The feet of them that hang.

The poster is done, and it's bloody awesome!

Huge thanks to Poli for doing another great job. You guys should go check out her blog, Tactless Twat. There's a link to it on the sidebar, or you can just click http://pepperminnts.blogspot.com/. She takes beautiful pictures and writes interesting words.

Your everafter is all i'm after

I just found this amazing mural project called A Love Letter For You and i had to share some of the murals with you.

I love some of the things i find on the Internet at 1 in the morning. Find out more, or just take a look, at www.aloveletterforyou.com

Night Draws In.

Hello there. I've been doing some drawing again, so I thought I'd share. The first 2 are basically copying Jason Shawn Alexander, an amazing comic book artist whose work i love, the 2 of the girl are from a Vogue shoot with Pixie Geldof, and the one of The Escapist and Luna Moth hugging is from The Escapists! graphic novel. I'm playing around with my new watercolours and inks, so far nothing too spectacular, but i'm happy enough. Tell me what you think.

The Boy With Nails For Eyes

My mum sent me an email the other day with a link to a review of her friend's son's webcomic. I didn't open it until today, when i was chatting to her and she asked if i'd looked. I must be honest, i wasn't expecting to be particularly impressed.

I was wrong to pre-judge.

As the review states, its a masterpiece. Beautifully constructed, well laid out, with great music and well written prose, it really atands apart from pretty much every other web comic i've ever read. The art reminds me of the graphic novel of "M" which i mentioned in a post over a year ago. I really can't fault any of it.

Here's a link to the comic. Its a flash animation, so it might take you a while to load, but its worth the wait.
http://www.basement-garden.co.uk/theboywithnailsforeyes/

and here's a link to the review, because its more informed and eloquent than i am.
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-13564-Cleveland-Comic-Books-Examiner~y2010m3d26-Webcomic-Review-The-Boy-with-Nails-for-Eyes

I hope this gets the recognition it deserves, because i really do think it is something special.

One more for the road

I just found this one on the same site and had to share it. It is from Nancy Spero to Lucy Lippard; two highly influential women whose paths crossed numerous times; Spero as a feminist artist, Lippard as a feminist art critic, historian and curator.

Back in the habit

I'm trying to get back into the habit of drawing. I have about a million notebooks, and i have one that i really love which i carry about with me all the time, and i occasionally draw in it. I'm not very good, but i enjoy it, and i know i'll never get better unless i do more of it.

Anyway, here are some drawings from the past weeks and months, and a few just from today. Sorry about the poor photo quality. Click to enlarge.

Sketch of a photo of Malcolm X by Richard Avedon

Sketch from a photo of Twiggy by Richard Avedon

Dried rose on my windowsill

A Warhol skull and a Modigliani nude - sketched at The Met in New York

These 2 are from today. I understood absolutely nothing in my lecture on post-colonial modernist writing today, so after about 15 minutes I stopped taking notes and drew a waiter instead. The flowers are in a champagne bottle by my bed.

The Food Penguin

 Not Ranunculi

That's it for now, but i'm (hopefully) going to be drawing more and more, and if i like any of it i'll put it up, so check back soon.

Chicks who rock...

This is very cool, and oddly beautiful. I swear i've heard stuff less produced than this on some albums i own.



Issues of mechanical reproduction, unconscious art-making, and the beauty of chaos swirl about in Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s work. The themes are well-worn, but the approach is lighthearted and inviting. This French artist and composer has a knack for misusing everyday objects to create alarmingly organic music.
For instance: Boursiey-Mougenot once jerry-rigged a grand piano to play musical notes translated from the text being typed on a random laptop. He’s also attached harmonicas to the end of vacuum cleaners to create otherworldly, organ-like noises. In the video below, the artist placed an amplified guitar in the middle of a gallery and then allowed dozens of birds to perch upon its sensitive strings, resulting in some surprisingly listenable accidental drone!

The Start of Something New?

In case that last post got you down, here's something to cheer you up. Joseph Gordon Levitt, actor/dancer/man-candy/future Mr Lucy Atkinson, has an amazing website, hitRECord.org, and on it i found this, a film he made with almost 200 collaborators on the site. Perhaps this is where indie cinema is headed?



The love i feel can only be expressed in gutteral noises.
Happy weekend to you all.

Belle and rebel

So a couple of weeks ago i had an adventure.
I went up to London to see my friend Poli, whom i love and who is moving to Nottingham, along with my best friend Kelsea. This means i shall have to occasionally venture into the midlands and that makes me sad. Before she left, in a bid to postpone that inevitable journey, some quality London time was suggested, and so we met up.

If you read this blog with any regularity, or even if you just look at the pictures, you might notice i have a minor obsession with a certain fabulous french blogger named Garance Dore. If you read her blog you will no doubt know that for London fashion week GAP asked her to design a range of ridiculously limited edition t-shirts for them, in conjunction with an exhibition of her drawings and photographs and anything else she wanted to put up. If you've seen me in the past month you will have seen me wearing one of these shirts. I love it.


