Mr Soft Page X

'Mr Soft Page X' which used to be 'Mr Soft Page 1' until  I replaced it with something different.

The Mr Soft project I've posted about recently is finished. I've completed the images, scanned and cropped them and they're ready to be sent off. Once they appear in print I'll post details of where that is (France, mostly, for those wondering).

Here's the first image I started as part of the project. It's quite a literal illustration of one of the sections in the novel Mr Soft appears in, 'And He The Mother Of Them All'. In this scene, Mr Soft stands and watches the explosion of a bomb he's planted on the other side of the city from the safety of a hotel room. He watches a cloud of toxic gas rise from the explosion, and works out that he's got enough time before the cloud reaches him to... well, he calls hotel reception and gets them to send up a prostitute, as he gets 'the scalpels' from his zebra skin suitcase.

I grew unhappy with this image as I was working on it. I couldn't make Mr Soft ambiguously shaped and really nasty and looking out of a window all at the same time, so this was dumped and replaced with an image made of cut up catalogs, postage stickers and some ink.

Until the images are published, I won't share them -- I've posted enough details and WIP's on Instagram to give an idea of what I've done, so if you're interested search for the hashtag #mrsoft.

Describing Mr Soft. 2nd Attempt.

Languishing in my draft posts is my attempt to describe why I've been creating interprative illustrations of Mr Soft. I doubt I'll be publishing it. Instead, here's some source material, taken from "The Complete New Statesmen", written by John Smith. The photo is an illustration by Brendan McCarthy, which I've taken as my cue for my project.

Excerpt from "The Pre-Pubertal Man", taken from "And He The Mother Of Them All".

    Lonnie waved up at Mr Soft with a tiny hand, shiny with amniotic fluid, and gestured for him to sit down.
    "So," Lonnie said, "what can I do for you?"
    "I want a disease, Lonnie. A Kurtzeimer retro."
    "You aren't thinking of hitting Harlem again, are you?"
    Mr Soft shrugged, and scribbled a skull-and-crossbones in the air with the tip of his crook. Lonnie laughed, the speech module turned it inot a funny rattling sound, like gravel in a tin can.
    The laughing must have been uncomfortable for the woman, though, because she moved in her sleep, moaning softly."