LayLadyLele

Twiddly bits

2011-10-20T13:33:00.004+01:00

I've been attempting to get back into illustrating type, and the motivation of my bessie mate's impending 30th birthday chivvied me into realising an idea I'd had for a print based around the speech I made at her wedding back in February. My other bessie mate did an absolutely mint job of the screenprinting and the birthday girl was suitably chuffed. All good. So much fun had I making twiddly bits for her, that I had a stab at another bit of twiddly type for a wee internal project here at Frame Towers. Still dicking about with it, but here it is as a Work In Progress.

Speech!

2011-08-18T15:53:00.003+01:00

It would appear I have gone and agreed to take part in an event organised by She Says Scotland. Which involves me standing up and talking. In front of potentially quite a lot of people I don't know. And attempting to sound like a grown up and a professional who knows what they're talking about.

Ah crap.

Oh well.

The event asks the question 'Where do good ideas come from?' and myself and a number of other ladies in the creative industry up here will be attempting to answer that with reference to our own personal experiences/disciplines.

Helpfully, I gave a talk recently within Frame that was sooorta in the same territory. So some recycling may occur. Although I am going to add in a couple more slides that relate to stuff that stuck with me after reading Steven Johnson's marvellous "Where do good ideas come from?' (that I also helpfully read not so long ago).

Pray for me. Or at least keep me away from the bar until after I'm done speaking.

RBS, Edinburgh Airport

2011-08-08T17:59:00.003+01:00

So NOW you see why I've been so quiet. Two major campaigns going live in the space of two weeks. Oooft. This was was another belter though. We were asked by RBS Group to produce a new campaign to populate Edinburgh Airport with. They have a great deal of media space there and wanted to use it to talk about The Group, their heritage, and their powerful connection to Scotland.

We produced the 'This is Home' campaign. The work was designed to illustrate that RBS Group, having been based in Edinburgh since their inception in 1727, know Edinburgh as well as anyone, all its little foibles and idiosyncrasies and adorable faults, all its nooks and crannies. They call it home.

The photography was meant to feel like an Edinburgh resident's own snaps of their home city, while avoiding the usual picture-postcard cliches. So naturally I turned to the best photographer I know. The awesome Miss Jane Stockdale. Who pinballed wildly around edinburgh from dawn to dusk on the longest days of the year, taking snaps of the city she too once called home. And the results were bloody fabulous. Natch.

The campaign went live last weekend. I reckon I might just have to jump on a flight somewhere so I can go check it out. In the meantime, if you're jetting off anywhere nice - have a look and tell me what you think.

The National Museum of Scotland Reopens!

2011-08-08T17:35:00.002+01:00

Goodness. I have been quiet haven't I? Not like me. But I offer up the usual excuse. I've been a busy busy wee bee. All big and exciting stuff though, and all the hard work is starting to go live and get great reactions. So it has all been worth it, I swear.

One mammoth project was the launch campaign for the newly reopened National Museum of Scotland. The old part of the museum was closed down three years ago, and treated to a world class makeover. We, the Framees, were tasked with producing the campaign to announce its impending reopening.

The Very Clever Types at the museum really wanted to emphasise the huge range of exhibits, the fact that a great deal of them had never been see before, and the thrill of discovering something new every time you visit. We produced a series of fun, bold juxtapositions that collided exhibits together; bringing to life the unexpected connections you may make at the museum and the sheer range of things on display. It was a fun, easy-to-get, populist campaign that spoke to everyone. And got some great reactions on twitter and facebook when it went live.

And we fair painted the toon! Six sheets, bus sides, banners, window displays; the work was EVERYWHERE. And the response was ace. People had really missed their museum and the campaign seemed to really fuel the excitement on the lead up to the grand reopening on the 29th of July.

The opening day was a runaway success. The museum surpassed their visitor targets three times over. While an animatronic t-rex, acrobatic gargoyles and japanese drummers welcomed them through the doors, once inside, the building and the exhibits required no such pizzazz. The transformation is truly world class and I feel so, so proud to have played a wee small part in that.

Congrats to all at NMS and pats on the back for my fellow Framers. * superchuffed *

Supertalented mates

2011-04-15T10:32:00.005+01:00

Another of my super-enterprising and super-gifted friends has sailed away from that safe harbour and set up their own studio. Bob Young, another ECA alumni, has formed Alphabetical Studio with his friend Tommy Taylor. They are coming straight outta Shoreditch and together are making sweet sweet design music. More than worth keeping an eye on I reckon. *proud face*

Good, good times.

