A post about how much I love Anticon, prompted by the Wandering Wolf

Nowadays, with two children to feed, and two cars to drive them around in, and a house I pay for them (and me, and my wife) to sleep in, finding money to spend on music pretty much never happens. But back in the day, when I was working on the Deli at Tesco, and my girlfriend (now wife) was off at uni, I spent a LOT of money on music.

And a large proportion went to Anticon. I'd never have found out about them, bizarrely, if I hadn't been looking for post-hardcore records online -- I was obsessed with Rival Schools' "United Against Fate", and looking for other stuff by them took me to Some Records, which is where I fell in love with The Ghost, and looking for more like The Ghost took me to Southern Records (who did distribution for Some, back in the day). Southern were handling distribution for a whole bunch of really interesting record labels, including Anticon, and had a great website littered with free samples from bands I'd never heard of, and probably would never have heard of otherwise. At the time, as I said, I was after rock music, and one of the artists was 'Different' by 'Sage Francis'. In a shocking bout of naievity I thought maybe it would be like Frank Black (aka Black Francis) so I did the ol's Right-Click-Save-As and as it was 2003 left the download going overnight.

Sage Francis is a rapper, as I found out the next morning. And I instantly fell in love with 'Different' so I bought 'Personal Journals' and was blown away by it. So then I started scrabbling around for anything similar, and since it was released on Anticon and I had some spare money (I was living with my mum, so all my money was spare) I bought a whole bunch of stuff that was out then -- Selling Live Water, Bottle Of Humans, Oaklandazulasylum, Music For The Advancement of HipHop, Forcefield Kids -- I was just eating it all up. And obviously that spilled out to records by Anticon artists on other labels, like Boom Bip and Doseone's Circle.

I was, frankly, obsessed, and stayed that way for a good few years, even now to some extent with most of the energy I'd use on obsession burned up through fatherhood, chomping up everything they released. I used to check the website twice a day in case there was any news (they usually updated about every two weeks...) I was on the Restiboard, and when that closed jumped over to Sole's board for a long time. I dragged my wife to the 'Live From Rome' release party and my two best friends to see Passage (hungover) at the Spitz. (Actually, over the years, I've dragged my friends and/or wife to a lot of hiphop gigs they weren't really keen on.)

Here's an illustration I did of Doseone and Andy Broder, as CrookandFlail, as part of the review I did of the Unearthing live shows for Amelia's Magazine.

Those artists are still top of my agenda, when I do have money to pay for music or (heaven forfend) going to gigs. Subtle will probably always be my favourite band, I'm still trying to keep up with sole intellectually and ideologically, I'm still waiting for Unindian Song Vol2.

Recently, Yoni Wolf (I'm not sure if he still uses the pseudonym why? or if that's just the name of his band now) has been releasing podcasts with various artists, and the two featuring Adam Drucker (Doseone) are just... Well, they're great. But it's a weird experience for me, because suddenly all the information I was so hungry for about Anticon 10 years ago is just THERE, and it's great. Trouble is, now I want MORE. I want extra from Dose and Jel and Yoni and I want to hear from Passage and Telephone Jim Jesus and Sole and all those guys with superb, ridiculous names.

This is the latest one, which also has Jel covering (some of) his own personal history. I'm really hoping there are more soon.

#animalchallenge

After the Jackal and Magpie images I did for Secret7s I was eager to do more pictures of animals, but didn't want to spend hours browsing Google Images until I found one. Instead, I asked Twitter what I should do -- first answer back was 'A Liger' by Anxiety Decending and after 5 mins of Google (including double-checking that Ligers aren't bred for their skills and magic) came up with this:

A Liger

And since then (starting Friday lunchtime, writing now on Sunday night) I've done another 7 animals, including a Degu, a rat, a monkey, a turtle, a hippopotamus and an elephant.

I'm really enjoying it -- it's nice to have a change from the purely abstract, which is what I've been working on recently -- making cutups for 'the secret project'. It's like I needed to prove to myself that I could draw figuratively if I needed to, and a few of the images I've done so far have suggested I can. I'm planning to work a couple of these up to fit in with the Secret7" stuff I did, too.

As well as adding them as I go on Instagram and Twitter, I've started a dedicated gallery on my Facebook artist page -- feel free to like the page while you're there, y'know. If you want to.

