standing still in a moving place

House print blog

2012-01-20T14:17:00.000-08:00

I've set up a new blog to show the house prints here

No.3 is on the desk at the mo an should be posted up there early next week... :-)

on the desk recently...

2012-01-16T00:40:00.000-08:00

new project thing

2012-01-09T07:45:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago i set myself the artistic task of documenting a year's worth of bus trips with lino prints.

it was a good thing to have undertaken, but i decided not to burden myself with anything similar in 2011... :-)

however, this year i'm itching for a bit of a challenge again, and so here's 2012's slightly obsessive project - drawing and producing a print of one local house each week.

because of a dodgy knee/general portliness issues, i'm supposed to be walking for 30mins a day, so the idea is to get out and about and try to engage with the local area a bit more and to make that part of the exercise.
also back in my college days a wise old tutor got me to drawing buildings and bits of architecture, and i'd like to get back to that.
there are some interesting houses fairly close to us here, so i'm looking forward to getting out and looking for them.

the idea is to do them in number order, so the first week's print will feature a building with the house number one, right through to a number fifty-two in the final week of the year.

each print will have some text on it too.
i bought an ipod in the autumn, and i'll be listening to that as i draw. i'll incorporate some lyrics that stand out in the finished image. it'll be interesting to see how the image and the text work alongside each other - whether the words suggest some sort of narrative [or maybe they won't...]

i'll blog each print on here with a tracklisting and some thoughts on how it's all going...

so here's number one. it's what you see as you walk up our road, and there's a bench on the corner so i sat there to draw it.
the quote is from 'to earth with love' by gay dad, and making the drawings reminded me just how out of practice i am when it comes to observational drawing - i was having to concentrate so hard that i wasn't really listening to the ipod.
i used photos on the phone to help me back in the studio, but i'm hoping that as the project goes on i'll use the camera less and rely on my drawings more.

soundtrack:
'beach party' by jonny
'will you?' by hazel o'connor
'emily kane' by art brut
'silent sigh' by badly drawn boy
'we never talked' by nina nastasia
'bros' by panda bear
'she just coukldn't stay' by trembling blue stars
'the final arrears' by mull historical society
'to earth with love' by gay dad

also, these... :-)

2011-12-29T11:16:00.000-08:00

Paul Thomas Saunders - Silhouettes Of An English Rose by Paul Thomas Saunders

The Hands of the Wrong People - 'You're Not Singing Anymore' from The Hands of the Wrong People on Vimeo.

my favourite five tunes of 2011

2011-12-29T01:45:00.000-08:00

[of course, by tomorrow i'll have completely changed my mind and chosen a different five...]

coming soon...

2011-12-24T11:16:00.000-08:00

a new comic, available in the new year.

also, a new printing project or two for 2012, and a bit more activity on this blog, hopefully.

have a great christmas and a happy new year!

hot off the desk[top]

2011-12-09T02:41:00.000-08:00

more nice job-ness

2011-12-02T02:24:00.001-08:00

nice job...

2011-11-30T09:38:00.001-08:00

...which i'll maybe post more of later :-)

advent thing...

2011-11-30T07:58:00.000-08:00

a quick last-day-of-november plug for the advent thingy that ian adams and i have done for proost.

you can get it here for the bargain price of just £3.50...

for that you get 25 images of advent people places and things, each with a little reflection to get you thinking...

on the desk lately...

2011-11-24T05:49:00.000-08:00

PNE fans may wish to look away...

this is from a booklet produced to celebrate the 'writing wrongs' Streetspeak project. it's a football and poetry-based thing that's been nice to work on. it's a great project too...

talking of poetry and footy, here's a page from a comic that i'm working on with paul cookson, due out early in the new year...

[click the image to bigify it]

work in progress...

2011-11-04T12:39:00.001-07:00

a tiny snippet of something i've been working on this week...

good news and an imminent price hike

2011-10-28T01:04:00.000-07:00

Yay! good news!

the craft centre and design gallery in leeds will soon be stocking some of my bus trip prints :-)

the bad news is that i'm going to have to hike up the prices in my etsy store as a result.
so that gives you this weekend to get on and buy them online whilst they're still cheap!
use the code LEEDSBUS66 in the etsy store and you get a 20% discount...

banksy

2011-10-11T02:00:00.000-07:00

just to prove that i am doing stuff at the mo [though in truth, work is a bit slow coming in right now]...

...here's a rough photoshop sketch of gordon banks, done in preparation for a possible future project...

talking in church and cardigan arts triangle news...

2011-09-29T01:11:00.000-07:00

my everyday working life is quiet solitary, and most of my thinking is internalised - i don't really have to explain myself much, or think on my feet. most of the time here it's just me and the pencils and the coffee pot and 6music or itunes.
so whilst getting out occasionally to talk about what i do is undoubtedly averygoodthing, it's also a bit daunting...

my 'leeds resurrection' pics have been on display in a local church recently, and so the other sunday i was invited along to be interviewed about them, and it was great. sue was there, and she told me that i didn't make a fool of myself, which is always a relief [and, from sue, very high praise indeed...]
people seemed interested in the work, and there were some good questions; and it's always a good thing to be made to think about your work.
it was nice to see those images again, to be challenged about aspects of them and to be excited by them again.

then last sunday i took part in the annual cardigan arts triangle day. it's an afternoon in a small area of headingley when local residents open up their houses and invite artists to display their work in there. i was invited to show my stuff at the tapper's home, and apart from a couple of incidents of blu-tac theft, they were the perfect hosts :-)
like an idiot i didn't take any photos, but here's a couple of pics that i stole from lee jackson's twitter feed...

