Barron Storey at the Society of Illustrators

Me and my friend Anthony Saint James (a gentleman of lenses as opposed to pens) were looking around the Society of Illustrators last week (I was checking out the Members' Gallery as I'm having a show there next year) when we saw that Barron Storey's 'Life After Black' exhibition was being put up in the main gallery downstairs.

With the show just about ready to open, Mr Storey himself was there, pasting pieces into little books and directing. But what we didn't know was that this was a show absolutely stuffed full to the gills with sketchbooks - and only sketchbooks - of all sizes, packed with minute drawings, pen and ink, notes, faces, type, motorbikes, trees...I've never seen anything like them in my life. And d'you know what? You could TOUCH. As it dawned on us the purpose of this show was To Touch (or rather to rifle excitedly through page after page) there was an almost audible sigh of relief so big that we needed to lie down for a minute.

They are, in the authentic sense of the word, awesome; just writhing with thoughts and humming brain activity. You do get the feeling that if he didn't do these, he would just grind to a halt. I had the pleasure of talking to him briefly and got the impression of a straightforward, kind, passionate man with pencils where fingers should be, dreaming in pictures and paper.

If you get the chance to go, you must. His work reminded me that sketchbooks are not just for Christmas, they're for life

Thumbs courtesy of Anthony!

My New York Pen Stash

This is my new haul from Kinokuniya opposite Bryant Park in NYC. I first went when it was suggested by Maria at the Altpick and it happens also to be round the corner from Bernstein & Andriulli's office. Very handy.

I COULD have spent about forty thousand dollars; instead I went for double-figures only, and settled for these (left to right):

- 3 x 2"x3" narrow-lined notebooks with manila and GOLD - yes gold - covers. Back pocket/handbag stuff.
- 1 x Pentel calligraphy brush with two spare black cartridges, with bubble of three spares.
- Set of three very cute BUT surprisingly robust mini-fountain pens with spare carts. In blue, orange and black. Am drawing with the black one tonight.
- Refillable calligraphy brush pen (fat) - GREAT not to have to chuck it out when it's done!
- Double-ended calligraphy brush; narrow stubby end for fine detail and fat end for more 'confident' strokes.
- Bog standard 2H pencil. The Bs are hard to rub out before scanning.
- Lovely stubby biro-like calligraphy brush pen. Has a sneakily disguised marker end with a VERY fine but firm brush tip. Exquisite.
- A tool to carve your own stamp from stone. Includes two stones. Looks sharp and scary and all the instructions are in Japanese so, wish me luck with that one.
Includes rub-down Arabic letters in upper and lower case Helvetica and an unknown Third Reich-style font.

Also Edward Gorey's never-filmed script for The Black Doll, in hardback.

Can't wait. I'm likely to go back before leaving NY so get your orders in now!

So you don't have to be dead then?

This week the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, from whence I carved my degree in illustration, rang to tell me they were naming their new annual illustration prize after me.

My first thought was, 'Oh, my God, how wonderful', followed immediately by 'Don't you have to be dead to have a prize named after you?'

Well not so, it seems. I was not only a student there but have taught there on and off for over sixteen years, delivering seminars, workshops, Q&A sessions and just good old-fashioned illustration tutoring. So perhaps it isn't so surprising, and I am, of course, completely floored to be asked (for a second I was welling up).

The prize giving is in June and as I'll be away, my best friend Melanie Tomlinson a fellow BIAD post-graduate and maker of magical metal things, is handing over the award on my behalf. The award isn't just a certificate - oh no - I've organised a handsome trophy in the form of a one-year subscription to Bikinilists, a consultancy with my good mates at The Design Conspiracy, a portfolio surgery and a signed limited print. They also receive an Association of Illustrators' membership, so whichever fortunate student I choose as the recipient will exit the course armed with a fearsome set of tools to make their way in the illustration world.

Damn - I wish I'D had the Sarah Coleman Prize when I graduated! 'Must try harder'...

You can get information on BIAD's degree shows here.

