old block, chips off; apples fallen from the tree [etc]

joe's lino-print birthday card portrait of eddie...



eddie's four-colour angry manga print [at the time he did this i'd only dared try a couple of colours...]



joe's football heroes-inspired maradona lino.

more sneaky preview-ness

enjoyable world cup tune...

The Bench Warmers - Football (Kick It In The Goal) by GusterG

as heard on marc riley's splendid 6music show...

frank sidebottom, RIP

really sad news...

top secret project...

[shh! don't tell anyone...]

wayne rooney

so wayne rooney doesn't like being booed [like gary neville before him - maybe it's a man utd thing]

firstly, a lot of people have spent a lot of money to follow the team over there.

and for those of us watching on tv, every game we have to sit through that self-aggrandising nike advert with rooney [and others] bigging themselves up. and generally celebrating their own greatness.

seems a bit rum for wayne to then turn round and complain about supporters expressing their frustrations when he's not remotely lived up to the hype that he's happily bought into...

and he's been very, very poor so far this tournament.

world cup questions

1. is the cameroonian national anthem the least african-sounding piece of music ever written?

2. where does alan shearer buy his shirts [and why]?

3. emmanuel adebayor - subtitles please?

meanwhile if you haven't already seen it [and whether you like your footy or not] this remarkable bbc piece about football on robben island is really worth a watch.

world cup coverage...

...interesting to compare and contrast the bbc and itv world coverage.

itv is always going to struggle because it's utterly blighted with adverts.
but historically they are always a bit rubbish anyway - somehow the pundits are just that little bit less credible and even des lynam couldn't lift their game when he defected from the beeb. [so i don't rate adrian chiles' chances...]
and tonight they were calling that performance "very, very good. not top-notch, but very good" [kevin keegan]

whereas on bbc radio they were savaging the team - chris waddle was especially critical, but then he always is.

it strikes me that the truth is somewhere inbetween those two extremes.

against the usa it was always going to be tough [they beat spain last year] and not losing is a good start. we're always a bit slow getting out of the blocks at these tournaments - '66 and '90 where we also only drew the openers; euro '96 too.
so it's no tragedy...
we retained possession much better after half time, and carved out some good chances. a point gives us a base to build on.

but you have to wonder if the broadcasters come to it with their agendas already set - itv with their blind optimism [no matter how many times you say it andy townsend, we can see for ourselves - we were NOT on top in that first half] and against that there's the beeb's whingey pessimism [the tactics are all wrong, the substitutions didn't work, we won't get out of the group unless capello changes everything, carragher's too slow, ledley's too injury-prone, our kit's rubbish... blahblahblah]

i'm looking forward to seeing what lineker and co. make of it tonight on the highlights show...

it's always great fun watching england isn't it...?!]

**UPDATE**
lineker and co - largely critical, but a bit more measured than the radio lot. there's an agenda there though - four years ago they were clamouring for carrick over hargreaves, and this time the pundits've seemingly all decided that they want rooney up front on his own with gerrard just behind, so it looks like everything's gonna be viewed through that lens until/unless fabio changes things...

coming back from barnsley, on the last bus...

my old man

Moonlight in Vermont by Watlingtonjazz

that'll be my dad playing guitar there...
and if you like that, then there's more here :-)

on the desk lately...

lino cuts tidied up a bit in photoshop for a new magazine - more info when it's out... :-)

blind embossing*

so i had to go to barnsley last week...

gave meself plenty of time to get into town to get the train but the scheduled bus just didn't show, so it all turned into a bit of a mad panic.

to commemorate the bus' non-arrival i did this quick experiment in blind embossing [where you don't use ink, but dampen the paper so that the imprint of the block leaves raised areas - it's a nice, subtle 3D sort of effect which can look amazing if you do it well...]

this is my first stab at it, and the photo's not great. i used some old lino that my dad gave me - it's really hard, so you get very sharp edges. but it's also quite thin, so there's not a lot of depth to the cut, and having done this one i think the lesson is that the cut needs to be deeper, and/or the recessed areas on the block need to be flat[ter]. maybe i'd have been better constructing the block from cut-out letters glued onto card. so while it's not a huge success, i'll definitely be having another go soon...



*disclaimer for any pedants reading this - it actually might be a "debossing" that i've done here... i'm not entirely sure of the difference, to be honest :-)

bus trip 39

here's a view of the back window of the number 13, with the number twelve behind.



and, for the benefit of derek h here is each layer of colour so you can see how the thing comes together...
[these are ones that didn't quite register well enough...]

jim and beth's 40th bash down in that london...

so back about a month ago sue and i escaped down south to celebrate jim and beth's 40th birthday's with some good mates.
i made these lino prints to commemorate the weekend, but as they formed part of jim's present i couldn't really post them till his big day had passed...

as ever, some successes, some admirable failures here, but i'm learning all the time.

the train to london one was really lovely right up till the last layer of line and text went on, and it sort of killed it [that's not sue in that one, it's the daughter of the overly-loud daily mail reader from donny who sat opposite us most of the way down]