[the figure lurking in the background is lynne tapper]
after a slow start, we had good numbers showing up; some really good conversations, a few very complimentary remarks, and some sales. it was a great thing to have been a part of and i'll definitely be doing it again next year [if invited!]

the bus trips project seemed to grab people's imaginations, and i got asked a few times what my next project was going to be.

and i've been thinking about that - it's been nice this year not to have the background noise of the printing project going on, but i am starting to miss it, if i'm honest.

so - as a memo to myself as anything - here's a few ideas that i'm toying with...

1. a leeds alphabet. i'll spend some time in and around the city drawing letters and bits of nice font-age that i can find [there's some amazing little bits of architectural stuff going on in leeds if you look for it] and compile an alphabet of individual linoprinted letters from those observations.

2. i'm 45. it always bugged me that i didn't do anything specific to celebrate my 33-and-a-third birthday, and i don't want to have to wait till my 78th [if i make it that far] so this seems like a good year to celebrate my collection of vinyl... i'm thinking of dusting off my old collection of 7 inch singles and selecting the top 40 to immortalise in print form. again, typography may well figure quite heavily.

3. something stupidly ambitious, and - again- music related, along the lines of seth's dominion city work or anthony green's 'resurrection' sculptural painting... only a bit quirkier, with more papier mache [and not as great as either of those things]...

on the greenbelt blog...

2011-09-24T01:26:00.000-07:00

our wild thing prints are on the greenbelt blog...

thank you, david dark :-)

2011-09-19T01:49:00.000-07:00

so the talk at st edmunds went ok last night. i don't think that i said anything too dumb, so that counts as a big result in my book :-)

in prep for the service though, i skimmed back through the opening chapter of david dark's 'everyday apocalypse' [i thought that a question of Christian Art vs. art made by christians might have come up, and dark has some good things to say about that.]

anyway, just re-reading the bits in the book that i'd underlined was kind-of-thrilling - i'd forgotten just what a great book it is, and how important it had been to me the first time i'd read it...

here's a selection -

"We were made for something better than we're getting and whatever it is we're settling for..."

"The present work concerns itself with all manner of media that highlights, exposes or lampoons the moral bankruptcy of our imaginations while teasing us toward a better way of looking at, and dwelling within, the world..."

"i'm grateful for and in dire need of whatever art can keep me awake and alive to the mystery, whatever keeps me paying attention, whatever reminds me that none of us (and no ideology) are possessors of the final say..."

"to reimagine the now is our work and our pleasure. look hard. it is at hand..."

people of leeds: a date for your diaries...

2011-09-15T04:08:00.000-07:00

i'll be interviewed about art and stuff in the service at st edmunds church in roundhay this sunday evening, KO 6.30pm.
they have my leeds resurrection pics on display in there at the mo...
can't guarantee that i'll make much sense, but david the vicar there is great, so even if my answers are rubbish, at least you know that the questions will be interesting :-)

and i think that there'll be a Q&A time, so you'll get the chance to ask me what my favourite colour is, and where i get my ideas from... :-)

the gang

2011-09-06T10:37:00.000-07:00

just realised i never posted it, but i made and took these little wild things figures to Greenbelt to help decorate the Hub info desk.
originally they were going to be part of an animation project we were going to run, but that never came to pass.

at the end of the weekend the various members of the gang were all re-homed, each one going away with a deserving someone who'd put in a shift on the visual arts side of things this year...

luke leighfield and jose vanders

2011-09-06T08:34:00.000-07:00

this is a rather lovely version of a great tune and you can have it for free.

go grab a copy...

finished print

2011-09-05T01:19:00.000-07:00

the finished versions of the blue mary m print from that last post.

i feel like i've somewhat belatedly hit on something with the lino printing - whereas before i was often transcribing the line of my pencil drawings onto the block, in the past few prints i'm using shapes and solid areas of colour to build the images.

this print is of course available to purchase in my etsy store.
you can still use the code LEEDSBUS66 there to get a 10% discount on anything in my shop...

more lino-printing work in process pics...

2011-09-03T10:34:00.000-07:00

three-colour blue Mary M print, with the two blue layers drying, and one sample printing of the final black layer just to try it out...

my desk is a mess. needs tidying, badly :-)

harry baker as max, beginning the wild rumpus at GB11

2011-09-01T03:03:00.000-07:00

lino cut wild things...

2011-08-31T11:35:00.001-07:00

following up on that last post...

one of the things that we did in the hub at greenbelt this year was to make lino prints of wild things [i posted about it here a while back...]

we got punters to cut a block of either a head, body or legs and then to choose the remaining body parts from a growing selection of blocks cut by me [in advance] and their fellow greenbelters to make complete wild things.

here are some composite pics of wild things showing every block cut during the festival [we had more bodies than legs being cut, and way more heads than both put together, hence some body parts appear quite often...]

some of them are really very good indeed.

which is your favourite?

greenbelt

2011-08-31T05:25:00.000-07:00

so last year, after greenbelt, i promised updates and reflections which never came. sorry about that, but basically GB10 was good, with the highlight being meeting up with tom hollander and james wood, the men behind the tv show 'rev'. i'd made the first contact which resulted in them coming to greenbelt, and thankfully it was a hugely popular and successful moment in the festival - i've been basking in the glory of their big-top appearance ever since... :-)

so then- onto GB11. i was basically responsible for programming visual arts things in the Hub tent. this year we themed it all to maurice sendak's classic 'where the wild things are' children's book and if you click the links you can see some of our lino printing and general wild-thing rumpus-making. the rumpus was possibly my all-time greenbelt highlight - due in large part to the various talents of harry baker who wrote a poem especially for the event and led the whole thing, rhys cowe, jay and claire - who made masks with punters and generally set the whole exuberant tone of the thing - and simon emery, who created an immaculate installation of max's room from where the whole thing was set in motion... it was a blast.

greenbelt is a place of extremes for me - it's so wildly different from my day-to-day sat here at my desk, where i'm fairly solitary and self-contained. on the racecourse it's busy, very busy - i'm running about sorting stuff left, right and centre, and there are people to deal with everywhere. so at various points during the course of the festival you'll catch me at my most rantingly misanthropic and also being engagingly sociable and generous - it brings out the best and worst in me... but i wouldn't miss it for the world. it's the most hope-filled place on the planet and i love it.

