Wednesday 30 June 2010

Excuses, excuses

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, I've been distracted with moving house, musical projects etc. My band, Black Helicopters, played our debut gig at Manchester's Eurocultured festival recently, and we've almost finished some studio recordings - I'll post links when they're done.

I don't intend to add much to this blog in the next few weeks, which may seem perverse when it's beginning to find an audience (that wasn't really my intention originally; this is something I have to do for my degree), but I'll be concentrating on my own work for a while. It's been a frustrating year; I put a lot of time and energy into animation before realising it isn't something I feel able to pursue, and lost momentum with the illustration side of things. I also started to feel, perhaps unreasonably, a bit like a square peg with regards to my course.

My next project will be to produce a cover and illustrations for Straw Dogs by John Gray (which I highly recommend, by the way). I'm intending to drastically increase my volume of output this year, so expect to see some works in progress up here soon.

In the meantime...

There's an exhibition of "outsider art" (a dubious concept if ever there was one) at the Whitworth Gallery at the moment. It's not a subject I know much about, and I can't say I was enthralled by much of the work, but there was some intriguing stuff. There are a few drawings by Madge Gill, who by coincidence I first came across at A Sound Awareness a couple of weeks ago.


A Sound Awareness is well worth a browse, in fact - check out these library LP covers from Philip's Prospective 21e Records.


Project Thirty Three has numerous vintage abstract LP covers.


The Sound of Eye is a wonderful new blog dedicated to films of a mostly avant-garde/music-related nature. I've barely begun to explore it, but one highlight for me was Philippe Grammaticopoulos' extraordinary short animation The Regulator.


And there's always Feuilleton and A Journey Round My Skull to keep you occupied.

Finally, an entirely non-illustration related link: BP and the Axis of Evil. Adam Curtis on the connection between British Petroleum and the Iranian Revolution. You really should read this.