Bristol Design Festival and other bits!

I'm in the middle of sorting out my exhibit for the Bristol Design Festival which runs from the 5th - 11th of June. I'm really looking forward to it; it'll be nice to display my work for people who may not be familiar with my stuff and who knows, I may even get some commissions from it which would be cool!

I'm also psyching myself up to send out more samples to publishers and agents. I always hate doing this as I never know if what I'm sending brings across my personality and work and if it even stands out at all. I think I just have to do it and not dwell on it too much!

This morning I was thinking about what I want to work on next as a personal project as the last few weeks I've been a bit stuck and have been doodling, reading and playing on my DS more than anything as I tend to get into a bit of a fluster if I try to work when I'm in a bit of a uninspired mood. I like working on projects that involve lots of images in a set format (like my Thingies and Kiyarakuta) as my brain starts spitting out all kinds of things and my momentum picks up very quickly. So I thought why not do something that be used as promotional material, something collectible and kind of quirky so I'm going to make 100 images that will be printed as business/trading cards that can be handed out and also promoted as kind of collectible artwork!

More on this when I've had a doodle...!

The Experiment

I'm not sure what the experiment was but I think it went wrong.

GROFUN!

Through Veg Out, the awesome little exhibition I was part of earlier this month, I got contacted by a great Bristol-based organisation called GROFUN to do some illustrations for them. GROFUN work with schools and the community to encourage growing your own food which is a fantastic idea. Hopefully I'll be able to do some more work for them in the future; it was a lot of fun to draw happy fruit and veg!

The pics will look slightly different on the printed material but here are the originals!

New Genki Gear t-shirts!

In no less than 5 amazing flavours! (Or colours if your taste buds don't work that way).

They Do magazine

In June, I'll be appearing in an on-line magazine that promotes artists from all disciplines. This will be their first issue and I look forward to it!

http://theydomagz.wordpress.com/

Dagon!

Here's my interpretation of one of my favourite H.P Lovecraft deities; Dagon! I've been reading a lot of Lovecraft lately and happened upon a passage about the non-Lovecraftian god of the same name in a book I'm reading called The Secret History of the World. So inspired I was to draw my own version of Dagon and his fishy-froggy minions! I've got a bit on an obsession with drawing big-lipped, bug-eyed fish creatures at the moment which seems to fit the whole "Innsmouth Look" pretty well. I may have a go at the big daddy himself, Cthulhu, but we'll see...!

Birdy Skyscape!

Firey Desert!

Jolly Tundra!

Happy Forest!

I Can Poop a Rainbow!

Doggies in the Park

Real-life as I'd like to see it!

Shit Films and the Girls Who Love Them!

It's no secret that I'm a fan of bad films. Not just Congo/Anaconda style mainstream fayre but the kind that you find in the bargain bin in Poundland (you can imagine what a bargain THAT is...). After being led to this gem of a site http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/vhs-videos I've found not only films I've seen that I'd long forgotten about, but also films I must track down just because they look so bad. I don't know why I do it to myself - more often than not I end up feeling like I've wasted 2 hours of my life yet the anticipation of the next cheap movie is just too strong! Here are some gems I must own but am not willing to pay more than £2 for...

Come on; you know that's just a really bad ploy to make people pick up what is essentially going to be a pile of Tosh! It's bloody Robocop! He wasn't a vampire!

The Tag line alone has sold this to me: " The X Killer is too insane to be caught. This ex-cop is just mad enough to try." Starring Wings Hauser no less! If you said "Who?" then you're correct!

Corey Haim = bad at the best of times.

Nazi zombies? Give them some dinosaurs to ride and we have a blockbuster on our hands!

I saw this when I like 12 and thought it was pretty bad. It's kind of like a Predator/Aliens rip-off starring Rutgar Hauer. In London. Ugh...

I own this piece of crap. It's full of misleads to who the killer is that just ends up making no sense in the end! However, it does contain the best-ever facial expression of someone perving on a couple "making out" in their car.

I thought Gleaming the Cube was a bad name (and film). But Eat the Peach?!

Anything with Ninja in the title is a crap film winner in my book.

