The Class of 2009

Thought I would promote my new batch of competition in the world of illustration - namely the 19 students that are soon to graduate from the Illustration Deptartment at Edinburgh College of Art.

The Degree Show opens on June 13th (the PV is on the 12th) and it is an excellent, varied, exciting and surprising show indeed.

This group have been great to teach and I think many of them will do well in the tough 'ol business that is Illustration. I just hope they remember the pricing and business advice I gave them back in November!
I have selected an image by Toby Cook from his book "The Upside Down House" and a life drawing by Trine Mangernes as a small taster of the variety in the exhibition.

Go along to their Show, buy something from their shop and support the next generation.

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.