Aqua-Don

I had the choice of working in monochrome or colour - biro or paint.



I chose to paint. That choice became the bane of my life for 2 weeks.



I've never been a fast painter, out of all the things I'm slow at, it may be the thing I'm slowest at. I gave myself 7 intricate paintings to do, because compromise wasn't an option for this vision.

2 weeks is a long time without sleep.

Angels

Apparently.

Metronomy. The Look. The Bay.

Back in April I had the pleasure of seeing Metronomy perform at Rough Trade. At the same time I manage to finally get hold of their long awaited 3rd album, The English Riviera. Afterwards with their song 'The Look' stuck in my head I sat down for a while and did this:





I've become aware that all I draw in my personal sketchbook these days are musicians,
but I'm OK with that.

After their performance in a typical fluster to get my album signed I nervously met the band and ended up having the tiniest of conversations with them, which ended up with me receiving these buttons:



I think all I managed to blurt out afterwards was, 'these are awesome!' And then I huddled off. I'm currently annoyed with myself about this encounter, as I completely forgot to ask them who did the illustrations on the buttons, as they're great! If anyone reading this happens to know could you please tell me!

I've always admired the music videos Metronomy come out with, they almost always find the perfect balance between distinct style and narrative, and when they don't, they always excel in one or the other. To keep it short you'll want to see all of their music videos.

Just watch these and you'll see what I mean:

Their last single:


Their latest single:


And I think I'll end with what is my favourite Metronomy video, and probably my favourite music video ever so far. There's no question about it, you will enjoy this:

PCP (Print Crowne Plaza)

Here's a series of screen prints I created for a Crowne Plaza Hotel Competition. The students of CSM were challenged to create illustrations with the London Blackfriars scene as the theme.

Wow these are old, seriously, I did these back in March...







Unfortunately I didn't win, and as far as I'm concerned I didn't even come close (although how am I to know? I had no insider knowledge of the voting panel). I believe this because this project was extremely rushed, as I was horrendously pushed for time, I'd just returned from Rome with just over a week left to work on the project, found myself a week behind work wise, and had 2 other projects and another live brief to work on alongside this one. The plus side was, I became a little bit more competent at screen printing.

But, as a minus every other part of the project went wrong, and I may have screwed everything else up. A few years ago I wrote in the 'About Me' Section; 'I have a problem, I want to do everything at once causing me to treat time & fatigue as the greatest of enemies.'

I'm not sure what to think about the fact that nothing has changed.

CSM Pop Up Shop/Off Sight Exhibition

This is happening right now!



CSM students are having a Pop Up Shop! In which we're selling a great selection of hand made items! It's running from 8-10th of this month! So yeah, todays the second day, once again another slightly late post. The pop up shop is running alongside the CSM Off Sight print protest exhibition, running until the 21st of June. Th exhibition shows a plethora of brilliant print work from the students of CSM, in response to recent problems with our print and bookbinding studios.

For more info on the Pop Up Shop check out: csmpopup.tumblr.com
For more info on the Off Sight exhibition check out: off-sight.tumblr.com


My contribution to the shop is a hand-bound narrative zine called Summer/Winter.
I've unintentionally been keeping this under wraps the last few months. It'a a story of gods seasons, based in a universe in which the seasons are run by gods, and the problems which would be bound to occur. This is where my characters Summer and Winter stemmed from.

The zine comes in a special package:


In the package you get a copy of the zine along with a free print of Summer or Winter!










The zine has 3 different covers to choose from, a neuteral cover, summer cover, and winter cover! Overall there are only 10 copies in total, so if you feel like it come pick up a copy!

The shop is on right now! If you're in London you've still got a couple of hours to check it out tonight! If not, the last day is tomorrow from 12-7! There are some awesome stuff on sale here and you won't want to miss out!

Let's just say I'm surrounded by some incredibly talented people.

See you there.

57 Protagonists

Tomorrow the Central Saint Martins 2nd year illustration work in progress exhibition begins.
We've called the show 57 Protagonists:



I probably should have mentioned this earlier, ah well.
The show shall be from 2nd-11th June at the SW1 Gallery in Victoria.
If you're based in London, come on down for the private view tomorrow (2nd) and enjoy some lovely illustration with a touch of added alcohol & cake courtesy of Bea's of Bloomsbury just for the night.

For more information check out the show's...
Work in progress blog: http://57protagonists.blogspot.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/57protagonists
Facebook Event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=201041676597544

Oh and one more thing,
a sneak peek of what you'll see from me at the show:

IV-V-VI