grthink: The Art of Gareth A Hopkins

LFW AW12 Round-up/Round-down

2012-03-05T05:17:00.001-08:00

DR NOKI's NHS AW12 by Gareth A Hopkins

For whatever reason, I couldn't keep anywhere near the same pace this past London Fashion Week as I did for the last one, and in my opinion the images I turned out were a bit weaker than normal.

But I'm going to resist the temptation to bang on about it like a little emo loser and instead share a couple of images that I made from LFW for FUN. This is actually the first time I've created fashion-based images without having a brief or a deadline, and I'm really happy with them.

First is a painting of one of the looks from DR NOKI'S NHS (up there, at the top). I love Noki's work, and have always wanted to create an image which is as lurid and threatening as his fashion work. Whether this is 100% there, I'm still not sure, but taking a few days to work on this paid off.

And secondly here's an image of one of the models from Oliver Spencer's catwalk show. I've never seen a model carry so much disdain for the audience as this guy did, and he instantly became a hero of mine.

Angry Model for Oliver Spencer AW12 by Gareth A Hopkins

I also did my first Fashion Review for Amelia's Magazine this year, for the Asger Juel Larsen VS T.Lipop show, and commissioned some genuinely great illustrations from Sam Parr, Jo Ley, Gemma Cotterell and Lo Parkin. And I wouldn't have been able to get anywhere with it without the support and editing skills of Matt Bramford. I actually think my writing was more successful than my illustration this LFW. Interesting to see how that develops.

Finally, I did an illo for Alia Gargum's review of Sibling, which I took two shots at finishing. This is the first one, which I wasn't happy with at the time, but in retrospect is OK.

SIBLING AW12 by Gareth A Hopkins

Tina Elisabeth Reiter

2012-02-16T04:46:00.000-08:00

Did this illustration the other night, for Amelia's Magazine's review of the London College of Fashion MA Exhibition.

I'm pretty happy with it, as was the designer I illustrated, Tina Elisabeth Reiter, who tweeted her thanks to me. To get a personal thank you from the person you've illustrated is pretty rare, and very welcome -- I think I can count on my fingers the number of times it's happened and I've done loads of stuff for Amelia's in the past. On my part, it was a fun illustration to do -- I really liked the designs, especially the shape of the coat and the use of browns and oranges.

My scanner was refusing to work because it's printer was out of ink, so in the end I had to resort to taking a picture, which while not ideal actually worked in my favour, because it's given the figure an antiqued effect, although it did mean that the oranges which I'd hoped to make really 'pop' went a bit muddy. The background is a colour-altered version of the red one I used for my The XX illustration a little while ago -- making it green was a no-brainer.

That my drawing of the model has made him look a bit more like a young H.P. Lovecraft than I intended is a good example of that whole 'literature and horror creeping in' thing I mentioned in Digital Arts blog post.

Abstract Comics: The Blog

2012-02-14T08:59:00.000-08:00

I've recently been invited by the incomparable Andrei Molotiu to contribute to the Abstract Comics Blog, which is a massive honour for me. The Abstract Comics anthology from Fantagraphics is one of my favourite things, so to be able to get invovled directly with the blog is really exciting. (Thanks to Mike Getsiv for the nudge).

So far I've stuck three articles up, about The Intercorstal, naturally. Here they are:

Intercorstal Page 57 Raw Version : http://abstractcomics.blogspot.com/2012/02/intercorstal-page-57.html
Overview of Intercorstal:Witches: http://abstractcomics.blogspot.com/2012/01/intercorstal-witches.html
Details of Pages 47, 48 and 49: http://abstractcomics.blogspot.com/2012/01/intercorstal-pages-47-48-and-49.html

(I had a pic in) Digital Arts (in January)

2012-02-14T05:15:00.000-08:00

Totally forgot to post this at the time, but back in January, Digital Arts included my illustration of Asger Juel Larsen Spring/Summer 2012 in an article about Creative Trends in 2012. They'd asked Amelia Gregory (editor of Amelia's Magazine) what she thought would be happening with Fashion Illustration in 2012, and she said:

“A feeling of restlessness is prevalent in illustrations which draw influence from the spectre of war and the darker end of literature. Look out for strange and hellish scenes,”

From that, they had a look at Amelia's Mag and pulled out my image (here's the orginal article with some stunning illustrations from Faye West and Gem Sheldrake, amongst others). I laughed out loud when I found out -- for a while I've been conciously trying to make my images LESS hellish and dark. But then I suppose I did go to town on this one -- I've said it before, but the background's made from a very rubbish painting I did of Gravity's Rainbow, for a start.

Still, awesome to have had work on Digital Art's website, and if the trend for 2012 is dark and haunted by the spectre of war, I'm sure I'm very happy to oblige.

Puppets etc

2012-02-03T16:29:00.000-08:00

So, I've been having a bit of a crisis of confidence over the past couple of weeks. Don't know what brought it on, particularly -- one minute I'm bobbing along perfectly happy with my place in the world, the next I'm getting all moody and weird about not being able to draw or something. I think part of it comes from my re-found love of 2000AD and the fact that I've been comparing myself to Simon Harrison and Edmund Bagwell and Chris Weston.

But anyway, pretty much out of nowhere I signed up to do some illustrations for Amelia Gregory's review of The Devil And Mr Punch and did the two illustrations posted here. And I'm totally happy with both of them. They were both done pretty superfast, and without much fuss, which meant I was going by instinct throughout. Reviewing them critically now, there's stuff I would have done differently, but there always is, isn't there. Go Team G, I guess.

Laura J Martin: Part 2

2012-01-13T05:33:00.000-08:00

As mentioned in PART 1 this week I've done two illustrations of Laura J Martin for Amelia's Magazine. PART 1 covers the illustration I did for Richard Pearmain's review of a live show. This part (predictably called PART 2) details the process for getting an illustration prepared for Amelia's review of LJM's album 'The Hangman Tree'.

After the image of LJM playing flute in a wood, I was eager to do something a bit more familiar, and had originally planned to do a 'grthink portrait'. After carefully selecting a photo off of the internet, I sketched out what it might look like, and to be honest it wasn't looking good. I'd suspected as much, to be honest -- my particular style of portrait, with all the lines and black ink and abstract shapes ages women in the most unflattering ways. It's OK with men and animals, they can take a bit of extra age, but I've not found a way to get it to work for women. So I toned it back, and played with some more ideas, sellting on a simpler style where all the work goes into the hair, which is still pretty abstracted.

So, I thought I'd do a more finished version of the simpler portrait, and put in a Japanese-inspired abstracted background, becasue there's a lot of Oriental influences in the music, particularyl because of the flute (also, there's a song called Fire Horse which is about a Japanese lovestruck arsonist). And here came my first mistake: For some bizarre reason, I made the portrait a double, with LJM looking knowingly at her own reflection. I still can't remember why I was so sure that this was a winning idea. Anyway, I did the double portrait, and coloured it in, and here's what that looked like:

After I'd done that I set to doing the background, deciding to use some of the shapes from one of Hokusai's 36 View Of Mt Fuji as a starting point. In the picture below, you can see what that looked like in my sketchbook.

When I tried to combine this new backgorund with the double portrait, I realised a number of things:

1. The new background was too small, and no details showed through from behind the portrait.

2. The lines in the background were too bold, and totally distracted from the portrait.

3. The double portrait wasn't going to work for me.

So. First things first, I deleted the right-hand portrait and moved the border in. Then I played with the background, trying to tile it and layer it and lighten it and darken it and a whole other bunch of stuff, but it wasn't working. So I dumped the background and pulled out another one I had saved. And then considered the space I had, and the sie of the portriat and stuff, and whacked in a light green fade, and was finished.

The lesson I'm going to take from this whole thing: paints. Digital colouring and manipulation is one thing, but in general I get much better results if I've got paint to hand.

Laura J Martin: Part 1

2012-01-13T05:05:00.000-08:00

This week I've done two very different illustrations of Laura J Martin for Amelia's Magazine, and had a range of stuff I wanted to mention with both of them. So in my sporadic series of 'Process and Frustration' blogs, here's what happened and why. The two articles are HERE (live review) and HERE (album review).

I got involved with illustrating Laura J Martin after seeing a callout for illustrators on Twitter. Normally I'm a bit wary of taking on illustrations of musicians, becasue if I don't particularly like the music I find it really hard to build up any enthusiasm for the project. But I took a look at Laura's soundcloud and she had a collab with Buck 65 on there, and he's one of my heroes which made it difficult to say no. And then when I heard the two tracks on there I was really, really impressed and immeidately got in contact with Richard Pearmain, the writer. And from there I was off, desperately eager to impress.

After listening to the tracks on soundcloud and videos on YouTube, I had an idea of drawing LJM (that's what I'll be calling Laura from here-on-in, LJM. It's just shorter, and avoids the chance that I'm getting unduly overfamiliar with 'Laura' or ridiculously formal with 'Ms. Martin') in a forest, playing flute to woodland creatures. I smashed together a pencil sketch of that, during which the 'woodland creatures' turned into 'imaginary woodland creatures'.

Then I inked it, during which I weirded-up the rabbits, added a bit of details to the birds and accidentally gave the big bear/cat thing a beard. I was stymied throughout the inking process by my pens giving up the ghost and the fact that I might have rushed it a little bit.

Then came the colouring. I was without my paints or pencils or anythnig like that, so I scanned it and coloured digitally. After a few false starts I decided to give each element it's own gradiated colour, and ended up with the final image. To be brutally honest with myself, if I'd used paint I'd have been happier with this. As it is, it has a certain charm, but I can't help being reminded of Arabic textbooks from the 90's (maybe a slightly odd point of reference, but an accurate one.)

Turned out that this illustration was to be used in a review of a live performacne, becasue as I sent this image off to Richard, another callout appeared. Eager to exploit the chance to do something I was happier with, as well as use the chance to do two very different illos of the same subject, I jumped for that one. Which I'll detail in PART 2.

Commissions still open

2012-01-03T06:03:00.000-08:00

Here's a picture of one of the commissions I did in the run-up to Christmas, of a cat called Smartie (apologies for the photo quality).

If you'd like a portrait done then get in contact -- prices listed below.

A6: £20
A5: £40
A4: £60
A3: £100
A2: £200
A1: £300

Portrait Commissions OPEN

2011-12-01T05:33:00.001-08:00

So, you've seen my portraits of Winnie The Dog (above), and Frankenstein's Monster, and Marconi, and Sole, and Alan Moore (the little version and the big version) and you're thinking 'Wow, those are kind of neat'.

And then you realise that Christmas is coming, or it's someone's birthday, or something like that, but you don't know what to get that person.

Well, do you know what? You could ask ME to do a portrait of them! Sizes availalbe range from the very small (postcard or A6) to the frankly unfeasibly large (A1).

I'm pretty reasonably priced, too -- the cost will vary slightly on how much work I have to do to comlete, and that can be agreed on nearer the time, but here are some base prices to work from:

A6: £20
A5: £40
A4: £60
A3: £100
A2: £200
A1: £300

I'll include p&p in the price too, and probably chuck in some other stuff I've got lying around at the same time.

