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

Sweet View: popping upmarket

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

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

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

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

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

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

True Grit

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

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

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

Haircutting

Stuffed crust oven pizza for dinner, Soreen for pud.

My best of 2010

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

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.