robots...

i'm still working on the robot job. there is a light at the end of the tunnel but, in the words of half man half biscuit [and also richard hawley i think] it might just be a train coming the other way. driven by a robot.

here's some artwork for you to look at anyhow...

up to my neck in robots

apologies yet again for the lack of interesting new posts here. i just finally finished the artwork for the first of these two robot books, and have plunged straight into work on the second. here's some roughs to be going on with.

shelf life...

last friday a lovely bloke called rob fry delivered my office shelves.




i've not blogged much about our extension, because as i think i've said before, it's been a bit of a long, drawn-out and stressful process. but the arrival of the shelves have made a huge difference to everything as now i suddenly have places and spaces to store stuff. i'm not living and working out of boxes anymore. all my reference books are to hand. i'm rediscovering comicbooks that i'd forgotten i had. for the first time since we moved up here all my cds are out and visible in one place. in alphabetical order. [man, it feels good to be able to type that...]
suddenly spaces are opening up in every room in the house as my stuff is dragged out and stored in it's proper place at long long last...
it's a glorious thing.







the shelving units themselves are a bit mad, and i love them. big wheels on the three floor mounted ones so that we can move them out into the room to screen an area off if we have folk to stay here. they're the same wheels that they use on biffa bins, apparently. rob has done a fantastic job in making them. the end-grain on the shuttering ply that he's used is fantastic. wavy and organic and a bit all over the place. and they look a bit like they've been discovered and dragged out of an old warehouse, which is what i asked for. if you're up this way and you need a chippy, i'd happily recommend rob...

keeping busy...

[there are 30 of these robot storyboards on the desk at the mo. and a load of the smaller spot illustrations too. busybusybusy...]

greenbelt

apologies for the blog-silence - the week leading up to greenbelt, and the week since we got back have been way too hectic with workworkwork and various bits of back-to-school activity. plus i've been struggling to put into words exactly how i feel about the festival... especially when others like lawson and lobelia and lovely ian and gail are blogging very informatively about it elsewhere...

but, basically, it was great.
this year we ran a little self-portraiture project, inviting folks to come and spend a half-hour or so in the hub venue drawing themselves for a big wall of faces - effectively a self-portrait of the festival.
[pics courtesy of chris lawley]
we borrowed ten easels and drawing boards from the pittville campus up the road and expected to have maybe 25/30 punters through each day. in the end we got over 400 faces up there, with people queuing up to have a go from the moment we opened each morning...
we had a real mix of people through too - all ages and abilities, experienced draw-ers and folk who've not picked up a pencil since their schooldays - and it was really brilliant to work with them to produce stuff that in many cases they didn't believe they were capable of. from my point of view, it was a welcome contrast to the relative solitude of my working life, and a real joy to be teaching again - something i've not done for almost fifteen years now. those skills have lain dormant for a long time, and i'd forgotten how rewarding teaching can be [and that i was actually quite good at it]

the whole visual arts programme at the festival seemed to go very well this year - i loved leon varga's icarus bikes, phil hopkins' tables and martin wilson's beautifully obsessive photo projects... [you can find photos of them amongst the flickr pics here]
the artschool and the freebie 'art for all' prints were also really popular. so a big success all round.
in previous years, i've occasionally blighted our festival weekend by getting a bit knackered and stressed and losing my sense of persective at times, but this time i managed to get through the whole weekend with only a couple of misanthropic moments - one entirely justified when the occupants of a nearby tent decided to stay up all night laughing and carousing and generally choosing to ignore the fact that canvas isn't soundproof...

other great things about my greenbelt experience this year...
1. sitting out at night with the marts and the bennetts and beer and wine on the night before the festival started...
2. meeting old and seldom-seen friends - ian and gail, matt and family, various hardings, chris and angela from 'chaste', jon and claire b, paul cookson, the goans, simon emery and co, rory k, maybe-ers, the hills, jonesy, lloydy and keren, harv, the lawsons, lovely dave walker, mark lou nathan and the telford folk etc etc etc...
3. taking eddie to see 'fightstar' [who i enjoyed quite a bit more than i'm willing to admit to] and the mosh-fest that was 'rising from death' [we stood at the side out of harm's way... eddie went up and spoke with them afterwards - he asked the bassist where he got his "cool cape" from - and they were really lovely with him]
4. pizza with many chillis on it.
5. the beer tent, and beer vouchers to spend within it...
6. joe dancing for the entertainment of passers-by in the 'arkadash' tent with a glow stick and a pair of 'pants to poverty' y-fronts on his head...
7. cookson, ian mcmillan and stewart henderson
8. a shower
9. the 'pie minister' stand and food vouchers to spend there...
10. iain archer doing a couple of solo tunes in the hub one lunchtime
11. meeting new folk [inc sally thompson who i'd only previously met online via the parable comic forums]

things that i missed that i'd like to have seen/done...
1. too much music to mention - but especially the aforementioned lawson and lobelia, miriam jones, spearhead, emmanuel jal, seth lakeman, howe gelb/giant sand, anna elais and the forlorn hope, brute chorus etc etc etc
2. comedy. especially jo enright
3. david dark [i'm cross about that - he was the one speaker that i really wanted to hear this year]
4. printmaking in the art school
5. the artists' forums
6. gav's impromptu gig
7. rev gerald ambulance
8. ikon, maybe and all the stuff that went off in the new forms venue - i never even made it up there once this year...

