Ink & Paper

May is looking like a busy month for the UK poster community with three exhibitions taking place across consecutive weekends.

The first of which being Poster Roast as part of Camden Crawl.

With a bit of a twist this year, Poster Roast will be host alongside Alternative Press and Lexington Record Fair, making it quite a DIY day out in the heart of Camden.

It's all free to get in and more information on the three day event can be found here and it promises to be an exciting venture.

The following week comes the debut UK poster show by the UKPA, which will feature both UK and US artists, again taking place in London.

This event will act as more of a gallery show than an expo, with posters having their own space and will be available to purchase at the event.

There will also be a series of discussions, debates and a Q&A on the Sunday from 4pm featuring ramblings from a bunch of talented friends including Graham 'Army of Cats' Pilling, Drew Millward, John Howard and Lil Tuffy. There are plans in place for these talks to be filmed, to further spread the knowledge of these illustration disciples.

The following week will see the return of Screenadelica as part of the huge annual event, Liverpool Sound City.

LSC is an international music, media and technology conference and live arts and music festival, which started life in SXSW a few years back.

This will be my first year exhibiting my wares at Screenadelica and I hope to make it over there for the Saturday. More information on this year's event can be found on their website.

The Crawl

Here are some pictures from this past weekend's Poster Roast at Camden Crawl. The weekend was amazing (as expected) and great to hang out with all the poster wieners again.

My posters [I Like Trains / The Black Keys / Wolf Parade] sat in between Drew Millward's and Diego Mena's.

L - R :: Andy [Tape Ears], Tom Lacey and Luke Drozd.

Bobby [Telegramme]

Some dudes checking out Kate Prior, Graham [Army of Cats] Pilling and Adam Pobiak's fine craftswoman / craftsman-ship.

I forgot to get any pictures of the collaborative poster, which was screen-printed live by The Positive Press but will show & tell when I see a shot.

Big thanks to Mr. and Mrs. White at We Three Club who put the whole thing together and it all ran so smooth and as ever, was lots of fun.

Whilst I was at the Roast an old friend dropped by, which was obviously great to see him but also because he brought along some business cards that I designed for him.

We also discussed the possibility of creating moustachioed characters / objects / anything to be included across the site, with the addition being this duck:

So, lots of fun things to look forward to soon.

Way Down Hadestown

Hello there.

In less than two weeks time I will be London bound for this year's first Poster Roast, taking place on Saturday 30th April and Sunday 1st May. It's co-exisiting alongside Camden Crawl and looks set to be another fun weekend of posters, music and cider (it's sponsored by Gaymers).

Like last year all the exhibiting artists have contributed a bit of artwork which is to be included on a collaborative poster. This will be printed live before the eyes of the Camden Arms (where the whole Poster Roast is going down). The brief this year was to illustrate your favourite dish of a roast dinner. I selected cauliflower cheese because I love the melted chesse seeping into the florets of the cauli... Sorry got carried away a bit there!

To keep the poster-orientated theme of this blog, here is a recent poster that I completed for Leeds folk promotion team Hide & Seek.

Being familiar with Anaïs Mitchell's album 'Hadestown', I wanted to illustrate the story that is told across the record. It's based on the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus embarking upon a quest to the underworld to rescue his wife Eurydice.

Naturally I wanted to create something a bit darker to reflect the story but also create a striking and intriguing image.

Now this is a tenuous link but in keeping with the roast theme, here is a logo that I recently completed for a friend's new film production company, Boo Said The Goose.

Roast goose?! Like I said, tenuous... Anyway, the chaps wanted a bold and colourful logo made up of simple shapes to give it a classic logo feel.

See you spoon.

Constellations

Oh, hello there.

Although announced on Monday across various web platform's like NME, Drowned in Sound and The Fly it gives me great pleasure to reveal that the travelling poster art circus that is Poster Roast, is Leeds-bound.

I have joined the Poster Roast team to assist in co-ordinating the exhibition, which will be taking place in conjunction with the utterly fantastic looking Constellations Festival.

If you have a look at some pictures from past Roasts, you'll get the idea of what can be expected at the University for the exhibition. There'll be live screen-printing, original screen-printed posters on display by a wealth of UK artists, who will be on site selling their goods and able to offer further insight into the world of screen-printing.

The festival looks too good to be true too, since I love Broken Social Scene and Les Savy Fav. Not to mention having soft spots for Four Tet, Liars and Spectrals, it looks like a real winner of a day!

So, see you there then?

Next onto the poster that I screen-printed for Wolf Parade for their gig at the Brudenell Social Club last week. Well, the show was fantastic and the band were really super friendly.

I sold quite a few posters at the show (which is always nice) and now you can buy them from my Big Cartel store for £10.

And if you're the sort of person who loves to buy posters but doesn't really like trawling through the high street trying to find frames, then these are cropped to perfectly fit in the very affordable 16" x 20" Wilkinsons frames, as shown above. Gee, ain't I good to you?

This week, I'm going to be turning my attention to producing a couple of pieces for an exhibition taking place in Manchester called Customer Circus, curated by Taneesha Ahmed. Its part of a week long Festival taking place at various venues in the city between Friday the 1st of October and Friday the 8th.

The brief for the exhibition is very relevant, relating to emerging artists who are working during the socio-economic conditions of the recession. So I'm currently putting together some ideas which I'll try to reveal later in the week but needless to say, I am rather excited for the event.

