Nostalgia Post 1

It's been a while so I thought I should start catching up with various things that I forgot to document at the time. I am slow. Here are some much delayed pictures from 'Friday Late : No Strings' at the V&A at the end of last year. The night consisted of many good things connected to contemporary graphics and independent publishing. Nobrow invited me to be part of their room, where they had all their usual great books for sale and a comic workshop with the mighty Jack Teagle and awesome Luke Pearson. I had my very own tattoo parlour, tattooing either an animal, vegetable or mineral onto the arms, occasional legs and one bum of members of the public. It was very fun and pretty intense, with me drawing non stop for 3 hours with one loo break in between. Sheesh. Here are some of the results which include some kind of Zebra / stripy donkey, an aubergine called 'Obie', a diamond and a whale with a tattoo of a whale with a tattoo of a whale... (Whaleception)

V&A Friday Late and Collectionistas.

I am involved in some things this weekend that should be brills. Firstly this friday evening 25th November I will be at the V&A as part of Friday Late - No Strings. In the words of the people form the V&A who wrote this -

Friday Late No Strings explores the world of contemporary graphics, typography and illustration through the lens of independent publishing. Collate your own zine with Publish and Be Damned or illustrate a 1-page comic with Nobrow. Witness 150 pages being read aloud in the Visual Editions Mass Reading Event and enjoy talks by Simon Garfield, Elias Redstone, Tom Keeley and friends of Eye magazine. Take part in screen-printing and bookbinding workshops and enjoy the sounds and visuals of DJ/VJ combination David Wilson and Sam Potter in the Grand Entrance.

I will be there as part of Nobrow who are taking over and curating the cafe. I will be tattooing people with an image of either an Animal, Vegetable or Mineral. There looks like lots of good workshops, talks and things to look at as well as me scribbling on people's arms. It's on from 6.30pm-10pm and it's free. More info here

The second thing is Collectionistas a Risograph print exhibition at The Mill co Project on Vyner st.

The exhibition curated by Kavel Rafferty is all about collecting and I am one of 25 artists / collectors who have created an image for the exhibition. My print is called 'Things in Bottles that aren't ships' and shows the future of my current collection 'Things in bottles that aren't ships'. (Above is a crop.)

The private view is this saturday 26th Nov from 12 - 7pm, where there will be refreshments and real records played by real record collectors. The prints (printed by Hato press) will be for sale at the very reasonable price of £15 and at limited edition of 30. The Millo Co Project is Here.

Perhaps see you at one of these!

That's Novel! That's a Comic!

Nobrow will be exhibiting excerpts from the forthcoming 'A Graphic Cosmogony' at 'That's Novel!' a comics exhibition at London Print Studio and I am lucky enough to be one of the 6 artists whose art work is featured. The exhibition opens Thursday the 21st at 6pm and will run from 22nd October to the 18th of September. It looks like it will be real fun and very yellow.

Talking talking!

Hello. Hay fever permitting I will be chatting about how I make work this thursday 24th June from 6.30 Pm at Nobrow HQ (62 Great Eastern street). I will explain how I mix paint, my favourite pencil brand and snacks I eat while working. Or more likely I'll be showing photos of boxes full of cut-out bits of paper and saying "Here is a box full of cut-out bits of paper. And here's another"

I will also be signing copies of 'People I've Never met & Conversations I've never had' after the talk.

To RSVP go to Nobrow's Facebook page or if like me you're not on Facebook i'm sure you can give 'em an email or write them a letter or leave a post it note somewhere with your name on.

Pick Me Up at Somerset House

If you are at loose end this bank holiday weekend head on down to Somerset House for 'Pick Me Up' their graphic art fair. Its full of great illustration and design with a plethora of collectives /studios / artists / shops and publishers all showing lovely stuff for your eyes to look at. There are some great stalls from Peepshow, Nobrow, Evening Tweed and Landfill Editions among others. I was there yesterday doing some drawing for Landfill who are making a catalogue of imagined items once on show at Somerset House and will be printed using their immense Risograph machine which is reason enough to go down to see. Here I am concentrating on drawing a jug and Marcus Oakley concentrating on a scottish man on a plinth. Thanks very much to Hugh from landfill for a fun day and for taking this photo which i stole from his flickr.

Happy Late February 2010!

Well my new years resolution of blogging more is going really well. It has only taken me 7 and a bit weeks into the year of 2010 to get around to doing my round up of 2009. Pretty good huh? Yeah. So here are all the bits and pieces I forgot to post about last year so I can get onto posting some new stuff!