Two Shows Coming Up!

Well, between now and July it's going to be a tad hectic as I'm participating in the Bristol Design Festival at the beginning of June and The Japanese Art Festival in mid-July. I'm doing a load of new work for the Japanese Art Festival and exhibiting existing work for the Design Festival. All I have to figure out is what the hell I want to exhibit! It'll mostly be printed stuff; I may get hold of some strong Velcro so I can put up a few paintings too.

I'm looking forward to both of these as the Design Festival means I could get a new audience outside of the demographic I usually aim for, whereas the Japanese Festival is a chance to make some all-new Japan related images. Whoot! I'm going to be busy busy busy!

Bristol Con and exciting things!

The Bristol International Comic Con is over for another year and I'm sad to say, a tad disappointing this time around. The Small Press Expo was pretty awesome; I made some sales, met some nice people and all in all it was worth the £15 I spent on the table. The main con was tiny this year and to me the only notable stands were Top Shelf and Genki Gear. It's a shame as the con is usually one of the high points of the year and it was rather non-eventful this time. I can understand why it was so small given the current economic climate but hopefully next year will see the con back on top form.

As for the exciting news...! My new t-shirt through Genki Gear will be available to buy from them and Play very shortly. It comes in no less than 4 awesome colours as well as two gorgeous jackets which I can't wait to get my greasy mitts on! My favourite colour is the orange tee as seen here:


However, that isn't the only bit of exciting news; two of Genki Gear's t-shirts have been selected by SFX Magazine as two of their Top 40 Sci-Fi Related Merchandise, one of which is Destroy Them! Whoot! So you should be able to see my evil robot as well as (hopefully) a name credit in the June issue of SFX. No doubt I'll be posting when that comes out!

Digital Dabblings for the Day!

Stationary Again

More Stationary Designs

Another play around with some stationary ideas. I'm not too sure about the Space Rabbit one; I think the colours need to be more monotone, or at least a bit more complimentary to each other. These are pretty fun to make though!

Bristol Small Press Expo!

I'll be selling goods and wares at the Bristol Small Press Expo on the 9th of May, which should be fun! It's on from 10am-6pm at the Mercure Holland House Hotel as part of the Bristol International Comic Con. I'll only be exhibiting on the Saturday but will no doubt be spotted wandering aimlessly on the Sunday, spending money on comics. I'll have a fine selection of paintings, prints, badges, postcards and bags for sale. Come on down, why don't you!

New KON Designs!

I absolutely love how these new designs came out; it feels like I actually managed to utilise the odd template shape to really make the most out of the space for the design! Hopefully I'll get my free pairs this week; can't wait to wear them! :P

New T-Shirts!

I have some new t-shirt designs here http://notyourmomsvinyl.com/index.cfm?ShowCat=7 for your viewing and hopefully purchasing pleasure! Please check them out!

Montague Pomme F'rites

A close friend to the Queen, Montague Pomme F'rites is a Capuchin gentleman who enjoys fine dining and organising his pipe collection. He is currently seeking an eligible young woman to woo and serenade with monkey song.
Another one of my portrait series. I'm having fun with this looser style even if the pictures aren't that great! I'm trying to strike a balance between the paint and some use of pencil but acrylic doesn't take crayon as well as gouache. Any suggestions would be welcome!
Acrylic on canvas paper.

Stationary Designs

Well, I'm about to start sending off work to publishers, agencies and the like and I've just ordered a metric shit-load of promotional material; business cards, mini-cards and notecards are on the way and stickers and badges will be ordered over the weekend. In a bid to come up with some more promo ideas, I've started to fiddle about with stationary ideas, namely notepads. They're pretty nifty and are the kind of thing I know people at cons would go for! I'm a bit of an obsessive when it comes to cool stationary; half of it goes unused buying a spanking new notebook is a guilty pleasure, even if it sits gathering dust for ages. I have a folder full of notebooks from Japan I know I could never bring myself to soil!

So here are the first two of many designs I'm playing about with. I'm manipulating existing images in the hopes of building up a kind of "brand." I think packs of these with badges and stickers would be a nice little seller!