All I'll need is a photograph and a little bit of time and I'm good to go

Please email me at gareth@grthink.com if you're at all interested.

On Page 51. Some process.

2011-11-15T04:57:00.001-08:00

I've just posted Page 51 to The Intercorstal blog. It's very chicken based, and that's only really half on purpose.

I was flicking through the sketchbook I'm currently using for pages of The Intercorstal and found some sketches I did of the Stepney City Farm's animals as prep for the Paul Foot Jigsaw Madness flyer a few months ago. There was a page with three sketchy chicken heads on there, all faulty in one way or another (the drawings were faulty, not the chickens) and I thought it would be interesting to use my own sketches as a base for a page, considering I've used so much else recently (P&O brochures and postcards in particular). This is what it look like to start with:

Then I drew a grid over the top of it and set to work. When I was working on the grid I used some smaller, square frames having been really impressed with the layouts in P. Craig Russel's adaptation of The Sandman: Dream Hunters which anxietydescending got me as an early Christmas present. It's pages like this one, courtesy of Comic Book Resources, that I was thinking of:

http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/preview2.php?image=previews/dccomics/vertigo/dreamhunters/SNDDH-2.24.proof.jpg

And then, yeah, I laid into it. Normally I'd work on The Intercorstal while watching TV or a film, but since moving house I've now got a desk to work at, which is much more comfortable, but there's no TV. As background I put on Alan Moore's reading of Unearthing which helped a lot, but there came points when I naturally needed to take breaks to free up some ideas. These ideas came from stuff I had lying around, and their influence is much clearer in this page than in others (which is why I thought it might be interesting).

Here's a run through of what's in there, other than the chickens, that didn't come directly out of my brain:

Top-right panel: There's an eye-shape near the inner border which I took from a Sandman toy that Anxietydecending bought me a while ago.
Centre-left: In the top-left corner of the frame there's a hand holding a box (you can only see the bottom of the box) which I copied from a photo I had of a Communist Chinese statue of a worker -- the dimensions are true to the sculpture.
Bottom-left: A set of lips copied from a photo of a Chinese statue of Marilyn Monroe.
Middle two on the bottom row: Details from the aforementioned Sandman toy.
Bottow row, right-hand side: A line drawing based on a photo of the view through my mum's patio windows. This was the last frame I completed, and I thought the relative simplicity made a nice contrast to the rest of the page while still being full of Intercorstally shapes.

This is the first time I've gone into this much detail of my process on an Intercorstal page -- if you've got this far I'd appreciate any feedback on whether this is something you'd like to see more of? There are still patterns and shapes and characters in this page that I could wang on about, as there are in all the Intercorstal pages, so if there's any interest whatsoever I'll try it again for Page 52.

Frankenstein's Monster

2011-11-09T04:03:00.000-08:00

Click on the image for a bigger version -- you can better appreciate the detail in the shadows when it's up close.

I did this for Ballad Of's Little Book Of Horrors open submission call, which has since been renamed 'Ballad Of Petra Doe'. Because of the conditions of submission I couldn't share it until it either got printed or I found out it didn't make it in... Found out last night that the latter was the case.

To be honest, I wasn't surprised, as it's not quite the sort of thing I'd expected them to include. But I'd set my sights on doing a portrait of Frankenstein's Monster (aka Adam) and this is what happened. I'm still really proud of it, and am really happy I can finally show it off. I still love Ballad Of and think it's a great site and resource, and I'll definitely try to get into the next book.

And I'm looking forward to seeing the finished Petra Doe at the Launch Party - whether I dress up for the 'wake' is still up for debate.

New Intercorstal Pages and other news

2011-11-03T06:41:00.000-07:00

I've added five new pages of the Intercorstal to the Intercorstal Blog, going back to the old numbering system.

The Intercorstal Page 48 - this was originally done as a cover for 'Elipses'

Reverting to the old system has made me realise that these five pages are the first 'old school' ink pages for over a year. Although I've produced a lot of other pages for Collider, Valentine, Witches and About Town they've all used photographs or other illustrations as a base. (I'm not including 'Cloud City', the series of postcards I did, as I'm still not sure what to do with them...).

My target of 96 pages is fast approaching -- the latest 'old school' page is number 49, but that numbering doesn't include all the 'special' pages I've done over the past year. With the amazingly patient AnxietyDecending, I'm hoping to collect what we've got so far as a very limited edition called 'Elipses'. I hope to then use that to weed out weaker pages or trends in the completed pages and then kick off toward Page 96.

As well as this type of page, I also recently won a box of USA ephemera from a giveaway by Kye Sanga on Twitter and have said I'll make a comic out of that, and I'm also working on a comic made from a ten-year old copy of Empires Sexiest Movie Stars.

Gareth A Hopkins VS London Fashion Week September 2011

2011-10-14T05:26:00.000-07:00

House Of Worth Lingerie SS12

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, and elsewhere, but I love illustrating London Fashion Week for Amelia's Magazine. Even with designers I'm familiar with* will throw up totally unexpected things, and responding to those is really exciting.

To make things even more 'interesting', this past LFW coincided with my moving house, a process which took longer than anybody really expected it to. A lot of my stuff was packed away -- my paints and my lightbox in particular -- and I was living at my inlaws' without any dedicated space to work in (I ended up camping out with my laptop and scanner in the dining room most nights). Some of the illustrations were finished either during my lunchbreak or after hours at work, with their oddery old copy of Photoshop but excellent scanning facilities. These restrictions forced me to approach illustration from a totally different angle, and I think that shows in a lot of the images I produced. Some are the best Fashion work I've done, or at least the work I'm happiest with. Some isn't so great, but I'll let the images speak for themselves -- the ones dotted about in this post are naturally the ones I like the most.

I got through a lot of images. Like, A LOT. I'd ideally be doing a seperate post for each of the images, or a paragraph for them as I did in my last post, but with time constraints and everything else gonig on, I can't even post every image. The best I can offer is a few images and a complete list of the designers I covered and links to the respective articles at Amelia's... In some cases, I'll add some comment on how I felt with the image...

I'd also like to take this opportunity to say a big thanks to Amelia for allowing me to carry on drawing stuff for her despite the fact i'm always bloody moaning about one thing or another. And also to Matt, Alia and Maria (and any other writers I've worked with but forgotten) for being amazing to work for.

And so, in mostly chronological order:

A La Disposition Preview (2 illos)
Jasper Garvida Preview (1 illo)
Emesha Preview (1 illo)
Toni And Guy (2 illos) I talked about how much I enjoyed drawing Toni And Guy hairstyles in my previous post, but I decided to take the opportunity to share this image here, too.

Toni & Guy SS12

Bora Aksu (2 illos)
Mark Fast (2 illos)
Jasper Garvida (1 illo) After the success of my drawing for the preview that Amelia's ran (covered in my previous blog post) I was looking forward to this, but somewhere along the line the head went really wrong. I can't help looking at it without seeing Anne Hathaway crossed with Sloth from Goonies.
House Of Worth Lingerie (2 illos)
Jayne Pierson (2 illos) In contrast to my moaning about David Koma (below) I was pleasanlty surprised by my illos for Jayne Pierson. I've illustrated her clothes once before and the result was pretty atrocious, and these images are really strong

Jayne Pierson SS12

James Hillman (2 illos)
U.Mi-1 (1 illo)

Shinsuke Mitsuoka (2 illos) I was really proud of both images I produced for this review, in particular the one I've posted here. Before I saw a preivew photo from the collection I was ready for a night off, but it's rare that I get to do Sci-Fi Power Ninjas (my description, BTW) for Amelia's so I jumped at the chance.

Shinsuke Mitsuoka SS12

Christian Blanken (1 illo) I really like this. And it's totally different to last time I did Christian Blanken, which was very quick and rough with the models have circles for eyes (which was something I was pushing back then). The old one worked really well, but I'm glad I've been able to show another side here.

Christian Blanken SS12

David Koma (1 illo) I was disappointed with myself on this one. I didn't give myself enough time to finish it properly, which was part of the problem. But the other was I wasn't really into Koma's designs this year -- when I've illustrated his collections before I've been really excited, and the results have been good, but it just wasn't working for me this time.
Asger Juel Larsen (1 illo) I was overjoyed with the original ink pencil and ink work I did for this one. Really channelled my love for Brian Bolland, and put me in mind of the biker stuff he did for the Death Race story in Judge Dredd in the 70's. Adding the colour and background stripped some of the impact off. I still love the image, but am sad to have lost the original. But then, that's the first lesson any artist, illustrator or writer should take to heart -- never be precious.

Asger Juel Larsen SS12

KTZ (2 illos) I was lucky enough to be at KTZ's LFW AW11 show earlier this year which blew me away with it's mondrian-inspred stripes. So I naievely thought that their SS12 collectino would be along similar lines. So when I got the images of African-inspired prints which were very detailed, and layered, I balked a little. I think I made the right choice for the image below, deciding to do a really focussed piece on a cap/scark combo. It's one of the things I'm proudest of from this season.

KTZ SS12

Trine Lindegaard (2 illos)
Posthuman Wardrobe (2 illos) Believe it or not, but I often try to be quite light and airy and ethereal in my illustrations, which I finally acheived for these Posthuman Wardrobe images. I think some people saw them as a bit sketchy and un-worked, but I like them.

Posthuman Wardrobe SS12

So, by my count, that's 29 illustrations done, which isn't bad going I reckon.

*Just being able to say 'I'm familiar with partiular designers was unimaginable when I started this blog...

LFW Sep2011 Illustrations for Amelia's Magazine Pt 1

2011-09-18T15:05:00.000-07:00

I love illustrating London Fashion Week for Amelia's Magazine -- get such a mix of styles to work from and the hectic pace suits my way of working -- if I get a long time for a image it goes two ways: stale or perfect (but usually stale) whereas banging out two images in a few hours without really knowing what you'll be doing tends to inspire. Everything stays raw, which is how I like it, but working from images of polished, expertly designed clothes means that the rawness is tempered slightly.

Illustration of one of Toni & Guy's SS12 suite of styles, before I tarted the image up in PS.

I especially enjoyed working on Toni & Guy for this article by Matt Bramford, because drawing hair is one of my favourite things, and it's rare to get to focus on it. I agonised over the backgrounds and levels for about two hours, and you can see both final images over at the article, where they really belong. But I particularly liked the 'tall hair' as it came out of the scanner, which I've posted above... it's not the sort of thing that I'd submit to Amelia's as it's a bit too wonky, but I love it.

I did this image for a preview of Emesha by Amelia Gregory (in an hour, at the last minute), and really love it, even if my appreciation for Abigail Daker's work is a little too obvious (well, it is to me...). One cool unexpected benefit is that the model that I drew added me as a friend on Facebook. So, you know, I did something right.