Secret7"

I missed out on Secret7" last year, somehow, and this year decided in a pretty off-hand way that I'd submit something. So I had a listen to the tracks to work from, and instantly fell in love with Laura Marling's "The Beast". As I was listening to it, I knew I had to include a Jackal somewhere, and after doodling a few ideas, the design for my final  sumbisssion came pretty much fully formed into my head. After that it was just a case of finishing it off and here it is. If you'd like to VOTE FOR IT then you can click the link in the caption, below.

http://www.talenthouse.com/creativeinvites/preview/grthink/888

While I was working on "The Beast" I felt the urge to do another. Again, the design for an image came fully loaded into my head, but unfortunately for me, the image was of a hand, for Jessie Ware's "Still Love Me" and drawing hands is my artistic Kryptonite. As I was sketching my hand, over and over and over, I realised that I needed to break off and work on something else, and as I listened to Haim's "Better Off" I came up with the image of a bird. Because of my personal fixation with Magpies, doing one of those seemed like a natural choice, and I came up with this:

CLICK HERE TO VOTE FOR THIS IMAGE

And once I'd finished the Magpie off, I re-approached the hand image. 

Now then, I happen to think this last image is the best of the three. I probably shouldn't play favourites, but conceptually I think it's the strongest: is the wedding ring missing -- and if it is, is there still love in that relationship? Plus, it's got the best balance of shape and movement, and a big block of my favourite colour... I think you should vote for that too, if you're reading this.

CLICK HERE TO VOTE!

If you do vote, then thanks -- I really appreciate it.

If you don't, I'll know, and I'll hunt you down*

*really

(not really)

Also, the voting system doesn't really affect the choice for most of the entries, so it's a kind of nice to have, not an imperative. Cheers.

Wolfman's Got Nards

While I had breakfast this morning, I watched the end of The Monster Squad, which was on Sky Movies. It's a film that I used to watch a LOT as a child, back when I lived in Aberaeron (my brother bought his copy on VHS from Aberystwyth's WHSmith) and watching it back now, while it's obviously dated, it's still as good as I remember.

What it also reminded me of was that a while ago -- a year, year-and-a-half, maybe -- I made these two illustrations of an iconic scene from the film for a zine project. But yeah, here I am, finally sharing the pictures I did. As well as the differences in colour between the two, there's also the change in order of the first two panels. Don't know which one I prefer, if I'm honest.

"So, how's things going, with your art?"

I'm often asked how things are going, what I'm working on, etc. Becasue of any number of reasons, I'm quite reticent to share -- occasionally, I can't remember what I'm actually working on because I'm thinking about what I'd rather be working on, for instance. Or I get flustered trying to explain I'm making an abstract comic by drawing on packing labels that I've stuck to pages that I've rescued out of the recycling at work.

So, here's a quick list of what I'm working on, want to work on and should be working on (as much to help me remember as anything else):

Resyk: This is that abstract comic based on pages nicked out of the recycling at work I mentioned above. The pages were double-sided but there was only three of them, so that's 6 finished pages of work. The first two pages are included at the top of this blog. Trivia: The word 'Resyk' is nicked from Judge Dredd, and is the name for the facility in Mega City 1 where dead bodies are sent to retrieve important natural resources like water and carbon.

Vineland: Last year I managed to come into possession of two tattered 1st edition copies of Thomas Pynchon's Vineland (one of my favourite novels). I've just started making inroads into 'working it up' by drawing on each page, inspired by Tom Phillips' "A Humument". So far I've done testers on the blank pages at the back, but soon hope to start on in full.

The Intercorstal: Elipses: I've been promising this for a year and a half now -- a collected retrospective of everything I've done related to The Intercorstal. I've rescanned all the pages, and ow have to go through the arduous task of formatting them all so they print at least consistently. I'll get it done eventually.

The Intercorstal: Ladythings: A long while ago I won some ephemera from the artist Kye Sanga that I promised to turn into a comic. This included a cheap, torrid little romance book, some Piano tuition books, some beads and a few polaroids of total strangers. I've not made a start, as frankly I've got no idea how to start, but will get there eventually.

The Intercorstal: I still need to do some more 'traditional' Intercorstal pages, to keep that side of the whole project moving. I'm too easily distracted by the lure of detournement of exiting images, though.