Just a news barrage today then. Now, back to work!

Don't Look Back

Hello all. Hope life is good not gloomy.

So the bank holiday weekend of May was one of celebration and joy. I went down to Camden to exhibit my screen-printed wears at Poster Roast / Camden Crawl.

As expected, it was great fun; hanging out with my cuz, getting to see old friends and making new ones and a fair bit of drinking... Here are a few photos by the brilliant Owen Richards from the exhibition that took place at The Black Heart pub.

Some of Adam Pobman's, Luke Drozd's posters and mine (this picture was taken by me, I don't want you to think that Owen took this duffer...)

Some of Chris '3D Glasses' White's posters

A massive thanks goes to Chris and Alex for putting the whole thing together. I can only begin to imagine the amount of hard work and effort that went into organising the event.

They have also been struck with some bad news this past week, that their cat had been knocked down by a vehicle and the vet's fees are going to be slightly insane.

To help them out, you can go the 3D Glasses shop and buy one of the limited edition posters (pictured above), which features artwork from myself, Chris and Alex, Drew Millward, Graham Pilling, Dan Mumford and many more.

Back to Camden and I did actually get to see some bands. Five in fact. Though four of them were from Leeds, oh well... I did however get to see the mighty Teenage Fanclub who loved the posters that I screen-printed for them, which co-incidently are now on sale from my Big Cartel shop.

This is my view from the side of the stage at Koko and pretty terrible photos

And these pictures are by Berto Garcia, whose magnificent capturing of the Camden Crawl weekend can be viewed here.

So as you can see that it was quite some weekend, thanks to everyone involved.

On to the next big thing and at the end of this month I am going to be exhibiting some work at The Riverside in Sheffield, which promises to be quite exciting. I think I may do some new work for that, if I can find the time.

Here is the poster by the brilliant Sarah Abbott, who is curating the event, so thanks to her for inviting me.

I have so much new stuff to post here this week to let you know that I do actually do some work but thanks for reading all of this, hope you found it interesting and insightful or just enjoyed the pretty pictures.

Sparky's Dream

Hello there

So as I may have definitely mentioned before, I shall be exhibiting a selection of my screen-printed posters at Poster Roast at the aptly named Black Heart Pub in London. This event coincides with Camden Crawl, an event which features over 200 bands playing at over 40 venues.

As an exhibiting artist at Poster Roast I was presented with the opportunity to design and print a poster for a band playing at the weekend. From the selection I picked Teenage Fanclub, although only being familiar with their 'hits'.

After doing some research into the band, turns out I love them, bonus. So I set about creating a poster based around the lyrics from one of my favourite jam's of theirs; 'If she lived in space, man I'd build a plane' from Sparky's Dream.

So after creating the image, I set off to the West Yorkshire Print Workshop in Mirfield to get my screen-printing face on. Watch, as the story unfolds...

The acetates lined up, ready to be burned to the screens

When printing I usually have an idea of what I want the colours to be but if they deviate from my mental images then it's generally OK. This time however I wanted the colours to be precise to the digital file that I'd worked on, so I printed it off and constantly referred to it, getting the colours just right

Printing the first colour

The first colour printed, this silver-ish, grey has a slight metallic tinge, which is always nice

The second colour being printed

Light blue is down

I then managed to run out of time in Mirfield as the joint was closing... Mad panicking ensued only to be relieved by the ever-lovely Calum Harris whose work you can see here. So the next day I went to 'The Grungeon' to print the final colour

The final screen in place for the third colour

The third and final colour is finally down

All the prints drying out

The final print, all cropped (34cm x 25cm), signed & numbered, stamped and ready for their epic journey to see the Fannies on Saturday and then from my Big Cartel page from Monday 3rd May.

A close up of the poster

Another close up of the poster

Thanks for reading / looking at the pictures / both / all three. Hope you all find it as interesting to read as the process is to complete. As always each poster is completely unique due to the methods involved in screen-printing, which is what makes it all so much fun.

That just leaves me to say I can't wait for the weekend. Seeing old friends, relatives, Teenage Fanclub, Pulled Apart By Horses and general merriment. I hope y'all have a grand weekend too, whatever mischief it is that you get up to.

Adios

We Are Underused

Hi there

First off I've been working with a chap called Tom, who is planning on launching a new fold-out zine soon. So, as well as creating the logo (above) and helping with the layout of it, I've also been interviewed and that will appear in the first issue, which will be nice.

In other exciting news, I will be exhibiting along with the UK's finest poster folk at Camden Crawl this year as part of Poster Roast 2010. I can't wait for this, as the previously attended Roast's have been lots of fun and this year looks set to be equally as amazing.

As well as displaying our lovely posters, there will be live screen-printing to give peeps an idea as to what goes on behind the scenes. The live screen-print in question will be a collaborative effort featuring a letter of Poster Roast illustrated by all the designers exhibiting. I was given the first letter, so I thought something 'interesting' was required... For more info on Poster Roast 2010, just click on this link and you'll be whisked off to a magical land full of skulls, nipples and lots more things you probably wouldn't approve of...

Hats well and truly tipped to the lovely Chris and Alex for putting it all together, it promises to be a weekend of fun, frolics and maybe a little bit of drinking. Roll on the bank holiday weekend in May, yeah!!