2011-03-20T11:42:00.002Z

I also forgot to mention I'm not long back from my hols. Don't worry there shall be no mega-posts along the lines of my Indo diaries (I did keep a wee diary while I was away, but I just can't be arsed transcribing it here - erm, sorry). The whole impetus to go on said jaunt was primarily to be a bridesmaid to my bessie mate Sarah, who moved to New Zealand about five years ago and never returned. I can't blame her though. New Zealand is a truly, truly beautiful and completely awesome country and she has bagged herself a wonderful kiwi man called Otis. Otis is a bloody talented artist himself and besides doing breathtaking spraypaint murals, he also makes and 'tags' Sarah's sandwiches every morn. Ah. Its definitely love.

Anyway - the wedding and subsequent recovery BBQ amounted to the single best wedding I've ever been too; in fact probably one of the best social gatherings I've ever been to, full stop. My girl looked like a film star. The other bridesmaids (and there were many!) were a cracking bunch of ladies too. Much wine was drunk, many speeches spunk, many moves were busted, and many many songs sung. Including one made up on the spot by the soon-to-be-famous Matt Stalker, inspired by my good pissed self going for a twirl in the rain around about midnight. Which thankfully somebody recorded and Mr Matt posted on soundcloud so that we might relive that night ad infinitum. I felt so lucky to have been there. Le sigh.

I haz a website!

2011-03-17T18:39:00.003Z

Hoorah! FINALLY. I have sorted myself out with a website. Of sorts. I had a stab at building my own site from scratch. (Note to self: you will never be a developer. Quit trying.) And soon realised that I'd get much better results by just using a portfolio template service like Cargo. Who are purty darn good. My site is super simple and will be being added too over the next couple of weeks, but thought I'd just throw up my first bits and bobs and push the 'go live' button. Cos I got a bit overexcited. :)

Go see go see! www.leledesign.co.uk

Oh yeah...

2011-02-06T16:19:00.003Z

Oh, and another thing - as I've just realised I never updated after the post about the nomination - I only went and won a bloody Gold at the Roses Design Awards didn't I? For the Young Scot Annual Report featured in an earlier post. A wee jaunt to Manchester was had by myself and two of my digitally-minded colleagues, a dancefloor was thoroughly pwned, champagne quaffed and monster hangovers generated. Was fun.

Also, the photographer at the do was doing a mini shoot of all the winners after the awards. And I maaaaay have gotten a bit overexcited and pretended to..er... eat my award.

Still, as ridiculous as I look, the Drum clearly liked it as it ended up on the cover of the Roses Awards supplement the following week.

Oh.

Knickers.

Mais, je ne regrette rien.

Whoops

2011-02-06T16:06:00.003Z

I do believe I buggered off for a bit there, didn't I? That will never do. Sorry. It's down of course to the fairly reasonable excuse that the day job has me almost permanently up to my tits in it. And then I was away over Christmas and yaddayadda. Plus I'm about to embark on another of my all too infrequent jaunts about the globe too. So I'm sure I'll have plenty to say about that once I'm back.

In the meantime though, one of the little bits of freelance I DID do was for a friend of mine in London who has recently set up Alphabetical Studio. Cos he is a talented bugger yes he is.

Anyway, this bit of freelance was for a regenerative project called The Link, which was looking to transform a fairly grim area of South East London with a series of brightly coloured painted murals, all featuring positive, community-focused messages. I was asked to do 'Make a Connection'. Pretty sweet really. No chat yet on whether its actually been made into a mural but that would be super rad if it happens.

Watch this space.

Tip, and indeed, Top

2010-08-06T19:48:00.000+01:00

Newsflash! Just heard that the Young Scot Annual Report has been nominated for a Roses Design Award! AS HAS Mike Marlin website!! Very very chuffed. Props to Mr Adam Smith, Ms Keli Mitchell, Mr Dave Buchan and Mr Colin Wiseman. Go team! Woooop! :)

Another Live one

2010-06-28T14:07:00.003+01:00

Another website went live last week, allowing me to blog about it at long last. This project has been fairly epic - a vast illustration and design job covering EPs, Albums, Samplers, teasers, identity and online. Even BADGES. Wow.

