silver and black art show

I've done a print for the show below. It's a nice big screen print in silver and black and limited to only twenty...printed by Josh Bedford at archipelago works.


click pic to enlarge.

...sailors warning

Here's the second version of the red sky in morning chapter illustration. I've been trapped in some sort of purgatory the past month, drawing pages i feel don't look good enough or ones I've manged to destroy with my own stupidity and clumsiness. I have another two days and then I'm free again to actually carry the story forwards instead of swilling around in a stagnant pool of crosshatching and dots.


click to enlarge.

the wastes of time.

It's been a hellish week for drawing. First i decided to redraw the first two pages of the comic i'm working on because the style was a bit off. I settled into a style and i've always looked at the first two pages knowing i had to tackle them again some time.
....so i spent two days drawing them again. I was about two thirds of the way through and i managed to spill a whole bottle of ink over it, completly ruining it. So now i'm drawing them again. The first two pages have now taken me about twelve days to draw and i'm completly sick of the sight of them.
Below is another aborted page...one i never quite finnished because i found a better way to draw it. I never got around to dotting the 'ng' The second version is much nicer, it's the same but all the text is left undotted and theres lots of shaded cloud obscuring the text.


press big



Here's some more work from the moor in sheffield. Next week i'll be painting an airship on one of the roofs so keep you eyes in the sky.


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Tell him to shove Elgin avenue up his arse.

Please excuse the shoddy photos. These are just raw one's straight off my camera. These are some more photos of the paintings I've been doing down the moor in Sheffield.
I've been painting so much down there I've started to feel like artist in residence. It's a great opportunity for me to get some of these frames painted for the photo comic. I've got loads more smaller bits to paint down there, but I've been busy lately and the weather seems to conspire against me.
The photo comics going quite well. It's hard dealing with narrative and keeping in mind that each frame is a painting in it's own right. The result is more like a tapestry story than a real comic.


clicko to biggo




x phlegm x

Animal rehoused.

The work i had up in Ipswich last month will be going up for a month here in Sheffields old sweetshop in nether edge. Apart from a couple of new screen prints this is the only work I'll have for sale in a long time.

click to super big it



I did some calculations to see how long the rest of my comics going to take to draw...At the rate I've been working...trying to be an illustrator/artist on the side it would take me a year. So last week i bought a calender, some highlighter pens and started a grueling sadist approach instead. If i stay stubborn, eat only beans, keep my house heated by log fires through the winter and watch rocky training montages before i sit down to draw each morning i think i can get it wrapped up some time next July.

x phlegm x

ps. Anyone in the world of facebook, which admittedly appears to be everyone but me, can join the old sweet shop group below. Click the links below for the gallery group and the exhibition event.

Event group

Sweet shop group

...wait for no man

Lately I've been sorting out a few cosmetic changes to the nameless comic I'm working on. Adding illustrated chapter headings, tightening some of the looser artwork and adding pages where need be. All in all I'm quite happy with the way things are going. I've got about forty five pages of it drawn so I'd say it's just shy of half done now.

Below is one of the illustrated chapter headings...the first chapter i think.
click to see in hypervision.



See you.

x phlegm x

The last of the last at last.

I've at last come to the last fifty of my postcard issue. Sadly i ran out of embossed envelopes to put them and it would cost me too much money just to get fifty knocked out. So instead i've had them printed red on white envelopes. Instead of the embossing on the back i got a marker pen and scrawled over them all.

I'll drop off ten at rare and racy and another ten at the old sweetshop in sheffield. The rest i'll keep to sell from my website for a little longer.

click to enlarge.


click to enlarge.

in brine? cluster?

Still no computer. I'm just using a friends to do my blog each week. To be honest it's great not being botherd with emails and the internet for a while. I can just sit, draw and let the world pass me by.
I've been preparing to print the cover of my comic this week, and toying with changing the name of the comic...it seems to have ended up with a the title 'in brine' I need to figure this out sharpish if i'm going to do the cover. I'm officially now one third of the way through drawing the comic and all the pages are roughed out so i can safely say the page count will be around 100.