King for a Day from Mark Waddington on Vimeo.

as ever, i missed almost everything that i wanted to see and hear there, but of the stuff i did manage to do my highlights included skiving off from the big sunday service to meet up with stevie B, moira, ian, steve and andrea; the wild rumpus; people surprising themselves with just how well their lino prints came out; two great sessions of pecha kucha; meeting simone lia [and managing to not embarrass myself too much in the process]; luke leighfield in the underground venue; billy bragg's encore of tank park salute and a new england [i'd missed the rest of his set]; pies from pieminister; the methodist art collection, which is breathtakingly good; a slightly tiddly conversation with mike r, del and grace; willie williams' lumia domestica; and my wife and kids who i know are brilliant but who still manage to surprise and amaze me...

chicken...

2011-08-18T10:34:00.000-07:00

here's two things that i'm pleased with.

a chicken - a woodcut of a bird originally drawn in the goan's garden in dunoon [we'd highly recommend it as a holiday vacation] and, somewhat appropriately [and completely by accident] a portrait of simon peter.
he's based on the character i drew in those leeds resurrection pics a while back, and i'm hoping that he'll feature in something else that simon hall and i are working intermittently on at the mo...

both prints are available in my revamped etsy store...

more new prints...

2011-08-13T04:54:00.001-07:00

so here are a few lino prints that i've made based on drawings done on widemouth beach back in june...

there's seven in the series, but a few of them haven't worked so well. these have come out ok though :-)

i've got a couple of sets of all seven to give away so if you want one, leave a comment. the first two'll get a set.

:-)

here come the politicians...

2011-08-11T00:19:00.000-07:00

so now the fires are out and the rioting has stopped [for the mo]
here in leeds there were a couple of half-hearted attempts to get some aggro going, but thankfully nothing really developed.

and now that things have calmed, out come our elected representatives to explain it all to us...
last nite i watched sayeeda warsi and diane abbott bickering on newsnight, and it was an unedifying sight.

the established tactics seem to be - for the tories: state and re-state that the rioters are criminals and scumbags and need locking up, if anyone tries to talk about the underlying reasons for the mayhem accuse them of making excuses for it and condoning criminality, unless the reasons are poor parenting, years of political correctness and the policies of new labour, in which case those are all good reasons and let's discuss those at great length.

for labour: talk about how this sort of thing only ever happens under the tories, talk about the cuts as much as possible, state and restate that the rioters are criminals and not to be condoned then re-state it, then talk about the cuts again.

and so it'll go on. it's hard to escape the conclusion that our mp's first instinct is to work an angle, to try and manipulate the debate to the best advantage of their party and to discredit their opponents, rather than to genuinely engage with the issues and work together to sort things out and make things better. so many of them seem to serve their party first and us a distant second...
this morning a tory mp on the tv talked about the extra officers on duty in the capital "that david cameron organised". it's all just PR and spin...

meanwhile, as the politicians bicker and point the finger teams of local people are coming together with brooms to sweep up and try and put things back together again...

exclusive dad'n'lad prints for sale!

2011-08-10T09:49:00.001-07:00

so after much pestering, all six of the prints that i made of jonah's drawings are done, signed and ready to go.

and here they are, all signed and numbered by him [he's insisting that he's the artist. i'm just the hired hand...]

they're all printed in acrylic and water-based inks on off-white 80gsm japanese paper, and the image size on each is approx 150x210mm...

they're all for sale - 12 quid each [p&p included] or £45 for a set of all six...
we're splitting the proceeds as he's got an eye on an mp3 player he wants to buy before the greenbelt festival at the end of the month.
[it appears that we have spawned a capitalist]

email me if you're interested!

[they'll also be up in my etsy shop when i can get around to sorting that out...]

alex and clyde

2011-08-07T10:19:00.001-07:00

we're back from a week away in Dunoon - more about that later if i get the time - and i'm straight back to work.
[it's my fault - should've done these before we went!]

these two images are for this book - which will be ace. make sure you pre-order a copy :-)

two more prints...

2011-07-27T10:12:00.000-07:00

...again taken direct from drawings left by jonah in my sketchbooks.

the gold one looks a bit gil-scott-heron-like to me, though i doubt joe knows who GSH is...

the green one is a drawing of me, i think, and has turned out very brian biggsy [which can only be a good thing]

apologies for the poor quality of the photos - i'm using photo booth and it's hard to get the lighting right :-(

jonah's drawings as new prints...

2011-07-25T11:47:00.000-07:00

so for a long time now, jonah's been nicking my sketchbook to alleviate the boredom of car journeys and educational trips to galleries [etc.] and filling the pages with these random doodle-sketches of faces and heads. and they're really, really good.

so for a while now i've been talking with him about turning them into lino prints...

today i had a bit of space in the schedule and so finally got around to cutting and printing the first two [with at least three more to follow when i get the chance]

and here they are...

i'm on the national curriculum...

