More Sharple Boone...

We now have a new website to promote the Sharple Boone comic!

Head along there for more preview pages, fll synopsis and details of how you can help to get this project completed!

The Sharple Boone Conundrum

After a couple of months work and another couple of months of submitting it to publishers I've decided to upload a couple of pages from the comic I have been working on with the incredibly talented David Drake.

The Sharple Boone Conundrum is currently on pretty much every comic publisher's slush-pile so we'll see what happens there!

The rest of my website has had a little bit of a tidy and there's a few more recent bits of work up, so have a good look around whilst you're there!

I'd Like To Tell You About The Book I Read...

The start of a new series of work (it all helps to keep me off the streets) in which I avoid all that hassle of applying for actual work at a publishers and just pretend that's what I do anyway.

Well, sort of. As I read books I can't help images popping into my head that could be covers - especially so when the cover is crap. Far, far too much use of standard Getty Images photos for my liking these days. So what you have here is an indulging of that urge, coupled with what will hopefully be viewed as a tribute to some of my favourite writers.

The full set can be viewed on flickr at the above link.

The Rialto Cover!

The new issue of the fantastic Poetry magazine The Rialto is out now - featuring a cover by me!

Been a fan of the magazine for a long while now, and I'm over the moon to be the latest cover artist - pick up a copy now!

Tarot

Today I started a series of works based around the iconography and symbolism of the Tarot deck.

This all sort of spun out of an idea I had for a comic strip or at least a narrative series of work which was going to be themed around Tarot and how the iconography relates to current events, e.g. The Tower and it's application to the attack on the World Trade Center. All well and good, but I'm not primarily a writer and aside from a few snapshots of images I had in my head it was far from being anywhere near complete.

Time is money as some idiot said, and this is a bit of a pro-bono project, so I decided to use the snapshots I had prepared and directly apply them to the Tarot deck. Time will tell if I can get through the 21 Major Arcana (let alone the full 78 cards in the Tarot deck!) but already it would be nice to see these printed as a set. We shall see!

Penny Arcade Record Bags

These little beauties were hand-screenprinted to help promote the Penny Arcade night.

They're limited to a run of only 30, and some have already been given away as treats for people attending the night so don't delay if you want one!

Grab them via my Big Cartel store: http://petitmal.bigcartel.com/

SOL MACHINA - Folc/Psyc/Roc Mix

As a special insert for the THE RUMSEY WELLS Rumsey Times I have put together an hour long mix of folk, psych and psych-rock inspired by late evening sun, hidden rituals and dream flora.

Get the mix at the above link, and head to the Rumsey to pick up a free promo poster for the mix!

This is a joint Penny Arcade and Petit Mal - Illustration venture!

The Corn Bride

New piece dedicated to my beautiful, creative and slightly mad fiancee Beth.

Two for Joy

Here's the new poster for our regular DJ night, Penny Arcade, inspired by old-school cut and paste and psychedelic posters.

Head along to our Facebook page (link in the title) for more info!

Screenprint in INTO-Giving Charity Auction!

I have a screenprint in this years INTO-Giving Art Ball to help raise money for the building of an Orphans and Vulnerable Children’s Centre in Lusaka, Zambia - if you fancy bidding on mine or any of the other fantastic works of art up for grabs then head along to the Sainsbury’s Centre for Visual Arts on the 9th September!

http://www.artballnorwich.co.uk/

Mural completed for the current run of ShopArt! - up now on Castle Meadow, Norwich (just next to Maplins).

Confronting the Danger of Art

Images from a Pamphlet I’m working on in collaboration with the poet Ian McLachlan.

The pamphlet is based on Public Information Pamphlets which were prevalent (certainly in the UK) around the 1970’s. These pamphlets were on a range of topics concerning safety in and around the home and in general worked by reducing uncontrollable events (such as a nuclear attack) to a series of easy to follow actions. They were weird though, placating and patronising and with a hefty dose of fear mixed in.

Our Pamphlet is based upon the idea that the main danger facing the public today is that of art. This creates a nice little paradox and has provided really fertile ground for me and Ian to work on.

Currently I’m about a third of the way through, then there’s printing and so on, so don’t expect this very soon. More, as soon as we can!