I was in an Exhibition up at The Royal Standard in Liverpool at the start of the year. The show was called 'SALE' and it was like a big ol art supermarket where you could buy the art work straight off the wall. The prices of said works would go up and down depending on inflation and the artists profiles. I was selling some screenprints and some heads. At one point you could buy an original Nick White head for as little as 20 pence other times it was a huge amount like a tenner or something.


One of the screenprints shown at SALE. The show went on tour in November to the Liverpool Tourist Information Centre.


At Easter Laura and I flew over to Turkey and traveled around looking at many mighty man made and natural feats of beauty. One day I'll do a proper post on this as it was pretty darn amazing just look at the fairy chimneys of Goreme.


In the meantime here is a picture from Pamukale that looks like snow and ice but it's not.


A very old piece graffiti depicting a chicken-man fighting a cross.


And Superman, Spiderman and Batman (with red cape).


At the end of April as posted on this blog I was involved in a lovely exhibition with Mr Tom Hicks, Miss Clare Mallison and Mr Paddy Molloy. Having gone to uni with these fine animator / illustrator peoples it was about time we had a show together. We collaborated on a large drawing of 2 rabbit headed Vincent Steinbecks and showed a variety of drawings and prints. The launch was a busy and grand affair even if Tom did miss it. Above is a photo of one of the pieces I had on show.


As previously mentioned I was invited to take part in the first issue of Nobrow, a journal released bi-annually by the lovely people at Nobrow. Here is my submission for the 'Gods and monsters' themed issue.


The conversation that never made it into the piece.

To coincide with the release of 'Gods and Monsters' and the start of Nobrow as publishing house proper a new website was designed. Sam and Alex originally asked various artists to design a banner including the name and logo for the site. These banners would change every time you visited the site as Is the done thing. Though the banners weren't used in the end I still like the one I did.


A large portion of 2009 was spent making and designing books which was very much down to other people helping me get my act together. One of these people is Sam Rees (see above) - zine maker and drawer extraordinaire who along with his equally extraordinary wife Marina Rees (see also above) signed us up to various book fairs. It's good to have deadlines and these fairs made sure I made stuff otherwise our table would look pretty sparse and no one likes a sparse table unless your selling sparseness.

Sam, Marina and Laura Wardfrost rightfully ignore a customer at the Alternative Press Fair August 2010.

Luke Best and some guy looking pretty darn pleased with their spread.


Shifty stall holders at Handmade and Bound 2010. Photo stolen from Sam Rees's blog.

In the latter part of the year Sam, Luke and I collaborated on a limited edition hand screenprinted tea towel.
Toot!


The other people giving me a big helping hand and a whole lot of support and back patting were of course Alex and Sam from Nobrow. (Not sure If I've mentioned them in this post yet) But thanks to them I had my first book published and my first solo show. Here are some pics of the exhibition and private view. A very belated cheers to everyone who came before the fuse went.







Photos stolen fair and square from Concrete Hermit's flickr page. Cheers Chris.

Limited edition poster made for the launch and exhibition.


In October I was invited up to Dundee to do a talk at the university about my work and Illustration. I showed them a pretty snazy powerpoint presentation of - my work, how I did my work, where i did my work, why i did my work and some shopping lists. Thankfully this event was split in two so only half of the students dozed off.


I showed them this carefully styled picture of my desk.


Whereas it usually looks like this.


Earlier in the year I was asked to contribute to the latest Taschen 'Illustration Now!' Vol 3. It was released in November and subsequently they sent me a copy which was nice.



To coincide with Dufus's autumn / winter tour of the UK and Europe I made this limited edition of 25 stencil cut screenprint to sell at their gigs for money. It's inspired by the artwork I did for their classic album 'The last classed blast.' yup yup.


Varoom! The magazine made by the Association Of Illustrators did a review of 'People I've never met...' in their winter issue. The review appears on the same page as a review of Peter Blake's new ABC book which I was just as chuffed about.


To round off the year I was invited by the good man that is Andrew Rae to take part in the first East end version of 'Heavy Pencil'. I sang songs and drew alongside other Peepshow greats as Mr Luke Best and Spencer Wilson. Despite it being pretty darn cold and all the pictures suddenly disappearing at the end, twas a great night indeed. Snaps taken by paper folder extraordinaire Chrissie Macdonald.


Thanks and apologies to anyone who read this far for the horrendously large and self indulgent post but that's it I'll shut up now. Good.