whoa. so that december thing came and went, huh? i trust this post finds you having had a very merry christmas and gearing up for some bananas craziness to see in the new year!

this month has kind of been spent somewhere in a black hole of organizing stuff. it wasn't very exciting. BUT! we've pretty much got the bulk of the press out of the way for curiouser and curiouser (the group show opening on the 24th of january that you should TOTALLY cme to. there will, at the very least, be wine- more on that HERE) and things are coming together for the art competition/exhibition i'm helping the twenty something london crew put together ( CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT HOW YOU CAN GET YOUR FINGERS INTO THAT PARTICULAR PIE . we're giving you intrepid art types the chance to be in our two-day show at drink, shop & do and the fold gallery.but wait. there's more. winners will also be featured in macs magazine, fourth and main, sleek and suitcase online. not too shabby, huh?).

BUT ENOUGH ABOUT THAT. LET'S LOOK AT SOME GOOFY STUFF YOU GONE AND DRAWN.YEAH!



jeeze. remember back when you used to draw things with backgrounds? that weren't based on tenuous word play? but yeah, this is the last one of these... well, for now at least. there might be a very long list of potential pun-based doodles sitting in my sketch book. i don't think i can resist them.





front and reverse of a business card for a friend who just so happens to be re-goddamn-diculose at the whole music thing. he's currently renting out his mad piano/saxophone skills so if you've got a wedding/birthday/batmitzpha/book group meeting on the cards that you think would benefit from a little background music, you should totally shout him a holar.


and here's something for all the folk who have been working in retail this festive season. i don't know if this segment of a recent this american life episode struck a chord just because i've been doing the whole day job thing in a toy shop but it's definitely worth sticking in your ears

pun stuff. given the tragically long list of potential silly drawings in my sketchbook, i'm very tempted to try and get enough of these done to make a wall calendar for 2014. who knows. you could maybe even sell them in that etsy store you keep swearing to god you're going to make one of these days...

BUT ALSO. REMEBER HOW I WAS ALL LIKE 'O HAI GUYS WE'RE DOING A SHOW'??

well. what do we have here?



for more information, check out the site for the show: http://curiouserandcuriousershow.wordpress.com/

it should be pretty rad! if you're around on the 24th of january, come on down to the curious duke gallery. it's litrally a hop, skip and a jump from old street tube. there will be wine. not to mention a ton of bitching art.

some stuff i'm working on. WHOA TOOCOOLFORSHCOOLINSTAGRAMALERT:





the first one's acctually licked, but i'm going to need to eat a ton more soup to get the second one ready *hint*possible instillation *hint*

aaaaaand some more doodles/snaps.

despite quite possibly not being what they seem to be, owls make much more co-operative life drawing models.

oh man. i can't even begin to tell you what a trip it was being able to get so up close with these animals.










BONUS CONTENT!

do you like to see terrible things happen to super cute animated characters? then i strongly recommend giving this cheerful youtube jem.



WHA??? PSA FOR RAIL SAFTEY???? BETCHA DIDN'T GUESS THAT ONE COMING!

OHSHIT. IT'S OH-MAN-YOU-HAVEN'T-UPDATED-THIS-IN-A-WHILE-SO-LET'S-STUFF-A-POST-TO-THE-GUNNELS TIME.

depending on how much blogger let's me cram into this thing, this might just have to be a m-m-m-multi-post job.

so.

thing the first!

a few weeks ago, i helped set up a rather unusual life drawing day for the illustration department at that university i swear to god i've left. asides from mike and emma, we had the pleasure of spending the day with a pair of owls, a lizard, a skunk and an armadillo. oh man. those last two were quite possibly the most adorable/impossible to draw things ever (asides from being disgustingly cute, skunks are hyper-drive-active.)

more from the t-shirt/print venture!



…

i may just be using this as an opportunity to indulge my thoroughly shameless love of all things puny.

