Handmade Hard Times Handed Back

Crikey, another update! You'll think I've gone blogging crazy. Well, I do have news to tell...

Yesterday the lovely Many Nice Things and I had a little stall at the Handmade craft fair, which went down at the ever-cozy Brudenell Social Club. It was a very pleasant afternoon with tea and free cake. Lots of people came down (thanks) and we sold a few items, which is always good! Also big chants and cheers to Amy, who put it all together!

Here are a few pictures from the event (sorry they're not very good, the Brude is dimly lit) So now our lovely little friend 'Ice Cream Man' is available from my Big Cartel store. Just click here to go and purchase the print and felt brooch package. Get him while he's hot! Or cool, since he is an ice cream after all...

Ciao

Date w/ Ikea

Hello folks.

So, First Draft (the exhibition) happened last night and was what I would call a success. Lots of people came down and mingled and munched delicious mince pies and sipped hilariously strong coffee.

My five Ice cream man got a girlfriend, awww Matt Hodson Nic Burrows Gareth Brew Thanks to the Nous Vous for putting it all together, people who came along, plus Nic, Matt and Gaz for making my stuff look crap.

And a friendly little reminder that the Handmade Brudenell Craft Fair is going down at (unsuprisingly) The Brudenell Social Club this Sunday between the hours of 1pm and 5pm. Come along and get all those crafty Christmas presents and avoid the classic last week before Christmas feeling, where you think 'Crap! I haven't got anything, for anyone, ever', then go make some wild purchases from Amazon!

Take it sleazy

Ice Cream Man

Hello. Sorry its been a couple of weeks since my last update, been rather busy you see...

So, lets get started. Everyone loves Tom Waits right? Well to celebrate the great man being... um, great, I have printed these cheeky little chappies (who's better than a swimming pool) named for the song 'Ice Cream Man' from Wait's Closing Time LP.

And here is a process thread to walk you through just how the little dudes were printed.

Here are the images burned onto the screen at the print workshop in Mirfield Printing the first layer The blue layer drying on the racks Apparently though, it all got a bit much for Susan Boyle... poor lass Printing the orange layer I printed the orange layer onto tracing paper, to ensure that the registration was spot on for the print to be at its most ice creamery Drying on the racks After they were cropped they were then signed and numbered... ... and stamped The final product A couple of detail shots So there you are, another process post to give you an idea of what goes on behind the scenes of screen-printing. This print will be debuting itself at the 1st Draft exhibition tomorrow (Thursday 10th December) at The Merrion Art Market and will be joining another secret friend on Sunday 13th December at The Handmade Craft Fair at the Brudenell Social Club. The latter of which will have mince pies and other festive delights! Come along and say hello at one, or the other, or both, or all three!

In other news, last night Copy Haho were amazing and I totally can't wait for their album. I'm also really enjoying Richmond Fontaine and The Pelican Brief by John Grisham.

Au Revoir

You Are My Coal Mine

Good day to you all.

So Christmas is fast approaching right? And to help save you time and money i've been festive enough to put up a tasty mincepie of a sale at the twoducksdisco Big Cartel store.

Christmas presents for everyone! Hurrah!

In other news I have an exhibition coming up at The Art Market in The Merrion Centre, Leeds. Its the first installment of a Nous Vous curated event called Draft, which aims to exhibit some of West Yorkshire's finest illustrators, designers and artists.

This all kicks off on Thursday 10th December between 6 and 8pm, so come along if you can as its a one night only affair. However, if you are incapacitated for the evening then you can pop along between December 11th of 2009 and January 9th of 2010 to see the work from the evening at the Opposite Café, which is opposite the Parkinson Building at Leeds Uni.

And to round things off, here is a new poster I just completed for Oxford folk-poppers Stornoway. Toodles.

Girl You Have All The Fun

Hello. A couple of posters i've just finished.

Firstly, The Old Romantic Killer Band are having a single launch in Leeds at the end of the month and this is for that. Plus I used the word 'super' twice on this poster, a personal best... I also finished a poster for Railcars who hail from San Francisco, which I hope to visit again at some point in the next couple of years... Literally being one of my favourite cities in the world! So, just a quick post this time around but new things to come soon for Never Ride wakeboards amongst other exciting projects.

Also I'm running out of interesting ways to sign off, so from now on i'll be referring to this site.

Sayonara.

Carbon Dating

Hello my friends. Come in and get warm.

So its come to my attention that my blog posts of late have been on the minimal side in terms of content. Well, just to prove that I am in fact a real human being, here are a few things that I currently love:

Jon Stanley Austin

This is my friend from my Leeds College of Music days who has a little blog and has just created some amazing 3D photography, which I pretty much can't get enough of!

Jon Stanley Austin's Blogspot

100 Abandoned Houses

My next obsession is a fantastic website called 100 Abandoned Houses. Its pretty much what it says on the tin, as a chap called Kevin Bauman has gone around Detroit photographing derelict and dilapidated houses and the results are beautifully depressing / depressingly beautiful.

100 Abandoned Houses

Musically i've been enjoying plenty of things as of late but my cream of the crop award has to go to Rilo Kiley's album The Execution of All Things. This is something of a pop masterpiece but masked in a really cool indie fashion and yes, I am aware that i'm behind the times but better late than never, yeah?