I'm still painting every week and trying to make the most out of the nice weather before it gets too brisk. Below is another painting from my photo comic.


click to enlarge


I don't demand comments very often but i'd like some feedback on the name...what do you think? 'cluster' or 'in brine' ?

animal house.

I still don't have a computer and so every thing is still in a mess....so this post is better than nothing, and that's the best i can offer for now.

I keep getting asked about exhibitions and if I'm doing any more prints this year. I'll be doing a short run of thirty or forty a3 screen prints some time before Christmas. The only exhibition I'm doing is the one below in Suffolk next week. I'll put up pictures from the show and list the unsold pieces when it's over. So that's it really, i have no plans to do anything other than work on my two books in the sanctity of my house sat by my fire with the cat on my lap. So i doubt I'll be in any shows until next summer now.

click photo to enlarge.




PS. If your in Manchester this week why not go to the urbis and see my favorite gallery 'the old sweet shop' exhibiting work for the buy art fair. They have the last remnants of previous editions of my prints, some budget prints, my comics and even a few original drawings.
There are thousands of people exhibiting and it's chock full of gallery's, so pop in if your about

x phlegm x

dead hardrive.

Sorry for the lack of posting. My computer has died and eaten all my work. It's going to be a few weeks before i manage to get myself level again.

sorry.

x phlegm x

painting trains

I've been busy painting some frames/walls of my comic this week. The moor in Sheffield is in a dishevelled state with a majority of the shops shut ready for demolition to make way for the moor version 2.0. I've been in there sprucing it up with some paintings to stop it getting that ghost town vibe. Below is the initial sketch and one of the first of four long carts pulled by giant odd animals. The moor is a strange place to spend time painting and I've already had some experiences that I'm going to take to my grave. I'm pretty sure they put something in the water down there.

click em to enlarge em






peas snout

x phlegm x

pssst pssst

Here are some more paintings I've been doing for the comic I'm working on.

click to enlarge







x phlegm x

Nothing but blind drunks and foxes.

I'm a bit fuzzy because I've been up all night so I'll keep it brief. Here's a page from my book 'cluster'. bye.

click to enlarge

solvents.

My lack of camera is almost over. I have a charger again for my old camera, so I'm going to use that one again until i can afford to buy a nice new one...so that should be 2013 possibly 2014 if know one buys cluster when it comes out.
Below are a few frames from my photo/street art prog graff comic I'm working on. If anyone's behind on what I'm up to, for some reason i thought it would be a good idea to make every painting i paint on walls a frame in a comic book for the next year or so. I photoshop years worth of work together and it all comes together as a lovely big comic book. Or at least that's what it's supposed to do, most of the time it's just a complete fiasco that melts my mind as i try and keep score of what's done and where I'm up to. I'm hoping I'll get to a point where the clouds disperse and it all starts to come together. fingers crossed.
I'm trying to paint the frames looser than i normally like to paint because most of the pictures won't be printed very big in the book.Some of the key frames will be double page spreads so I'll be cramming the detail into some pages. Anyway, that's enough blah blah blah. BYE.

Animal house

I wasn't going to to take part in any exhibitions this year because I'm working on my book. The problem I'm finding now is that if you sit on your arse drawing a massive comic every day for months on end, you eventually run out of money, starve to death and go mental with cabin fever.
so...I'm just doing the finishing touches to a load of animals painted on wood I've dragged out the sea. I should have about fifteen of them. I'll be putting them in an exhibition in October down in Ipswich. Here's the link to their website with the exhibition details on it, just get in contact with them if you want to go to the preview or know more about what their up to. Animal house
These two are the only ones safe enough to scan without smothering my scanner in yacht varnish. These ones are tiny, only a few inches high.

click to enlarge