Panic Stations

So that Don't Panic competition isn't going too well. I don't know who's voting, but evidently there are several hundred complete idiots out there with not much better to do. So far I've garnered two votes. One from girlfriend Charlotte and one from myself. Our one other friend and housemate Sophie is suspiciously awol. Some the entries are good, but the one's that are winning are all tremendously shit. I mean, this one is almost beyond belief.

Lot's of people are writing dismissive comments calling the whole thing a fix, and I would be leading the calls too if it weren't for the fact that I know someone who knows someone who knows someone who basically is Don't Panic and we tried to fix the competition to no avail. This is a genuinely public vote and thus I am a genuinely shit artist.
As ever, being an anarchistic, rebellious type, I blame the system. You see if you're winning, you get much more exposure, which is half the battle in this game. So you need to amass a load of votes coerced from friends and computer-literate family members at the start, and yours will soon snowball in popularity into the coolest poster since that tennis girl showed her arse. I may even have to put out a shameless myspace bulletin and a facebook note to pull in the votes. Both of which moves, ironically, scream of pure Panic.

In the mean time, here are some more cards. Despite the complete lack of appreciation for my Dreams poster (bar me and Char), I've taken the format on into my, ahem, "commercial work". Here I've just sketched a load of bits and pieces, vaguely to do with birthday celebrations or Brighton or London, and then just put them together and then copied and flipped it all. They're really as easy to make as those butterfly/bat/dead baby pictures psychologist's make by spilling ink and folding the paper in half.

These are London ones.



And these are Brighton ones.




And here's another type of card, the start perhaps of a whole range inspired by my friend Lee who, as the only real lad I know, loves kebabs, alongside Cheryl Tweedy and polo shirts with their collar up.

Disconnected

Two new pictures for the potential expansion of my pretty picture greetings card "business".



Also, I'm going to make these up too, which some of you may have seen before. They're not so great.



And this one, which is quite different not just because it's a photo-manipulation but also because, really, as a card it'll appeal only to teenage idiots. But that's a big market.

Seagull Party

The advertisements have changed from food and toys to gyms and self-help, so I guess Christmas is over. This is bad news for the Christmas card market. Next I'm going to do some more general cards, and not necessarily just Brighton ones. Like horoscopes, the more general cards they are, the more people they fit, and the more they sell.
Having said that, here's a Brighton one. It hasn't turned out too well. I think the lines on the birds are too heavy, and they don't look like they're dancing or enjoying themselves. Maybe I should have given them beers and fags, but beers and fags don't guarantee a fun party atmosphere. Do seagulls even do hard drugs? Probably. I planned on putting a small boy in the bottom left corner, gazing up in amazement, but forgot. Perhaps that would have livened it all up, I don't know. I do like the shadows, reflections and photographic elements though, they're fun.


Also, I recently rejigged my myspace page to act as a kind of web-portfolio. I'm not sure if this is the best way to do it though. Any comments would appreciated.

Don't Panic: Dreams

Another Don't Panic entry. I may as well squeeze these out before I have the chance to lose the public vote and get all tearful and dispirited and don't want to enter again. This one is for the theme that got promoted ahead of Work, Dreams.
Dreams are all built up out of personal elements from the subconscious, they say, so I used this as an excuse to lift old sketches out of my sketchbook- to put along with some new ones: the Ninja warehouse, Jessie our dog, a frog from the garden, friend Archie playing crazy golf in the Summer time, frying bacon in the pan. And that's supposed to be Michael Stipe twice at the top. From REM. REM! Eh! Geddit? Not my usual style of image, but I like it and may start doing more this way. It basically involves creating one image and reflecting it, which theoretically is only half the work, if not practically.

If this is past 3rd January, you can vote if you want by clicking here.

Don't Panic: Work

I've been meaning to enter the monthly Don't Panic poster competition for a while now. The public vote for their favourite image and then Don't Panic put it on a poster and give it away in those flyer packs that get pushed into your hands when you leave clubs, like the party bags you get at kids partys. They're always worth looking in because sometimes they have free gifts in them- the kind of stuff they think the people that go to clubs and stay till the end might like: big Rizlas, Guarana bars, condoms. Not that I smoke, like those bars or ever have sex, of course. I'm waiting for the pack with a sample bottle of a nice balsamic vinegar for brunch the next day, or a Radio4 schedule, something like that.
I did several with the upcoming theme of Work in mind. Annoyingly though after I entered them they told me the theme has now been put right back to February some time. This is annoying because a) I'll now have to wait even longer to discover I've lost, and b) there will be more entrants. I assume what happened is that the theme seemed so mundane, not many good people entered and so they panicked and pushed the deadline back. How ironic.