ON A DIFFERENT NOTE, i have some friends who do the music thing. they're in a band called kaiho. you can follow their antics OVER HERE.

this week they dropped a shiny new ep on their soundcloud and oh my stars and garters is it good. you should give it a listen.

i know i have.

quite possibly way, way, way too many times since downloading it today.


Everything Seems Worse At Night-time (Idiot Brain EP)

If Jesus Was My Swimming Instructor (Idiot Brain EP)

Charango Song (Idiot Brain EP)

Idiot Braine (Idiot Brain EP)

the crazy part is the you can snap this up for the low, low, low price of OH ABSOLUTELY NOTHING AT ALL.

i also had the total honour of playing graphic designer for the ep's cover:




actually, this has been a pretty awesome couple of weeks for my, er… 'photography'. asides from this, a couple of snaps i took of the band gigging cropped up in 'miss robin'- a digital fashion magazine thing. they're part of an interview with sas and and freya and you can give that a butchers OVER THERE.






lastly, a photo i took at amanda palmer's recent koko gig (jesus christ. that was an amazing, intense roller-coaster of an evening) ended up making the rounds on a few blogs. someone even asked if they could buy a print of it which was pretty groovy indeed!





ugh. the stench of self satisfaction coming off this thing is unbearable. oh well. at least you actually have a legitimate excuse for cramming your blog full of photos for once!

so this is part of something in the works. someone got in touch to ask if I wanted to whip up some designs for some t-shirts/prints. seemed like a fine excuse to get some word-play based images off my chest so yeah?

and oh hey, remember this?



it's currently up at the poetry cafe in covent garden as part of an exhibition middlsex put together with poet-come dean, maggie butt. it's part of the book-launch for sancti clandestini, a collection of poems celebrating fictitious patron saints, fully illustrated by the illustration department.

more on that HERE

aaaand if you're feeling like treating yourself, you can snap up a copy from amazon HERE.

the show's running till november 16th so get down there and check out the the rather awesome illustrative stylings of ABI MOULDER, BEN HENDY, FREDRICK EDEN, AMBER COOPER-DAVIES, FRED CAMPBELL and ZANNA ALLEN (amongst a whole host of others) while you can!

since we're clearly just rummaging around in the 'what I did this summer' backlog, here's some more not so fresh stuff. mmm-mmm-mm.

pretty much the moment we were done taking down the degree show, we all got this email asking if we'd like to pitch for a project that... that... oh heck, I can't remember the specifics. all I do remember was that it involved designing a pair of kid- friendly super heroes based on the themes of 'wildlife' and 'transport'.
...
needless to say, my inner 12 year old was all like "OH FUCK YES".







oddly enough, they didn't go for these mal-proportioned submissions. maybe that had something to do with one half of these looking like kraven the hunter and lion-o's unimaginative love child? who knows.

but hey. you got to draw some superheroes, right?

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multi media time! so a few months ago stand up comedian tig notaro performed a set that exploded all over the comedy scene. following a spate of some of the Worst News Ever, ms notaro was diagnosed with cancer. a few days later she went on to perform this.

(the first section of this episode of this american life features a snippet from her set. i've embedded the whole episode though because there's some truly on-the-edge -of-your-seat stuff going in the rest of it)

what a listen. you can get the whole thing HERE I'd strongly recommend checking it out. plus all proceeds from the $5 price tag are going to charity.

till next time...

aaaaaaand here are some more 'boards from that project.








oh! also! in the exciting news department, tales of the forgotten (the anthology richmond and i did a story for) will be BOOKLAUNCHING NEXT MOTHER-FLIPPING WEEKEND AT THOUGHT BUBBLE! i would love love love to be there for this (and to meet all the super great people on the team. and to see some of the amazing guests they've got lined up at the con such as art heroes kate beaton, skottie young, and OH MY GOD FIONA STAPLES.)

here's a very snazzy flyer project architect barry nugget put together:




psst! if you want to reserve a copy (payment by paypal) the prices are:

