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

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.