Also did this image of Jasper Garvida for Alia Gargum's interview with the designer. I was chuffed to bits with the figure -- I didn't need to fuss with it or redo anything on it, it just formed there on the page. Trouble came when I added the background, because as try as I might it just didn't work for me. Which ultimately led to me temporarily returning to my old style of adding the background in afterwards for the rest of Fashion week.

I did some more preview ones earlier in the week and have also done a few more already, but will talk about those in a later post. In the meantime , go and read Amelia's Magazine because it's not just the articles that i've illustrated for which are amazing.

Portrait series - sole

2011-09-12T01:55:00.000-07:00

Now that the Chelmsford Arts Trail is in full effect and I've got my display at Man About Town is set up (photos to come as ssoon as I find the camera cable...) I've decided to do a series of portraits of artists/people I admire. The first is sole, a rapper I've been a fan of for a long time now (about 10 years... goddamit I'm old).

I've posted my first attempt, which will probably act as a sketch and a lesson on how not to go wrong. For one, when I 'finished' it he still had he whites of his eyes, but without pupils looked a bit like a zombie. So I added pupils and any intensity in the portrait vanished. So, I filled in the whole of each eye and now it looks worse -- for one thing, there's a shape underneath the eye on the left of the frame that is eye shaped, so it looks like I've put the eye lower down than I actually did. I'll probably do some work on the shirt, hair and beard next time too.

Anyway, thought I'd share. It's kind of what this blog's for, right?

#A1Winnie Progress

2011-08-26T09:19:00.000-07:00

First picture I took after spending about three hours pencilling and erasing.

Hot on the heels on #A1Alan comes #A1Winnie, which will be my display piece at Man About Town Barbers during the Chelmsford Arts Trail. Here's some WIP pics...

Sometimes I wonder why I decide to draw this way...hand cramp after three quarters of an hour.

I call this area 'The Book Of Eli' because it took the entirety of that film to get done. The film's OK, BTW.

Intercorstal: Open Call for Assistance

2011-08-25T05:55:00.000-07:00

As part of my Arts Trail work, I had intended to get a new, site-specific version of The Intercorstal done. However, time's now running out and I've not made a lot of progress.

The intention was to use photos of my venue (the wonderful Man About Town Barbers) and overlay them with panels to make the comic, much as I did for 'Valentine' and the recently completed 'Witches'. I've got the photos, I've just not got time to do the drawing.

Which gave me an idea... Could I outsource the work? There are one or two people out there who 'get' the Intercorstal, or who are interested in Abstract Comics in general, so could I get them to do one or two pages each? Which is where this request comes in.

Would YOU like to do a page of the Intercorstal? All I can offer in return is a copy of the printed comic, full credit, and the chance to work on something fun that you might not have done before.

If you do want to help, please email me at: gareth@grthink.com

I'll send you a JPEG for you to work on, you do some stuff and send it back to me. You'd have to work pretty fast -- any entries not returned by the 5th won't make it in, unfortunately.

If you do happen to be new here, some pages from the Intercorstal can be found here: INTERCORSTAL BLOG

Any takers?

Dumbassery

2011-08-21T15:50:00.001-07:00

Edit, Monday Morning: This is all cleared up now, and the illustration's going to be used. Doesn't make me any less of a dumbass, but does make me feel a little better.

On Friday afternoon I picked up a callout from a new writer for Amelia's Magazine called Caitlin Sinclair, but managed to miss the deadlne of Sunday afternoon for the simple, amateur, dumbassy reason that I thought the deadline was Sunday night.

The illustration was for a review of a kind of walking-tour theatre show up in Edinburgh called Blood and Roses -- it sounds really interesting, so I'm looking forward to reading the review. Here's the illustration I did, above.

I hate missing deadlines, or producing work that isn't up to par. Those are the things that I live in fear of as an illustrator. I've worked pretty hard to build a reputation for getting things doen quickly and well for Amelia's, so to have fluffed it now is gutting. My best and only excuse is that I've got quite a lot on my plate with Arts Trail stuff at the moment, becasue I've only got two weeks left to do the mega-sized picture of Winnie for Man About Town, and figure out a way to display it.

One thing about this illustration -- it's yet another example of me not having a single style. I mean, I've probably got a 'signature' style, with the swirly black lineart I do most of the time in my personal work, but when it comes to editorial and fashion illustration I seem to be all over the place. I suppose that could be a good thing... at least it keeps doing these illustrations fun and unpredictable.

Chelmsford Arts Trail Poster

2011-08-17T06:46:00.000-07:00

Me and a few other artists on this year's Chelmsford Arts Trail were asked to do some posters. The brief was pretty open -- we just had to include the title 'Chelmsford Arts Trail', the dates of the trail, and limit it to two colours + white. I went with Marconi, who pioneered radio from Chelmsford, and despite the fact he was a massive fascist, is still kind of a local hero.

My face, in a photo, in a newspaper

2011-08-13T15:31:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago I went down to Hoola in Chelmsford to meet some of the other guys on the Chelmsford Arts Trail, and have our picture taken for the Essex Chronicle, and today I found the picture in the paper. I'll be honest, I'm pretty pleased with how the picture came out, I was expecting... I don't know. Something different.

Also, despite my limp wrist, I managed to have my photo taken reclining on a bean bag without looking too camp. Great success.

Latest work for Amelia's Magazine (August/July 2011)

2011-08-11T15:11:00.001-07:00

I've been really busy lately, working on the large Alan Moore portrait, working on prep for my final piece for the Chelmsford Arts Trail (I'm doing a portrait of a bulldog called Winnie), as well as finishing my submission to Ballad Of's Little Book Of Horrors and doing a poster for the Chelmsford Arts Trail... but I've still managed to squeeze in a few images for Amelia's Magazine.

Oh, and that's on top of doing flyers for Paul Foot's Jigsaw attempt at Stepney City Farm and Folkestone's A Town Unearthed projects...

Here's a quick round-up of the ones that I remember doing... (in no particular order)

Illustration for Amelia's review of the documentary Just Do It.
This is an illustration of a scarf by designer Lucy Jay, from an interview with Howkapow. (Lucy was kind enough to mention the illustration I did on her blog).
Jean Paul Gautier at Montreal's Festival Mode et Design
A fashion illustration for luxury brand Dagmar's AW 2011 collection.
This is a scarecrow I did some Intercorstalling to for an article about Scarecrows at Hampton Court Flower Show
This is a flower I Intercorstalled for an article about Flower Trends at Hampton Court Flower Show.

#A1Alan, finished!

2011-08-11T15:00:00.000-07:00

*UPDATE* 13th August -- Me and my wife Amy went to see Stuart at Man About Town this afternoon because I'd forgotten to add a signature to the picture, and when we got there it was hanging in the doorway... so chuffed with myself, and so grateful to Stuart, Jordanna and everyone at Man About Town.

So, I finished the big picture of Alan Moore in plenty of time, and have dropped it off to Stuart at Man About Town for him to take to V Festival and display at his pop-up barbers. There's not much to talk about in regards to it, so here's 12 of the many pictures I took as I went. They should be in order, to show what happened when.

#A1Alan

2011-07-25T05:50:00.001-07:00

On Twitter I've been mentioning #A1Alan, which is my current biggest project, along with lots of other projects I've got floating around.

How #A1Alan came about is this: I went to meet Stuart at Man About Town Barber's in Chelmsford, who I was paired up with for this year's Chelmsford Art's Trail. I showed him a selection of my work, including the portrait I did of Alan Moore for the Unearthing Review I did for Amelia's Magazine (above). He mentioned that he's got a pop-up space doing wet-shaves in the VIP area of this year's V Festival, that he had a it of space going there, and would I like to do a larger version of the Alan Moore Prtrait for display and potential display?

Obviously, I said 'Yes. Yes please' and threw myself headfirst into doing an A1 version of the picture. And it's taking AGES. Here's a photo of 5 hours work:
I'll be taking photos of progress after revery hour of work, to proerly document how long this stuff takes. Check back and follow on Twitter if you're at all interested.

#ACOFI Book Tour, Brick Lane

2011-06-08T04:36:00.000-07:00

Amelia Gregory during her talk

Last night I headed down to Tatty Devine on Brick Lane to attend the last night of the book tour being run to promote Amelia's Compendium of Fashion Illustration. Armed with the first ten printed copies of The Intercorstal:Valentine to give away to anyone interested in having one, and a selection of my illustration work to show off to anyone interested in looking, I rocked up at about 6:20 and promptly installed myself in the corner out of the way.

Spent some time chatting with Karen who does PR and runs the twitter account for Stepney City Farm -- as well as loads of cool stuff on the 9th July they'll be hosting comedian Paul Foot as he assembles the world's biggest Jigsaw... should be worth a look nearer the time.

Also got to chat for a while to Alia Gargum (aka @onetwothreedraw), who is an amazing illustrator as well as one of the lucky, lucky people to get one of the original black-cover Intercorstal comics (as well as the weirdly long letter I sent out to accompany it). She's also taking part in the Chelmsford Arts Trail this year, and lives very near to my wife's grandma (hashtag: small world).

Amelia gave a talk about Amelia's Magazine's history and her opinions on eco-fashion and social networking to a rapt audience... although 'gave a talk' doesn't really do it justice. Amelia has an apprently unique talent for talking at twenty words per second while still remaining perfectly understandable. If you ever get a chance to see it in action, you really should, it's astounding. (just teasing, Amelia)

There's some videos of Amelia giving a similar presentation here (I particularly like in the first video, when Amelia says "...this one was a Scratch and Sniff, which meant you could scratch it and sniff it"):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpmcFwcYhPo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElcZvjKuP1c

Showed off my carefully selected illustrations to Alia and Maria (aka @plasticseconds) who makes really cool jewellry out of rubbish (check out her site here: http://www.plasticseconds.com/) and then spent some time catching up with Matt Bramford and Naomi Law. Also got to meet Tim Adey who regaled me with tales of boredom and madness at sea from his time as a researcher.

I also decorated some biscuits provided by Biscuiteers -- I manned mine up by doing a skull and... an apple. Also had a couple of bottles of very fancy juice from Juiceology.

On the way home I had a bento box from Wasabi and it was a bit rubbish. (Just wanted to drop that in, for no reason other than I've not moaned about it to anyone else).

Here's some photos I took from the night -- they're mostly not very good photos.

Amelia bothering Alia and her friend with a camera while they try to draw on biscuits.

Stalking Matt Bramford from across the room.

Ladies from BiscuiteersLTD, far too polite to say 'No, really, we're ready to go home now'
(Ignore my amateurish inclusion in the picture via mirror in the background)

My Skull and Apple biscuits (I only did the bits in the middle, BTW). They tasted bloody lovely.

Tim decorates a biscuit. Not shown: Amelia being very critical.

The Intercorstal: Valentine

2011-06-02T05:10:00.000-07:00

Here's some photos of the third installment of the Intercorstal mini-comics, entitled Valentine.

The bulk of this was done as part of Alicia Rose's Secret Valentine Project. I was hopelessly late getting it ready for the February 14th deadline, and compared to the other stuff included in the project, was very very far from the 'Valentine' brief. The idea was to come up with something romantic, which in my brain translated to 'Cruises are romantic... I've got this Cruise brochure... let's make an intercorstal comic out of it!'

