Friday 31 August 2012

Tapir Birthday

If there's one thing Chris likes, it's Tapirs.
(There are actually lots of things Chris likes. Seals, political slash fiction, Agatha Christie, faking wikipedia facts, giving Alex ridiculous Unstruck questions, assuming multiple identities and shouting about swans being just some of them)

Me and Alex had grander plans for his birthday, but as it often the case with these things, it all got a bit last minute, and I ended up spending a lunchbreak creating an alphabet out of tapir parts.




 "Create tapir alphabet" is actually something which has been on my to-do list quite a while. Chris promised me that if I create the entire alphabet, he will create a rhyming couplet for each letter. This is but a teaser for the full version, which I will hopefully one day create.


Anyway, here's the birthday card in the hand of the birthday boy!

Sunday 5 August 2012

Beginnings and endings

Well, it's been rather a long time since I've updated this blog, which I feel a bit guilty about - there's no good reason for that guilt, other than my own desire to keep a regular blog, but anyway, here I am now.

This has always been a blog which I've wanted to be about my own personal (and work related) creative projects, but in all honesty, my central focus for the last few months has been LIFE, and again, I feel some guilt about that, because I want to focus more on creating, but somehow a lot of things have got in the way. Good things, for the most part.

I have plans and hopes for my creative future though. My day job is still fulfilling to a great extent, but doesn't really result in me producing the kind of work which I want to share here. There are plans in the pipeline (which I initially typed 'pieline'... yum) for a zine created with my two good friends Rosie Rogers and Hannah Brookes - however, all three of us have found LIFE somewhat getting in the way of that getting started, but hopefully soon we'll all be able to focus our energies onto it again.

In quite a different creative route to normal, I'm also hoping to learn to sew and make my own clothes, which is something that really excites me. So far I have succeeded in blowing up my sewing machine, and created precisely NOTHING, but it is very early days, and operation skirt begins this Tuesday evening, at the excellent MIY workshop.

But back to illustration and graphic design, I still keep my eye out for nice freelance jobs, or favours for friends, and recently had the pleasure of creating two rather lovely wedding invites - this border for my friends, the aforementioned Hannah and her partner Tristan (which they filled with their own text for printing)




And this piece for Tom and Jo - Tom had basically already designed it, but I created the illustration.


And then, of course, there's the ongoing creative force in my life - Alex's Unstruck project. And truth be told, that's the main reason I got round to writing this blog, as I'm sad to say that Alex has decided to bring Unstruck to a close.

He has reached 500 questions answered, and now seems like the time to stop.

Adam, one of the other illustrators, put it like this, and writes it better than I ever could…

"I found out tonight that Unstruck is ending this week, by Friday it's going to be at 500(ish) posts, and that's it. Personally, I think Unstruck has been crucial in my development as an illustrator. But I really think that its significance is huge, for me at least it has acted as a tangible network of creative people who've been brought together, really by the focus and dedication of one person, to create something that's incredible and beautiful and collaborative in the truest sense. It's been an amazing experiment, that I feel lucky to have been involved in, hopefully I'll manage to squeeze in a final illustration before the weeks over. Hats off to Alex. Looking forward to the next project"

And he's right, because there is another project coming, something which lots of the illustrators will hopefully get involved with again, and I can't wait to see how it turns out.

I haven't really mentioned it on here, as this is my 'creative' blog, but me and Alex have been somewhat romantically entangled since January, and in June I moved in with him. He is a wonderful, beautiful, creative person and I'm very lucky to have him in my life. In some ways the Unstruck project drew us together, and it will always have a very special place in my heart.

Here is Alex, sitting in the window of an apartment in Cologne - we holidayed there recently, and I meant to blog about it at the time, but... LIFE, and that.
 

Anyway, here are a few of my recent and final contributions to Unstruck. As always, it's a hit and miss process, but it forces me to use my creative brain and that is always a positive thing.

Check this out. You win five million dollars from the Publisher’s Sweepstakes, and the same day that that big Ed guy gives you the cheque, aliens land on the earth and say they’re going to blow up the world in two days. What do you do?

 

Which is more significant, being or doing?




What are the essential elements of a legal system?





If you could invent a new orifice, what would it do and where would you put it?





What can change the nature of humanity?