Lumberjack - Checked Shirt

Second little taster for the Lumberjack character I'm playing with. Though he has made an appearence in clay and painting form before.

Wacom Lumberjack

I got a Wacom Tablet for my Bday and its pretty cool. Will take some getting used to but quite fun being able to draw straight into the computer in almost the same style as using pencil and paper. The above is my first attempt at drawing something small with detail and its turned out ok. Currently creating a new series of gift cards and prints about this little fellow, will see if I can make some of them competely using the wacom tablet.
I'm away to play some more.

(PS - not sure why the image is not appearing above, just started doing that today for some reason - still there if you click.)

Craft House Concept

Pleased to say I have another couple of stockists in Edinburgh.

A selection of my cards will now be availible in the Fruitmarket Gallery which is one of my favourite shops in Edinburgh, the book shop is brilliant and it is always very difficult to browse without purchasing something.

Over in another part of Edinburgh Craft House Concept a new and rather lovely little store has also just become one of my stockists and will be selling a different series of cards and a couple of my illustration prints. To launch their new spring collection they are having a little celebration this Saturday (19th March 10am - 7:30pm) with some tasty cakes, craft demonstrations and 20% off all stock. I'd reccommend all Edinburghers to take a stroll along. See their website for more info.

Crafthouse Concept
31E Minto Street

Edinburgh

EH9 2BT

E is for Elephant

When I started doing these little Etsy Alphabet Treasuries with the hidden shapes I realised the most tricky of all to complete would be "E". If it was possible to pick 15 objects then no problem but as we only have 12 to play with you will have to forgive me if the shape doesn't quite reveal itself as well in this one.

E is for Elephant

"E, the first letter of the alphabet, is the most common (or highest frequency) letter in the English alphabet (starting off the typographer's phrase ETAOIN SHRDLU) and several other European languages, which has implications in both cryptography and data compression. This makes it a hard and popular letter to use when writing lipograms. Ernest Vincent Wright's Gadsby (1939), is considered a "dreadful" novel, and that "at least part of Wright's narrative issues were caused by language limitations imposed by the lack of E."^[7] Both Georges Perec's novel A Void (La Disparition) (1969) and its English translation by Gilbert Adair omit ‹e› and are considered better works"

 

High fives as usual for first to say what they see.

Harmful Rumours

D is for Dog

The fourth in my alphabetical tour of Etsy and you have prob got the idea by now, but again there are virtual high fives to those who spot the hidden shape in the images above.
"probably developed from the logogram for a fish or a door. There are various Egyptian hieroglyphs that might have inspired this. The equivalent Greek letter is Delta, ‹Δ›."

D is for Dog

Pick Me Up London

Last year we were down in London around this time and managed to catch the first Pick Me Up exhibition of illustration and graphic art at Sommerset House.

There were some great things including screen print of a little girl with boxing gloves which we bought from Concrete Hermit. One of my favourite things was the books by Nobrow Press, especially the work of Jon McNaught in his little book Birchfield Close. Nobrow Press will be back in Sommerset House this year and will have copies of their cool new book A Graphic Cosmogony. I had a little flick through a copy when I was in the Fruitmarket Gallery the other week and its very cool. 24 artists take on tales of the creation of the universe with some stunning grahpics.

Pick Me Up is back on this month - click here for more info and click here for tickets though you can prob buy them at the door like we did last year.

Somerset House Trust

South Building
Somerset House
Strand
London
WC2R 1LA

Warnings from the Future #01

Dear readers, I'm looking for a bit of feedback.

I'm about to place an order for more Gift Cards but I'm struggling to narrow down the list of cards to print. All my different stockists currently like and stock different cards but to make things simplier I'd like to reduce the range down to 20 or so instead of the current 40+. If you have a minute to spare, please have a flick through the images on my flickr and leave a comment (below or direct on the image) to say which ones get your thumbs up to be kept in the range. The ones with the most votes will make the final cut. The ones with the least will go retire on a farm in the country.

As a wee incentive to give your opinion, everyone that comments will get put into a prize draw to win a print and cards from my Etsy.

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

New Glasgow Society

Sounding like something from a retro imagined future the "New Glasgow Society" is relaunching this weekend in its little premises at 1207 Arglye Street. They are a good an interesting bunch of characters and highly reccomend going along or catching one of their upcoming future events.

The New Glasgow Society is an organization established in 1965 for the general betterment of the urban environment of Glasgow. The birth of the Society coincides with proposals for the insertion of the M8 through the Victorian fabric of the city. But it’s never been purely a preservationist group, the Society has a long history of supporting and actively promoting new projects which were seen to be of benefit to Glasgow, and, during the 1960’s and 70’s, used their considerable influence and membership of over 1500 to make their thoughts known to the powers that be.

"The aims of the Society are;

• To promote, encourage and stimulate public interest in, and care for, the beauty, history and character of the city of Glasgow and its surroundings.
• To encourage high standards of architecture and town planning in the Glasgow region in co-operation with other interested organisations where appropriate.
• To encourage the preservation, development and improvement of features of general public amenity or historic interest.
• To pursue these ends by means of meetings, exhibitions, lectures, publications, conferences, publicity and the promotion of schemes of a charitable nature"

To find out more go here - http://www.newglasgowsociety.org/

C is for Cat

The third in my alphabetical series of all things great on Etsy. As usual there is a very easy hidden shape above to spot. Virtual High 5's all round to those who spot.

"C comes from the same letter as ‹g›. The Semites named it gimel. The sign is possibly adapted from an Egyptian hieroglyph for a staff sling, which may have been the meaning of the name gimel. Another possibility is that it depicted a camel, the Semitic name for which was gamal."

C is for Cat