#A1Alan

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.

MOVING

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)

Clive, the European Panda

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.

'grthinking'

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...

Cut-Click Printed Issue

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)