for the group blog, DOODLE CABOODLE. the topic this time round was 'dream', which seemed like the perfect excuse to draw semi-submerged-bald-statue-men andOH HAI I THINK I SEE A MOTIF APPEARING. LOL WUT A HACK.

aaaaand in the spirit of blogging about things waaaaaaaaaaaay past the fresh news expiry date, this happened:



so a while back ben folds, amanda palmer, neil gaiman, and damian kulash (of ok go) got together and decided to collaborate on album as part of the ReThink music conference. they gave themselves eight hours to put it together from scratch. and all the tracks were going to be based on suggestions from twitter.
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HOLY MOLY, THAT'S BALLSY. but in the end, they got a totally fun package out of it. check it!

our holiday homework this year is to produce a 'body of work that explores who we are as illustrators'.
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a bbbooooooooooo. this is the kind of stuff that totally makes my toes curl. also, totally void of any idea as to how and make this clever and interesting but oh well, what the hell. it's man the fuck up and get on with it time. in the end, it's probably just going to be a load of random shit like this that rips into my failings because that's just how i roll :D

gotta say though, i am super pumped to see what everyone else is going to do for this.

gah. totally in a pinch as how to draw the little heads on the side so tried out a bunch of styles. if you guys have any thoughts, please feel free chip in and i will love you forever.

GOOD MORNING!

there were some pictures here, but now they're gone.

'painting' over other people's drawings is a bit surreal but my god, it's so so so nice to be in a work environment around other people again. and as much as i love you, drawing-board in my room, you can be a bit of an island.

*BONUS ROUND*
since this post was as dull as a butter knife, here's the obligatory 101 links to things you should check out:
EPISODE 218: with special guest PETE HOLMES if you like to listen to people ramble about movies, these guys are totally fun.


totally impulse bought this album on the basis of this one song because it's just goddamn funky but alas, none of the other tracks on 'treats' sound anything like this. the rest of that album sounds like FIGHTIN' ROBOTZ WITH LAZORZ. i still can't work out if that's totally awesome or not.

just a heads up. what follows is a totally waffle-y piece of waffle that ran away with itself and has nothing to do with cowboys. there are, however, some links to some rather dope art blogs that are TOTALLY worth checking out.

***
booked in to work again this week. a while back, i got an email out of the blue from JESS LINARES, who i haven't seen sine we did our foundation at camberwell. if you're stilll reading this, go back and click on that link. girl has CRAZY talent.

but i digress.

ANYWAY, she hooked me up with some rather nice chaps who farm in folk to do things like storyboard commercials for them and what not. i did a stint with them a while back and apparently didn't fuck it up too amazingly because they asked me back this week to help out with some colouring in (dear jess and freya, i take back every crack about geography ever).
it is a tiny bit terrifying though. one thing i learnt from the last time there was my photoshop skills are totally dinosaur. these people were doing RIDICULOUS things with image manipulation that probably saved them 900 hours and resulted in super nice, super crisp pictures (which is totally what their customers are looking for).
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i don't know how to roll like that. but it did bring to mind a totally awesome blog post written by recent middlesex graduate, HOLLY EXLEY. read it HERE. she raises some very interesting points about how well these degrees are actually preparing us for the real world. you should read it.... and then go marvel at her totally sick watercolours.

***

wow, sorry. that was a little bit tl;dr. the super rough cowboy doodles are thumbs for a poster gig (not to be confused with a gig poster. my god, i would give my eye teeth to work on something like that). holy shit. i NEED to find the time to nail this bad boy. this summer is severally schooling me in the fact that i CANNOT juggle projects at all.

speaking of summer, do you remember when it used to look like this?:


god fucking damn, i want to go play with my camera.

sketch book stuff. currently running through it and polishing some pages up because i'm neurotic like that. also, it's an excuse to get the water colours out.
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and draw ugly mermaids.

for our group blog,THE DOODLE CABOODLE. theme this time round was "If one of my bodyparts was a ______". this one's for you, twat-tastic MC. a while back, we went up to oxford for the vaudeville rave. the music was totally aces and everyone (bar us) was fabulously dressed. but the guy running the show. oh my god. everything he said took like 9,000 HOURS because each sentence had to be punctuated with a flurry of noises that sounded like android hell.

it was... mildly frustrating.


p.s while i like to look all sophisticated and intellectual posting links to ted lectures and documentaries about economic meltdowns, my real bread and butter is super dorky podcasts about THE nerdiest shit you can imagine. the NERDIST PODCAST is one such show. but oh my god, this thing is hilarious.

a big old sploge of work stuff. mysterious, out-of-context boxes! what secrets do you hold??
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i guess you'll have to wait till it's done till you find that one out.

