Red and Blue - Co:Lab Screenprint

As mentioned HERE the latest Co:Lab print was unveiled at the Vunk Fest Pop-up shop last month. The brief was to produce an A6 piece using only Red & Blue that would be put together with the other team members work in an A4 print. You can see all 3 prints HERE
After getting the brief I decided to use material form my sketchpads and as I had sometime to play a bit I drew some different images I liked, before deciding for the final one.

Once I've decided for the office man carrying the elephant, I went into Illustrator to work the layers for the screenprint and add the halftone for the background. Below is the final piece and you can see the slight defferences between the mock image and the final print.

Vunk Fest Pop-up Shop last day! thanks everyone

The Pop-up shop's last day has come and gone and a huge thanks goes to everyone that turned up over the past two weeks.

As a little extra today we launched a new set of miniature prints - read here -
The Co:lab team brief was red & blue. Each member of the team produced an A6 piece to be printed together with the others work in an A4 sheet and the fourth space was a Co:Lab promotional card containing the 3 typographies produced for the previous brief - read here -

On the right you can see a test image for my mini-print and on the left is me signing each copy - only a hundred of them
Silke was about in the morming and took some photos that you can see HERE
Thanks to Karen and the Vunk people for the opportunity and thanks to all of you who walked home with a Co:lab print! These 2 weeks had been a great incentive to continue working on something we really enjoy doing. Cheers!

De seis maneras diferentes - Chapter 8

Between the Co:Lab activity and a hectic couple of weeks I have managed to finish another illustration for encerrados afuera, an Argentinian website I collaborate with. As mentioned in a previous post, I concentrate on one element of the narrative for each chapter to come up with the final picture. Sometimes this takes many reads and sometimes is a first read snap. With this one it took many reads, and as with some other ones, it was a single sentence that finally sparkled the concept.
The main character talks about his first album and the first CD he ever bought, these being Rush's Moving Pictures and the Stone Roses first album. The writer describes the Stone Roses's album as a sunny valley separating two mountain ranges, one being The Jesus and Mary Chain's Psychocandy and the other one My Bloody Valentine's Loveless. After some initial doodling where I concentrated on things like vinyl, Rush and the Roses, I had a re-read and the idea that if there was such valley then a postcard could be send from there!
I tried to keep the aesthetics somewhere between the late 80's and early 90's, just like the albums mentioned and the actual storyline of the novel.
As the CEO for encerrados afuera is on a tour of Europe, this will do as a sneak preview until the chapter officially appears in its on-line form. You can see the first sketch and the final result next to this lines and below.

Vunk Fest Pop-up Shop

And so the prints we have been working on since January are finally hanging on a wall and ready for you to take them home!
Pics here
Thanks to those who turned up on Saturday, and special mention to Georgia and Erlend who came all the way from Edinburgh to grab the first prints!
Remember we are there until the 15 of May and you can follow the event on Facebook here
You can also have a look at process notes for the 3 new projects from the Co:Lab team here and look out for the official video of the Monster mash project

CO:Lab activity

There's been activity of the printing kind at the CO:Lab HQ.
We are working on a series of 3 prints based in typography created by each member of the CO:Lab team. This has to be our most ambitious set so far and I can say that just like the previous projects I'm really enjoying it.
Expect an update with more details regarding the creative process sometime next week. In the meantime here is a sneak preview of the first screen print and the link to CO:Lab's blog were you can see what's been happening so far.

De seis maneras diferentes - A novel

Since May 2008 I have been illustrating the chapters of a novel by argentine writer DJ Malhumor (DJ Grumpy). These chapters are being published in the website Encerrados Afuera and one of the things that most interested me about the project -beside the relaxed deadlines ;-) - is the writer's use of music and popular culture.
The novel entitled De seis maneras diferentes (In six different ways) tells the story of two siblings loosing their parents sometime in the 80's in Argentina. In the first chapter the main character talks about The Cure's first concert in Buenos Aires, his passion for Iggy Pop and Robby Rensenbrinck, as well as his family and growing up.
I always have music in the background when I draw and at the time of putting together this illustration I went back to my Cure favourite albums Pornography and Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me. It helped a lot when it came to drawing the Lego Robert Smith.
At the time of putting together the illustration there was no real prospect of continuity and therefore I kind of went for it, basically including all the things I mentioned in the picture. In retrospective it does work for is the opening of a story. When I post the illustrations for the following chapters it can be seen that from chapter 2 onwards I concentrated in only one element or situation of the story for every chapter.
I'm at this very moment working on the illus for chapter 8 and looking back at all the pictures I though it could make for a good post to go back to the beginning and look at the series with a new perspective.

69 cuadros de amor

A piece that I submitted to the Open Event 69 cuadros de amor (69 love pictures)
The event is based on the fantastic triple album 69 love songs by The Magnetic Fields. Artist were invited to create a piece based on one song from the album, and multiple entries were encouraged. The only guideline was to stick to a size of 30 by 30cm, which is roughly the size of a vinyl album cover.
The material will be exhibited in Buenos Aires sometime between April and May 2010 and the possibility of a book has been mentioned.
The song I chose is "Yeah! Oh, yeah!" and besides the fact that it cracks me up, I went for it because (to my surprise) no one had picked it up yet!
To check out the song in Spotify click here
I haven't heard the date for the opening yet but I'm looking forward to see what the whole album looks like hanging on the gallery walls

Shetland Befriending Spot - 30 seconds

I created some original artwork for Shetland Befriending Scheme in February 2010 that has been used in emails, A4 and A5 posters. The artwork I have produced for the befriending scheme in the past is usually shown before the films at our local Theatre in its artwork form, however this time designer in chief Jono suggested I develop a storyboard for a 30 sec animation. I must thank Jono for helping putting it together -as my knowledge of Flash still below basic- and just to say the video has no soundtrack as the showreel is projected with random muzac at the local cinema. I'm heppy to start the blog with this post!
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