3D Masks Sneak Preview

Here are the first glimpses of two of the three 3D masks that I have collaborated on with my father for the MASKS show (Facebook users can RSVP here) that opens on the 15th September in London at the Nobrow gallery. The show will run until the 11th November. My Dad and I talked at length about how to get these image to work three dimensionally and with a spot of elbow grease, luck and determination, I am pleased to say that I couldn't be happier with the end results. My Pops has really out done himself. He cut, drilled and chiseled the wood perfectly and it was up to me to paint and varnish the buggers. Just a few tweaks left and then they will be back at his work space for gluing before they are shipped to London for hanging. Exciting times.See here for exhibition details during the London Design Festival.

Masks Exhibition and Felt Mistress Sneak Preview

September 15th marks the opening of my new solo show 'Masks' at the Nobrow Gallery in London which will feature my mask designs from the last six months. The show opens just in time for London Design Festival and you can read more details on their website by clicking HERE. To make the event even more special I have enlisted the help of some very talented friends. In fact one of the collaborations is with my Father, Colin Newman but more details and pictures of that project nearer to the exhibition.

With the show just over a month and a half away, I can contain myself no longer as I'm very, very, very excited to preview photos of my collaboration with the extremely talented and very lovely, Felt Mistress. This is a dream project for me as back in 2008, I was exhibiting alongside Felt Mistress in a Christmas show and completely fell in love with her monsters and her ability to visualise and create these incredible beasts in three dimensions and only using felt! Anyway, three years later and to much anticipated excitement, I've finally gotten to team up with her and the results are amazing. Felt Mistress is creating three Yokai from my book, The Bento Bestiary (which is available to buy HERE) and today you can see sneak preview shots of the terrifying Taimatsu Maru. YEAH!This bad boy even has a big blue tail. SHAZAM!
Boy oh boy, he is a handsome devil!

'Masks' featured in Guardian

A couple of weeks back, my Masks series was featured the the Guardian newspaper. Which came as quite a surprise..... a very good one. These prints along with a whole host of other prints and exciting projects will be exhibited at the Nobrow gallery from the 15th September. You find more details HERE.

The Science of BBQ for Wired

An illustration for an article titled 'How to BBQ with Science' in the famous 'how to' section in Wired magazine.

Totem Tape for Betty and Dupree

Available now! My Totem Decorative Tape is for sale on the Betty & Dupree website for £4.95. Click HERE to purchase the tape or click HERE to check out their fantastic shop.

'Masks' Update

Pretty busy at the moment but I thought I'd stop and share the latest Mask designs from last week.

Ghost of Gone Birds - Bishop's O' O'

This is my illustration of the now extinct Bishop's O' O' for the 'Ghost of Gone Birds' exhibition and will be available at the shows as a 21x21 cm screen print of 20 on wood and a 42x42 cm Giclee print of 40 on a 310g fine art felt paper. The aim is to help raise awareness and money for bird preservation societies so that hopefully we can stop more species of bird from becoming extinct. The first of a number of Ghost shows start this week at the Liverpool School of Art and Design on Thursday 19th and Friday 20th May. Over 80 artists and designers are taking part in the project including Ralph Steadman, Jamie Hewlett and many more.

Free wallpapers available at The Fox is Black

Head over to The Fox is Black to download two free desktop wallpapers designed by me. Click HERE to pimp your screen.

Pocko

A little illustration for my agent, Pocko. All of the Pocko illustrators have designed a small image that works as a signature at the bottom of their emails. The images rotate at random from email to email. Pretty neat, huh?

NSPCC Foyer Images

A little while back myself and numerous other illustrators were asked by the NSPCC to create images to brighten up their foyer for visitors. We had to choose from a variety of words and I picked 'tiger' and 'robot'. A simple but incredibly fun brief. Below are the final illustrations and some shots of the illustrations hung in the foyer.

Here are some shots of the illustrations hung in the foyer. Thanks to Ashley May for his involvement in the project and for send the photos over.

Window Drawing for Schuh's 30th Birthday

On Good Friday I was asked by Schuh to come down to their Bristol store in Cabot Circus and draw on their window for their 30th Anniversary. I was quite nervous about drawing in public because it really isn't something I ever do but that worry was all for nothing as the sun was shining and the folks at Schuh were super friendly. I had a great day and really enjoyed being out of the studio and drawing on a large scale. The photo below was taken by Neil from Schuh, who travelled down from their HQ in Edinburgh for the day, and tweeted the drawing in its various states of progress.