ANYWAYS, remember that totally heart warming story about the time they let us paint the university red (and black and blue and yellow and any other colour we thought to bring with us)? well, turns out some genius in management decided that it was ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to white wash the place the next day. even though they're demolishing the site pretty much right now...

wack.

oh well, at least we'll always have the photos on facebook.





p.s watched this superbly put together documentary about rand-inism and how it tied into the economic meltdown. you should give it a go. it's TOTALLY facinating:

so a while ago, i was asked if i wanted to take part in an anthology the good folk at the comic book alliance were putting together called the spirit of hope. the book was, in the words of the cba, to be "...a unique anthology of short stories from the world’s greatest creators dealing with the impact of disasters on people’s everyday lives. Creators include Liam Sharp, Henry Flint, Nick Abadzis, Glenn Dakin, Mark Buckingham, Al Davison and Peter Hogan with stories covering all aspects of human life in the face of catastrophe. The collection comes in two editions – one with a beautiful Jimmy Broxton cover and a second with a cool Michael Allred cover. All profit from the title will go to help disaster victims via Second Harvest and the New Zealand Red Cross."

these guys managed to put this thing together in record time considering over 90 artists and writers donated work to it. the book is currently taking PRE-ORDERS and should be coming back from the printers in a matter of days.

the rest of the self initiated pages.

*note to self. find the time to finish this off.

kudos to miss griffiths who, as of last saturday, vanquished her german and french degree at oxford. we celebrated by drinking a lot of shit champagne. it was well classy.


OLD NEWS TIME!
as part of the end of the year/we're bulldozing the shit out of your campus celebrations, the powers that be granted us leave to run riot through cat hill armed with all manner of things that make marks. holy shit. it was so, so great watching people just go to town on the place.

work and HEY DUMBASS! WHERE THE WORD BALLONS GONNA GO?!?

on a totally unrelated point, i needed to learn how to do this like 5 minuets ago:

for our group blog. this week's theme was black and white. for some reason, gnarly monsters seemed to be the OBVIOUS thing to do.

speaking of gnarly monsters, i know i'm totally late to this but oh my god. the video for MGMT's kids is the most glorious, freaky shit.

we were in a totally cheesy club last night, and suddenly this thing comes on the screen that's like the bastard love child of labyrinth and john carpenter's the thing. it was kinda amazing.

WALK OF SHAME! actually, that's wholly appropriate seeing as i only managed to get a shocking 2 PAGES done this week. poor form, moore.

IN OTHER OLD, OUTDATED NEWS:



so a while back, we went to the macmillan book prize show. as mentioned before, HECTOR got his ass shortlisted which is totally awesome. speaking of awesome, some of the other entries on show at that thing were absolutely mind-bending. it's a shame the macmillan website has ABSOLUTELY NO COVERAGE OF THIS COMPETITION WHATSOEVER since this stuff totally deserves to be seen.

being anal, i did some rooting around and found some websites you should most definitely check out:
http://emmabennettillustration.tumblr.com/
http://cargocollective.com/naomijonesillustration
http://elysdolan.blogspot.com/
http://vanyanastanlieva.blogspot.com/

coloured pages from the self initiated. i thought i was going to get 24 of these licked. i did 5. ah well, win some-lose some, right?

it's a bugger though. moseying through SKOTTIE YOUNG'S totally badass blog (speaking of, why are you still here and not checking that shit out? it's HOT!), i came across this pearl of wisdom: that you draw things differently depending on how you're planning to colour them.

this kinda sorta totally blew my mind.

i guess before this, i'd put ALL the emphasis on the drawing and left colouring as an after thought. but thinking backwards like this could lead to such richer results. take water colours- you can actually do so much of the form building with them rather than over-saturating a picture with too many lines. this is something i deffinatly need to remember; such an anal control freak when it comes to drawing and OH MY GOD, THIS IS SO BORING. HERE'S A PHOTO OF SOMETHING FUN INSTEAD.