(This is Catherine Linton, from Wuthering Heights, a 1/3 scale costume model from my degree project. She's made of welded steel and has real hand-sewn clothes. Yes I did do illustration, honest - I just liked to stretch the brief a bit...)

Retrotogo...

A friend of mine found this the other day, Retrotogo.com

Apparently this illustration makes them think of the Seventies - which is fine by me, I was a 70s baby of course!
There are some gorgeous objects on this blog - bags, jewellery, coats, furniture - with about an hour and a credit card I could do considerable damage...

Computer artist.

I'm in this month's Computer Arts Projects mag, showing you how to create very analogue-looking lettering with sneaky digital means, in a more-complicated-than-it-looks tutorial.

It's nice to see big close-ups of nib hitting paper, but when Nick rang - in a spooky Facebook-related telepathy incident - and asked me to contribute an article, I couldn't help thinking, 'eh? me? I'm all ink and mess, mate.' But actually, I do use my digital artillery more than I realise, and writing this article threw a big 50's-style interrogation spotlight on exactly what processes I do use, and the steps they involve. Cheers to Nick and Julia for asking me to take part.

If you live on an island surrounded by newsagent-eating sea monsters, you can download my tutorial here.

I'm in the July issue of Computer Arts too, so watch the shelves! Or even better - subscribe!

The Harley.

Sometimes an object is so beautiful it takes the wind out your pipes - and when your own pipes are being overshadowed by the glittering beasts on this new Harley XL883C Custom Sportster, that's not an insignificant event.

This is my Dad, John (that's Mum bringing out the tea) and this is his new bike. In Vivid Black and chrome, this diminutive beauty was already making far too much noise when it arrived at my door, Father astride it with newly-blacked boots and head-to-toe in leather. 'Oh yes', I agreed, as he pointed at the exhaust pipes in that unique muffled 'helmet-on' language only bikers understand; 'it is a bit noisy isn't it? Be better when you get the quiet ones fitted'.

A black leather finger wagged in my face. 'No,' said the helmet. 'These are going. I'm getting the loud ones fitted tomorrow'.

And he did. And they are loud. And the bike goes, according to Dad, just as he expected - like a great big joyful bag of bricks with a totally impractical pillion seat. He normally rides a fast and gargantuan Suzuki V-Strom in flame red, which looks after the little American cousin in the newly-tidied garage (anything from the Land of the Rising Sun is apparently always going to be genetically superior). But here is the bike, and here are its breathtaking curves and details.

Enjoy.

Doesn't cost a penny

I recently had the pleasure of joining the Smile gang in Birmingham at the opening of their new (well, their first!) studio at The Bond in Digbeth. As well as providing a live pianist and free posters, they deserve full credit for the drool-inducing and huge variety of cakes on offer, all baked specially for the occasion, and for the hot tip of Big John's takeaway for a post-party tea (fresh-made cheeseless pizza and chips for under a fiver - result!)

Smile are Matt, Nathan and Sue, and are, amazingly, still final year students on Birmingham Institute of Art and Design's Visual Communication degree. I met them first while drawing my V for the Baskerville project - they did all the filming and photography, as well as taking the studio photos of the work I did for the Witches exhibition, which they did a superb job of.

Already working professionally for clients including Type, The Plus+ International Type Festival and Aston Science Park, Smile do branding, identity, web design, photography and much more. Just days away from graduating, these three are already far ahead of their game. I simply cannot wait to see how this very savvy little team make their way in the world! And I hope to work with them again on all sorts of projects...especially if they involve those things most beloved of Inkymole: type, and baking.

See their website here: Smile!
Stop-motion animation of the entire evening here: Blog.

Kevin and Henry

I suppose it's a bit unorthodox to mirror the blog of one of your mates, but our friend Kevin Foakes has put the new artwork for his next LP online, and it's bloody gorgeous.

Henry Flint contributed the earthy, scratchy, detailed illustrations which caught my attention in the way little has since I discovered Vania Zouravliov, Aya Kato and Laurie Lipton.

We can't wait for the album now! We're actually listening to tasters as I type.

