not just in that I'm now one thousand pounds poorer and much more worried about being burgled. It really is amazing. I'll never go back to "paper".

Here's a fascinating insight into my three-screen setup (the wi-fi imploded, so I had to sit within a two metre radius of the router) as you won't see on the Guardian.

For a much better overview of the Cintiq and it's awesomeness, look at this article on Gizmodo ("Verdict: simply amazing".)

Me vs. Diego vs. Pablo

2009-05-20T14:58:00.008+01:00

After seeing Picasso's version of Las Meninas the other day (Monday 13 April, to be specific) when I went to the Picasso: Challenging the Past exhibiton at the National Gallery, I started doing my own...

...but I obviously got bored pretty quickly.

Picasso's version looks like this:

And, just in case you're a complete philistine, Velasquez's original looks like this.

Daily Draw: 05.04 - 16.05

2009-05-17T18:13:00.013+01:00

On Monday 6 April, I watched television.

On Tuesday and Wednesday of the same week, I forgot to draw anything until just before I went to bed at Char's house so drew bits and bobs from round her room.
She uses Witch and has lots of photographs of me in little frames.

Thursday: nothing.
Friday: nothing.

Saturday: nothing.
Sunday: also nothing.

On Easter Monday I finally went to the Picasso: Challenging the Past exhibition at the National Gallery. He takes well known and loved paintings from the days of yore and makes irreverent versions of them. If he was around today, he'd then send them in to Covered.

I work in Oxford a lot, just by bridge 236. You may know it, it's the one with the big eyeless duck underneath it.

Hot Fuzz is better the second time.

In the Loop will be better the second time too. I didn't really enjoy it but now that I've heard so many glowing reviews I'm completely willing to re-mould my memories to fit in with the bandwagon. Hey! The swearing is so imaginative!

We've been having lots of barbeques, but all the shops in Stockwell refuse to sell normal meat so we've been investigating white Polish sausages and Birds Eye frozen reformed steaks.

For the bank holiday we hired out Eastshaw Farmhouse, a National Trust property in West Sussex. Country walks, big communal meals, Bert Jansch in the iPod dock, sexy drinking games. It's exactly the kind of thing my parents have always done, but with an iPod dock.

Char is growing beetroot, marrows, rhubarb, carrots and lots of herbs.
I am growing tired of having nothing to report but my girlfriends mundane hobbies...

...and my many hours spent on public transport.

Still, it's amazing what you can do on the tube.

At the time, Google Street View was new and exciting

2009-05-06T08:32:00.003+01:00

Pocket cartoons, they write themselves really.

I tried channeling a couple recently and these are what came out:

Actually the last one I "channeled" from Felix Jakens, who you may know already from the letters page of Viz.

Threadless: Karemoke

2009-05-01T09:32:00.003+01:00

Childish idea, childishly executed... it can only be a Threadless submission.

That's fifteen minutes of my life I'll never get back.

Covered and criticised

2009-04-30T11:08:00.010+01:00

You know Covered, right? The blog where people cover comic book covers? No? Where have you been? Outdoors?

I'm telling you, it's the blog sensation taking the world of comic-cover-covers by storm. I'm not entirely sure why, but it is. And I did a cover... and it's on there.

I chose to rework an Elektra cover, probably because really I have a very limited interest in comics but an unlimited interest in Jennifer Garner, to the extent where I'll probably go and see Ghosts of Girlfriends Past in the iMax.

The original artist Greg Horn knows how to make a sexy comic cover. T and A, nunchucks, pumpjacks (those oil things), the words VIOLENT CONTENT... it's all there.

And here's my version, in which the Elektra is played by Kate from Lost.

As an afterthought to a comment on the next days post "WEISSMAN" says he wasn't keen.

Which is ~~nice~~ confusing and depressing.

Mail Me Part Two

2009-04-20T17:12:00.002+01:00

Very keen readers of this blog, of which there are of course none, may remember this defaced envelope I posted back in May 2007.