2011-07-25T03:53:00.000-07:00

...not really.

but look here [scroll down to the section on 'why do people suffer?']

more stuff off of the desk...

2011-07-20T00:25:00.001-07:00

on the desk recently...

2011-07-16T01:32:00.001-07:00

[the poetry in that last one is © paul cookson and david harmer]

meantime if you're coming to greenbelt in august [and why wouldn't you?] here is a downloadable timetable for the various visual arts stuff that we have happening in the Hub. hope to see you there!

website...

2011-07-10T01:31:00.001-07:00

i just revamped my website a bit - my first stab at using iWeb.

needs a bit of a tweak here or there, but i'm relatively happy with it, for now...

on the desk recently...

2011-06-28T12:01:00.001-07:00

been working on a comic for poets paul cookson and david harmer.

their 'spill the beans' show is great - if you're looking for a couple of poets to inspire the kids at your local school, i'd recommend them very highly :-)

british people in hot weather [3]

2011-06-08T13:23:00.001-07:00

[i'd decided not to draw on the beach this year, but couldn't help myself in the end...]

british people in hot weather [2]

2011-06-08T13:21:00.001-07:00

more beachfolk...

british people in hot weather [1]*

2011-06-08T13:16:00.000-07:00

drawn on widemouth beach, cornwall. the car temp gauge read 30C as we were leaving......

* top tune by the fall - well worth seeking out... :-)

work in progress...

2011-05-24T14:55:00.001-07:00

end of line SALE...

2011-05-16T09:22:00.000-07:00

i just noticed that on sunday [may 22nd] the listings for a whole load of the bus prints in my etsy store expire [ie they won't be available anymore]

this also coincides with me needing to a) stimulate some cashflow and b) free up some storage space in the office, so i'm encouraging everyone i know to pop over there and have a look at what's available.

it's all very reasonably priced [especially now that all the prices have been converted to great british pounds and pence] and there's even a handy discount option - just use the code LEEDSBUS66 when you buy and you'll get a whopping 20% off. bargain.

please feel free to promote this offer to all your bus-inclined friends and family members...

ta!

the latest dr who prequel...

2011-05-02T14:34:00.000-07:00

M1 journey linoprint paid forward thing

2011-04-25T04:02:00.000-07:00

so here's the Fb pay-it-forward thingy [see previous posts] that gav and pips just got from me...

last year we took eddie to a christians in sport camp down at repton school [which is a pretty amazing, hogwartsian kind of a place] and i was a bit nervous for him, in all honesty.
to distract myself, i started drawing the drivers of cars that we overtook on the way down. and then, on the way back, passengers in the front seats of cars that overtook us [sue was driving]

those drawings have since been worked-up into the little 50x70mm prints that you can see here.

at some point i'll try to get them into shops or via my etsy store or something, but in the meantime i've decided that i'll see if i can sell a few via this blog...

if you're interested, email me - prices are £45 for a set [state whether you want drivers or passengers] or £75 for the pair.
the sets are a limited edition of ten and come packaged up like the ones on the right there [ie not mounted]

important disclaimer - because they're hand-printed, i can't guarantee that every print'll be absolutely identical to the ones pictured here, but then that's part of joy of the thing :-)

easter pic...

2011-04-24T04:31:00.000-07:00

...from the jesus in leeds/stations of the resurrection thing that i did for cpas a while back...

paid forward...

2011-04-18T09:45:00.000-07:00

a while back i came across a rather neat little facebook meme thing - 'pay it forward' - where you offer to send handmade items to the first five folks to comment on a post, in return for them offering the same deal on their FB wall... [i posted about it here...]

so, greenbelt al got some watercolour vikings that i painted a while back and had just rediscovered hidden under the bed, and james c got a print of himself wrestling with a tent.

during the school holidays, i had a little window to get another item done and delivered, and here he is - a simple little wild thing automaton [based on a character from the sendak classic]
you wind the handle and his arms wave in a vaguely threatening manner.

he's now found a home with sara, dan and victor spiderhands where i'm sure he'll be very happy :-)

that leaves just two more handmade 'things' to get sorted, but i've got till the end of the year...

wilderness show...

2011-03-30T07:52:00.000-07:00

Wilderness: An exhibition of Contemporary Art from Alex Walker on Vimeo.

my '40' piece is part of this exhibition.

if you're in the sheffield area, it's well worth a visit :-)

the blue nile in the usa

2011-03-30T01:10:00.000-07:00

i found this little half-hour documentary on youtube yesterday. i have no idea how i've never come across it before.

"...love breaks and your dignity gets drained away. You make mistakes and what you regard as your own faith makes a fool of you sometimes. A hypocrite, sometimes..."

[it's music so lovely and so entwined into my life that i have no defence against it anymore. whatever the opposite of immune is, that's what i am to it]

"The songs will last, i think. Because every time you go back to them you just get the feeling, I hope. And when they get old, it'll just seem like an old feeling..."

unwanted aliens...

2011-03-25T06:00:00.001-07:00

character sketches for a job that's been shelved for the time being [but hopefully not for good]

Slade

2011-03-22T07:48:00.000-07:00

i've really enjoyed doing these over the past few days.
they're maybe not the greatest likeness-wise, but i'm really pleased with them as images. there's something yellow-submarine-y about them, somehow...

wilderness exhibition

2011-03-04T00:19:00.001-08:00

this'll be good, and well worth a visit.

[my '40' piece will be part of the show]

wild things

2011-03-02T12:51:00.000-08:00

i've been lino printing with joe, experimenting with an idea for this year's greenbelt festival where i'm doing stuff in the Hub tent again...

new thing...