First I did this, but I really don't like it. The only good thing about it is the colour scheme which I stole entirely from a much better illustration by some Italian guy whose name I can't pronounce.

After a two day grump following my bastard first attempt, I I went back to the drawing board. This time I tried to remember it was supposed to be a poster, and so should at least be moderately interesting. Kids these days like big robot monsters, I thought to myself, so I decided to represent work, or the company at least, as a gargantuan robo-monster that feeds off the staff and their time and effort, with necessity but no obvious gain to them. A bit like this:

But it all looks a bit bleak, and dull. And anyway, kids these days like happy-slapping and Ketamine, not silly monsters. Some bold cropping left my image not-quite poster size so I added some black stripes and then put the whole thing in garish neons in a bid to jump on this "new-rave" band wagon. This one I quite like and entered it to the competition.

Then later the same day we had a friend called Hannah over for dinner and whilst I spoke to her I drew this, and coloured it the next morning and put in a scan from the business section of the Guardian in the background. It took a fraction of the time of the monster, but I much prefer it. In fact, it's one of my favourite things I've done. It all just works for me kind of. Plus, the reams of paper at the top kind of spell out W-O-R-K. It does work you could say. If you're a tosser.

The nice guys at DP even gave me this nice button to promote myself, but don't feel obliged to press it.

The Snow Child

The Introduction to Illustration course I was doing has finished finally. It's a shame, but more because now I'm actually doing nothing rather than anything else.
This is the last thing I did, the only thing resembling a 'piece' to emerge from the course. It's an illustration for this magical realist story, The Snow Child, by Angela Carter. Here, you can read it if you're that bored. It's quite good.

Maddy

Maddy asked me to help out with the artwork for her new EP or whatever it is. She has a lovely singing voice, a kind of Nina Simone meets Scooby-doo in Beth Ortons basement, all lit by candles, and then they discuss true love through blinks and stomach rumbles. That sounds rediculous but when I was at Ninja Tune that's how some of the people actually spoke. It was doubly confusing when all I'd asked is if they take sugar in their tea.
So here it is (I didn't take the photo though). Seagull's for Brighton, umbrellas for the constant weather metaphors and pink flowers for the fact that she's a girl.

Charles M. Schulz, of peanuts fame, said that "Creativity is all about making mistakes. Art is knowing which one's to keep." I read it on a record sleeve a few weeks ago and now quote it at Charlotte several times a day. "You left the front door wide open when you came in last night, and now there's a homeless man eating toast in our kitchen" "Well, Char, Charles M. Schulz, of peanuts fame, ..." Hilarity ensues every time, and all is forgiven.
This picture is really just several mistakes, but I don't mind.

The evolution of an invitation.

It's Beatrice's birthday, and Evil Tom's too. And, as people often do on such occasions they're having a party to celebrate. I didn't on my recent birthday of course, instead choosing the safe option of a dinner with my parents. Even then, only half the invitees showed up.
I've been allowed to create the invitations for their party. I was determined to do them well and so started, like a real illustration student, doing some preperatory drawings. First Beatrice:

And then Napoleon (the party's to be at the Fortune of War, which has something to do with Napoleon)...

And then I drew this, combining all (both) my ideas:

Pretty disastrous though. Why's it all brown? Why are their faces so dirty? Who are those two freaky weirdos anyway?
Then Beatrice phoned me again, and told me to add another name to the list of hosts- I can only assume initial interest has thus far been pretty low- that of Phil, whom I have never met. So then I did this. I don't know why they look like babies though.

And to justify the time the job took, also made it up in different colour ways.


You're invited too, by the way.

Driving

A sketch I did in the car whilst Char and I drove to Brighton. Some people say that having a girlfriend who can drive and has a car whilst I can't and don't makes me less of a man. It doesn't. The fact that I do whatever she tells me to and that I had to keep stopping drawing this because the car movements were giving me a headache do perhaps, but that's irrelevant.

Incidentally, at Ninja I've been in charge of the myspace page for the new Ninja club night, You Don't Know. Cool, aren't I?

J

I, I.

Really not sure about these two, so if you're looking, leave a comment with your opinions.

Dead Tree

Here's a picture I drew last night with my new pen. It's a pentel brush pen, like a self-reloading paintbrush, from Japan. That's the logo of it, I think, or it's the japanse symbol for pen or something.

D, E, F, G & H.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogtie_bondage


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urolagnia, but you should at least know this one.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felching


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emetophilia


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogging_%28sexual_slang%29

C

Better known as a 'Hot Lunch' in the UK, apparently.

Wikipedia.