Sumo Design

Lovely job this for Sumo Design in Newcastle - they have given me quite a bit of freedom to come up with ideas for a set of 6 B/W illustrations which they can use to show their clients how they promote the Arts through design.
Bit naughty this, as it hasn't been approved yet (sorry Jim) but I like the looseness of my drawing here and the fact the Storyteller has brought a bird with her to the classroom.
Really lovely just working in b/w again too - I found a bottle of Windsor and Newton ink I remember buying when I was a student and it has stood the test of time.
Treated myself to some decent Fabriano paper too, quite rough mould but actually really good for pen and ink drawing (no snagging and resulting ink splats)

Otherwise I am busy getting ready to start teaching at eca again - term starts next week and I will be working with 2nd Year students (ie new to specialising in Illustration from their general art courses)all week, so I have a juicy little project about creating characters which will keep them busy...as well as all the location drawing I have planned for them!
Next week is also busy at college for helping put the final touches to our 500 Years of Printing exhibition, which is called "Open Here" but I will do a separate post, with links for that.

CMY and K

Never have I given so much thought to the humble 4 Colours of the Apocolypse. That doesn't make any sense, but it has a ring to it, don't you think ?
CMYK - it could replace YMCA and you would only have to figure out how to do the "A" arm signal when on the discoteque floor (answers on a postcard please).
Anyway - I am going slightly loopy, as I am up in Edinburgh tomorrow and Wednesday, donning my inky overcoat in the eca Printworkshop in order to screenprint my part of the Imprint: 500 Years of Printing in Scotland project we are doing (see previous post). I FEEL like I have been printing for 500 years here in the studio, as I am doing a mongrel print - a hybrid of digital and screen - and so am printing the digital bits and it takes a while.
CMYK features, of course. I have never been one to use them together as a colour palette before, but I have to say I am quite hooked now - jiggle them about a bit, so they don't quite fit and, Bingo! you get fuzzy vision. You'll be seeing more CMYK from me I think.
Anyway,I was going to do something with King James IV but instead I have recycled a drawing of a rather brutish looking chap, who looks like he is from the 60's, but in my mind for this picture he is a printer - a Print Manager, or maybe a Print Operations Director...no,no...a Pre Press Repro Manager, that's it. He's worried. Books are going digital. The Book is Dead. Long Live the Book.
here is a tiny morsel of my image - miniscule.
500 years of No Printing in Scotland is the name of the follow-up exhibition.

New Folio Pages and other things of note

I am absent again, am I not?
Well, it is back to school time, fresh start time and all that, so busy busy.
This time of year usually means that I arrange some new folio pages for my books in the USA. Obviously I print out illustrations from actual jobs, but I also like to do speculative pages, personal stuff etc too. It is good to show all the other things you can draw, or think about too. I get quite a bit of work from random drawings or ideas I have printed out and put in the folio, so it does pay off.
Anyway, I am currently working on another animation with Eskymo (an epic - it's half completed but involves animals and cars) and these are SOME of the car drawings I have done for that, which I have composed into a folio page.
Generally I am crap at drawing cars, but I do love drawing them. Students, cover your ears/eyes, but i NEVER go and look at cars for reference, as I prefer making them up. You could never tell, could you.

What else am I up to? Well, waiting for some feedback on the first round of sketches for the new New Yorker/Mass Mutual job. I think Labor Day held everything up but we don't have that holiday in the UK, so I was twiddling my thumbs, champing at the bit to get going on it!

I am also working on a nice wee project with my fellow visual communicators at Edinburgh College of Art as part of the 500 Years of Printing In Scotland celebrations. Jonny Gibbs (my boss!) has organised an exhibition called Imprint and we all have to produce an edition of 15 prints responding to the theme of 500 years of printing in Scotland - quite open.
I have not done much printmaking but I want to get into our juicy new printworkshop at the college and do some screenprinting, but also using digital print too (which I do do) My ideas keep changing, but I am actually going down a bit of a conceptual route, unusually for me. Saying that, I do want to draw King James IV of Scotland (he granted the licence for the first printing press in Scotland to Chepman and Myllar) as he looks such a metrosexual thug, with his spaniel ear hair-do and furry bling bling. He did love his books though, bless 'im.
Anyhow, our exhibition will be on at the Art College in October, but I will post more about that later on, alongside my Imprint image.

Oh, can also say that I LOVE this woman's work - Marian Bantjes - beautiful, brilliant and she writes a mean essay too.