Guess What

It's always nice to be commissioned by a real person rather than a soulless mega-corporation. Real people spending their own real money, especially with this "credit crunch" on (sounds like a cheap breakfast cereal). Such was the case with this job: 48 portraits of real people for two bespoke editions of Guess Who? to be given as birthday gifts.


They took ages, but were well received apparently.

Note to any soulless mega-corporations reading: please do commission me.

This blog as a "wordle"

Personal type posters by robots... how long till there's an ad campaign based on these?
Make your own.

Pete Doherty: half man, half man

Here's a picture I did months ago for a Notes from the Underground short story. I was politely waiting for it to be published before posting it, but the paper is on ice whilst they try and secure arts council funding, or something... and I've got to put something up, right? It's been weeks.
The story is about Pete Doherty (once of the Libertines, now of the gossip columns) upon his death giving up his cadaver for Modern Art, and specifically for a Damien Hirst-style halving-and-pickling.
Here's the sketch:


And here's the final:

It's all came out a bit blue and insipid, but I kind of like it. The composition isn't really done as it's awaiting the text of the story to go between the halves, so it'll be interesting to see how it finally looks in the paper.
I'm currently rebuilding my portfolio website so that it can include in it some of my design work, and it looks this image may come in handy as the basis of the splash page. It's often said that Pete and I look alike (see right- he, on the left, deliriously happy on a cocktail of class As, me, right, quite content with a Scotch egg) so I can pass it off as a self-portrait. The division conveniently serves to represent the division within me as part designer, part illustrator (and part pretentious loser, as represented by the negative form in between).
Here's a sneak preview... yawn with your mouths closed please.

Canton Arms, Stockwell

Kronenbourg, Red Stripe, San Miguel and Fosters.

My type of arse

Whilst I was at school I went through a phase, between the ages of about nine and twenty one, of idling away the time by elaborately writing out silly words like Arse in the margins of my work. Now I'm twenty three (and-a-half) and I've just finished my first book cover... which has the word Arse elaborately written across as a principal feature (that's what they asked for). So I guess I wasn't wasting everyone's time after all, was I? (I'm talking to you now, Ms Mykytiuk).
Here's two of the versions I've done.

It's all quite exciting. I can't put the whole cover up yet so this will have to do. I'm also doing 25 illustrations for inside the book. Exciting.

In other news, I sent an email into radio 6 several weeks ago and Nemone read it out. You can listen to it if you want, though it's really not that interesting.

As seen in a magazine

If you buy (for six pounds) or go into Borders and look at (for no pounds) the May issue of Computer Arts magazine (apparently the world's best-selling creative magazine), and flick to the Exposure section towards the back, you'll see an embarrassing whole page devoted to me.

Months ago they asked me to send in a brief bio and a bit of description some of my images... so I duly sent in a barrage of tenuously strung together puns, thinking I was pretty funny. When I was finally exposed however- reportedly just like everyone else who's ever reported in the media- I found my carefully constructed lines were all chopped up and taken out of context so that all the funny that they had in them (which really wasn't much to start with) was sucked out. Then to top it off they took the one thing I'm trying to escape, my accidental maths degree, and made it a pull-out quote.

"Maths isn't an obvious degree with which to proceed into an illustration career..."

But still, I was in a magazine. That was nice.

Don't pick your teeth

Snuff

I wouldn't bother, unless you're trying to impress bigger boys as I was, for which it works a treat (he gave me his business card).

Joyce Division

The good news is that I've got a lot of proper illustration and design jobs on at the moment.
The bad news is that I can't post any of this proper stuff, and so have to keep sticking up sketches drawn in the snatched moments whilst they load... like this one of James Joyce playing guitar (recognisable by his trademark armless-spectacles).

Threadless: usbso-so

There's something compulsive about the ongoing-tshirt-design-competition at Threadless.com. It's like smoking: a waste of time and effort that leaves you tired and depressed, and that doesn't even have the kudos associated to it that it once did.
There are so many entries, combined with the questionable taste of those who actually bother to vote on these things, that your chances of success are pretty much slim to none. And even when you get a reasonably high score (as I did with this one) there's still no guarantee of your design getting printed.
It's the comments (and the vague chance of winning $2000, about £30 these days, if you win) that keeps suckers coming back.
You end up checking compulsively, buoyed by the adolescent Wisconsin goth who claims to have laughed out loud, assuming that the silent majority are in agreement with her.
But I never want to waste too much time, and so only ever submit pretty-average coloured doodles and awful concepts... which is of course even more of a waste of time.
This week:

Cereal

A moving story

Last week I stumbled across a "Flash-powered" webcomic, The Right Number by Scott McCloud, which was apparently hailed as the future of comics on the internet back in 2003. Ever eager to jump on a long departed bandwagon, I've tried to make my own. Boringly though I was forced to experiment with an old strip as I haven't had any original ideas for months.



Look at all that head turning effort that can be saved...

Laughable

I scanned in something I drew on a train and sent it in to Threadless.

It's pretty rubbish.

Player

IA: V Exciting

Having finished my Inappropriate Alphabet project months ago, I finally got round to sending it to some publishers. Whilst some recipients were no doubt disgusted and some simply perplexed, thankfully several showed genuine interest.
One of these was Anova Books. I met up with their humour/gift guy a few times and he was really nice (funny/generous) and, most importantly, he was really keen on the project and seemed to understand pretty well what I was trying to do with it.
Since then we've decided to definitely go ahead with it. Hopefully we'll be bringing the book out in time for Christmas 2008.
Now the real work has started. It was a bit weird at first, putting on a shirt to go and meet someone in a business setting to talk about the merits of just jerking off contrasted with jailbait , and discussing with absolute seriousness the chronological integrity of the narrative of 26 pages of crudeness. What is interesting is that the book works as a conversational catalyst: my publisher and I have discussed disgusting sexual acts we'd never bring up with our wives and girlfriends, and hopefully that is what is going to make it a strong gift book.

Something must be right about it anyway, because recently the IA page on my website suddenly started getting loads of hits from nowhere (well, America). Something like over 7000 people in two days looked at it, almost all coming via web-recommendation-application StumbleUpon. Look:


So now there's a lot more to be done for the Inappropriate Alphabet book. It's probably going to have a more appropriate title for a start. The too-rubbish and too-rude letters will have to be redone, some additional content will have to made up and thought will have to be given to colours and layout. I'll be putting things up on here as I progress (though not so much that you'll have no reason to buy the thing when it comes out) so stick your thoughts and opinions in the comments, I'd appreciate it.
It really is all very exciting. My dream of being a young novelist is being realised. Yes, I'm just like Zadie Smith...