So thanks for listening to my ramblings, I think I may try and do this more often... Oh and I suppose I should also show you this poster I just finished for my budsky Sam Isaac. If you are unaware, Sam Isaac (the man / the band) is breaking up! Well, he's taking some time off doing music, which is sad, sad news...

Over the past 3 years I've known Sam he has become a friend instead of a client. We hang out, play gigs together, chat on the phone, its lovely. If you haven't heard his music then you really should go and do that as he creates the most gorgeous, honest, warm pop music.

So it'll be sad to say ta ta but I hope to make it to one of these shows... and maybe you should too.

'So let's just say, so long'.

His Master's Voice

Have you heard the Monsters of Folk album? Well, its a bit of a grower but after some listens its pretty darned nifty!

Anyways, why I've really dropped by is to tell you about a t-shirt I just done for Luxembourg based record label Lili Is Pi. Just a couple of colours, a whole lotta love and E.T. They should be available through their website soon enough.

Catch you on the flipside!

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral

Hello folks. Hope you're avoiding colds and the like...

Quick update for some music packaging that I have recently signed off. The first of which being for Atlum Schema and his 7" single. Next up, the new self-released single from my bro's new band Glades And finally, the debut CD single for One of Twelve. In and out, just how we like it! Ta ta for now

Chips Ahoy!

Good day people of Planet Earth. Quick update on things...

I have finished my inventorying and filled my Big Cartel shop with lots of goodies. Some things I have less of than I thought I did... So if you fancy throwing some cash at me, then head on over to the twoducksdisco store.

I have just finished a terrifying t-shirt for Pandy Cane clothing which should be all set for scaring small children come Halloween... or not. And more pictures are emerging from Flatstock 23 including some nice... And some, less nice... And I'm sure there'll be plenty more to come.

Tatty bye.

In Our Talons

Well, hey...

So I made it back from Hamburg in one piece (barely) and managed to have a great time hanging out with all the Flatstock artists and German dudes. Plus I also managed to sell a few posters, which is always a bonus. Here is a picture of my print 'A Hard Days Night' in The Beatles museum, which was ace and I also sold a few of these whilst I was there. I've just put them up in the twoducksdisco Big Cartel shop, so if you fancy picking one up just slide on over. And just for you there's a special 20% discount if you enter the discount code upon checkout. Its 'Lennon' by the way...

So, I finally get around to posting my Bowerbirds poster. I like the Bowerbirds, I think I may go and see this gig. And thats it for now, next week there will be better photos from Hamburg so you can judge us as the drunken maniacs you've come to expect... plus some new works, hooray!

You say goodbye...

Anchorless

In the morning I shall be Hamburg bound for Flatstock 23 and the great times that lie at the end of my 14 hour solo journey. So I've loaded up my iPod with all The Weakerthans albums and got a couple of new Bill Bryson books for company.

I will be taking a fair amount of posters ready for the hard sell plus some kooky little business card wallets as illustrated above and below. I'll surely come back with crazy pics a-plenty from the weeks proceedings and be talking in some code that us 'poster weiners' have concocted to further distance ourselves from the real world.

I'll also post the new Bowerbirds poster up on my return but until then, have a great week!

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da

Guten Tag. So you may or may not know that next week I am off to Hamburg, DE where I will be exhibiting at the mighty FLATSTOCK on the Reeperbahn. If its half as good as last year it'll be the greatest thing ever as I get to hang out with some good old friends and hopefully make some new ones.

Whilst i'm over there i'm also contributing an art print to The Beatles (you may have heard of them) museum in Hamburg, Beatlemania.

Here is a quick process of the art print being made, starting with a sky blue colour for the first layer. The second colour down. The third colour, which although Elle described as a bit poo-y, is actually more Jamaican Ginger I think... Here I needed to make sure that the paint had an exact level of transparency so that the colour behind would be visible, creating extra detail and depth to the print. The fourth colour is a dark salmon and again having to make sure that the paint was transparent enough to show the colours which I was printing over. So, a bit more of a tricky one this and it took ages but they'll be up for sale shortly from my Big Cartel store but I can't wait to see these up in the museum!

Loads of updates to come next week and hopefully i'll have time to show you them before I sod off to Germany. Until then, auf wiedersehen!!

Idiot Heart

Along with the Magnolia Electric Co. posters that I printed for the Brudenell show (which apparently featured a man dancing in his underwear), I was also asked to screen-print my effort for Sunset Rubdown. I wanted to make a series of the two posters, giving people something to collect and basically something that looked pretty cool.

With this in mind I made a sketch based on the cowboy / horse illustration from the Magnolia poster. I wanted the image to relate to SR's recent album 'Dragonslayer' and so I drew some dude riding a dragon... genius! I then inked in the illustration using my tried and tested Pentel Pocket Brush. And then I went about doing all the fancy Photoshop things like adding colour and then making the separations ready for screen-printing. This time I added a moon as opposed to a sunset, as they've got a track called 'Silver Moons'. This also gave me the idea to actually print silver when it came to the screen-printing process. The acetate for the white layer of the print. Printing the white layer. The white layer down on the navy card, looking all nice. The acetate for the 'split (yes, another) fountain' layer. Printing the 'split'. The finshed poster on navy card. Detail on tan card. The finished poster on black card. So there you go, a little insight to the design and print process, phew!

Also worth a mention is that Tubelord's Rainboliatric project got blogged about on the Rock Sound website, where you can see a few of my efforts littered amongst the hilariously great artwork from other great UK illustrators! Way to go dudes!!