2011-02-23T08:57:00.000-08:00

it's only about half-finished at the mo...

lino print process video

2011-02-11T01:23:00.000-08:00

this is lovely. it's sort of hypnotic...
very therapeutic to watch...

Anatomy of a Linocut by Bill Fick from Jim Haverkamp on Vimeo.

via drawn.ca

bus trip 53

2011-02-11T01:08:00.001-08:00

this is the last print; the last remaining image from the bus trip project...

[though it's not from the final journey, because i got out of synch]

there's not a huge amount to say about it - it's just seven people observed out and about from a bus on a relatively balmy night...

like a lot of these prints, it's a bit of a curate's egg - good in parts.

the guy in the checked shirt lets it down i think... the pattern doesn't sit so well with the more solid areas of black in the rest of the print.

trip 66

2011-02-10T00:59:00.000-08:00

so when you take on a little project like this, sometimes the inspiration and the enthusiasm lapse, and you're scrabbling around for stuff to draw and print. well, i was anyway.
so i had these little plans in mind for things that i could do if i was struggling for things to sketch. one option was to draw every animal i spotted, chimneys was one that i did get around to, and drawing an alphabet of fonts from shopfronts was one that i didn't.

this print has one of the classic stand-bys on it - drawing my own hands, drawing.
the bus windows were clogged up with snow-gunk, and there wasn't much to see in the bus that i hadn't already drawn loads before. so there you go.

the left hand is very pleasing; i'm less happy with the right...

and the bloke is just a guy who got on in chapel A... i've made him look a lot more sinister here than he was in real life :-)

future global megastar

2011-02-02T06:26:00.000-08:00

help luke leighfield to "become a global megastar, perhaps like bono"

Luke Leighfield - Introducing 'New Season' from Luke Leighfield on Vimeo.

2011-02-01T00:59:00.000-08:00

the penultimate bus trip of the project.
and it's a bit of a cheat, if i'm honest.
this is an interesting window in chapel allerton, opposite the stop where i got off at the end of the journey.

a while back i had this idea to make lino prints of bits of interesting leeds architecture - the city centre is especially rich in uneccesarily flowery masonry, particularly when you look up above street level and the shopfronts. so i guess this print harks back to that idea and leaves me thinking that there's actually some mileage in it...

luke leighfield

2011-01-31T03:02:00.000-08:00

v much enjoyed ourselves at all hallows last nite - the songs off of gav's golden album sound better with every performance, and luke leighfield was hugely entertaining with big pop tunes plus tales of scottish hitch-hikers, potato facts, essential worcester sauce info, insights into just what it takes to deliver pizza, and theories about socks.

only downside was that i was driving so couldn't attack the pay-what-you-like bar :-(

anyway, here's the new luke leighfield single.

i'd recommend visiting this website where you can download his last album for as much or as little as you like... although the more you pay, the less pizzas he will have to deliver... :-)

st. gemma's

2011-01-28T11:52:00.000-08:00

just got in from an evening at st. gemma's hospice, which is just down the road from us here in north leeds.

it was an evening to celebrate the first official birthday of their young people's services, plus the launch of their new website and leaflets, designed by paul at definitive-creative.co.uk [and illustrated by me]

the work they do at st. gemma's is fantastic, and i met some great folks tonite - staff and kids.

thanks to dan, kerry, chris, michael, cameron and everyone else who made us so welcome there this evening :-)

paying it forward via facebook...

2011-01-27T01:14:00.001-08:00

you may be familiar with this - there's a facebook meme doing the rounds whereby you post an offer to send the first five commenters something handmade during 2011. the deal is that they then also have to post the same offer, so the making and the giving spreads out across the FB community. it's a kind of cool thing to do and i really enjoyed following the trail forward to see where the meme-tentacles had extended to...

i sent out the first two bits of handmade stuff last week.

greenbelt alistair got a set of long-lost paintings of vikings which i wanted to find a loving home for, and james clark got this print - made from a drawing done whilst camping with all our mates last summer.

a little milestone...

2011-01-27T01:07:00.000-08:00

i just printed out and posted invoice no.900

:-)

RE Today 'Expressing Meaning' commission

2011-01-25T02:40:00.000-08:00

last autumn i was asked by RE Today if i'd contribute something for an issue of the magazine and this is the strip that they commissioned.
it's my attempt to answer [or maybe avoid answering?] some questions around faith and creativity and art [with a small 'a'] that they asked.

i'm quite pleased with the way it's turned out.
if you're leeds-based you may recognise some of the locations.

you can find out more about RE Today here and on facebook.

even more bus trippiness...

2011-01-19T01:12:00.001-08:00

i can see the light at the end of the tunnel with this bus project now - having completed these two prints, there are only three left to do now...
and yesterday i was discussing a plan for a low-key show somewhere locally to show them all off and to celebrate the whole thing [more news about that when there is any. don't hold your breath...!]

anyway.

bus trip 60 is one of the smaller ones that i've done - 105x75mm.
it seemed right to do it that size and i'm very pleased with it. it shows the bus stop outside the big new[ish] 'clas ohlson' store in town, where i pretty much always catch my bus home.
i like the big symbols from their window display - the way that they're totally out of scale with the waiting passengers.
they look like some kind of weird alien hieroglyphs or something.

bus trip 63 is from a trip in with eddie to see 'evangelion 2.0' - part of the leeds international film festival...

trip 64

2011-01-17T01:15:00.000-08:00

a cold evening's journey back home, having been to see a movie in leeds town hall with our eddie...

