Lots of work got done over the mad winter:
Album Artwork for Blind Yackety
Logo for Excellent Alliteration Man! Books
Illustration for Le Cool Dublin (they didn’t want it)
They didn’t want this one either.
Personal projects with negative space typography
Illustrations for end titles for a short film about a cannibalistic child.
So when I’m not rooting through bins looking for broken slippers, I split my time between illustration and music.
Sometimes though, when the moon collides with the T-junction in the sky, those two joys converge. Thusly, I present Queen Herod.
Queen Herod began as a character from a song I wrote about a witch who eats children. The original idea was to re-imagine King Herod of ye Olde Testament as a woman. Perhaps she would be judged more harshly, as nothing is more “unnatural” in the popular psyche as a woman who kills/eats children. Sure us women just love babies!
The story departed at that point and ran off on a tangent. Have a look at the video to see.
I made the sets through papercut on black paper. I then made a little proscenium arch with a desk/bookshelf thing and hung it all off that.
When shooting, I had green gels on a couple of lamps and some strobes and torches. I had originally wanted to use puppets as the primary source of movement, but a) I only have two hands and b) the movement of torches seemed more fitting with the song. As in it was jumpier and I could make use of the shadows, and not the puppets, better.
It was edited in iMovie, only because I don’t have anything else. Soon to be rectified.
If you’ve any questions regarding the production, please email or comment. I relish the chance to geek out over papercut.
Have been pretty busy doing lots of different stuff, all of which I’ll be posting up soon. In the meantime, enjoying a nice calligraphic roundy script.
This is an EP cover for a fantastic musical duo. Should be out soon, fingers crossed.
The text was made by outlining the characters on watercolour paper, then soaking the space and dropping ink and watercolours into it.
It’s so easy to get stuck into one way of lettering (skinny, handdrawn, for me) that to keep things interesting I need to push myself to learn new ways of lettering. But I’m lazy at heart, so :/…
By the way, it’s bloody hard to draw an elephant. Anyone else find that? Even when it’s in the room in front of you.
This piece was done as a 30th birthday present for one of my besties…I think she liked it but it was given in a flood of sake (me) and emotion (her).
It’s gold paint on black paper and details a lyric of a Fiona Apple song (Paper Bag). Myself and herself sing (would be a loose definition of the noise-making) it at each other in very drunk times, convinced of the veracity of the lyrics. It’s all quite female-bonding stuff, but terribly enjoyable.
September’s goal is to make, film and edit a stop motion/live action animation for one of the tracks off Queen Herod’s EP. It has to be done by the EP launch in mid October, just in case I don’t feel quite enough pressure to finish things I start. I also have no idea how to achieve what I want but damn it, I have a concept! Excuse the expletives but darling, I’m feeling verbose tonight.
Here are some of the sets/backgrounds. They are a combination of paper cut and ink drawings. I might go with puppets on sticks or stop motion drawn characters. It’ll depend on how it looks when I start shooting.
Finally at the end of the 5 Day Collage Challenge (we won’t mention that it happened over 10 days…) I won’t say it was exhausting but it took a bit of a shove every day to complete something, usually giving myself an hour only. Which was good because I didn’t have the time to agonise over colours or layers or whatever.
Inspiration was my annoyance at the “feminism” purported in contemporary cultural products, mostly film or TV, namely Sex and the City. In that show particularly, the ability to be self sufficient (also refer to Destiny’s Child “Independent”) is getting muddled with luxe consumerism. Buying shit is fine, but when that is the only signifier of female liberation in a personal and professional sense, you kind of wonder how long it will stand up in a stiff breeze.
Rant over! This piece was collage on sugar paper, then brought into Photoshop; hue, contrast and saturation jiggled with, then the text is (rather speedily, apparently) drawn using a tablet.
 | GL on Queen Herod Will Find You |
 | Gar on Queen Herod Music Video in… |
 | Alan on Vitale and Fernley |
| GL on Work in Progresssssssssss… |
 | Riona on More Fiona Sparkles…… |