I scanned everyhting as I went and sent the scans to the always excellent anxietydecending to tidy up and pdf -- by some weird trick, though, the document was two pages short, so I knocked together some inserts to... well, insert.

As for releasing it... well, it'll be for free again, but I've been very shoddy at getting promised copies of previous Intercorstals out, so likely won't do a mass invitation for free stuff. That leaves me undecided on what I'll do, though. I'll keep you updated, I'm sure.

In the meantime, marvel with wonder at these photos!

400th Twitter Follower Giveaway (The First)

2011-05-27T04:33:00.000-07:00

Through some kind of supernatural force, I'v managed to get over 400 followers on my twitter account (http://www.twitter.com/grthink) and to celebrate I offered my 400th follower some free stuff.

The 'lucky' winner was Kristina Vasiljeva (@kvasiljeva) who got the contents of the above photo: the original Cassette Playa watercolours which were used at Amelia's Magazine for articles about Cassette Playa at London Fashion Week and my own experience at London Fashion Week, and a copy of The Intercorstal:Collider.

Hopefully she doesn't hate either... Kristina also has some great work on her blog, which everyone should go and check out.

Through a bizarre logic loophole, I actually had a SECOND 400th follower... Mr Anxiety Decending himself, and he'll get some stuff in the post too, eventually.

Feature updates...

2011-05-16T04:28:00.000-07:00

Forgot to say in my last post: I've recently had work featured on two very special blogs!

The first was on the outstanding Ballad Of..., who made me their featured illustrator on the 25th April take a peek here: http://balladof.co.uk/2011/04/gareth-hopkins/

Also, uber-trendy fashion store Lucy In Disguise featured a set of illustrations that previously appeared at Amelia's Magazine, and it included an illustration of mine. Take a look here: http://lucyindisguiselondon.com/2011/05/drawn-in-by-amelias-magazine/

Lame Ol' Me

2011-05-12T05:08:00.000-07:00

I've been very bad at updating recently -- a mixture of the recent run of Bank Holidays and the culmination of some big projects at work have meant I've been away from Ol'Blogger for a bit.

Not that I've not been busy, though -- a new Intercorstal comic called 'Valentine' was created, but at the last moment myself and Anxietydecending decided to experiment with the format, which means doing more pages for it. Some of the pages I've finished are up at The Intercorstal Blog.

I've also applied for inclusion in The Chelmsford Arts Trail, curated this year by The Shiny Shed. And I really, really want to get into it -- last year's was great, and I thoroughly enjoyed walking around the town looking at all the stuff on display, and think my proposal of turning a shop window into an Intercorstal page could be a good match, but we'll see.

As always, I've been doing some stuff for Amelia's Magazine -- take a gander at these articles to see what I've been upto.

Will write again soon, hopefully with some good news on stuff.

Process and Frustration: comXchange/Liminal final piece

2011-03-14T05:39:00.000-07:00

This is a blog detailing the effort and process that went into preparing for a show which I missed out on because of forces outside of my control.

A little while ago I was approached by Ibrahim Ineke, an artist/curator based in the Netherlands, to participate in a show he was putting on, in conjunction with Altered Esthetics in Minneapolis. I'd previously been in contact with Ibrahim after he requested a copy of the first Intercorstal comic I put together.

The show was to be a collaborative one between 5 US comic artists and 5 European artists. The idea was that each artist would send a comic of theirs across the Atlantic. They would then choose a sequence, or pair, of panels from the comic that they received and create a large-scale artwork based on the gap, or gaps, between those panels. As The Intercorstal is based in 'the space between spaces' I was really enthusiastic about getting started.

For the project, I put together The Intercorstal: Collider and sent it off. In return, I got a comic back which had detailed plans on how to build a High Tunnel by Maxeem Konrardy as part of a community project. It was the exact opposite of my comic, and therefore extremely exciting to work on, as well as extremely difficult. After a lot of deliberating, I chose two very specific panels to work inbetween, which showed how to fix two planks of wood together end-on-end using a bridging block of wood. The idea was to find the half-way point as the block was put in place and then do some Intercorstal-ly swirls and patterns around it. This quickly went wrong, as I was going to leave any 'physical' objects (i.e. the wood) as empty space, and within 20mins of drawing I'd accidentally filled in that space.

So, I reviewed what I had, and the idea, and went in a slightly different direction, and instead split the image I had into two, to better enforce the idea of the space between the planks and the block, and the action taking place between them. At first, I was gonig to build up the seperated objects onto one final image, but couldn't decide on how they best went together, so in the end they were left seperate. Below are three images -- two showing me trying to decide on a single image, the third shwoing what I finished with.

Overjoyed at having finished, with a week to go I packed the whole thing up and sent it recorded delivery to Ibrahim. And it never turned up. The show started, and Ibrahim emailed me to say how sorry he was not to have been able to include my work. A few days before the end of the show, he found out that it had been delivered, the day after the show started, but that he was out and his neighbour had taken receipt of the parcel, and not told him for two weeks.

Ibrahim still has the art, and the stack of Collider comics that I sent along with it, and I've left them with him, because I've not got the room for them really, and with first hand knowledge of how much it cost to post, wouldn't want to put him out by spending the money on sending it back. I'd work with him again in a heartbeat, because I think we're on a similar page, creative-wise, and he's a true gent to boot.

And that's that. Lesson learened, if there is a lesson to be learned.

Edit: LATER THIS SAME DAY: Writing this blog has been very cathartic, and made me realise that although I'm still angry about these circumstances, there's only two things I'd do differently: 1) Paint the artwork, because I left it as white paper with black marker, and I think painting it would have lifted the final piece 2) Fork out the extra for full-on postage. I went for First Class Signed-For, whereas if I'd spent £5 more it'd have been special delivery and the sad ending would have been avoided.

Here's Altered Esthetics blog on their side of the show: http://blog.alteredesthetics.org/?p=477

Britney Sabo was the artist who worked on Collider for Altered Esthetics. Here's a link to her website, and below is a shaky cameraphone photo of her finished piece, which despite the quality of the photo, I think looks aces.

Me, talking on camera, about #ACOFI

2011-01-30T13:27:00.000-08:00

Here's me, talking to the brilliant Amelia Gregory about my life as an illustrator, to help promote the outstanding Amelia's Compendium of Fashion Illustration, which I was lucky enough to have been featured in! Watch the video, by the book. It's simple.

Cut-Click Mailart Exhibition, Cleethorpes

2011-01-28T05:32:00.000-08:00

Just a quick post to say that I've done another envelope portrait for the travelling Cut-Click mailart exhibition (I talk about the first one HERE). The exhibiton will be up at Artlandinsh in Cleethorpes -- details are in the poster above.

The portrait this time is of Patrick R Donahoe, the current US Postmaster General. Whereas the subject of my earlier envelope portrait was John Stonehouse, who'd led a fascinating life featuring double-identities and faked deaths, which I built into the image, Mr Donahoe seems very boring. The biggest story around him is that he's inherited the US Postal Service at its weakest, poorest state, so I made an effort to include that. Here's the image:

#ACOFI - NOKI process

2011-01-15T08:06:00.000-08:00

Amelia's Compendium of Fashion Illustration has been avaialble in the shops for a few weeks now, and with only a couple weeks to go until the official launch party at 123 Bethnal Green Road, I figured now would be a good time to recount some of what I went through when preparing my contributions...

I was asked to illustrate the articles for two designers -- 123 Bethnal Green Road (you can see that image and a preview of the article HERE) and Dr NOKI. I wasn't really familiar with NOKI before getting the assignment, but only a cursory glace at some of his designs convinced me that his designs were right up my street -- very subversive, and vicious in the way that they repurpose branded clothes. In conversation I've gone as far as to say that he's doing to modern clothing brands what Dada did to post WW1 art... which I don't think is too much of a stretch.

Immediately I wanted to make a very violent, dischordant image to match his designs, but I was also very aware that the image needed to sit within the framework of the other fashion illustrations that I'd done over the previous months and also within the illustrations done by the other illustrators. (Once I've got a few projects off my plate, I'm going to go back and illustrate some NOKI designs off my own back, I think).

In a departure from my normal work, I also didn't have a specific image to work from -- instead, Amelia went to the NOKI shop at 123 Bethnal Green Road and took some photos of the clothes, with some suggestions on how I might style them. I flicked through some old fashion magazines that my wife had left in the bathroom for an appopriate model to work from, and after getting the pose down I added the clothes on afterward.

Early on, I ran into a problem -- overtired from work and desperate to get the image finished, I added too much water to my paint when working on the face and in trying to correct it managed to eat away at the paper. This meant that the paint dried in a weird way, which in turn made it look like the model had a nasty rash, as can be seen from the original scan, below:
To correct this, I traced the face and hair, and painted and inked that (very, very carefully). I scanned that in, and through the miracle of photoshop, was able to replace the offending areas. The new face can be seen here: (I also took the opportunity to give her a little more personality than in the original, by giving her thicker eyebrows and the hint of some eyelashes)
The other major hurdle I faced was getting the background image right -- it's no secret that I photoshop the background in after I've done the figure (well, most of the time) but I couldn't get the right background. I was very, very tired when trying to get this right, and positioned as I was in a strange hypnagogic state came up with some very odd ideas. By the end, I'd gone from painting backgrounds to painting scenes from my favourite books, including Gravity's Rainbow and Call of Cthulu. I scanned these in, played with the colour balances and dropped the model on. Here's a selection of the images which came out as a result:
The final one chosen was a blue background, which was actually a detail from an illustration of the climactic scenes of All Familes Are Psychotic. My personal "favourite" was the one you can see in the bottom-right of the above selection -- at the time, I thought it looked like the model had just appeared from another dimension, like some sort of Fashion BVM, but it's actually a ridiculous image in a whole bunch of ways, especially when it's at print-size.

Of all the images I've made recently, this is one of my favourites, though. And that's regardless of the work that went into it -- I just like the way it looks. And it looks especially awesome in the book, which every sane person should own a copy of... You can buy it here, didn't you know?

New Year Update

2011-01-04T05:22:00.000-08:00

Last year was amazing -- got really stuck into illustrations for Amelia's Magazine, resulting in my inclusion in Amelia's Compendium of Fashion Illustration, The Intercorstal really came on strong (and Collider was made as a little standalone), I fell back in love with using watercolours, and one of my favourite pictures was done, for the travelling Cut-Click mailart exhibition...

And this year's already off to a flyer:

I'm currently working on a miniature version of The Intercorstal which will make a mini- mini-comic, and I'll post some of those as I scan them.
I've got some more Fashion Illustration to do for Amelia's this week.
I'm waiting to get started on my part of a cross-channel Comic Art exhibition (which is what Collider was made for)
I've just started work on a new portrait for the Cut-Click exhibition, which opens on the 1st Feb in Cleethorpes...which I'll elaborate on in my NEXT POST...