Tales of The Forgotten £8.50 (92 pages, colour)

to reserve a copy contact barry@unseenshadows.com. or reach him through the Unseen Shadows facebook page or website.


but that's not all on the exciting news front, because next january we're doing a show! myself and a group of middlesex ex-pats, tutors and students are going to be exhibiting work inspired by the works of lewis caroll at the super fly curious duke next january. more details on that VERY SOON but i've finally been able to grab a moment and get started on my piece for the window display we're making. here's a peek:



hmm. now just to do some actual art for it…


so yeah, as you've probably gathered from the links and whatnot that usually accompany these posts, i live on a diet of internet media. i recently stumbled across this series of reviews by the nostalgia chick. here's one in perticular that took a rock to my rose-tinted nostalgia googles. holy shit. the number of times i must have watched milo and otis must rank into the thousands. easily. but never once did it dawn on my five-year-old self ALL THE TERRIBLE THINGS they must have done to those animals.

i also love the fact they made a kids film from an existential japanese piece.

back when summer was still a thing that was happening (long, long loooooooong before this spontaneous winter business. snow in october lol wut?) i did some storyboard for an independent film. last i heard, they were still looking for funding and i can only wish them the best of luck in finding it in these lest than awesome economic times.








a few more of these are floating around in the back logs of this blog...



on a more positive note, DUSTED THE MOTHER LOVIN' ANTHOLOGY LAST WEEK! hopefully there are going to be copies printed in time for thought bubble up in leeds. i'd love to be there for the launch and meet all the awesome folk who busted their asses on the book but i don't think i'm going to be able to make it. boooo. but more on that as it happens.

so since the first 5 pages for the anthology went up over at the unseen shadows' site, posting them here's fair game, right?










more on the story/book here (including a rather swish cover by peter mason)

but seriously, if you have a potter around the site, you can see a whole lot more from the anthology, including a PREVIEW of cy dethan and valia kapadai's story.

man am i digging valia's brush work on these pages! totally jouncing over here to see the final product….

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these two episodes of wtf with macro maron were an excellent back to back of art talk. ugh. conversations about getting creative and shit are totally my jam. give them a twirl and feel enthused.

Episode 319 - Loren Bouchard

Episode 318 - Coop

one of the things i was working on this summer was an animation project with one of the masters graphic design students at the old university. the idea was to produce three 50-page flip books explaining how traditional games from around the world worked to the youth of today.

a possible alternative to angry birds? who knows.

anyway, here's one of them. heads up- it's pretty jerky. probably should have up-ed the frame rate but imovie is a thing that i do not understand:




aaaaaand here's some sketch book stuff:







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while we're on the topic of sketch book stuff, do yourself a solid and check out THESE PAGES FROM MARCO MAZZONI'S MOLESKIN. oh my word, that bird. man does incredible, incredible things with coloured pencils….

so where have you been for the past forever, man?

busy. a while back, i got an email from richmond (raconteur extrodinaire who wrote the story for the robot-filled-romp we did with renegade arts, TURNING TIGER) asking if i wanted to do a story with him for an upcoming anthology.

it goes without saying the answer was a resounding OHELLYES.

the anthology's a collection of short, one off stories expanding barry nugent's unseen shadows universe (more on that HERE ). goddamn, goddamn do i like playing in this sandbox.

here's a page:



and here's some sketchbook stuff:








i'll be posting some more snippets as we go. at the moment desperately hauling ass so the book can be launched at the upcoming thought bubble con.

*******
in other news, massive congratulations to fellow middlesex ex-pat BEN HENDY http://hendyism.blogspot.co.uk/ on only getting MOTHER FLIPPIN' SHORTLISTED FOR THE THREADNEEDLE PRIZE. if you fancy a spot of art, head on down to trafalga square and check it out. it's a _massive_ show with oodles of fantastic work. you can also vote for the people's choice prize *a nudge nudge wink wink*

fingers crossed!