Three controllers and winehouse

I hope Jamie T wins the Mercury prize tonight. Amy Winehouse is in the papers enough as it is. The anti-drugs league shouldn't worry about her being a bad role model though: she's helping them by looking as so weird as she does. She's a one woman scare story. What with her tiny wire frame body covered in cheap tattoo transfers, her burly uncontrollable sideburns like a rocker, stuck on mrs potato head eyes and lips all topped off with a greasy nest of synthetic hair that probably smells of stale vomit, she's a poster child for keeping clean. Having said all that, I do think she's hot.

In Vogue

A Pretty girl I copied out of a glossy magazine. I think she was in a shampoo advert. Everyone likes pictures of pretty girls, boys and girls. I like pictures combining pen and pencil, though I haven't found a good way of colouring them in yet.



Meh.


I like pocket cartoons. I have my google page set up so that I can see the days Matt one every day without having to expose myself to any of the Telegraph site. Here's a quick one I did while at work last week to go with this Pitchfork article about a choir that sings their complaints.



I had my first Vindaloo last night. It made me feel pretty big and clever at the time, but today I've regretted it. By midday I'd gone for a poo in four different toilets: at home, on the bus to Oxford (there's a toilet on the bus to Oxford), in the bus station and at work.

Madeleine again

I've never liked that EP artwork I did for Maddy for that EP she never made, and always intended to do another for her. The other day, entirely on the bus, I did this with a photograph Jacob Todd took that she doesn't like but I do.

Edinburgh

Char and I went to Edinburgh for an extended bank holiday weekend to check out the festivals. I never believed all the positive reports about going up I've had over the years, I think because my knowledge of Scotland is formed almost entirely by Trainspotting. Even when we walked around the city, which was constantly impressive, whilst I was not shocked by the large amount of pretty and tanned people there were milling around in the sunshine- I assumed they were fashionable London media types seeking out some culture, like myself- but I was, to my shame, always shocked when I heard them talking exactly like Begbie. It really was amazingly fun (read: expensive). We saw loads of shows and comedy in our four day stint there, and some of which was good but a lot of it was really dire. The advice is often given to listen out for word of mouth, so when we arrived and our new housemate listed some of her must-sees, we immediately rushed out and booked ourselves up for most of the weekend. Unfortunately after the first show: some family-friendly acrobatic slapstick nonsense, Traces, it became clear our new friend has the mental age of about two. She probably made her recommendations based upon those that had the best shiny bits on the tickets, a view that was reinforced when we sat through two hours of children's puppetry the next day, which was like an itsa-bitsa remake of a kind of dumbed down Tweenies. As we watched it, hungover and trapped in a small black oven, it was obvious why all the infants around us were crying.
As you wander around the city, all the posters are crammed with stars and plaudits from vaguely credible newspapers and slightly-less-so websites. A lot of the things I'd seen before and I was bewildered as to how anyone can possibly say these things. There are very average comedians boasting quotes like "definitely the funniest man that ever lived" and you just have to wonder how anyone can ever think these things, let alone apparently write them down and put them in the public domain. It'll probably turn out that our housemate is a journalist with the Scotsman and chortle.co.uk although if that was the case the quotes would be more like: "I liked the way the man wore a hat indoors...". We did see some very funny stuff, but most of the laughing was definitely done with/at our friends who were there too: Archie, Sophie, Sandeep, Arron...
I went there to broaden my mind and reignite/ignite my flames of passion for theatre and live performance, but came back less keen than ever. However I did re-realise several of my other passions: wandering around, super shandies, rum and ginger, falling asleep in clubs, McDonalds breakfasts and seeing old friends.

Just did Italy

Just had a really fun time in Italy for a week with Char and her family. Here's a collection of photographs to prove it, including a couple of inevitable I've-got-a-phone-with-that-panorama-function-and-so-use-it-at-every-opportunity shots.



I didn't get to really draw that much whilst I was there, but I started this one from the poolside:


And did this one of the house, which I really enjoyed doing but am quite disappointed with. Nonetheless, expect more water colours from me.



