Lego snowflakes at North Rock Gallery!

Following my previous post on the yule exhibition at North Rock Gallery (NRG) here is a pretty bad foto of the print. Hopefully Santa will remember to leave a scanner in my stockings this year. Read more about the show here and if you are about Lerwick make sure you make it upstairs to see the Co:Lab contribution

Dj Malhumor finds it hard to leave Frankfurt

Just finished another illustration for an article in Encerrados Afuera by Dj Malhumor (Dj Grumpy). The article finds Malhumor having a hard time leaving Frankfurt thanks to the presence of a troubled soul, who unwillingly turns our writer's trip to the airport into a kafkian happening. A good chance to practice some of those Photoshop skills I never knew I had, and stop depending so much on Illustrator to turn my sketches into a final piece. Blog had a bit of a makeover while I prepare for the last Arts&Craft fair of the year -read about it here-

North Rock Gallery - Yule exhibition now open

And so posting resumes. The members of Co:Lab were recently invited by North Rock Gallery for their X-mas exhibition. As is now customary the 3 of us approached the subject in completly diffent ways and the result are hanging on the gallery walls since yesterday night.
Silke took a few fotos you can see clicking on the pics below
Many thanks to North rock Gallery for the invitation to take part, and the yumtastic mulled drinks and bakes :-)

Dj Malhumor visits the Jaguar House

New this month in Encerrados Afuera is another collaboration with Dj Malhumor (Dj Grumpy). The writer travels through an area where pumas are not a rare sight and this triggers some memories of Murakami and the film Tropical Malady. The illustration tries to capture the spirit of the piece, picturing the traveller and the encounter with a man/tiger. Click on the image for larger size

69 cuadros de amor/ 69 love pictures - Exhibition

Earlier I wrote about a collective exhibition in Buenos Aires inspired/celebrating the triple album 69 love songs by The Magnetic Fields - read the post here
Thanks to my friend BIO who was able to attend and kindly allow me to share them, and please check out her new gorgeous website launched only a few days ago (I should almost have a post for that)
I must say I love the idea of having albums/songs hanging from a wall. Music is always around visual artists while working and I have fond memories of a section in the once revolutionary Raygun magazine, back in the 90's with a song being turn into an image by a different artist on every issue.
Special thanks to the organizer

New befriending campaign

 



The teaser for the Shetland Befriending Scheme's new recruitment campaign is out!
This week the Adult Learning's booklet 2010/11 landed in every single household in Shetland and in page 95(right next to the Booking forms!) is the design I made for the voluntary organization.
The final version should hit the streets in two weeks time!

Meantime I'll be trying my luck with Starcraft II, because a spot of mindless videogaming can sometimes trigger a wave of creativity. I've been a fan of Blizzard games for nearly 15 years and I love their attention to detail and superb artwork.

De seis maneras diferentes - Chapter 8 hits the web

CEO for encerrados afuera Mr J, is back from his tour of Europe and top of his To do list was updating the novel I mentioned in an earlier post - read here - 

This week's slow reading is Kirby: King of Comics. Artwork is nothing short of awesome and it arrived at a time when I'm researching into old comics imagery for a future project.
Over and out

Square Circle Triangle - The latest Co:Lab project

With thanks to Andrew for the text!
Produced over the course of a month for exhibition at this year's VunkFest Music and Arts extravaganza, co:lab's latest project is a six colour, cross pollinated, geometric delight.

Recalling the overprint collaboration of co:lab's debut outing, each of the three final pieces in the SC&T project bare the creative stamp of all three co:lab members.

The prints are built up from a simple geometric template – a triangle within a circle within a square. In week one we each tackled the square (leaving a space for a subsequent circle to occupy). At this point Jono, Beto and Andrew all chose two colour as a signature to carry through the project and ensure some kind of continuity through the set.

At the end of the first week we came together with the fruit of our labour and left with each other's as a stimulus for week two – the circle. Both this and the triangular element of the project differ slightly from step one in that we each, from that point on, had the freedom to bleed one of our chosen colours out into the preceding shape and through the artwork of our fellow co:labbers.

We moved up a print size with this project and following week three's triangle we were faced with finding a new source for acetates. Up until now we have been printing these out on Jono's A4 printer but with SC&T's maximum working size of 350mm x 350mm we had to look for outside assistance. Fortunately Beto happened upon a recommendation for www.copyexpress.co.uk who were extremely helpful and provided A3 acetate we could patch together with amazing next day deliverly!

Jono cunningly managed to bypass the acetate stage by producing his contribution in cut paper which could be placed straight onto the coated screen when exposing.

SC&T was hanging in The Shetland Museum's Learning Room between the 9th and the 11th July alongside many other artists contributing to this year's VunkFest. The museum also played host to a series of short films on the Sunday and of course you can read about all the great bands playing that fantastic weekend here. For more information on all the going on check out www.myspace.com/vunkventures

 

New cards arrived

Encouraged by the wise words of Jedi masters Andrew & Jono, I have finally produced a set of self promotional cards.
Using the services of Moo.com I put together a series of 8 cards with a selection of my favourite pieces from the past 2 years on the back. Thanks Rachel for the info!
So next time I see you remind me to give you one.

Another welcomed arrival this week was Wilson by Daniel Clowes (Eightball, Ghost World, David Boring). Silke and I have been laughing a bit and enjoying Wilson's awesome sense of meaninglessness. Click on the image to access the podcast with Clowes discussing the creation of Wilson and make the Amazon guys happier.

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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