wedding present bizarro gig return bus trip

2011-01-16T06:40:00.001-08:00

this print is from my trip home after a wedding present gig last december...

if you're not familiar with them, the wedding present are a leeds band, fronted by dave gedge, making music that often document a particular male crapness in relationships and their aftermath. [my mate simon h suggested that we prepare for this gig by having pointless arguments with our wives...]

their songs are sometimes poignant, often darkly funny, with well observed and cleverly-written lyrics and back in 1989 they released 'bizarro', an album of indie guitar rock thrashed out at 100mph that soundtracked me through a painful romantic heartbreak, and which became my music of choice during the occasionally bitter fallout...

flash forward to 2010 and this was a sort of homecoming gig, with the band playing the whole lp.
and it was a brilliant night - sort of cathartic for me, with songs that i once wallowed in suddenly sounding all joyous and exhilarating. i was smiling for days afterwards.

in the print here, the grey bloke is 1990-me, surprised at 21st century me. the songs quoted are 'brassneck' and 'take me!' [possibly my favourite wedding present tune ever, a big, exuberant, 9 minute rock-out...]

michael gove's 'english baccalaureate'

2011-01-13T02:57:00.000-08:00

i don't post much of significance on here, and writing's not my forte [i could probably do you a better diagram explaining myself here] but last night we had eddie's yr9 parent's evening [just ahead of him making his GCSE choices], coincidentally on the same day that michael gove announced his swanky new plans for an english baccalaureate qualification, so it's a hot topic for us right now, and i wanted to get this off my chest...

first of all - i've always believed that the school league tables are a load of crap.
when we moved up here sue did some supply teaching and worked for half days in two very contrasting leeds schools. the first was in a very economically deprived area, catering for many families and pupils with social and educational difficulties. in the results-based league tables, the school is routinely placed quite lowly. but sue was hugely impressed with the commitment of the staff, their professionalism and the quality of the teaching there, and came back enthusing about what a terrific learning environment they had created there.
the second school is in a much more economically stable area, and has had good ofsted reports. it usually comes quite high up the league with good results. but [without going into too much details] sue was relatively unimpressed with the place, which seemed pretty complacent and happy to focus on it's reputation rather than it's practice. she certainly felt it could have been doing much more with it's pupils than she witnessed while she was there...
of course that's just a snapshot, but then so are the league tables. that's why they're not to be trusted, even though successive governments have put so effort into promoting them as the primary indicator of a school's worth.

in essence, the idea of the baccalaureate [as i understand it] is one i'd support. if the bacc is a qualification that recognises that a student has had access to and success in a broad and varied range of subjects, studied in some depth then that sounds great to me. because i believe that education is about producing well-rounded individuals who have been given a chance to explore the full breadth of the available curriculum, and opportunites and encouragement to excel in the subjects where their aptitudes and passions lie.

but despite what he might say, michael gove's 'english baccalaureate' - and it's imposition on the league tables - is absolutely not about that breadth and variety of experience and attainment.
instead it looks to me like a regressive promotion of a two-tier academic vs vocational divide whereby schools are rewarded for their success in a narrow range of subjects and effectively punished for their achievements in those areas which the government perceive to be less important.
if gove's baccalaureate was truly about breadth it would have some arts requirement in it. but it doesn't.
the arts [along with many other subject areas] are deemed by the government to be less important than maths, science, english, foreign languages and the humanities.
as a school, if you want to do well in the league then you will now have to promote the bacc subjects and achieve good results across the board there, first and foremost.
and because a low showing in the league is likely to make your school less attractive to parents, and with the cash allocated largely dependent on the size of your roll, there are big implications for future funding there.

our eddie's school [allerton grange, in leeds] has been absolutely fantastic for him, and we have nothing but praise for the place and the staff. it's a school with an arts specialism, and that's one of the reasons it's been so great for him [and us] - it suits his aptitudes and has given him a big variety of great opportunities to explore and develop his creative talents [not least appearing in macbeth at the carriageworks as part of the shakespeare in schools festival last year]
it's also been brilliant in helping him in the more academic and gove-approved subjects too, where he's also excelling. but i fear for the school and others like it. because part of the school's DNA is the promotion of the arts it attracts kids like eddie who have a passion and an aptitude for the arts [actually, "passion" is not a word that you'd normally associate with eddie, but you get what i mean...!]
and those kids will go on to acheive good grades across the arts.
but the 'english baccalaureate' won't recognise those qualifications and achievements in the arts, and the school will be downgraded in the league as a result. it's wrong and it's incredibly misguided; and it seems to come out of our politician's presumption that "hard" academic subjects and qualifications are intrinsically more valuable than arts and vocational studies...

it's making me quite angry. grrr.

and having said all that, here's a link to my good friend steve's blog, where he puts it all much better and more succinctly :-)
there's also a link there to a nine-minute bbc clip of michael gove and a caller sort-of debating the issue on radio 5live.
it's worth a listen. i found our education minister rather patronising, rude and disingenuous in it, but that's just my opinion - you can have a listen and make your own minds up ;-)

three more bus trips...