In the meantime do, as they say, check it out:
Kev's Blog

The One That Got Away - one of many!

Sometimes I do speculative work or work for pitches where I think there's a chance the job could go live, or it's just too juicy a project to turn down, paid or not.

I've got quite strict criteria on these, but often, contrary to what might be expected, they produce work I'm really pleased with, or which goes into competitions, or gets picked up by a client or and therefore earns its keep in some other, unexpected way.

Previous examples of this were a thrown-together invite I did for my talk at the Apple Store in Regent Street - that piece has brought in more jobs than I can count - clients loved it. Another example was Dollface, produced as a personal piece of work and a screenprint, which has recently got me a proper juicer of a job for Saatchi's in New York. In fact there are so many examples, I might even start a series! Or a book...

ANYWAY - here's one I did last week. It was for Progression Design, and was a campaign to be run at Glastonbury this year. it's far from perfect, and the job didn't go ahead, but I enjoyed it a lot. I think I like doing these because the pressure's off - it's just a case of doing the best you can and having a bit of an experiment!

Nobody asks you any questions for ages, then 3 interviews come along at once!

I seem to have found myself being asked a lot of questions lately, so here are the links to 3 different interviews:

Alt Pick


Factoryroad

Justine Brilmyer - This one is the most indepth and may give more insight to my life as an illustrator for anyone who is interested in such things.

Fun in the sun

I helped raise £800 for the Cultural Art Canvas Programme Thailand in Brixton, London on Saturday, by painting 'live' at the invitation of our long-term partner in crime Solo One.

I screwed the lids off crispy acrylics and got men to crank open jars of crusty glitter paints to create my golden Thai headpiece-wearing lady, 4ft x 8ft high, alongside Inkfetish, Shucks, Tizer, Rabodiga and other art notables. 'Dollface' prints were sold at the auction afterwards, and we took a very un-graffiti picnic of home-made bread and chocolate cakes.
Turning up with just a notebook of sketches and a rough idea (and flying by the seat of my pants) was brilliant fun, and reminded me I can still draw even when surgically removed from my desk!
And I had the sun on my face for five hours - lovely.

Finished piece.

Inks Fetish and Mole

Tools of the trade

Glass Monsters

Check my new beasts, these incredible life-size glass insects by DM Beard Glass in Devon.

My Hercules Beetle is just under 2 inches long, and the awesome Bird Eating Spider is a handsome 5" diameter. Just look at the tiny details! With everything perfect in every way, it's hard to believe these are made of glass.

Spider's poison sac glows amber in the sunlight and her iridescent black legs glitter darkly next to Beetle's breathtakingly tiny feet. And the shadows are something else. But the thing is ... they have weight. Hold the spider in your hand (her legs dangling over), and you get a sense of how the real insect must feel.

Bought from the Broadfield House Glass Museum, Dudley.

51st New York Society of Illustrators Show, New York City, March 6th 2009

- My friend Ed attended the opening of the Advertising show at this year's 51st New York Society of Illustrators Show in New York, in which I had two pieces for the first time ever. Ed had a vested interest in seeing the show, as he wrote the words for 'Sky High', one of the chosen illustrations, he also wrote the story inside this years Christmas cards.

Here is his report:

It was bright and hot in there at 6. As the two floors filled up and we milled around it became obvious that all the entries were extremely good. The soundtrack for the first hour went between dub and Bob Marley via some rowdy tunes skipped soon after they started by whoever was controlling the player, possibly so no-one started bouncing. The food, in a word, was Jesus. The bar, in a word, was free. Relaxed happy folk murmured and mingled until 7 when the gallery director introduced John Cuneo to the podium. John had appeared at the events for the other 2 categories earlier in the year and started with the line "I'm gonna say the same stuff I said last time only faster." He then babbled and blurted and stumbled and stuttered until everybody's ice was broken. We learned he was asked to do the Call For Entires posters only after R.Crumb refused. We learned his mother hasn't liked his stuff since he stopped drawing people with big feet. His people with big heads are just not enough for her. He told us how extraordinary a thing it is to be selected for the show, especially as the Advertising and Uncomissioned category was the largest this year. The jurors had stayed up until midnight deadline day deciding what made the selection and what didn't. It was, apparently, "a gruelling process".

