OxPARC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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