Otherwise I haven't had the chance to do that much. I'm trying to think about entering this competition and working on a couple of genuine bona fide commissions (all top secret, of course), but most of my time is spent travelling round Grey Britain and beyond. Not only (though primarily) to Oxford for my two-day-a-week job, but also back and forth to Italian villas, down to Brighton- where I was for Loop festival this weekend, not that I paid much attention to it once I was there, and tomorrow up to Edinburgh to see Sarah's play and to stand around in the rain drinking and perfecting my Scottish accent. It's really like I've got several jobs, but I get paid in fun rather than boring old money.

IA: K, L , M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U...

The Inappropriate Alphabet: it's back. I should have this filthy childrens book ready soon. Printed up and on the shop shelves, or at least, printed up and in my desk drawer...
Charlotte's away in Italy this week, leaving me home alone. And whilst this does give me a break from the endless drudgery of married life (lawnmowing, bickering, Big Brother, Big Brother's Big Mouth etc.) and chance to work on "projects" like this it has been pretty lonely knocking round the house on my own. The two shootings pretty much on my Stockwell doorstep in the last week and a half have ramped up my paranoia from it's default code orange, which still means that when I'm home alone I mute the TV every five minutes because I think I can hear someone creeping up behind me (though I do this a lot less since I realised we have surround sound installed) all the way up to code FLASHING-FUCKING-RED. Utter, all consuming paranoia. I've been spending most of the days urgently, nakedly and armed with a non-stick frying pan pacing between the many windows and doors of the house, checking to see if the human hairs taped across their openings remain intact.
Living in complete isolation has driven me slowly insane.
Within about an hour of Charlotte's leaving I was arguing bitterly with an avocado onto which I'd drawn a disapproving face. I have entirely abondoned ablutions and dressing and just sit, for hours on end, dizzy with the heat pulsating through the closed blinds above my desk, flicking emptily through porn (as research) and that is it. My life alone. Sweaty. Filthy. Disgusting. Scared. I even did my shopping in Iceland.
Still, I'm off to Italy to join her tomorrow, so that's alright.























I'm not sure about V, W or X. Any suggestions?
I also recently did this elaborate sketch of a pretty girl, and idly started colouring it on the bus to work. It looks shit and off-balance now- not helped by the complete lack of lips, but may turn into something quite pretty. Then I'll ruin it by drawing in the rest of her, tromboning some old pervy Chris Langham type.

Trafalgar Square

I've got a new widescreen sketchbook, and yesterday I took it to Trafalgar Square.

Quick draw

I did that thing a few nights ago where you go out for a few quiet drinks and a game of backgammon and on the tube back you decide that you're sober enough to read when really your not at all, meaning that next time you come to your book you can't remember what's happened, where you are or why it's covered in sick. I've ruined many books for myself this way over the years. Though thinking about it I suppose one way round the trouble would be to get drunk again so you remember it.
So though I'm determined to re-read the bit I've forgotten of my current book (Kafka's The Trial, which is most enjoyable) I can't be bothered to do it now. This left me at a loose end on the bus back from Oxford tonight, so I decided to set myself a challenge: to draw, photograph, bluetooth-to-my-laptop, colour and blog a picture before I get to Victoria. I started quite late into the journey too, so I've had to do all this in about twenty minutes.
Unfortunately the drawing (another embarassing pop star, why?) is pretty horrendous, and so is the picture I took before my phone battery died. The colouring's shit too, come to think of it. But, boy, did I bluetooth it to my laptop well!
Anyway, I killed some time.

Lily bloody-Rose-bloody-Beatrice-bloody Allen

This is probably the most elaborately coloured thing I've ever done. All gradients instead of block colours and polychromatic line work. There are a few bits I'd like to change, but it's alright still. I need some celebrity likenesses in my portfolio, you see.



Lily and I are MySpace friends (which I realise doesn't make me that special) and I think I'm going to put this in her comments bit, but I'm really not sure. It's a bit embarassing and teenage, even if it is ironically teenage (which it's not).

EDIT, a few hours later
I couldn't resist putting it on there...

