My First T-Shirt Design!

How can that be?? It's the truth though, for some reason I have never had an image of mine on a T-shirt, surely they would be perfect for them? Apparently not... well, until now.... open the floodgates! Yes, if you want a T-shirt design call me... well, email.... I don't much like talking!
I got a call from Ty back in January asking if I would like to contribute a design as part of their new fashion label's first collection. Mercy & Wild are fusing fashion and charity into their brand, giving 25% of sales to a different charity with each collection. Go take a look at their site, you could even buy one of my tees! This collection is for  Dyslexia Action, a very noble cause and all the Tshirts reflect a different aspect of living with Dyslexia.

Hers

...His

All together now

Calendars...

This Modern Life

i met with the devil the other day, we had a nice chat and he told me that if i really want to listen to Spotify i'd have to sign up to Facebook. "Sneaky", i said. "That's just the way we roll" said the devil.
There you go.... I'm now on facebook!! arrrgh! I guess it's a trial, part of my year of social media, see if anything sticks. I'm now trying to figure out how best to get my blog posts on it, I think I'll just have to link. It's being looked into... then it might have some use for helping spread the word of the blog. Who knows?.... but pop over and see me if you're feeling friendly.

Sketchbook Solution?

I don't know why i didn't think of this sooner!! I bought an A5 soft backed sketch book and just trimmed it down to fit my back pocket perfectly. Don't know why i can't just buy an A6 one, but hey, it was only £1.20 or something. It's a Seawhite of Brighton, 140gsm, so good thickness and it's that nice off-white. When i was at college, I always used to use cut-down office files, which i filled with cut-down sugar paper and hole punched to go in the file (you could also throw out those real bad drawings without anyone knowing!!). I don't know why it took me so long to do it for my problem back pocket sketchbook of choice. It seems to be working out fine. You can see my vague crop points on that first page. The staples were quite wide apart, but i managed to get it to fit. I love it when a plan comes together!... don't give me no moleskin sucker! There, knowledge imparted, i can move on.

Silence...

Aim Low

Large Ewer

I popped into Hastings Museum on Saturday to check and I was right, they have a jug almost exactly like the one i bought. Slight difference to the spout and the banding and handle. I'm fairly confident it's from the same pottery, Rye Pottery. it says from around the mid 19th century for that one. It's condition is obviously better, but I'm glad i found it's brother! Beautiful isn't it? quite a beast though, not sure how folk picked this up full!!... well you can tell they didn't really, as there is particular wear on it's belly bellow the spout where it's been tipped repeatedly. It's great how they tell you their stories isn't it.

Big Old Sussex Pottery Jug

I just found this in the Old Town and had to buy it. It's a little bit (quite a bit!) knackered, but what do i care! It's a pretty big jug, 12'' tall x11"wide, and it's very distinctively Sussex pottery, the clay is very iron rich and leaves little iron streaks, and the pot's a really rich dark colour. I'm very happy to have my hands on one of these, I've been eyeing similar pots in the museum for a few years now, but never got my hands on one. I've included one of Matt's fantastic cups (handleless mug) to give a better idea of size.. it's not a small cup either! Wish I knew what pottery it was from.

LOST- the working process

Thought I'd just show you the relatively simple process i go through, in this case for my LOST images i posted recently. I guess ideas come fairly well formed to me by now and often a sketchbook scribble won't be far off the end result. Here's a few of my little back pocket sketchbook pages.

... and here's how i worked them up. I sketch them out with a very feint pencil line, just to really give me a sense of form and then i draw over in ink, in this case it was a .3 and .1 drawing pen. As I mentioned before they are very small, these are A4 sheets of paper.

Then all I have to do is scan them, re-size them all onto A4 and do a minimal bit of cleaning up, or repairing any bits i drew wrong or that i drew a bit to be patched on later (nearly alway a hand or foot).
I hope that gives you a bit more insight into my general working methods.

Failed Pest Control!

A not very great solution to the pigeon problem outside our studio! i think it may have worked for about a day or two. Thinking i may have to sit and work with a large papier-mache owl head on!

Look What I Found!

I re-discovered this, clearing out a cupboard after a roof leak (yet another thing to get around to fixing!) It's my old Super Nintendo! I thought it didn't work and that i just didn't have the heart to throw it out. Anyway, it was worth plugging in one last time and it worked! wooo hoooo!! It needs a clean up, but the old joys came flooding back. I LOVED mariokart! (and street fighter 2-turbo!!). Me and my good friend and flatmate at the time, Craig, played these for hours, especially mariokarts and Donkey Kong Country2! I wish Craig had a blog up and running that i could direct you to, or a website! He's living out in Thailand now with his wife, Lek and boy, Jasper.... "hey Craig!". He's a very creative and funny guy, making brilliant if slightly mad stuff. I'll dig out something of his for a giggle. He really showed me how art/illustration can be fun, just doing things that make yourself smile, it doesn't have to be all serious and worthy. Anyway, I'll do a post for Craigio in the near future. We had some good times. He eventually decided his life didn't need the misery of freelance illustration and there was more to this world!!(Imagine!) Anyway, now I'm rambling. SNES=good, but I'm resisting getting back into it. My body can do without that tension, i do get a bit absorbed! My boys are willing to be addicts... if only i'd let them... not a chance. Although i should while i could still beat them!!
We're off camping for the weekend and it looks like it could be wet, great! I shall report back and try to remember a few snaps. We're still not sure how waterproof our vintage tent is either... i guess we're going to find out! (tarps to the rescue?) Have a good weekend folks.