Anyway, wishing everyone a very Happy 2011, hopefully it'll be at least as good as 2010.

Intercorstal On Show

2010-12-19T22:27:00.000-08:00

It feels like a long time ago now, but on December 7th 2010 (it's the 20th as I write this) I got a chance to show off some of the work I've done on The Intercorstal in a new way -- rather than in a comic, it was hanging on banners.

It came about because my new department at work held a gig/DJ night for... well, nobody's really sure how it came about. But somehow it was decided that a gig/DJ night would be put on, and they arranged The Distillers bar to hold it in. And then the ringleader of effort said 'Gareth, you can display some of your art on the windows, it'll look good!' despite not really knowing what I've been working on.

Through a desperate creativve process which involved... again, I can't really remember how I got to where I did. But I decided that I'd hang pages from The Intercorstal on banners from the balconies in the pub. I won't go into the full banner-making process but at 5pm on the day, with doors open at 7pm, I started frantically combining lining paper, blown up Intercorstal pages and plastic dowling rods with staples. The plan was to make eight banners, which after an hour and a half was reduced to six, and after another half an hour reduced to four. At about 7-ish, with me very hot and bothered, receiving desperate looks from the head waitress because I was spread out across some of her dining area, myself and a colleague managed to get the banners hung.

Feedback on the night was surprisingly positive, although limited as barely anyone turned up...and everything was packed up at 9:30, so it took longer to set the display up than it was on show for. The bar staff were kind enough to take the banners off my hands at the end of the night, but that might be because the evening's compere told the assembled crowd that my work sold for great amounts of money (my work doesn't sell, let alone for a lot of money).

Having said that, I'm proud of what I managed to acheive with such limited resources -- total setup costs were £5 -- and know that if given the opportunity again, that I could replicate it. Apologies for the quality of the images, it was dark and I only had my phone on me.

This Week In Hopkins Towers

2010-12-16T05:03:00.000-08:00

Cher Lloyd, from X Factor 2010, for Amelia's Magazine. [LINK]

I've been very, very lazy when it comes to updating this blog of late. As usual, that's because I've been very busy doing things elsewhere... For instance, in the past week I've had illustrations for three articles at the continually engaging Amelia's Magazine go up! And one of them is above, and the rest are below.

Also of particular not is that tomorrow (which will be Friday 16th December 2010) Amelia's Compendium Of Fashion Illustration is released! I'm really excited to see the finished product, as it looks like it'll be amazing. You should definitely go and buy a copy. Buy it NOW. Even if you have already...

Sue Timney, for Amelia's Magazine [LINK]

Wagbo, from TV Burp, from Amelia's Magazine overview of X Factor 2010 [LINK]

Image from Rapsodica Satanica, for Amelia's Magazine: LINK

Amelia's Compendium of Fashion Illustration -- 1st images of proofs posted

2010-12-01T04:45:00.000-08:00

Anybody not swayed to purchase Amelia's Compendium Of Fashion Illustration by my earlier blog should have their stoicism shaken slightly by these photos, posted by Amelia on Twitter, of the proofs that have come back from her printer (the photos feature the work of Natsuki Otani, Abigail Wright and Bex Glover). Already the quality of this book is obvious -- I'm so excited to have been included in the book I'd go so far as to describe myself as 'hyped', which is something I've never done before.

If you've not already, order a copy now and make use of the pre-order deal.

We can see from this last image that I am featured on Page 194! 194 is now my favourite number.

The Intercorstal: Collider

2010-11-11T14:37:00.001-08:00

A little while ago I compiled the first 32 pages of The Intercorstal as a standalone comic and gave away copies. One of those went to an amazing artist in The Netherlands called Ibrahim Ineke at the Baracca gallery, who a few months later he emailed me inviting to contribute to an exhibition that he was helping arrange -- I'll post more about that as and when it happens.

But for the exhibition, I was asked to come up with a new comic, and after a little experimentation and playing with some ideas, I've created The Intercorstal: Collider. It's a slender little 12-page wonder, combining six previously unpublished pages of The Intercorstal with six brand-new, unique pages, which I'm not going to explain because it would ruin them.

The whole thing was skillfully and professionally packaged for print by the ever-amazing anxietydecending, who I genuinely can't thank enough.

And, as before, I'm giving away copies to anyone who wants one, and probably also to people who don't. So, if you want one, email me at gareth@grthink.com with a postal address and I will get one in the post to you! (If you received a copy of The Intercorstal, don't assume I've still got your address, as I'm wildly disorganised)

Here's a couple of photos of this work of wonder to whet your wappetite.

Amelia's Compendium of Fashion Illustration

2010-11-11T04:30:00.000-08:00

A year ago, when I started this blog, I had no interest whatsoever with Fashion Illustration. I did what I did, and that was patterned black ink with bears and Appleheads and ghosts all over it, and I was kind of happy with that.

But over the past year I've been taking jobs at Amelia's Magazine for Fashion images, and have quickly built up a style I'm happy to work with, and have also developed a pretty healthy appetite for fashion illustration generally. I don't think I'll ever really get 'Fashion', but I love it when it's illustrated.

So it's with no small amount of pride that I've been included in Amelia's Compendium of Fashion Illustration, which is available for pre-order now. My pages include a selection of images produced for Amelia's, as well as a couple of new ones which I'm really proud of, that I might share once the book's out, but certainly not until then. And there's a pretty long 'process' blog behind the new images... again, I'll save that for now.

Here's the official blurb for the book. Everyone should buy a copy, because it'll be awesome.

Amelia’s Magazine has become a must see website for upcoming independent and ethical fashion designers, all illustrated in wonderful technicolour by our talented team of illustrators.

Amelia’s Compendium of Fashion Illustration book brings together the best illustration from Amelia’s Magazine alongside the best new ethical fashion designers, all in a gorgeous coffee table book with a stunning pearlised cover designed by the Arizona based artist Andrea Peterson.

The book offers inspiration to aspiring fashion designers, illustrators, art directors and anyone who is interested in ethical fashion design. It features interviews on the design practice of the chosen 30 illustrators (who were chosen via this open brief) alongside nearly 50 boxout profiles of the very best in ethical fashion design, including clothing, footwear and jewellery.

Featured ethical designers include Ada Zanditon, Beautiful Soul, Christopher Raeburn, Dem Collective, Edun, Fifi Bijoux, From Somewhere, Goodone, Henrietta Ludgate, Joanna Cave, Lu Flux, Minna, Nina Dolcetti, Partimi, Prophetik, Romina Karamanea and Ute Decker to name but a few.

Amelia’s Compendium of Fashion Illustration comes as an eminently collectible limited edition softback with a pearlised front cover. Beautifully presented and entirely ethical in production, the book is printed in the UK using environmentally responsible vegetable inks on FSC approved paper.

Perfect for fashion designers, illustrators, artists and anyone interested in the world of ethical fashion design, this will make the perfect Christmas present for that creative person in your life. (read on for ordering information and some very special Christmas offers!)

MOVING

2010-11-07T15:10:00.000-08:00

I've made a new website, which is a little shinier and portfolio-like and genrally spick-n-span, which is http://grthink.weebly.com, and that's what http://www.grthink.com will be from now on (as long as the web-settings, which I kind of don't really understand, work properly). This blog will live on, though...and hopefully I will find time to update it more often... my last post, before this was OVER A MONTH AGO.

That's rubbish.

There is a reason, or rather two reasons, which have been keeping me very, insanely sleep-deprivingly busy. Neither of which I can really go into right now, because they're both kind of secret. In time, though, I will tell all. And you might not even care. You bugger.

See that, up there? Good-looking banner type-thing? That's the banner I made for the new site. Go and look at the new site, it's awesome. And all the links work and everything. (N.B. If any links don't work, can you let me know? THANKS)

Trenders

2010-09-27T09:07:00.000-07:00

A while ago I did some postcards for inclusion in goodie bags for Magpie Market, but because I was ill I missed the deadline. I had 8 postcards left after doing those, and figured 'meh, what the hell, let's give them away'. So I put the callout on Twitter, some people said 'Yes, please' and within not too long a time I got them sent out.

They're not too complicated... just a run of little guys telling the owner of the postcard was was trending on Twitter at the time. But they were fun to do, and quick. Full View HERE

Clive, the European Panda

2010-09-21T05:29:00.000-07:00

Here's my submission to European Panda Press' open call. They asked only for a European Panda, in B&W. It took me longer than I'd hoped to get around to this, but I'm pretty happy with the results.

First Half of London Fashion Week

2010-09-21T05:09:00.000-07:00

Designs by Julian J Smith for On|Off - Original Article

The writers at Amelia's Magazine have been going hell for leather over the past few days, writing up shows from London Fashion Week, and I've been lucky enough to have had the chance to illustrate a few of them. It's only since I've started illustrating for Amelia's that I've taken even the slightest bit of interest in Fashion Illustration, and I really didn't think my first efforts were up to much. But gradually I've grown in confidence, in no small part from the encouragement of the writers (in particular Amelia, Matt and Sally) and now I relish the chance.

I especially like illustrating for Amelia's because practically a pre-requisite is that I need to work in colour (except for one instance, featured in my last blog post), which is really liberating. Now, when given any piece of work to do, I always think about working in colour, and only go for B&W if it actually suits it, and not the other way around, which is how I used to work.

Because my approach to each set of illustrations is slightly different, I've started drawing eyes as simple circles to kind of 'trademark' my work -- despite what else is going on, if the model's got blank circle eyes, I did that picture.

Here's the illustrations I've done so far -- there's another set waiting to go up on the site, and I've got some more to work on tonight, and hopefully the night after, too)

Design by Jacob Kimmie - Link to orginal Article

Elliot J Frieze catwalk show Presentation by Laura Bailey at Esthetica Brunch

Three new illustrations at Amelia's

2010-09-09T13:47:00.000-07:00

Designs Felicity Brown and Simone Rocha (London Fashion Week Preview)

This week I've been very busy for Amelia's Magazine, doing two illustrations as part of their previews for London Fashion Week, and one of the band The XX for their Mercury Music Prize preview. I really like two of them (Felicity Brown/Simone Rocha and The XX), and despair a little for the other (Cooperative Fashions) -- the despair arriving on the back of the fact that I did it when very full of illness, so my usual critical faculties were out.

The xx (Mercury Music Prize preview)

Cooperative Designs (Interview as part of run-up to London Fashion Week)

If I wasn't still so full of snot and headache I'd endeavour to do a 'process' post for one of them, but as it is, I haven't the faculties...

'grthinking'

2010-08-18T04:18:00.000-07:00

I've been reminiscing over the past few days about the large, A2 pictures I used to do. Everything I've done recently has been small -- Intercorstal pages are A5, illustrations for Amelia's Magazine are usually about that too, I did all those postcards...

The main reason I've not been doing big pictures is because I've not got the space anymore, or the time -- having a baby in the house really reduces that space you've got, and as I work on the dining table, I've got to pack everything up in between sessions. Hopefully I'll get around to doing another big picture soon, using some of the things I've learnt over the last few months. In the meantime, here's some of my favourites from over the years...