some bad stuff happened too - joe lost his rag once or twice, and got some money stolen when he left his purse in a portaloo. and i had a falafel disaster - five huge chunks of celery hidden within the pitta. evil.

but overall it was a great weekend, and as ever, it's been a bit of a come-down returning home and getting back into 'normal' life again... maybe, as steve ponders here, the trick is to try and take something of the festival on into our everyday existence and not leave it behind in cheltenham...

catalogue pages

these are my pages in the beehive illustration catalogue for next year [beehive being my lovely agent]


sorry for the lack of posts lately - it's been a stupidly hectic few weeks, and it looks like it'll be that way for the foreseeable future. still, it's better to be busy and working than not, so - mustn't grumble...

if you're going to greenbelt, drop by the hub tent and say hi - i'll be working on the big greenbelt self-portrait in there most of the weekend. i'll also be at the proost lounge [in the hub, 7pm saturday] which'll be well worth a visit...

ttfn

things that i've seen this week.

things that i have seen this week...

1) goldfinches in the garden.
i've moved into my studio office. to be honest, at first it was a bit of an anti-climax - i just sat here thinking, 'well, is this it?'
but there are no shelves up yet, the windows need a good clean, there's still bits of building stuff all over the place; once it's finished it will be great, and i'm realising that more and more all the time i'm in here. and today i've been watching a couple of golfinches playing about in the garden inbetween showers as i've been sat drawing at the desk. very cool.

2) death cab for cutie.
with ed and liz and brett in manchester last night. they were great [death cab, and e,l & b] and a bit rockier than we'd been expecting. all your death cab favourites were rolled out - it was crowd singalongs ahoy. and although it took a bit of searching to establish this fact, i was not the oldest person there. styrofoam were the support band and they were good too.

3) eddie's end-of-primary-school production.
'goodbye, my friends' was what it was called, but mercifully it was a lot less melodramatic than that title might have led you to expect. ed had a role as a competitive dad and was a minor revelation - to us at least; the boy can act a bit. it was a pretty impressive production all round, maybe not in that very 'showy' way that some schools go for, but just in terms of the genuine sense of community and camaraderie amongst the kids, and the real affection that the staff have for them. gledhow primary is a really rather special place and it's been great for ed. as usual at these things, i manfully held back on the blubbing whilst all around me parents were sobbing left right and centre. my bottom lip may have trembled, and the odd tear might have escaped onto my cheek, but i managed to maintain a firm grip on my emotions. ahem.

4) my print design got chosen for a greenbelt festival freebie giveaway...
you can go see it, along with the other designs chosen here ...
there's also a fresh challenge up on the greenbelt here comes the sun thingy...

meantime, here's a small selection of things that have been on the desk recently...




(my colour sense is not my greatest asset, but i was really chuffed with the way this picture of an old hard-of-hearing gipper turned out)

momentous-ness

is that a word? it is now ;-)

i just spent an afternoon working at the desk in my new office. i'm not officially moved in yet - it's still full of builder's stuff, and there's loads of essential illustrating equipment [mainly, the stereo and my music collection] that i can't move in there yet, so it won't be fully operational for a week or two...

but it feels veryverygood to be able to sit at my own desk again after months spent sharing the dining table with mealtimes and eddie's half-painted warhammer figures...

here comes the sun [again]

the third challenge is now up and running on the greenbelt here comes the sun thingy...
go have a look, and have a go.

[warning! doctor who spoiler! ian B - don't read this post!]

.



























when i was a kid, davros was the scariest and most brilliantly repulsive thing i'd ever seen...

well it looks like he's back! eek!

[i'll be watching from behind the sofa...]

meebox

stayed up very late last night to watch adam buxton's new project on bbc3 - meebox.

well worth seeking out on the bbc iplayer...
i particularly enjoyed this...



and this...

happy birthday son...

i've recently been working on a range of cards for some friends - hopefully they'll be coming to a shop near you at some point in the not-too-distant future, but in the meantime we have a few hundred prototype copies for sale...


new drinks


ebay


lightning


gifthorse


old dog


castle


fish


bug

they cost £1 each, plus 50p per order for p&p, and you can order them by emailing suzi hamlin at suziehamlin@simplyput.org.uk or by snail-mailing your order to her at 579 scott hall road, leeds, LS7 2NF [make sure you state which card/s you want and how many of each...]

here comes the sun...

we love greenbelt

and as part of our contribution this year i'm sort-of co-ordinating a little interactive online artistic project, loosely ripped off from this, based on the festival's 'rising sun' theme, and called 'Here Comes The Sun'.

the idea is that every week or so we'll set a simple creative challenge, and then anyone who fancies doing it can post their results back on flickr [or to me and i'll put it up for them] for everyone to admire. there's a facebook group connected to it too, but as i'm a facebook refusenik, i don't know much about that side of the project... ;-)

the thing will kick into gear next week sometime, but if you fancy a sneaky peek, copy and paste this url - http://www.greenbelt.org.uk/?s=157 - into your browser window and see what we've got planned [but don't tell anyone that i sent you, it's not gone 'live' yet...]

and if you fancy getting on board and having a go, we're already after submissions for challenge no1 - "Make a songlist of no more than ten sun-related tracks for your iPod. Hand-write your list, with your favourite line from each song and scan/photograph it, then post the image to Flickr with the tag greenbelt:sunproject=songlist "

if you're partial to a bit of musical miserable-ism you can so see my ever-so-slightly melancholic list of sun-related tunes here.

go on. make us a playlist.
you know you want to.