2011-01-12T01:02:00.000-08:00

so, i'm getting near the end of the bus lino print project thing.

the bus-travelling part of it ended on december 21st when i made my final journey of 2010, back from chapel A having bought sue her christmas present. that's trip no.71 - see above.

trip 68 was a journey into town with eddie for the sunday service - not, you may be sad to learn, a religious gathering, but the rather brilliant acoustic night put on by mr barnaby aldrick at the call lane social bar in leeds city centre. it was snowy, and cold, and the bus windows were all smeared with condensation and road-filth, so it was hard to draw anything in much detail...

trip 69 was the journey back. it was so cold that even on the bus you could see your own breath and despite appearances, we were both pretty cheerful, if a bit knackered. i may revisit this print and re-do it, with a few little alterations. i'm thinking that i might add some text and maybe tweak my glasses a bit.

the bus stop in no.71 isn't the one that i caught the bus from - it's the one across the road [just down from the library in chapel allerton, sort of opposite the seven arts bar if you're interested...]

i've never really enjoyed drawing trees much - trees, foliage or general landscape.

but i like the way that this one has turned out...

the 47th bus trip...

2011-01-03T10:04:00.000-08:00

i may have blogged about this before, but a while back i came across an interview with billy childish where he talks about the theory of 'ruckenfigur' - compositions in which the viewer sees the figure from behind and is invited to share in the view that the subject sees.
it's relevant to a lot of these bus prints as i've inevitably ended up drawing that back of my fellow passenger's heads quite a bit.

that said, i've shied away from showing much that's going on outside the bus, probably because there's not a huge amount of dramatic landscape to draw between here and the city centre; often it's dark out when i'm travelling; also because the scenery flies past a bit quick to draw clearly; plus sometimes the windows are so steamed up and/or grimy that you can't see much through them anyway...

so this was an attempt to do something ruckenfigur-y. and i quite like it.

more bus trippiness...

2010-12-29T12:13:00.001-08:00

the first one from august 24th was a bit tricky as my drawing at the time was a bit uninspired and i was in a flat-out rush to buy camping supplies in readiness for greenbelt - feeling very unprepared and a bit all-over the place and not really in the best place mentally with the whole project. turned out ok though i think. i like the way that the check pattern repeats across the two figures' clothes.

the second is from a trip into town with jonah to get the train to barnsley. i was a bit migraine-addled, which was why i wasn't driving. joe drew the pics for me as i couldn't focus on the page too well, and this is basically an enlarged version of the sketch he made of a kid on a bike outside the shops opposite eddie's school.
he can really draw, can joe :-)

upside down christmas...

2010-12-23T01:49:00.000-08:00

i have a confession to make - i'm not feeling very christmassy this year.

some years it's like that i guess - work piles up, there's too much stuff to do and even though advent is a time for waiting, and for preparation, somehow there's just no time or space to focus on what it's actually all about.

so today i've got all my festive music on itunes shuffle and will be trying hard to get into a more yuletide-like mood.

one of the tracks that will probably come up is this mp3 which i wrote when we lived down south and which leesun and justin then recorded for us a few years back [for a revive advent event up here i think...]

it chimes in with something that simon hall and i have spoken about a few times recently - written right through the whole jesus-story is the idea that wherever he went and whoever he met, christ turned everything on it's head.
i like that idea a lot.

and so i'm left wondering if maybe i need my life turned a little bit upside-down a bit this christmas :-)

two more trips...

2010-12-13T04:31:00.001-08:00

more album artwork...

2010-12-08T12:40:00.000-08:00

go have a listen here...

album cover...

2010-12-08T10:01:00.001-08:00

bus trips 57 & 61

2010-12-08T00:55:00.000-08:00

i'm still way behind schedule with these bus prints.
there are currently twelve of them waiting to be done!

but, as i only ever planned to do this for a year, the end is in sight... :-)

here's the latest two - smaller than before as my stocks of lino are running a bit low...
this is another view of an almost empty bus. when i've done these before i've used more colours, this is an attempt to see how it might work with line and a single colour...

this is a girl i spotted outside thomas danby college on my way into town. it's a good place for people watching, even from a passing bus, as the students hang around outside a lot and you get to see a lot of tribes all gathered together in one place. when i was [a lot] younger, a shop near my saturday job in leicester had a pair of boxer's boots in the window and i really loved the look of them, whilst knowing that i'd never have the courage to buy and wear them in public. they probably didn't do them in size 12 anyway :-)

parable...

2010-12-03T11:35:00.000-08:00

this new anthology looks pretty great.
it's been in the offing for a couple of years now and after a series of publishing hassles and delays it's finally arrived...

looks like you can buy it from here...

there's already a second volume in the pipeline and i'll have a piece in that [written by caleb monroe]

etsy discount code...

2010-11-24T03:13:00.000-08:00

apologies for these etsy-related posts but i'm trying to sort my store out a bit...
and so i'm just trying their automated coupon deal out - if use the code LEEDSBUS66 when you buy stuff from my etsy store you should get a 20% discount...

bargain!

bus trip 55. errr...

2010-11-23T03:12:00.000-08:00

so this is a bit of a weird one, and probably needs some explanation...

firstly, i lost the details in a sketchbook somewhere, so i couldn't find the timings to include on the print :-(

but it was a trip into town with jonah to buy boots, and i was pretty uninspired with the whole project at the time - the journey and the route and the bus itself all seemed a bit dull and over-familiar. and i was having this conversation with joe about what the worst disaster might befall us on that trip - i was thinking crazy-amazing disaster movies, hence this image.
and jonah's [very much] worst-case-scenario for the trip was that dennis wise might get on and come sit next to us...

thankfully, the journey was very uneventful.
[it didn't actually happen. honest. there were no actual alien squid. or meetings with short, unpleasant ex-footballers]

so this print is made up of two separate blocks - one in two colours to create the green layer and then a block for the black over the top...
i cocked up with the lettering a bit, so that's not come out quite how i'd have liked it.
and there are some lessons to be learnt about positioning the black layer if/when i try this again...

so i'm not overly chuffed with how it's turned out, in all honesty. but then part of the project is to show everything, the good and the bad, and to learn from both...

dank and cold. bus trip no.62...