I went to the exhibition on the first day it opened, looked around with Poli, and bought one of the shirts. Its the first time i've been on the ball enough to snap up anything limited edition, and i was very pleased with myself. The only bad thing was that both Poli and i forgot our cameras.


I went back up 2 weeks later because Scott Schuman, The Sartorialist himself was in town to do a book signing, and i had to see him in the flesh. Since Garance is his girlfriend i thought she might be there too, and if truth be told i was more excited about meeting her, she has one of those blogs that when you read it you immediately feel that you two would be great friends.


So i'm strolling down Carnaby Street, after spending ages picking out my outfit, and i walk straight past Scott, flanked by his assistant Tracy and gorgeous Garance. He looks like a mobster from an old film, short and stocky in a perfectly tailored suit, with a girl on each arm. I immediately text everyone i know. I go in to Liberty, where the book signing is going to be later, and they have no books for sale yet, so i head back to the GAP, armed with my camera this time, and begin snapping away at the exhibit.


Suddenly i turn around and who should be there but Garance herself, looking radiant and approachable at the same time, a glass of champagne in one hand and killer heels on her feet. I mustered all my courage and said hello. We talked for a little while about blogs and fashion and what i study at uni and films and how Scott might be directing one (you heard that here first, he hasn't even said it on his blog yet!) and got on just as well as i assumed we would. She offered me some champagne and asked me to stay around for a drink while she did some interviews. Of course i accepted.

Next thing i know, the doors of the shop have been closed and there's a bouncer with a guestlist checking people's ID's. I have stumbled into the midst of a genuine London Fashion Week party, rubbing shoulders with he editor of french Elle and being complimented on my hair accessory by a writer for i-D. I turn around and there is Scott, the Sartorialist, right next to me, looking slightly shy and in deep conversation. I don't have the balls to say hello to him, he's far too cool, but i watch him for a while and even snap a dreadful picture, just to prove to you that he really was there.

I stick around, drinking Bellinis and pretending to be a reviewer for a magazine so cool and underground that none of these old world fashion moguls will have heard of it. I work for Cheekbone, delivered by ninjas every half hour because that's how fast our trends change. And i people watch. I wish i had better pictures, because the people were amazing. Unnaturally beautiful, so stylish you immediately feel like a bag lady, and yet so friendly. I want one of these parties every day!

The room was crowded, and at one point i got punched in the arm. I turned to see who it was and there was Scott, again, looking very apologetic and asking if i was ok. I mumbled something unintelligible and grinned, and he turned back to his conversation. Verbal communication with the Satrorialist. Now when i die i'll go to fashion heaven!

Then he ran off to go to the press opening on his signing, and i decided that i should probably eat something, so i left, saying goodbye and thank you to Garance, who gave me a hug and told me good luck with my films, and exited back into the real world. I ate something and then went to go to the book signing, and this is where disaster struck. I had decided to wear heels, and after being on my feet all day and walking all across London (because it's too pretty to take the tube) I was beginning to regret that decision. My feet were aching. I went into liberty and immediately faced the longest queue I'd ever seen. I took my shoes off and settled in for a long wait.




About 5 minutes later a security guard came up to us and asked if we had books already and that if we didn't we should go buy one somewhere else because they had sold out. It was 7:05 and the books had gone on sale at 7. I put my shoes on and headed up to Oxford street to buy one from borders. Borders had shut down. I dragged my aching feet down Regent street, but there were no bookshops. My numbed toes went all the way through Soho and were bleeping by the time i got to Shaftsbury avenue, only to find out that they had sold out too. There were no sartorialist books in London and the tip of my toe had dislocated.
I decided to give up. I had met Garance, been punched by Scott, gone to a fashion week party and drunk slightly too much champagne, and my feet were hurting so much a considered walking across London barefoot. I snuggled up in a chair in Starbucks and read vogue, and felt very fashionable indeed.

Paper Binge (at the Fringe)

This is very late, i kept meaning to post it and not getting round to it. Oh well, here it is anyway.

Paper Binge is billed as an evening of “yummy films to inspire and delight,” and it certainly did that and more. The evening started with a beautiful set from the devastatingly attractive and talented boys from “The Morning Orchestra,” setting exactly the right tone of relaxed, sunny happiness before the films began. To see for yourself, catch them at Fletch at St. Andrews at 1pm on 24 May.
The films themselves, a collection of animations almost all under 10 minutes long, were very diverse, switching between the comic, the tragic, and the downright ridiculous. Stand-out films for me included “My First Crush” by Julia Potts, a beautiful line drawing and collage animation, taking recordings of real people talking about their first crush and animating them into birds, polar bears and dogs. The absolutely hilarious “KJFG No5” by Alexei Alexeev, starring a band made up of a bear playing a tree, a bunny drumming on a stump and a wolf wailing, who have to hide from a hunter, was so simple, and very short, but had the whole audience in tears. Also present was the Oscar winning animated short “La Maison en Petit Cubes,” a tragic tale in pastel and water-colour of an old man surviving a flood by building house on top of house, who scuba-dives down into his past through the rooms he’s been forced to leave.
Separating the two halves of the show was a question and answer session with two of the directors, both of whom work for Passion Pictures, animators made famous worldwide for their work with “Gorillaz” and the amazing “Sony Bravia” adverts. Their pick for favourite film of the evening was “Revenge is Cold,” the absurd but charming story of a professional bird assassin, who happens to be a cactus named Antus, and his run in with Woody Burns, the matchbox who dreams of turning into Steven Bernard, a lighter. Antus leads Woody to the North Pole and leaves him there with nothing to burn while he goes off to see his internet girlfriend, an igloo. Woody gets his revenge by melting the igloo and turning into a Zippo, the king of lighters. If it sounds strange, just wait till you see it. It was written by a 12 year old during a workshop with underprivileged children in the Camden area, and then animated without changing the script or story in any way, and the result is something you have honestly never seen before.