Jesse Tise's Space Spells

2010-08-13T05:30:00.000-07:00

A rare departure from talking about myself...

Jesse Tise is an illustrator that I 'met' a few years ago on DeviantArt. His work's always impressed me, but in the last few months it's got stronger and stronger -- his degree's really paying off :) He's just printed a 'zine called Space Spells and sent me a copy, and I have to admit that it blew me away a little bit.

It's been printed on crisp fresh newsprint which perfectly compliments the slightly grainy illustrations. Although it's based on an album by Flying Lotus I can't help drawing parrallels and comparisons between Space Spells and my own project, The Intercorstal -- it's got a recurring character, it's both shallow and deep at the same time, it features a healthy does of semi-magical symoblism... On top of that, it's got a kind of 50's, Jetsons vibe to it...

In short, I love it. You should get in contact with him via his website and see if he's got any left. You should do that now. Here's a couple of my favourite images from the book (lifted off the website)

Wayne Hemingway Process

2010-08-13T05:08:00.000-07:00

This illustration of Wayne Hemingway was done for an article at Amelia's Magazine about 'Vintage at Goodwood'. It started off as a portrait done in the same style as my recent ones of Alan Moore and John Stonehouse, but Amelia suggested I try using colour... two hours of the paintpot tool in Photoshop and this is what we get. I don't know what possessed me to go with such a lurid blue... all the other coulours are relatively tame (well, except the reds and pinks in the words). Below are the original black and white ink drawing, and the photo I worked from.

Process for Unearthing Blog (potentially uninteresting)

2010-08-03T04:35:00.001-07:00

I recently attended the performance of the multimedia collaboration 'Unearthing' by Alan Moore, Mitch Jenkins, Adam Drucker and Andy Broder, and wrote a blog about it for Amelia's Magazine. I also did two illustrations (posted here) and grabbed some stills from some video.

The illustration of Alan Moore was relatively straightforward (posted above). I had in mind the starting image I wanted to use, and that I wanted to do it in the style I'd used for my Jon Stonehouse image for Cut-Click's mailart exhibition. Once I'd pencilled the broad features in, everything else fell into place. I was going to include a lot more text, but when it comes to Alan Moore, what do you choose? In the end, I just put the word 'Gods' above his right eye (referencing his use of Magick and one of the themes of 'Unearthing') and stuck a 'V' in there (as in 'V For Vendetta', but I suppose at a stretch it could also reference Thomas Pynchon's 'V.', which Moore is apparently a fan of.). There's also two ghosts snuck in there. I actually did most of the beard inbetween multiplayer matches of Bioshock 2.

The one of Crook&Flail (below) was more difficult. Crook&Flail is the moniker under which Adam Drucker and Andy Broder composed the music for 'Unearthing'. There's one image of them together as Crook&Flail out there on the internet that I could find, and it wasn't very interesting, and I couldn't work from it very easily, so I went looking for images of them apart which I could combine. There are loads of Drucker (who also goes under the psedonym Doseone) many of which I was familiar with already, but none were really suitable, and there are very few of Broder. I ended up trawling Flickr for images I could use... I really should have tracked back to their owners (job for later this week). I wasn't happy with the composition at first, to the point where half-way through I was going to give up, but a session of working on it in front of Ghost Dog set me right. The reliance on black and white stripes was intentional, for two reasons: 1) Referencing the style of the Egyptian Crook&Flail that they're named after 2) Alluding to Doseone's old band Subtle.

I decided not to do an illustration of Mitch Jenkins because... well, it din't occur to me. That's kind of awful. Maybe I'll do one and add it here, then retcon this blog post to look like I'd done it all along?

The still was taken from a video I took with my new favourite toy, and Flip camera my Dad got me for my birthday. I only filmed about 30 seconds of the performance, because I realised that the screen, as I was looking at it, was lighting up my face, and making me very obvious to the performers.

I had a very hard time writing the blog, though. It was the most concentrated piece of writing, other than emails, I'd done in a very long time (probably since Nanowrimo 2006). Progress was hampered by: 1) the fact that I had so much that I wanted to write about, but couldn't get it all down succinctly enough* 2) the notes I'd taken got put through the washing 3) the time I'd set aside to write got eaten up by getting slightly drunk at a BBQ and falling asleep on the living room floor. Similar to my problems with the Crook&Flail illustration, it came down in the end to just holing myself up on Sunday night after my wife and son were asleep and banging on the keys until I was happy enough to send it (adding the usual caveats in the submission email to Amelia that if she wanted to reject it, she could).

To my relief it was posted. (HERE, IF YOU'VE NOT FOLLOWED THE LINK ABOVE YET) Since it was posted, I've of course noticed things that were wrong, or I'd change now. But it remains something I'll be proud of for a long time now, whether anybody else reads it or not.

* One thing I desperately wnated to shoe-horn in, but wasn't sure whether Amelia's audience would appreciate is the fact that Ciaran O'Keefe was in the audience! I clocked him as he walked past and desperately wanted to run over and shake his hand and tell him how much I respect his work despite the fact that Most Haunted gets worse by the episode (and that I haven't watched it for about a year)... but I was having a conversation with a chap named Ben and the moment passed.

Ghosts Playing Ping-Pong

2010-08-02T04:56:00.000-07:00

Not too long ago I submitted the above image to Sandra Dieckmann's ongoing Haus Stories project. It's a brilliant idea -- artists/illustrators create a floor, or story/storey, which gets added to the 'house', leading to a ridiculously tall building.

How they ended up playing ping-pong, I'm still not entirely sure. When I started, I knew I wanted to make a haunted room, with my usual trio of ghosts, and I also wanted to make it as 'classically surreal' as possible -- most of the objects in the room, including the door and the window on the left, have been subverted somehow so that their original purpose is invalid. And at somepoint I added a net to the table, a ball in mid air and paddles to the ghosts... Reviewing it now, I totally missed out on the opportunity to include some cheese in there somewhere...

Amelia's contribution round-up

2010-08-02T04:23:00.000-07:00

Over the past few weeks, I've been pretty busy with various things, in particular doing odds and ends for Amelia's
Magazine. Here's a quick round-up (in no particular order):

I did this picture of comedienne Deborah Francis White as part of a round up of the comedy tent at Latitude Festival, as well as one of Adam Lambert.

This image was done for an article about a Q&A with Peter Blake, and I also did a portrait of him, which you can see by following this like: LINK The St Pepper's thing was in response to the fact that apparently, Blake is tired of talking about the cover he did for St Pepper's Lonley Hearts Club Band (which is covered in the article) -- it's very different to what I normally do, because it doesn't include using a pen ANYWHERE.

I've also had a contributor's profile added to the site. I spent as long looking for a picture of myself that I didn't hate as I spent on the illustrations for the Peter Blake article, and looking back, I still look like a bit of a numpty.

Newstuff July2010

2010-07-11T15:34:00.000-07:00

It's been a very long time since I last posted anything, and it feels like I've got a lot to update...

I've done some more illustrations for Amelia's Magazine, the best of which is one of Seasick Steve, above. I don't know why I did him in green, but I think it looks cool.

I've also sent a picture of John Stonehouse to Magpie Markets as part of Cut-Click's travelling mailart show. It took me ages, and I loved it, but for some unknown reason I didn't scan it, just took the crappy photo presented below. I'm hoping to do a lot more of these in the future.

Oh, aand in very exiting news, Cut-Click's first printed issue is on sale here: http://cutclick.bigcartel.com/ and it's AWESOME. Really.

I've contributed a panel to Abstract Comics's ABCOLAB2 project, which didn't take very long but was very fun to do:

Aaaaaaand I've posted three new pages to The Intercorstal!

Cut-Click Printed Issue

2010-06-23T05:00:00.000-07:00

Back in March I posted about having been invited to contribute to Cut-click's first printed issue. I had some of the postcards from St James Infirmary (still to be finished) featured back in Cut-Click 17, also.

Well, today I got an email from Caroline at Cut-Click with a copy of the proof for the printed issue attached, and I'm very exited. I'd submitted two portraits, one based on a photo of me and one based on a photo of my son Bill, and they went for the one based on me. I've posted my portrait of Bill here, right there, at the top of the page. I'll wait for the printed issue to come out before I post the other one.

Both portraits were a combination of my usual swirly detail style, but using faces as frames to work on rather than geometric patterns. I'm very pleased with how they turned out, and rate tham among the best stuff I've done. They took ages which is why I've dodged doing any more of them since...

Once it's printed and I've got a copy and it's available elsewhere I'll post again to remind everyone... for now, here's what to look for when you're out in the world (cover by Tigzy Rice)

Learning = Pain

2010-06-13T14:39:00.000-07:00

My approach to my work is pretty consistent. I've got a pretty strong visual identity (black ink, patterning, fixed set of motifs) and I usually feel comfortable with that. However, because of a need to push myself, and because I think I have the ability to do different things, I take on other projects.

Recently, that's involved taking jobs from Amelia Gregory for Amelia's Magazine, as I covered in my last blog post. With each assignment, I've grown a little more confident in spreading my wings. And with this growing confidence, I took an assignment to illustrate an interview done with Robin Ince and casually asked if Amelia had any idea for what she'd want. The response I got was a perfectly reasonable "...maybe something inspired by crabs on the rampage with musical instruments and people in trees?"

And so, having done the housework and put my son to bed and had a beer and a coffee, I went on a hunt for images of Robin Ince and crabs, thinking I'd do a picture of Mr. Ince being terrified by an army of marauding crabs. In very quick time I got an idea of how to draw crabs... they're pretty easy. And I found this image of Robin Ince, which could look like he was scared of some crabs:

And then I set to work... I figured I'd do something colourful, so after I'd done what I thought was a pretty passable pencil draft, which I defined with sanguine ink, I set to painting. Once I thought I'd done enough painting, I broke out my black pens and set to working up what I had. Once I was finished, I put it to one side, played some PS3, and went to bed.

At 6:30 the next morning, woken up by my son, I came downstairs and found this:

"Oh GOD... it must be early in the morning, because that looks terrible". When my wife came downstairs, I held it up and said "Look at this shit, it's probably the worst thing I've ever done, and I'm including the time I spent as a child". The response I'd hoped for was "It's not too bad, you must have looked at it for too long."

The response I got was: "Well, honey... you're good at what you normally do. Why not try that?" I was understandably appalled. How dare she limit my artistic and creative freedom?! Who is she to try and put me in a box?! Justifiably, I marched out of the room, outraged and indignant. As soon as I was through the door, I knew that she was right, and what I had to do...

First I watered the plants, then cleaned the washing line, changed the bed sheets, cleaned the kitchen, had a sit down... Then, I got back on the internet, and looked for some different pictures to work from, got the printer out, then my lightbox, then worked through my usual process, which involved creating grids with my Tesco Value Geometry set, reading through the interview for interesting phrases, working out how to illustrate those individually, placed those in pencil on the grid, then slowly, bit by bit, working up in pen... and, after about four, five hours, came out with this, which is much better:

The moral being... um... Don't draw bad pictures? Well, yes, but more than that, I need to remember to be true to myself, and to take my bloody time over these things.