Secret 7: At Faye West's suggestion I'm going to give this year's Secret 7 a go. No idea which artist to illustrate for, or whether to do more than one, or whether I'll have time to even get one done.

Mr Soft:  Waiting for the final images to be published, but all the works been done and I'm really proud of what I produced. I've blogged about it elsewhere.

Secret Project: I've been invited to be a part of an ambitious project which I've sworn myself to secrecy over. I've completed one image for it, which is one of the best things I've ever done, but still have to do another nine, at least.

Trolleys: It's not really a project, more of an obsession with instagraming pictures of stray trolleys. But I've started to be sent photos by other people, as also happened when I was maintaining the TrolleyBlog, so something might end up coming of it after eventually. Who knows.

Um, I think that's it. But it's quite a lot. Oh, and I've already started collecting more photos from P&O brochures, and they'll probably get done before some of the stuff in this list...

But yeah. I'm busy.

Mr Soft Page X

'Mr Soft Page X' which used to be 'Mr Soft Page 1' until  I replaced it with something different.

The Mr Soft project I've posted about recently is finished. I've completed the images, scanned and cropped them and they're ready to be sent off. Once they appear in print I'll post details of where that is (France, mostly, for those wondering).

Here's the first image I started as part of the project. It's quite a literal illustration of one of the sections in the novel Mr Soft appears in, 'And He The Mother Of Them All'. In this scene, Mr Soft stands and watches the explosion of a bomb he's planted on the other side of the city from the safety of a hotel room. He watches a cloud of toxic gas rise from the explosion, and works out that he's got enough time before the cloud reaches him to... well, he calls hotel reception and gets them to send up a prostitute, as he gets 'the scalpels' from his zebra skin suitcase.

I grew unhappy with this image as I was working on it. I couldn't make Mr Soft ambiguously shaped and really nasty and looking out of a window all at the same time, so this was dumped and replaced with an image made of cut up catalogs, postage stickers and some ink.

Until the images are published, I won't share them -- I've posted enough details and WIP's on Instagram to give an idea of what I've done, so if you're interested search for the hashtag #mrsoft.

The Intercorstal and P&O

I've just cut up a P&O Cruises brochure to get images as a starting point for another Intercorstal project, which I'll do either as the Mr Soft project finishes, or in tandem with it. This new project will be the fourth Intercorstal-related thing I've done which heavily uses P&O promotional material, having already completed:

Witches which was based on a set of 8 promotional postcards

Valentine, based on a brochure

Mr Soft, which uses cut up pages from a P&O brochure to make comics on two of the project's four final pages.

P&O isn't the only company that I've taken promotional images from as a basis to make comics -- Collider used pages from an IKEA catalogue and Butcher's Park was made from an Epic Learning brochure. Oh, and I have a sketchbook made from a Next catalogue. But why do I use these images, and why do I return to P&O so often?

I spend a fair amount of time thinking about this, although precious few people have actually ever asked me. Here's some reasons that I've come up with:

1. The Intercorstal as a project is mostly monotone, and at some point I decided that it needed some colour. I experimented with including colour in the 'traditional' pages, but was never really happy with it. The only 'released' example I can think of is "Taking Advice From Bryan Lee O'Malley" which I did for the second TwitterArtExhibit. So a way to introduce colour is to have it there already, and base the ink work on those. And I think generally it works really well, which is why I keep coming back to it.

2. Those source images are so beautiful in their own right, it seems a shame that they are so easily passed over and dismissed. They're used by the companies involved to inspire particular emotion in order to sell their product -- most people when reading these materials don't pay a great deal of attention to the pictures. Reusing them is my way of appreciating them, making them exist as objects of beauty, rather than just tools to sell cruises/furniture/etc.

3. Nobody does blue sky like P&O. That yawning expanse of pure blue is one of their biggest selling tools -- a place of opportunity, peace, hope, that people can buy into by going on one of their cruises. And it's a great tool to use when you're looking for colour to compliment and act as counterpoint to something like The Intercorstal, which is dense, complicated and often quite violent.

There's probably a hidden psychological aspect, too -- as there is with so much of my work. I mean, I've been on a couple of P&O (one of which I've blogged about here) cruises, and my wife and her family totally love them, but whether there's an emotional reason that I keep returning to them in my art, and responding to their image in the way that I do, is probably best left to a professional to decide.