[kudos to lloydyfor the image...!]

been away

over the half term holiday we went off to northumbria for a bit of a break, staying in a little port town called amble.
we had a great time - highlights included fighting vikings on lindisfarne, being stalked by mark 'full monty' addy, seeing a seal, playing a lot of scrabble with the kids, alnwick gardens, joe learning to ride a bike, the baltic gallery and seven storeys in newcastle, bamburgh castle, and beaches.lovely, lovely beaches. it was our first visit to that part of the world and it won't be our last...
there are photos on our flickr site [there's a newly-added link on the right there...]

meantime, here's the first finished page from this story that i'm illustrating for the second 'parable' anthology...



[and some exciting building-work news - my new office is now plastered and floored!
still a load of stuff to do before it's all finished, especially on the outside, but i'm looking at being in and working in there in the next few weks. hurrah!]

long time, no blog...

sorry that it's been a bit quiet here lately...

but hey, it was my birthday a couple of days back!
here are the cards that my boys made me...



joe's - on the left there - illustrates the fact that i've got a bit obsessed with the garden of late. i've re-sown the lawn where four years of football have rubbed it bare of grass, and his card shows me being swamped by new growth and covered in the contents of our overflowing compost bin, whilst the boy himself looks on with glee...

eddie's - on the right - commemorates my celebratory birthday visit to fuji hiro, leeds' premier japanese eatery. hurrah for noodles and peanut & red chilli sauce.

anyway, as a result of my birthday [and the wonders of my well-stocked amazon wishlist] i got a whole load of excellent cds which i'm working my way through, and some fantastic books to add to my 'must-read' pile...


meantime, i've finally got the ok for my robot design - here are the final two stages in his evolution - the upper one is the definitive version that was settled on...




i also just did a little job for 'girl & dean' - a little thing for their edinburgh show promotional package, which was cool... [interesting fact: jess from girl&dean can currently be seen cavorting with a randy lobster in a heineken commercial...]

and there are a load of other nifty possibilities in the offing - i don't really want to go into them too much at the mo, mainly because they are still just tantalisingly lovely could-be's. but there's something that might happen with an american publisher who's seen my stuff on proost, and some work with a charity that works with and campaigns for the victims of sex trafficking... interesting and exciting stuff...

lastly - extension news. i've not blogged much about the building work - mainly because there's not always been much news to relate [it's been a very slow, drawn-out process...] - and also because it's been a bit stressful. but now the windows are in, there is plaster on the wall and the electrics work!
next week the floor goes in... there is visible growth on the grass roof... we are beginning to allow ourselves to get bit excited about it all again...

animations...

leeds has a great film festival - it's where we saw 'persepolis' last year and you owe it to yourself to go see that film now it's on general release - it's utterly brilliant on so many levels...

but there's also a young people's film festival, which they run every easter and it's great - loads of workshops and movies from around the world, all very reasonably priced or free.

eddie's done an animation workshop for the past couple of years, and this is the movie that he and his mate sam made this time round... [watch out for stupid sheep's swivelling eyeball and the inspiration lightbulb that pops up above the boot... very neat touches]



and here's one that joe made with his mate asher and a guy called wesley - amazingly good for their first go at stop motion, i think you'll agree...!

i want one of these...

...lovely things

"...the leader of the plaque..."

just been to have a couple of fillings replaced.
and so i'm sitting here with a tongue like a beached fish and one side of my head feeling all lumpen and listless.

they had to inject me twice, and i got the feeling half way through that all was not going quite as smoothly as they'd hoped.

it wasn't painful though [at least not once that second injection kicked in - heh heh] more of a discomfort. i can largely switch off to what's going on and retreat to my happy place for the duration. i think it's more to do with unhappy memories of gas and fillings when i was a kid... that weird sensation of tools making mechanical noise and vibrating inside your face...

i need to floss more regularly.

poetry v. rock

two myspace pages to visit if you like a bit of poeticness with your music...
click here for northern soul-tinged tales of youthful disappointment in south yorkshire
click here for beautifully poetic songs of love and loss from the isle of lewis, including 'every month' which may well be the most heartbreakingly sad and lovely thing you've ever heard.

evolution of a robot...

i'm working on a project that has this robot character in it, and it's proving quite tricky getting him right. i'm posting these largely so that i can keep track of what i've done on him so far!
[when i finally get the ok for his design i'll post him up here...]