Lesson over.

Illustrations for Amelia's Magazine

2010-06-09T14:20:00.000-07:00

Recently, as well as my continuing work on The Intercorstal (up to page 40 at the time of writing) I've been contributing illustrations to the superlative Amelia's Magazine.

Each illustration is very different, and certainly a departure from what I'd normally do. There's a fourth illustration which may or may not make it into a blog which may or may not ever get written...

Here they are, along wwith links to the blogs that they've been included in...

Gordon Brown, for a blog about the election

An aristocrat culling grey squirrels, for a blog about Robin Ince's School for Gifted Children

Two illustrations of the fashion of Charlotte Taylor, from a blog about Northbrook and Salford's show during Graduate Fashion Week (only the one on the left got used)

Tate Cruising

2010-05-31T15:34:00.000-07:00

"Ceremonial Ghost Mask"

So, as I've said, I recently got back off holiday. I went on a cruise around the Eastern Mediterranean with my wife and her family -- generally cruising isn't for me, but this was slightly different as on sea days there was three hours of activity arranged by Tate, both lectures and practical acitivities.

Now, P&O cruises have a certain demographic: what I call Coffin Boffins. Basically, 70% of the passengers on the ship could have been riding the bus for free. And not to push stereotypes, but people who are old and interested in cruising read the Daily Mail and have a very narrow view of what art is. This meant that the program of lectures were tailored to the more vanilla end of the spectrum... don't get me wrong, they were without exception excellent, and I got a lot out of them, but they were very, very safe, and I could feel how uncomfortable the three lecturers were with having to play to the audiences weaknesses. For instance, after a lecture on Picasso, one gentleman (installed on a motability scooter) remarked to me "He could obviously draw properly... why did he have to go and do all that nonsense with the faces and things". (The gentleman in question was actually a really nice bloke, he just liked pictures to look a certain way).

My favourite lecture was on Dali and the Surrealists. If I'd had my way, they'd have been two seperate lectures... actually, I would have had them split it into three -- one for Dali, one for Surrealism, and one for Magritte. But still, I love that entire movement, so to hear someone talk with authority about something they obviously loved too was a genuine treat for me. There was a wonderful moment when the lecturer (Linda Bolton) was talking about 'Gift' by Man Ray and the computer equipment broke down, and the audience was asked to imagine what might have been on screen -- Breton would have loved that.

Linda Bolton is forced to deliver the Surrealism lecture surreally.

As excellent as the lectures were, though, the practical workshops were awesome. Run by abstract artist Patrick Jones each of the eight workshops dealt with a different technique, starting with portraiture and figure drawing and ending on monoprinting. I was okay with the drawing bits -- drawing's what I do normally. But when the charcoal was broken out, and then the paint, I got very uncomfortable very quickly. Watercolours and monoprinting went okay, but anything with acrylic paint went very badly for me -- saying that, I loved the workshop on masks, which I'll come back to in a second.

Again, I was usually the youngest in each workshop, but generally the people who came to them were a little more open minded. Which was good for them, because Patrick had a delightful way of taking the premise of each workshop and twisting it slightly, to the point where the regulars knew not to expect the expected. For instance, one of the workshops was billed as 'Pop Art' and within five minutes we'd been told that we weren't doing Pop Art because Patrick didn't like it, and we'd be doing something nearer to Abstract Expressionism instead.

The best example was the session on masks: we'd just been to Venice and everyone was expecting the chance to make their own Ventian masks (especially since that's what the programme of events had promised), and instead we were asked to approach the idea of masks as something more primal and interesting, to think about how masks hide identity and respond to that. Everyone else worked onto plastic face masks, but because I got there late I did a painting of a mask instead, which was the piece I was most happy with at the end of the course.

Below is a selection of some of the stuff I did as part of the Tate programme, for interest rather than to impress anyone.

Sketch for a mask

Monoprint -- my first ever

Watercolour -- we were asked to do a lanscape with a 'bowl of light' in the centre.
I was thinking about The Intercorstal while I did this and with an extra hour or so
would have had something more... landscape-y. Maybe.

Figure drawing

Portraiture -- I was a very long way away from the model when I did this.

Intercorstal News Update 29th May 2010

2010-05-29T15:54:00.000-07:00

I've just returned from a 16-night cruise, taken with my wife and her family. While I was away I finished five pages of The Intercorstal and some other very different pictures. The other pictures will come in a later post, but for the moment I just want to talk about The Intercorstal...

The quest for a stapler hefty enough to compile the first minicomic is complete -- it was waiting on my desk when I got back from holiday. Now I just need to print it out, and then I'll start sending copies out to those people who've requested a copy, and also to people who's opinion hasn't yet been offered but I'm interested in getting.

The five new pages have been uploaded at The Intercorstal blog. The latest three (Pages 36, 37 and 38) are among my favourites so far, and I've decided to talk about them a little here.

Page 36 is inspired by Abstract Expressionism, in particular Rothko, and I actually find it hilarious in its audacity -- I'm unsure as to whether anyone else will.

Page 37 is again a little private joke with myself: Because the ruler I had with me was only 6inches long, that's how long I made the image, but kept the page at its usual 8 inches, therefore referencing the process of creating the page -- in a similar way to how many Abstract Expressionist images exist principally to express the act of painting, the height of this page's content expresses the act of measuring. Again, not sure if anyone else will get the joke, or the reference. This page also features my favourite ever ghost, and some abstractions based on a photo I took in Venice of a boat moving past the city.

I came up with the idea for Page 38 while half-asleep one afternoon, while waiting for some water to cool in order to make up my son's milk. The sixteen little boxes are abstrations based on photos I took around my cabin -- the bases of lamps, the corners on TV cabinets, things like that. The cross in the middle is a location in The Intercorstal -- a mountain side dotted with Wind Houses with what is either wind or sand in the background. For the record, I know what a Wind House looks like, but don't know what it does, much the same as a hORSEhOOK.

Those that know they're getting a copy of the minicomic: keep your eyes peeled for the postman. Those that don't... well, keep your eyes peeled anyway, you might have some important credit card bills or something.

News Roundup May 2010

2010-05-08T05:57:00.000-07:00

After my last post, in which I was convinced that the Intercorstal mini-comics were about to be sent out, I came a-cropper of not having the right size stapler for the job. This is on order now, and I expect to start sending copies out to people (both those that responded to the offer, and some who didn't) by the end of the month. Trust me, when you get it, you'll be amazed... that it took so long to sort out.

I've had an illustration included in a blog by Amelia Gregory at the exemplary Amelias Magazine -- it's the one of Gordon Brown about halfway down the page. I'd post it here, but then there'd be no incentive to go and view it in its natural habitat, would there?

In sad news, Trolleys In Odd Places had it's last ever post a little while ago -- I made a little video to see it off which has lots of photos in it. Since posting the video, I keep finding other photos that really should have gone in there, but oh well. Now I'm looking for something else to make into a regular, focussed blog. I'd ask for suggestions, but knowing me I'd reject them all.

I've been finding pictures here and there which for one reason or another haven't found a home. above and below are some picture I did around the time of Operation Concrete that I didn't do anything with.

Lots of fun things coming from me soon, that I've not mentioned here... will do soon, promise.

Word to yo' moms.

Gareth

The Intercorstal News Update 16th April 2010

2010-04-15T21:55:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I reached an important milestone in the 'Intercorstal' comic project -- I finished my 32nd page, which leaves me exactly a third of the way through my 96 page target! The fact that the 96-page-target was totally arbitrary is both a source of great pride and tragic woe in my life.

Other than a feature over at the superlative Abstract Comics blog, reception to The Intercorstal has been lukewarm, to say the least. These are three of the possible reasons I've come up with:
1) People don't like it because it's very rough around the edges, poorly done, unproffessional... etc. I'm not sure whether that's true, but it's a very real possibility.
2) People don't 'get it' -- a comic set in the gaps between space and conciousness which has a repeating set of motifs at its heart in place of characters, which has no easily discernable plot is possibly not something that most people will spend time with if its intentions aren't entirely clear -- especially on the internet, where it's so easy to pass things over.
3) I've not explained the project enough, or left enough information about it around, hence (2).

Despite the lack of public reaction, I've decided to be beligerant and carry on regardless. An unfinished comic which nobody likes is worse than a finished one, in my opinion.

Also, I've started collecting text to use as dialogue/exposition, by both letting my own mind wonder free to find short sentences and phrases and by jotting stuff down as I hear it in the street. I'm now researching the best way to deploy this text, in particualr finding ways for it to randomise, and I'm also thinking about how I'm going to go about getting it printed up.

If anyone's got any opinions on the project, I'm either emailable (gareth@grthink.com) or you can use the comments fields here, at the Intercorstal blog, or over at deviantart.

Mail Art One, Spring Issue

2010-03-22T23:40:00.001-07:00

Number 1

Just a quickie to say that 'Number 1', which was submitted to the Tron Gallery's Mail Art exhibition has been included in the Spring Edition of Susan Mortimer's Mail Art One zine. You can check out a slide show of the zine HERE.

Sketches for Cut-Click

2010-03-17T19:05:00.000-07:00

I was asked earlier this month to provide an unpublished artwork for Cut-Click's first printed issue, and jumped at the chance. The brief was pretty open... A6 and portrait, which I misread as 'a portrait, A6 sized'. I did two portraits in the end, one of them a self portrait and one of my son Bill, and have sumitted them both, so I won't post either until the issue's out (if I've been accepted). However, before I settled on doing portraits of myself and Bill in the style that I did, I did a series of quick sketches to generate ideas... and here they are. I like some of these, they might crop up elsewhere.

New Intercorstal Pages

2010-03-16T23:42:00.000-07:00

I've finished three new pages for the Intercorstal, which I'll upload properly soon -- for now, here's just one of them.

UPDATE: Somewhat later in the day... Here's the other two:

Landscapes etc

2010-02-26T04:44:00.000-08:00

Following on from the 22 Postcards I posted yesterday, here's four which I'm particularly proud of, all depicting imagined landscapes of one form or another. They were much harder to do, and therefore more time consuming, than the other postcards, so I felt they deserved a seperate airing.

Also, news-wise, I'm just about finished on a brand new page for The Intercorstal, with another to come soon after that. I'm also working on a comic based on a script supplied by AnxietyDecending as part of Colaboratay.

Verse 1 and Chorus 1 of St James Infirmary are featured in Cut-Click Issue 17, which is awesome. I'm also working on some other stuff for them, which will be revealed when finished.

Postcard Bonanza

2010-02-25T04:48:00.000-08:00

Here's a JPEG which contains scans of 22 of the postcards I've been working on over the past few months. These don't include any of the images I've been working on for St James Infirmary (Verse 1 & Chorus 1) (Verse 2 & Verse 3) or Colaboratay, or the Landscapes I'll post soon.