More self-negotiated fun

Another piece done purely for the fun of it. This one is worked up from an old Scouting annual I found in a charity shop. I want to hold a fox.

Work on three pamphlets/zines (whatever you want to call them - I guess 'zines' is wrong as none of them will be done on a photocopy type ethic) concurrently at the moment, the 'Broken Homes' one is nearing completion and should be available in my store soon. The 'Revelations' one is a little way off still and the other one, well that's a little bit of a secret and special collaboration with the fantastic poet Ian McLachlan.

More to follow as and when. Get out in that sun!

That's My Game!

Portrait of Will Ferrel, for no good reason other than I love him and I love drawing.

Etsy Store now open!

I have opened a shop on Etsy so head along there to buy prints (and more in due course)!

Feel free to contact me if there are any other images from my website you would like a print of and I'll happily get those listed too.

In other news, I am also taking part in the Open Submission Screenprint show at Stew Gallery in April - more info here. The piece I'm submitting is above, a limited edition hand-screenprinted exploitation themed number - you can buy one in advance of the show from my Etsy Store.

Lovely!

Revelations and Golden Homes

I'm busy working on two series' of work which I'm hoping to collect in some form of book/zine (tbc) by Summer this year. One is based around The Revelation and all the crazy imagery that's in there and one is based on a stack of 1970's home improvement magazines I picked up from a charity shop about 8 years ago. Both are ideas that have been rattling round my head for a while so it's nice to have the time to get cracking on them.

ShopArt!

I am over the moon to announce that I have been selected for the next run of ShopArt! exhibitions.

ShopArt! is a fantastic rolling series of exhibitions taking place in empty and unused shopfronts around Norwich city centre. In the curent economic climate, what better use of empty stores is there? Filling in the gaps with interesting and exciting framed and installation works.

More info can be found at the above link.

More work on my website and I also have a new Facebook page - so come and follow me there. I intend to use it as a(nother) way of updating people on any prints, exhibitions and the like without the formality of a mailing list.

Work Update...

So... working away on a few things at the moment. The website has been updated with a few new bits since the new year and there'll be more of that to come.

Currently I'm working on a series of images which will be an opportunity for me to return to my favourite medium, screenprinting. I envision this as an ongoing series of pieces around the themes of childhood, 1980's safety videos and nature.

Also, I am very excited to be starting a pamphlet/book based project, helmed by the lovely Jon Stone and Kirsty Irving. The project will involve a collaboration between myself and poet to create a unique publication reflecting the themes of our work. Jon and Kirsty are hands-down the most dedicated exponents of Poetry, with a real hunger and grass-roots drive to get new and exciting work published. And all whilst being thoroughly lovely people. Check out previous projects here...

Ghost Box

Ghost Box is a fantastic record label run by Julian House and Jim Jupp which releases music by a collective of artists (inculding themselves under the monickers The Focus Group and Belbury Poly respectively) inspired by folklore, vintage electronics, library music and 1970's documentary soundtracks.

Every limited release recalls school music room experimentation, school trips to a local woods to collect insects and the long lost safety videos of childhood (learn to swim!), without ever stepping into homage or pastiche.

The packaging is also a perfect reflection of the label's influences. Created by House, each sleeve is somewhere between the covers of science text-books and library recordings. The kind of beautiful object you wish your house was full of.

This mixture of childhood, nature and instructional material really resonates strongly for me and is becoming a nucleus for my own work. Far from just nostalgic reverie, I think there's a tangible sense of what it was like to feel protected and creatively encouraged as a child in Britain.

El Gato Negro

Hey hey,

Long time (again) since posting. Just wanted to draw your attention to the fantastic work of Eric Bonhomme aka El Gato Negro.

There seems to be a lot of work out there that really picks up on a vintage, inky comic style echoing artists such as Paul Pope and Jean Paul Leon (two favourites off the top of my head), but very few have the balls to carry it off.

Eric/El Gato's work never falls into that category; his illustrations are getting stronger each time (as shown by the warm-up work on his blog) and he has a really unaffected, free style. The link above is to his Society6 page, but you can also check out his blog here...