The brief for the drawing was to take any key moments from the past 30 years of pop culture and interpret them in my own way. I mainly drew inspiration from hip hop, punk, metal and Teen Wolf. The below pictures were taken by my friend and talented photographer, Pete Derrett. Pete dropped by to say hi and was a welcome break from the non-stop drawing. You can check out Pete's blog HERE.
This last photo was taken by Neil at the end of the day to show everyone on Twitter the finished window. I highly recommend checking Schuh out. On top of the fact they sell lots of great shoes they also stock a good array of UK size 12 which is fantastic for me as I suffer from large feet and usually have a very limited choice for foot wear.

Nobrow Packing Tape

A little while back Nobrow asked me to design their new packaging tape for their online orders to be wrapped in and here is the result. Alex from Nobrow asked me to illustrate a parade of animals all reading books in just two colours. Due to popular demand the tape is being sold on their online shop for £6.50 a roll but currently only a very limited amount is available. Click HERE to purchase the tape. Each roll is 66 metres in length and 5cm wide, the pattern is 40cm long and then repeats for the remainder of the tape's length. Below is a quick rough sketch of the design. Notice how quite a lot of the animals have changed places and the Bear and Gorilla have changed drastically from the first rough to the final full colour design.
Here is the full 40cm design.

Masks Series Part 1

Over the past two weeks, I've found time to work on a personal project and I finally feel genuinely excited and enthusiastic about drawing again. I've really enjoyed experimenting without any pressure and I have found that the ideas for other images in this series are starting to snowball. I'm taking a little break from working on them at the moment to concentrate on commercial work but this is the first half of a series of prints titled 'Masks' that will be available in the near future. Once the collection is complete they will all be sale at my solo show in September. Enjoy.

Public Display of Affection Sign

Cent magazine asked myself and four other designers if we would like to create a sign for their latest issue. We had to create a sign that each of us felt was missing from the world. I chose to create a sign to endorse 'Public Displays of Affection' (PDA). I'm not talking about outdoor sex in public places or dogging in a layby, I'm talking about how nice it is to see people happy together and unafraid or embarrassed to show affection for each other in a world where bad news is reported at a premium. You can read my full explanation in the image below if you click on it. You don't have to but I thought I'd at least give you the option.

The Spring/Summer issue of .Cent magazine, guest edited by photographer Minnie Weisz, is out mid-April. For more details, please visit www.centmagazine.co.uk

Nobrow 5 - Repeat Pattern and Process

Nobrow 5 debuted at 'Pick Me Up' London last week and is now available from the Nobrow website. The theme of the issue is 'A Few Of My Favourite Things' which needed to be worked into a repeat pattern using 3 regular pantone spot colours and 1 gold metallic pantone. Blimey! It was bloody tricky but the results were worth it. The cover of the issue is by Micah Lidberg and inside features work from Bjorn Lie, Nick White, Meg Hunt, Matthew The Horse, Jon Boam, Rob Hunter, Nishant Choksi and many, many more.

I thought it might be interesting to run you through each spot colour layer for my piece. It was made up of a grid of monster and robot faces. Here is the original sketch that I retraced with a pencil, ruler and compass on my light box. Everything I do is hand drawn. I don't use vectors.
The first pantone is yellow and I used the colour at 100%, 70% and a 40%.
The highest opacity that I used the blue at was 85% due to a conversation with Rob Hunter about how dark the blue will print compared to how it appears on the computer screen. Rob had a pantone chart and the difference from screen to printed paper was quite significant. Losing the 15% knocked some of the intensity out which worked out for the best.
Next up is red. It's really more of a pinky red than a deep red. By crossing it over with the yellow, the pinkish red gets boosted to a strong red. I think I only used the red at a maximum of 90% and a minimum of 20%.

Here we have the pinkish red and yellow crossing over and making a strong red. It was fun to work out the areas to leave pink so that the image didn't appear too flat and boring. You always wanna give a bit of 'Shazam!'

The blue and yellow create a green and the different shades of green are made by using different opacities of each spot colour.
Here is the blue and red crossing over without the yellow. These two colours create a purplish secondary colour that highlights the dark areas of the image.
For the gold spot colour to work at its best, it should not be over-layed or under-layed. Industrial litho printing is very, very accurate so I just cut the shapes to fit directly into the spaces. Here is an example of what it looks like without the other colours.
Here is the finished illustration. It really made my brain blocks hurt but I feel very happy with the final result.
Here is a photo of it in the latest issue. My digital camera is very old and very rubbish so this probably isn't the best representation of the printed article which is why you should go and buy it. It smells great too.
Hope this was helpful. Toodles. x