The medals were then accepted by the artists with charming degrees of happiness, nerves and bemusement. Some didn't realise they had to speak. Some expressed relief at finally being able to crawl from their caves and meet their fellow illustrators. Sometimes the desk is a lonely place. Takahisa Hashimoto got the biggest laugh of the night by starting his speech with "Hello New York!".
After all the awards had been received and everyone had applauded everyone else, the mingle-chatter was louder and technical talk floated around on clouds of mutual respect. Eyeballs went up close to pictures. More drinks went down. The bar staff were great. And just before it was time to leave we were served trays of creamy apple crepes. Next year there should be a medal for the food. And maybe a medal for Best Entry featuring a Fictional Creature, which this year was certainly Michael Wandelmaier's "Harpooning The Wooly Whale". I'm not an illustrator but I'll be back there next year. I hope.


- Me too Ed. Thanks for going!

Michael Wandelmaier - Harpooning The Wooly Whale - Best Entry featuring a Fictional Creature medal

Rene Milot - Screaming Rabbit

Richard A. Goldberg - Bon Voyage

Routes

Recognise anything here?

(Click the image to play)

My 'Flamenco' illustration has been used as a poster in the set for Rachel's Bedroom, in Channel 4's online 'alternate reality game' called Routes. The poster was hurriedly emailed off to my friend Kim at Oil Productions, who designed and built the game, to be printed in a matter of minutes before filming began.

Routes is played online via spaces like YouTube and the Routes website, and is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, involving multiple media and game elements to tell a story that's affected by participants' ideas or actions.

It's all very clever, and if you want to read more, here's more on Alternate Reality. Something tells me this is the future of gaming...or should that be storytelling?

I've got a Flickr, how about you?

Click to Flick!


Clickety-click to flickety-flick...

The Factory Shop

Working in Factory Road, where factory sales with stacks of ripped boxes of tights, socks and legwarmers are a regular occurrence, we thought it only right to open up the forecourt ourselves and get our merch out on sale.

Who's the 'we'? Well, I've had a shop for a long time, on my exhibition site writeofftheworld.net, but this is a proper stand-alone store which will eventually be reachable from the new inkymole.com site and my other site, factoryroad.net, which I run with my partner in crime.

It's not quite 'bring a binliner and fill it for a fiver', like the tights warehouse across the street, but there are lovely things to be had, with more to come.

Try it out! I'd appreciate your feedback, and reports of any glitches, before it gets properly hooked into the national grid and the queues at the tills are massive.

click: The Factory Shop

50 new Nikko G nibs!

This is my new batch of 50 Nikko G nibs direct from Japan, which I got this morning. Our friend Warren, who lives in Tokyo, went to a gargantuan art shop to get them for me. This little lot should last me for several years; although I should change my nibs more often than I do, I get through about 12 of these per year and stocks were running low, so this delivery is a real life-saver!

Sharp and very, very fine, these ultra-bendy steel nibs are made in Japan and are capable of a seriously impressive range of stroke widths - from hairline (almost invisible) to absolutely vulgar girth. They are, apparently, the favoured choice of the Manga artist, and although Manga is not to my taste, a lot of the work you see on my sites over the last twelve months (including my Snowtrees Christmas print) will have been done with these nibs. They were first bought for me as a pressie exactly a year ago by my friend Dick Hogg who'd picked them up on his travels, along with a fish-cake shaped rubber! Cheers Warren, cheers Dick - it's great having international chums!

I got up for work at 3.30am this morning to gird my loins for a full-on first day back at the coalface. Strangely excited, I had been trying to convince Leigh I could hear snow falling in the night. On leaping out of bed (I leap into, but never out of bed, so something was up) I saw this. All that remained to was write in it and my first-day-back-at-school-blues were gently blown away at a silent, fluffy zero degrees, one flake at a time.