Pig in a sweet machine

He turned his rounded back upon me

Another wee sample of the illustration project I'm thinking about for a Sherlock Holmes story - this idea combines parts of the original illustrations with overlaid elements redrawn in a surreal childlike style.

Happy Easter

[EDIT: I just didn't really like the colours of the previous attempt at this so have reprinted it. Think this simplified version is a lot easier to look at. Too much going on in the first one. Still don't think it really works though. The original is at the bottom of this post.]

I love when you overhear just fractions of a conversation as people wander past and you are left going - what on earth are they talking about. Like when I heard a couple of old men chatting about having been to the moon! I wanted to capture a sense of this fleeting audio and also something eastery and so was born the above.

Fleeting

I'll have to pass on this weeks theme to a friend of mine as it seems quite appropriate for some of her amazing work. I am currently developing a new site for the her, top New Zealand artist Alex Milsom http://www.alexandramilsom.com/ check out some of her brilliant images though the site is not quite finished yet.

EDIT - I've had quite a lot of people asking me about web designs and their blogs in the last few weeks so thought I should do a general call rather than answer everyones individual emails.

For the next while I have a bit of spare time, so anyone wanting to chat about getting their blog redesigned to function more like the one above then please drop me an email info@holeinmypocket.com and we can have a chat about what you are after and discuss a budget. First come first served - toasted cookies, get em while they're hot.

A Wee Tasty Experiment

In all the pigeon excitement of earlier on I forgot to mention that our books are for sale at Stereo in Glasgow tonight as part of A Wee Tasty's Experiment. Theres a write up about it in the Skinny here. We were asked to take part by the guys at Now Now who are trying to orginise all sorts of arty fun in Glasgow and have just recently had an art record breaking day.

We weren't able to make it - sadly - hence the reason I'm sitting at the computer and not enjoying all the fun but it sounded like it was going to be a lot of fun. Looking forward to the photos.

Pigeons

Stop the Pigeon

Caught the Pigeon

Ok just had two very odd experiences - read the above two posts on Southside Happenings

Birthday

Empire States meets the big apple. Isn't Lego great, the above is a gift I was sent for my birthday from my friends in New York. Its been along time since I built some Lego and is was lots of fun. Might go buy some more.

Rabbit's foot

Made it to number four on the list for Illustration Friday this week - one day I shall reach number one. I always try to draw a fresh image for each week - does everyone else do that too? Sometimes seems that people use old random images that have very little if anything to do with the specific subject - but that might just be my little brain not able to spot the links.

made me sad

Found this little guy in the road - so thats what happened to the ginerbread man when he tried to run away, he was run over by a steam roller.

Elementary

Started work on a new project about Sherlock Holmes - should be interesting. Only slightly related to that, here is a mock up sketch while I was figuring out how I'd like my version of the characters to look.

miss clown 2009

be werry, werry quiat . . .

Subtract

whale of a time

The annual picnic was legendary

[Might need to click on image to see it bigger. ]

Pleasent day so far - tended to the plants on the roof and watched some squirrels chasing each other in the park. Need to fly to London this afternoon but I think I'd like to get working on some new ice cream flavours and my ideas for the book design project.

Ah well, should find out on Monday if my badges have made it through to the next round - fingers crossed.

Southside Festival

The Southside festival is coming up again soon and Ann is again on the steering group helping orginise it. She is a very busy bee and has just finished making the festival a brand spanking new website. - www.southsidefestival.co.uk.

I have also tried to help out a bit by mocking up a couple of posters for two of the mini local events taking place during the festival - a silent film night and a tea dance taking place at the local church hall. My two posters are above - I am pretty please with them but they might require a redesign due to image rights.

but its a giant horse???

I've avoided posting anything about this so far - because I kept expecting someone to admit it was just a big joke. But apprently its not, they really are building a giant horse in the South of England - you could not make that up if you tried.

