"To hell with reality! I want to die in music, not in reason or prose" - Louis-Ferdinand Céline

I'm working on a large scale portrait of my friend's parents...

Can't Go Wrong Without You

"And illustration? What’s the point of arguing for a resistance in terms of "radical" expression. Illustrator!! Go turn into a bag of worms. Zero future, If they can sell Maikovski like cereal they’ll do it. All artistic capability stops when there’s an ounce of money to be made. All the tutti-frutti ragtail of flunkey editors, art directors, marketing heads, etc. . . . the more chronically conservative they are, the better they’ll rule and the longer they’ll rule. You’ll never stir skulls like these even with an oar. It’s an escalator straight to the basement. You’re not there to dream but to listen to death rattles . - . it’s handcuffs!! Line up on the line!! That’s advertising. "Cafe de la Morgue." There’s nothing any more of intelligence or intellect of interpretation. Radical today? Just another coterie as inbred as the fattest agencies . . . jittering junk-heads, fashionable, flippant and ephemeral as maggot agencies are constipated and conservative. Either you take the position as artist to shoe the stars from another universe or else you ventilate your brains on the options handed you by high geared head breakers. Radical??? Not for long. You’re only a handshake away from being flied down, ironed, melted, glazed, starched, and mashed by these fathers of happiness. It’s no longer noon at 2 o’clock. Tell yourself that the next time you impale yourself on a grain of hope."


- The Brothers Quay (taken from this article).


(I always find the Quay Brother's work such a useful reminder to keep taking risks and not get settled in my ways)

"Respectable people...what bastards!" - Emilé Zola

Lewis recently introduced me to the work of the writer Emilé Zola - at the moment, I have just begun reading The Belly of Paris. I admire his ability to go out and document the world around him in great detail - his books are precious resources, capturing the essence of a place and time before the existence of film. 

You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try.

These are a few examples of illustrations I made a few months ago for a commission. 

The brief was to design a set of characters - Mr and Mrs Farmer, their son Junior, Grandpa, Mrs Farmer's friend and Mr Farmer's colleague, who all discuss the work required of a pharmacist, and what this entails. 

The client stipulated that they didn't want the characters to have any racial resemblance "to avoid an awkward choice". They wanted four double page spreads to convey four conversations between the characters.

I sent the characters, along with a storyboard rough to the client, after which they gave me the green light to continue. That led to these illustrations:

After they saw these illustrations, they changed their minds. Now they wanted green silhouettes based on stock photography instead of illustrated characters. And they needed them by the next morning. Really, I should have told them to find another illustrator at this point - I felt quite depressed thinking I would have to put my name to something so far removed from my own ideas. But I really needed the money, so I was in a bind. I duly sent over these images:

Surprisingly, given that I was asked to use stock photography, they found the silhouettes too "catalogue pose". The woman was too slim for their liking and because she was a pharmacist she wasn't supposed to be wearing jeans. Now they were asking for an illustration of Grandpa and Junior, which they wanted to be "generic yet stylised". It would have been much more helpful if they had sent some sample images of what they thought "generic yet stylised" meant. I sent over this illustration:

After this shocking image, they cancelled the project.

I didn't feel that I was taking huge risks - I was trying to create images that people could relate to - women having tea together, a boy playing with a ball with his grandad.

The client was asking for Grandpa to have a walking stick and for Junior to be in a wheelchair and for the main character Mrs Farmer to be overweight, and for none of the characters to have a racial identity. They were so afraid of offending people, and I found this really sad. I'm sure that people with disabilities don't need characters to be disabled for them to relate to them. And it is terribly patronising to expect a white person to fail to identify with the thoughts and ideas of a black person.

More festive pattern making...

sweet-wrapper blue...

reprising my interest in sami culture and gouache...

Gouache patterns

I've been making limited palette patterns with gouache. (Would love to find a way to get them made into wrapping paper...)

Dreams are illustrations from the book your soul is writing about you - Marsha Norman

(based on an illustrated book I made in a dream)

The Ladies' Paradise

Today I've been experimenting with watercolour.

This is a book cover design for The Ladies' Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames) by Emilé Zola, a novel and documentation of the inner workings of a department store (based on the Bon Marché in Paris), detailing the experiences of the staff and the techniques used to overwhelm the senses, aimed at encouraging customers to spend. (The handrendered typography is based on Zola's own handwriting on the original manuscript.)

New Empress Magazine

I had a nice surprise in the post this morning...

Issue 3 of New Empress is now available from these stockists:

• The BFI Southbank shop in London.
• Wardour News in Soho, London.
• Cornerhouse in Manchester.
• The New Empress webshop.
• The Prince Charles Cinema, London.
• Riverside Studios, London.
• Watershed Media Centre, Bristol.

you-kulele, me-kulele

I've begun to learn the ukulele and because its swiftly becoming my new obsession I decided to make a little information book covering the history of this petite instrument, its ancestor the Portuguese cavaquinho, its close relatives, its place in Hawaiian culture, the basic chords, strumming technique, its popularity during the 1920s with stars like Buster Keaton...but I only got as far as its name: "ukulele" (Hawaiian for "jumping flea") and got so distracted by this little piece of information that instead of the planned information book, I have a little narrative developing, about the peculiar life of a Jazz-age, Gregor Samsa-ish, parasitic beastie.