2010-11-22T01:23:00.000-08:00

work's got all hectic again, but i eked out a little time this weekend to make this print - it's a bloke i spotted leaning up against a bus stop on my way home from town. it's pretty simple, but i quite like that.

i've been adding a little mars black into the colours that i'm mixing up for these recent prints and it seems to work well, muting them down a bit without muddying them too much.

and the lettering's quite pleasing on this one.

lovely freebie music about women called Gloria...

2010-11-15T08:19:00.000-08:00

i heard a track off the 'jonny' ep on marc riley's 6music show the other week and tracked it down here... jonny are norman blake [teenage fanclub] and euros child [gorky's zygotic mynky] and if you like either of those bands, you'll probably love this. it's quite slight, but great.

also available for download is a demo from leeds band 'the rosie taylor project' who i like a lot - you can grab it from here...

fold-up comic print thingy...

2010-11-12T11:01:00.001-08:00

bus trip 51 - colours and layouts may differ to the one in these snaps...

and i need a shave...:-)

last-gasp etsy plug...

2010-11-11T03:58:00.000-08:00

so, earlier this year i set up an online etsy shop to see if i could sell some of my bus prints.

whilst it's not been a roaring success, it was worth doing i think, and i just noticed that on the 27th of november [ie in a couple of weeks] a whole load of my listings on there expire and i'll have to renew them...

so here comes the big advertising push...

why not bob over to the shop there and have a browse, and maybe buy yerself a print or two?
they'd make ideal christmas presents for all your print-and/or-bus-loving friends and family members...

and also, as a little incentive, the first dozen or so buyers before the 27th will also get a bonus copy of bus print 51 [which won't be on sale, so it's kind of exclusive] - a little printed fold-up comic of six bloke observed from the number 3, early in the afternoon on august 24th... bargain!

2010-11-09T01:30:00.000-08:00

a quick advert for all northern-types - i just recently iworked on this leeds charity advent calendar - it's a quid [bargain] with scratch-off panels that reveal thoughtful stuff to do each day through december. and all the cash raised goes to local charities [as listed on the back]

ok comics are stocking it, as are a number other retailers throughout the city...
go seek one out!

[it seems that i am not the only public-transport chronicler...]

2010-11-01T07:26:00.000-07:00

these are very lovely...

two more prints...

2010-10-30T06:04:00.000-07:00

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...

2010-10-23T06:12:00.001-07:00

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...

2010-10-21T05:37:00.001-07:00

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...

2010-10-20T02:10:00.000-07:00

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...

2010-10-18T10:54:00.000-07:00

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... :-)

2010-10-18T02:29:00.000-07:00

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...

2010-10-13T04:22:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-09T13:31:00.000-07:00

this is also pretty awesome.

this is great...

2010-10-04T13:34:00.001-07:00

eighties footy caricature help required...

2010-10-01T06:58:00.000-07:00

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...

cave refectory road

2010-09-26T08:13:00.000-07:00

can't wait to get a copy of ian adams' new book, cave refectory road.

jonny baker reviews it here...

summer's over...

2010-09-13T14:04:00.000-07:00

...and in truth it kind of passed me by.

work-wise this year has been one of feast and famine - barely anything coming in between last november and this april, but a positive glut of stuff since the beginning of may. the poor start to the year has left me playing financial catch-up, so i've not really been able to turn much down.
and cashflow issues mean that even whilst i've been working absolutely flat out, fifteen and sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, the bank have been sending doom-laden and threatening letters.

the bulk of the work over the summer has been a series of six educational book projects, and the final artwork deadlines for these have all fallen in the last four or five weeks. factor in a week away in wales and greenbelt* and it's been a real challenge to get everything done; well and on time. but today i finished the fifth job and began inking on the final one - a day and a half ahead of schedule.

the end is in sight.

and when it's all done i'll be taking a few days out to catch up on the bus prints, and i'm really looking forward to that...

i'll maybe post some images from these books sometime soon, though sadly i'm not allowed to upload some of the best images until after their publication... contractual restrictions and all that...

meantime, i have some work in the first issue of this new magazine.
well worth a look, though be warned, it is a bit NSFW :-)

*more about greenbelt soon.

sign the petition, save the arts [watch the david shrigley video]

2010-09-13T04:45:00.001-07:00

greenbelt comic...

2010-09-05T15:42:00.000-07:00

while we were at greenbelt, we made a comic.

it was written by mike maddox, illustrated by a range of festival punters - amateurs and professionals alike - expertly assembled by john lloyd, and printed as a supplement in the festival paper which was handed out on the monday morning.

it was lovely and remarkable and you can get it as a download here

lack of posts...

2010-09-05T15:09:00.000-07:00

...there's not been much on here for a while - that's down to a caravan holiday in cardigan bay [cardigan bay good, caravans bad] greenbelt [more about that later, if i can wangle the time and assemble my thoughts into any kind of order] and a ridiculous workload which has seen me working 16 hour days, seven days a week since the middle of july.

it's not good for the soul, but it will appease the bank manager [who was getting a bit snotty with me for a while]

it's also not good for the bus prints project as i'm not getting out and about much [just the two journeys during august] and have found myself with a backlog of 30-odd prints to cut and make [i just don't have the time spare at the mo to get on with them - paying jobs take priority]

in lieu of anything more exciting, here's some photos from cardigan bay.

normal service will be resumed at the end of the month, when the deadlines are met and i can get back to worrying about not having enough paid work on the books again... :-)

on the desk recently...

2010-08-03T06:02:00.001-07:00