I'm not really sure what the point of it is, or what message it is trying to convey. They are going for a super realistic style which would suggest that it is meant as slightly Po-faced but all the infor I've read about it suggests that they are completly genunine about it and the giant horse is irony free. I enjoy that the media has dubbed it the angel of the south! I maybe wrong - but it is quite clearly a horse not an angel - unless they are going to stick wings on it and make it into Pegusus. Maybe there is a greek connection and the whole thing will be full of soldiers?

I think they should just accept that the whole notion is absurd and if they do decide to build it then they should stick an even more giant jockey on its back.

Or stick on hundreds of normal size jockeys - cause lets face it - jockeys are quite funny.

Badge of dis-honour

I decided to enter my "Keep calm and Spend more" design into the Sterohype's - button badge competition. Currently they are sitting in amongst 344 other entries awaiting the review of the judges. Fingers crossed they get on well and we get some good news next week.

Found art - notice 01

I was digging through some old sketch books the other day and came upon my collection of found objects, notices, playing cards, shopping lists and discarded photos. I realise that I've not really shown this rather nice collection before so have decided to put that right. Above is a notice found in a city centre lift - it is beautiful in its own simple way.

Somewhere I have another wonderful notice which I found stuck in the middle of an empty notice board in a pub. It read "Notice: Please do not remove this notice, there is a copy behind the bar."

We all scream for ice-cream

Ann and I just got back from a weekend in Latvia for her birthday. Riga was really nice, lots of old buildings and cobbled streets, but in a slightly lived in, run down feeling which felt far more really than a lot of cities you go to now where its all been touristed up. Give it time though and it will soon catch up though.

As it was Ann's birthday my suitcase was pretty much just full of presents but there was one set of presents I couldn't bring. At Christmas Ann got me an Ice-cream recipe book. True to form as soon as I'd mastered the basics I started experimenting with my own concoctions. For Ann's birthday I made her drumstick lolly flavour and blueberry and blueberry ripple.

Being the pedantic graphic designer that I am, I also made some labels for the boxes as seen below.

Too-wit, too-woo

Following on from my plunge into the good sea facebook - I have also joined the twittering world too. I am even less sure what you are supposed to do with it. With all these web pages online to be updated its a wonder that anyone gets anywork done. I know I've just spent most of the night trying to synch up the twitter with this blog and choosing pretty logos instead of getting on with a poster I should be doing.

Twitter does seem like nonsense fun though so I look forward to tweeting you all.

www.twitter.com/himp

ps - does anyone know how to get the text in my side bar to not tab inwards on the second line of my twittering. Tis annoying when it is not aligned correctly.

Its alive

The Himp website news section has had a wee update with some of the things we have been up to over the last few months. Just so you know we are still all in one piece.

Keep calm and spend more

Taking inspiration from the classic WWII posters instructing the populace to "Keep calm and carry on" in the face of possible Nazi invasion these new badges imagine the motivational propaganda today's governments might issue to get us through the credit crunch. Sprouting the seemingly illogical message that we can "spend" our way out of a recession, the design has been updated for the naughties - the crown is replaced with the bowler hat as a symbol of the banking elite who have run the country into the ground and available in Dollar Green, Sterling red, Yen blue and Euro yellow.

ECHO

A wee flyer I designed for the SPID Theatre Company for their new show in London - details above, sounds like it will be really good so worth a visit.

fresh and hot

Wee colour sketch idea for a poster for an heating company who get their heat from the earth. Trying to capture the same kind of style/ language that is currently popular for fruit drink / healthy food adverts.

Saul Stienberg

A couple of my drawings got into the Saul Steinberg competition at the Dulwich Gallery and you can see them at the below link - for some reason the quality is terrible though.
http://pix.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk/gallery23.aspx

Book Face

Ok I'm not really sure what it is for but below is a link to a Hole in my Pocket facebook group.

I think the fact that the facebook world confuses me might be the first sign that I am getting old am no longer down with the kids - to combat this I might have to go buy a skate board, knock a police man off his bike and begin using the texting venacular. Nt sre dat wud b dat g8 tho - I thnk kidz mite b stupd.

Link to facebook group

snow fair

Yesterday we had a ton of snow so I built the above snowman. Sadly today there is no snow and the little snowman has gone.