Tourettris: sanitised

I thought I'd resubmit a family friendly version of this.


And whilst I was there put the sandwich on, filling time.


Edit, a few days later
Tourettris was rejected again, the sandwich is in but I don't expect it to do much.

Lily Allen

I don't know why I've drawn this. No doubt something to do with that dream I had.

jacknoel.co.uk

jacknoel.co.uk 2.0 is live. (Though I'm not sure about that numbering system, or my use of the word "live"). It's still pretty lo-fi and shoddy. It's built almost entirely around a free programme, Simpleviewer, which basically makes a whole flash website for you in about six seconds, but it's not too bad. Considering it's all made by me, just a mere boy.

The 'big idea' is the concept of a sandwich. It's a kind of recurring motif from my comic strips dating back to this, my first proper strip, which also conveniently symbolises the coming togeher of many different elements combining to make a better whole. Which is what I do you see, you know: combine average drawing skills, a puerile sense of humour, a naive world view and a dose of completely unjustified self-importance.
This blog, you'll see above, is the bacon. The idea was to have each gallery as a filling bookended in the menu by a 'home' and an 'about' as slices of brown bread, stupidly though I didn't put in enough fillings and so had to sacrifice the home button.
Oh well, have a look, and tell me what you think will you?

(just click the sandwich to go there).

Sara

There wasn't much work for me to do at work today, which is a bit annoying what with the sweaty slightly-hungover three hour commute I made in for it at half six this morning. Getting up so early really does mean you get to see the best part of the day, it's just that I'm invariably too tired to enjoy it. This morning I spent the whole time I was "catching the worm" (not to be confused with burping the worm) desperately scrabbling to remember my dream from the night before and, specifically, the joke I told Lily Allen in it that made her fall in love with me (the punchline is "I believe that he's called Alf Resco...")
Luckily though mine is not the kind of work where you're given some pointless task like alphabeticising the junk mail just for the sake of having something to do, so I was free to just read the blogs of strangers about cats and their correspondance with Argos and play around in CS3 (it's not that different).
This morning I bought a digital arts magazine in Victoria station, and almost immediately started weeping with it's shitness. I should have taken the six pounds I spent on it and with them paid the London Lite man to roll up one of his awful papers and repeatedly poke me in the eye with it. It's that bad: about a dozen glossy pages of trite vector illustrations of skulls and cutesy pirates and a free CD containing a video of the three designers it features every issue and the editor pointing and laughing at you. Anyway, the theme of the issue is collaboration and this reminded me: I've been meaning to work with Greg now for a while, whether he knows about it or not.

Greg, my old housemate, put this pencil drawing of his girlfriend on his blog and claims that he plans on adding to it soon, but I know (from loitering on his facebook and myspace pages- that's right, he has both) that his life is a bohemian blur, as flooded with friends as Gloucestershire is with floods, and he'll probably never get around to it. So whilst I was not working at work, I started idly adding colour and textures to it.
It felt a bit weird working with the loving drawing of Sara, and is probably the kind of thing I should be doing for my own girlfriend instead. Still, Sara is quite lovely. I'm sure I could make her fall in love with me if I could just remember that bloody Alf Resco joke.


There's really no skill or attention required to colour something in like this, it just involves several layers and an internet connection for stealing textures.

Latitude

We went to Latitude festival at the weekend, which was nice.

Day One
The journey there was a bit difficult.


and the same in muddy colours.


Day Two


Day Three

myspace.com/wildbeasts - see them if you can.

and another sketch book page from last week.

We all went on a Summer holiday

What a delightful holiday I just had in Orgiva, Southern Spain with seven of my best friends for life.

Day one...


...day two...


...day three...


...day four...


...day five...


...day six...


...day seven...


...and then home.


I'm saving up for a camera. If I had taken one, I may not have drawn my experiences but captured them more accurately in pixels. I may have taken photographs like these, which I stole from Will via facebook (or librocara, as they say in Spain).



I tried briefly colouring some of the drawings:



This one's okay:



But this is much nicer I think: