two more prints...

half-term's over, and *proper* work kicks back in on monday [it'll be back to late nights and weekend working again for a bit]

so these couple of prints will probably be the last for a while.


no.48 is the bus stop on brackenwood green, just round the corner from where we live, and where i spent a frustrating half hour in anticipation of a bus to take me into town en route to see the handsome family at the HPPH...
some of the details may not be entirely accurate - this image is compiled from about four or five separate drawings made while i was waiting there...


no.52 documents people that i sketched on a trip into town to meet with ric stott, cheryl lawrie and her aussie team just after greenbelt [and i will post something about greenbelt soon-ish. probably]
the composition is maybe not the best here, but the colour works quite well, i think, and it's getting back to the sort of composite images of people sketched that i was doing earlier in the project...

schoolboy error...

this bus-trip-print documents a trip into town with our jonah - i picked him up from school and we set off to buy football boots for his academy trial at barnsley fc...
this is from the journey back home.
i was very pleased with the print until i took one down from the drying line to pencil in the details under the image - that's when i spotted a black line that i'd erroneously left in. i should have spotted it, it's a very frustrating mistake to have made, but the lesson to be learned is to spend a little more time and care examining the image each time i print a new layer... :-(

anyway, back to that academy trial - it went very well, and as a result jonah's been accepted into the academy. we signed his forms last thursday and are very proud of him. and he's quite chuffed about it too :-)

2 more bus prints...

i'm digging deep into my bus trip lino print backlog now.
progress will slow next week when i have *proper* work to do, but in the meantime it's full steam ahead with these.



i'm very pleased withy this one [above] though for some reason the black layer is taking an age to dry out...



...and this next one started out as this very spidery pen drawing of a bloke stood in front on the bus.


then the plan was to create a two colour print based on this design [worked up in photoshop ready to transfer to the lino] - a grey-ish background with a black layer of line over the top to delineate the figure and the bus fittings...


but then during the printing of the background grey/blue layer i decided to leave it at that - i think it works well enough as it is... sometimes less is more :-)

more greenbelt comics...

so at greenbelt we did this big collaborative comic thing, and it was great.
i blogged about it previously here...

the only downside to it was that so many frames of artwork had to be left out of the finished strip - we only had space for 24 panels and that meant that some really good work never made it into print.

but now all the work done has been assembled into eight additional versions of the strip and made available for download on the festival site
[cue much joy in our household as not only are all three of the panels that eddie drew up now viewable, but they also chose one of his as the main image advertising the thing on the website there]

go have a look and see if you can spot them... :-)

and i will get around to blogging properly about the festival sometime soon-ish, promise...

burmantofts lass...

drawn on the bus on my way to jimmy's hospital for an annual clinic visit [nothing to worry about, honest!]
sometimes these short, quick journeys give me the best drawings to work from - maybe there's just not enough time to worry about it. anyway, this was a lass i saw walking past the bus.

i'm currently very happy with this print... :-)

back on the buses... :-)

i've had a weird last-twelve-months.

nov/dec '09 was all about the triumph of the advent exhibition and the despair of a very significant mate's death.
so i began 2010 a bit shattered and floundering, and then a big project that i'd signed up to vanished in january and it looked like the recession had finally hit the markets that i tend to work in [educational publishing, mainly]

that gave me time for the bus print project, which has been great, but there are bills to be paid, and for a while it was all a bit tight.

thankfully, things picked up, particularly via my lovely agent who's been brilliant, and put a lot of stuff my way, including a couple of books for the usa which were a joy to work on [i'll post pics when they're published in jan.]...
but those six months of relatively little coming in has meant i've been left working seriously/stupidly hard since april playing catch-up, and trying to appease my sceptical bank manager.

so i've just emerged from a period of working seven days a week, fifteen or sixteen hours a day, with little or no breathing space between jobs.
it feels weirdly like the end of something - if not the year, then a significant season or something...

during that manically-busy-time the bus project has been pretty much shelved - ridiculous working hours mean that i've actually not been out much anyway, and so there have been way less journeys to document - but i've suddenly found myself with sixteen prints to make, dating back to june 28th [see below]

this week, i have a neat little window to start to work on the backlog, but what sort of order they'll get done in is anybody's guess [this one is number 49, the last one previous to this was, i think, no.44*, and number 58 is currently drying on a line in the office here]

anyhow, it's nice to be back making these prints, and re-learning the processes.
and of course they're all still available via my etsy store :-)





this one relates to my trip out to see the handsome family at the HPPH with simon hall - a quick trip from town out up the burley road when i very nearly forgot to draw. this old-ish guy with the pony tail and the novel was very friendly, letting me on ahead of him. this is the second attempt i made at this print. in the end i decided to just get it done and not worry too much about it; treat it as a bit of a 'loosener' to get me back in the swing of printing again :-)


*made on june 11th!

ask for wonder...

ric stott is "a Methodist Minister, art psychotherapist and artist, working in Sheffield exploring Christian spirituality and community based around the creative arts..."

but more than that, he's a top bloke; his energy and enthusiasm for the arts are infectious, and he has a new blog -'i ask for wonder' - which is well worth bookmarking or subscribing to...

go have a look and if you leave a comment there, say 'hi' from me :-)

proof - i am kloot

this is also pretty awesome.

this is great...

eighties footy caricature help required...

right then.

i'm doing this caricature and it's not going so great. or maybe it is - i've been staring at it so long that i can't really see it anymore, if that makes sense.

so. here's where i'm at with it.



can you recognise him? [if not it's back to the drawing board in a big way - rip it up and start again]

and where am i going wrong?
eyes? nose? hair? [i know that the kit is right - i've done me research!]

**UPDATE**
cheers bro, gary and mark [but not minty - "paul mariner"???!] via facebook.
here's a revised version with stubble and a squarer chin...