Othello At The Brighton Fringe

Set in the claustrophobic world of modern politics, this contemporary take on Shakespeare’s classic play explores the invasion of privacy, and the devastating effect it can have on people’s lives.

By submersing itself in modern celebrity and paparazzi culture, this production of Othello proves Shakespeare’s relevance to the modern world once and for all.

Othello is Shakespeare’s classic example of the destructive power of jealousy and mistrust. Innocence is corrupted and trust is eroded as every relationship is drawn into a tangled web of jealousies. By exploring the idea that “tearing down privacy lets in chaos and lets out love,” this production looks at Othello in a new, contemporary, cultural light.

Sussex University’s acclaimed drama society is proud to present its third production at the Brighton Fringe festival, after many years of successful productions at Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Dates & times: 18-22 May - 6pm

Venue: Brighton Unitarian Church

Price: £6/£5 conc.

Tickets can be bought online at:
http://www.brightonfestivalfringe.org.uk/ticketing/webextra.aspx?ev=907

This is my big directorial debut, and it's shaping up to be a pretty awesome show. I've been working on it since November, and it's taken over most of my life, but hopefully it will all be worth it. Now i just need people to come. We were in The Independent this Saturday, which is amazing, and will hopefully boost our audience numbers, but i still want more!
Please buy tickets, and wish me ridiculous amounts of luck.

For those losing faith in the goodness of humanity.

The Tweenbot is a cardboard-bodied, human-dependent robot that navigates the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Tweenbot has equipped with a flag stating its intended destination, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal. Kacie Kinzer, the student of Tisch School of the Arts created the tweenbot for his art experiment.
"Given their extreme vulnerability, the vastness of city space, the dangers posed by traffic, suspicion of terrorism, and the possibility that no one would be interested in helping a lost little robot...

The results were unexpected. Over the course of the following months, throughout numerous missions, the Tweenbots were successful in rolling from their start point to their far-away destination assisted only by strangers. Every time the robot got caught under a park bench, ground futilely against a curb, or became trapped in a pothole, some passerby would always rescue it and send it toward its goal. Never once was a Tweenbot lost or damaged. Often, people would ignore the instructions to aim the Tweenbot in the 'right' direction, if that direction meant sending the robot into a perilous situation. One man turned the robot back in the direction from which it had just come, saying out loud to the Tweenbot, "You can't go that way, it's toward the road."


Oh, I love this world.

Down day...

I was feeling pretty down today and i didn't know why, so when i got home i read through every single asofterworld comic to comfort myself. I picked a couple to share with you. Remember to click on them to see them bigger.




I love this one, it made me smile real big.


I hope your new years are going well so far, and that one day someone says something similar to each of you.

Truth and Beauty bombs

I love A Softer World. If you haven't checked it out yet then you should because it's cool and funny and often quite moving.
As proof, here are some of my favourites which i have saved over the past few months. (don't forget you can enlarge the images by clicking on them.)






I just realized that all the ones i've saved are a little on the creepy side. They aren't all like that, here's one that's a little depressing, or poignant, but still lovely.


Finally, here's a postsecret from this week which made me laugh, despite being really rather disturbing!

object of lust

I do not often buy graphic novels, I'm one of those bad people who picks them up in Borders and reads the whole thing whilst sipping my grande skinny chai tea latte (without water) and then puts them in the basket for the shop minions to out away. I love them, receive enormous pleasure from them, and then let them go. I rarely re-read them, so i don't see the point in buying them. If the library had a good selection i'd go there, but they don't, so i steal information and aesthetic pleasure from Borders, because they are massive and can deal with it.



I probably don't actually want to own this book, but right now i crave it, and it isn't stocked anywhere where i can sneakily absorb it's contents whilst drinking an over-priced caffeinated beverage, so i'm kind of stuck.



It may well be the most beautiful graphic novel i've ever seen. It's all hand painted to photo-realistic detail by John Muth, with an introduction by one of my many Gods, Darren Aronofsky, and it's based on the classic Fritz Lang film. What's not to lust over?



(click on th eimages to enlarge them. Trust me, it's worth it.)