Back then I sent it in to the Mail Me Art, a brief internet thing in which artists and illustrators were invited to send decorated envelopes to an address all in the name of art and that.

I had a lot of spare time back then. I was temping at the time, still the best job I've ever had, in a big public-sector office with the internet and cake afternoons every Thursday.

Fast forward to years later and lo, there's a book about the project.

And continue forward to the contents page, and lo, it says that page 108 of the book features an interview with Jack Noel (cynics can verify this by going on the relevant Amazon page and "searching inside"). That's my name.

Flicking onwards, slightly more excited now, and lo: a double page spread. About me!

I discovered this when I went to see the now-finished exhibition of all the envelopes at the Red Gate Gallery in Brixton.

I had an inkling I may be in the book because I did sign all the relevant release forms many moons ago, but I really didn't expect a full interview. Especially since I'd forgotten answering any questions. This goes some way to explaining why my answers are puerile and stupid. Mercifully the iPhone camera's paltry 2 megapixels make it impossible to read all of what I say in the above picture, but here's a flavour:

What was the inspiration for your submission?
As I was working entirely with half-inched [and then at this point the publishers put in square brackets and translated: "stolen"] stationery, I went for a law enforcement theme. It's all a bit sub-Banksy and embarrassing, but then stealing stationery is about as edgy as I get so I thought I should recognise it.

Have you ever sent mail art prior to taking part in this project?
Previously I was restricted to the usual stuff: writing SWALK, and Postman, Postman, don't delay: eat your cornflakes on the way.
Another pretty funny thing I've done as well is writing London, England (and all that proceeds that) and then further elaborating: Europe, The World, The Milky Way, The Universe... though actually I haven't done that since I was about six.

So there you go. I was childish then, but this weekend I went to an engagement party (Congratulations Sophie and James), and a non-Chirstian peers' engagement at that, and so now am mature.

Plus, I'm in a book that was featured in the Telegraph and in Design Week, so there: mature.

Daily Draw: 12.03 - 04.04

2009-04-02T18:30:00.016+01:00

I haven't given up on my daily sketchbook thing. Not entirely, anyway.

Charlotte is going through a real sewing phase. It's lucky I'm one of those sensitive modern males comfortable discussing the merits of an empire line as opposed to an A-line, or the perils of careless overlocking, because that's all we talk about.
It's overtaken her last obsession for pukka-cooking - I think our trip to Jamie Oliver's shop Recipease in Clapham Juction freaked her out a bit- so now we're back to lots of Lloyd Grossman pasta dinners.

On these two days there was an acute blizzard localised around me, hence: white-out.

Matt says the new Stewart Lee programme is "a bit smug". Apparently the viewing figures started off at something-pitiful and throughout the programme they just fall off by the minute. For some reason though I've long proclaimed myself his biggest fan and have convinced myself of his brilliance so well that if he was just reading out the phone book I'd tell myself I loved it and then watch it for a second time on iPlayer. Perhaps even a third, in case I missed any of the area codes.

This weekend we went to the Laugharne Weekend in Carmarthenshire (that's in Wales). It's a literary festival in Laugharne (population: about twelve) with some really great names on the bill, a fair few of whom actually turned up. We watched Louis De Bernieres practice for his grade 3 on the ukelele, DBC Pierre stumble between the three pubs and Howard Marks swear at a PowerPoint presentation. We didn't watch Irvine Welsh, Mark Steel or Rhys Ifans but didn't want to anyway. The whole festival is so laid back it's practically lying down, too drunk to stand. We had special wrist bands but it seemed like any old friendship bracelet would get you in to most of the shows. Still, we were glad for that extra plastic band of warmth in the nights- we were camping and it was bloody freezing.

And then a relaxing six hour drive back with a broken radio. It was fun though.

You can sit here, if you like

2009-03-26T13:14:00.003Z

I haven't drawn a comic strip for a long time.

No one asks "why not?"

Lolcats, now without the lols

2009-03-25T18:17:00.005Z

I can has cheezburger

I can has... cheezy vectors

I can has... cheezus christ