There's a lot of ideas here, some of which I think were really successful, some not so much. At the same time there are cases of good ideas which haven't worked so well. I'll let you judge for yourself -- don't forget to click on the image to see it full-size.

St James Infirmary Verses Two and Three

2010-02-22T05:19:00.000-08:00

Following on from my earlier post, here are Verse 2 and Verse 3 of my illustrations for the song 'St James Infirmary'. There are two unfortunate errors here, one technical and one lyrical. The technical one is just that my scanner cropped the edges off all of the images, which isn't too much of a problem because I can just re-scan.

The lyrical one is this: Where I've written 'Step to that rubber tied hack' it should 'Step to that rubber TYRED hack', as in it's a carriage with rubber tyres and not a carriage that's tied up in rubber bands. Both these errors will be corrected by the end of the project.

I've also finished Verse 4, which also has a lyrical error, although not one which changes the meaning of the lyrics, so I might not mention that when I come to post it.

Here's VERSE 2:

And VERSE 3:

Also, if you have any interest at all in the song St James Infirmary, take a gander at the following blogs, which I've found invaluble for research:

I Went Down To St James Infirmary

NO NOTES: Regarding “St. James Infirmary” and other things related to the book “Letters From New Orleans”

2010-02-12T05:49:00.001-08:00

I've just uploaded these two images to One Million Giraffes, a project to get one million hand-made images of giraffes collected in one place. Excited by both the audacity of the project and the fact that I get to draw giraffes, I cracked these out as soon as I could.

Newsish

2010-02-03T05:39:00.000-08:00

Update-wise, I've been quite quiet here at grthink.com -- here's what I know about what's happening.

A lot of my time has been taken up with Colaboratay, which used to involve the passing back-and-forth of images between myself and anxietydecending. Those images were put to one side, and for the past month or so we've been holding a conversation, one postcard at a time. The first conversatio was 16 frames long, the second conversation is 5 frames in now. The last frame of the first conversation is shown above.

The Mail Art exhibition at Tron Theatre ended at the end of last month, and of the three pieces I submitted, two made it into the show and related 'zine. I was contacted by Susan Mortimer, the editor of Mail Art One, and the third image is being included in the Spring Issue, which will be available at the Glasgow Artists International Book Fair on the 16th and 17th April.

I've almost finished the next two verses of St James Infirmary, and have just one more image to do before I struggle under the stairs to retreive my scanner, so that I can post them all here. That'll just leave one more verse, the final chorus and a final call-off to do.

I've also got a pretty large pile of postcards (including the infamous "£20 Hand Drawn Postcards" from the Operation Concrete Launch, which I may or may not have mentioned before. When I get the scanner out, I'll get those digitized and then I'll have something else to post with.

Mail Art show update

2010-01-21T04:50:00.000-08:00

Alison, the curator of the Mail Art exhibition that is running until the 30th Jan, has kindly emailed me some photos from the exhibition, two of which are posted below.

I also got my copy of the free 'zine that the artist Susan Mortimer put together in conjunction with the show and it is superb. The internet version can be viewed here:

http://www.slideshare.net/susanmort/mail-art-one-long-gallery-tron-theatre-2010

St James Infirmary Verses One and Two

2010-01-20T04:39:00.001-08:00

Recently, I've been listening to the Scatman Crothers version of St James Infirmary, pretty much on repeat. It's a song with a long and chequered history, and has been covered by an immense number of artists and bands over the years. There's something about Crothers' version that really grabbed me, though. It's about a man planning his funeral following the death of his lover, but there's something in the way that it's performed suggested a further dimension to me -- that the narrator was planning, experiencing and reminiscing on his funeral all at once, turning it into a Fourth Dimensional Ghost Story.

Inspired, I decided that I'd make something based on the lyrics. Limited, due to a number of factors, to only being able to work on art during my lunch hour at the moment, I've started a series of postcards, each covering a single line from the song. There are four verses and the chorus is used twice, so that's six sets of four postcards, plus a final call-off. I've done the first verse, and the first chorus, and the rest will follow eventually.

VERSE ONE:
CHORUS ONE:

Mail Art Exhibition, Glasgow

2010-01-06T05:44:00.000-08:00

Previews for the Mail Art exhibition that I've got work in are on the 11th January -- if you're in the Glasgow Area, and know where Tron Theatre is, you should go.

The work I've got in it is awesome (even if I do say so myself) and you'll get free wine (and there's usually orange juice on at these things, too).

"Conversation" postcards 1-4

2009-12-22T05:48:00.000-08:00

This is a photograph showing examples of the postcards that I've been working on for the last few weeks. There are various sets, this one entitled 'Conversation', as each postcard represents...well, a conversation.

I've got almost thirty postcards drawn up now, and I'm a little unsure of what to do with them. In the past I've done runs of postcards explicitly to send out as freebies to whoever wants them, and I might still do that. But I'd like to do something more with them.

And I'm not going to do much of anything with them until I've got my scanner working again, that's for certain.

Colaboratay

2009-12-14T15:44:00.000-08:00

Recently I've started a new blog with my friend Daryl Morris, called Colaboratay. The idea is that one of us starts a picture off, posts it to the blog, the other picks it up and adds to it, posts their new version up, and so on.

We've not been going very long, but it's produced some interesting ideas already, and as each project continues I think the ideas are going to get both more concrete and also more outlandish.

Here's the current stages of the two projects currently underway:
Unknown Stage 2, most recently worked on by me.

Zeal Stage 4, most recently worked on by Daryl.

Mail Art exhibition

2009-12-08T05:13:00.000-08:00

A few months ago I submitted three pictures (Number 1, Number 2 and Number 3 -- see below) to the Mail Art exhibition taking place in the Long Gallery at Glasgow's Tron Theatre. The show is taking place between the 12th and 30th January, with a private showing on the 11th (which I'd like to attend, but I doubt I'll be able to).

A limited edition of Mail Art One Zine is being produced by Susan Mortimer as part of the show, which will have at least one of my submissions in, maybe more.

Number 1

Number 2

Number 3

Corridoring shortlisted for art prize (UPDATED)

2009-12-04T05:10:00.000-08:00

UPDATED 8th Dec:
I didn't win. All the best to the person who did.

Corridoring, one of the pictures I'm most proud of, which I included in the Operation Concrete artbook and exhibition, has been nominated for the inaugral SayArt.org art prize, which I am very excited about.

It's been honored with a prize once before, when it was selected for a coveted 'Daily Deviation' at deviantart. Eventually, it will also be seen in the short film it was created for, also called 'Corridoring' (it needs editing, which is hopefully going to be done by James Plumb)

Winners are being announced on 7th December, which is only four days away. I'd say 'Go Vote!' but it's not that sort of competition, and emails including votes for my work would probably just annoy the organisers because they're not accepting votes.

Operation Concrete (Update)

2009-12-04T04:21:00.000-08:00

Well, Operation Concrete is done now -- I drove into London to pick up my work yesterday. Although I didn't sell anything, the feedback I got was tremendous, especially from the drunk stragglers at the end of the launch night, because I could be pretty certain they weren't capable of bullshitting me. I've also learnt some pretty important lessons:
1) Framing is expensive, but worth doing right
2) Always have business cards on me
3) Always leave contact details at the gallery
4) If possible, when hanging other people's work, make sure it's the right way up... I think I may have hung one of Holly's watercolours upside down...
5) The sentence 'I was really into giraffes at the time' when used unexpectedly can mark you out as a freak.

Thanks have to go to Tori Treasure, without who I would have probably priced all my work at about a fiver. Also, her coverage of the night is excellent.

Here are some photos from the launch night of Operation Concrete, taken on my trusty N93.

Part of my section, with 'Corridoring' sat on the floor, waiting for the frame to re-set after it fell off the wall.

The 'Anger' section, featuring my picture 'Mist Of Blood And Rage', a sound pod which played 'Germany Germany' by Rue The Day and the exceprt from the novel that both the picture and image were based on.

Benjamin Phillips sat in front of Bill Talbot's work.

Some of Benjamin's work -- unfortunately, someone came in during one night of the exhibit and lifted one of his etchings, which is shocking.

Richard Galbraith, reading from 'Concrete Operational'.

Jack Clothier, of Alcopop Records, reading from 'Concrete Operational'

My friend Kathryn and I, posing infront of 'Corridoring' at the request of a wonderful, if slightly inebriated, stranger. The other works I had up were: 'Mountain, Sea', 'No Cure For The Overkill' and four pages from my comic 'The Intercorstal'.

Operation Concrete

2009-11-12T04:22:00.001-08:00

I've recently completed and submitted my most ambitious work ever to Rich Galbraith's project, 'Operation Concrete', which is a way of promoting the publication of his first novel, exploring the possibilities of self-publishing and working a social media project all in one. It's been a real privelege to work with Rich on this, and as I'm a massive fan of the band Akira I'm doubly-excited about the launch night, which is taking place on 26th November at Vibe Bar on Brick Lane.

Here's a link to the event page on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=197368296527#/event.php?eid=197368296527

During the event, the following pictures will be on display, and for sale (click the link to see them):
Mist Of Blood And Rage (the full picture won't be posted to the internet until the show's been on, so the link is to an early WIP)
Corridoring
The Intercorstal Page 1
The Intercorstal Page 7
The Intercorstal Page 11
The Intercorstal Page 24

Postcards From Dystopia

2009-11-12T04:10:00.001-08:00

The facebook event is here: POSTCARDS FROM DYSTOPIA I've got three postcards included in this exhibiton, curated and organised by Tutte Newall. Here's the official description.

POSTCARDS FROM DYSTOPIA

“A futuristic or imagined territory where a universal menace prevails”

An international exhibition of thirty artists presenting visions of a menacing universe with a collection of postcard sized works. This is in conjunction with a showcase of larger paintings of ominous dystopian territories by Tutte Newall and Andrew Hladky.

Our present culture holds a fascination with the concept of our own ordered civilization's collapse into chaos. 'Postcards from dystopia' explores this idea by delving into the realms of the imaginary and issuing visions from a dystopian and desolate environment.

3rd -21st December

Private View: 3rd December 6 - 9 pm

Artists:

Jessamyn Bailey, Nick Barratt, Anna Beam, Maria Colom, Giles Corby, Benjamin de Brousse Ian Gamache, Linda Griffiths, Takayuki Hara, Joseph Hartley, Andrew Hladky, Gareth A Hopkins, HRLCK, Isabel Howlett, Julia Iwasz, Fiona Leighton-Crawford, Kate MacDonald, Ruth Martindale, Nick McLeod, Tutte Newall, Raksha Patel, Federico Penteado, Maria Theresa Santos, Satch, Fred Schimmelschmidt, Angela Smith, Carly Troncale, Lisa Vuerich, David Willis, Esther Yuan.

Curated by Tutte Newall.

Nolias gallery, 60 Great Suffolk street, London SE1 0BL (5mins from Tate modern)

Gallery open: Tues - Sun 11 am - 6 pm and Mon 21st 11 am - 5 pm

Contact: postcardsfromdystopia@hotmail.co.uk Tel: 07722563357