The brief was an illustrator's wet dream to be honest: 'Give me a bunch of wonky fineliner renderings to illustrate the lyrics to a stream-of-consciousness song called Nearly Man. Then make said renderings live online and on album artwork. Oh, and I shall need a logo too.'

Ladies and Germs, I give you the mysterious Mike Marlin. I can't tell you very much about him because I've never personally met the man. All communiques were delivered by Alpaca. Sometimes by carrier pigeon. And once by a mute six year old boy in a poncho. All most irregular. To learn more you'll just have to visit the site and have a listen.

More updates and illustration details will follow once the album launches. Which will be SOON. Says here on this pigeon.

It's Aliiiiive!

2010-05-21T11:21:00.003+01:00

Wheeee very excited! The project I did the icons for in my previous post has gone LIVE! Its an online learning resource to accompany a travelling exhibition of the Lewis Chessmen - chess pieces carved in the 12th/13th century in Scandinavia and discovered on the Isle of Lewis in the mid-1800s. School children up and down the country will be learning about the chessmen as part of their curriculum, and the National Museums of Scotland tasked Frame Digital with producing the online resource. You can experience it yourself here. I particularly love the preloader and the trading game. Whoop! What a team. :)

PS just realised I didn't make clear - I designed the rest of the bloody interface too - not just the icons. Must. Buy. Bigger. Trumpet.

I feckin love doin' icons, I do.

2010-05-05T14:21:00.002+01:00

Very exciting project on at the minute with the day job's Digital peeps. Can't say much about it as it is yet to launch, but it is imminent. The site is aimed at pre-high school aged children, hence the cartoony style. I'll post the link once the site launches so you can see this in action. Sigh. I could do this sorta thing aaaall daaaay looong. :)

Scottish Design Awards

2010-04-08T19:31:00.002+01:00

Well slap my face and call me Miffy. The Young Scot Annual Report has been nominated in the Best Corporate Literature category at the Scottish Design Awards. Which, if nothing else, means I get to wear a posh frock and drink lots of champers at the end of May. Whoop!

Ooooft (Dammit).

2010-03-05T08:56:00.004Z

Occasionally (but not often :P) I come across the work of another illustrator who MAKES ME JEALOUS. The lovely Matt Stalker has a great eye for good work, and forwarded me this artist's etsy page. Going only by the name Matty8080 (methinks Matt's been googling himself again - arf), he produces awesome prints of scrummily detailed zombie creatures and animal face-masks. I also love how he's layered up that detail with big rough 'do not bend' stamps. Its a fecking awesome contrast and I WANTS ONE.

Right. Where did I put my fineliners...?

NB Have since been onto Etsy and got my sticky little mits on three of his prints. Am very excited. :)

Wee dudey icons

2010-02-18T09:01:00.002Z

Another wee icon job that may never see the light of day, but was fun to work on nonetheless. Done for the digital boys at the day job - but turned out not to be suitable. Ho-hum. Here they are for your viewing pleasure anyhoo.

When I'm 64

2010-01-13T10:07:00.003Z

Ok so I have been reassured by my client in this instance that the chances of his Dad stumbling across my blog are pretty close to zero, so I have his permission to post this before the big day. The lovely Matt Stalker had the awesome idea of recording a Matt Stalker & Fables cover of the Beatles' 'When I'm 64' for his Dad's 64th birthday this Friday. Apparently his Dad had loved the poster I'd done for Mickelmas and Matt asked me to do a simple CD card in the same style for the recording.

Pa Stalker is a bit of a pedant by all accounts, and Matt wanted to work this into the design somehow. So we had Dad partying on the front and correcting spelling, grammar and punctuation on the back.

Can't wait for the big reveal this Friday! Happy 64th Birthday Papa Stalker! Ain't you lucky to have such talented thoughtful sons? :)

Henna-nanaananananaaaaaaaa

2010-01-12T15:55:00.002Z

Wee illy for the day job, for a Curry & Cocktails evening. Rather liking this grainy texture effect; I draw the shapes in illustrator, bring into photoshop and add noise, then burn/dodge shadows and highlights into the grain. Its a sort of retro airbrushy effect. Expect to see more of this! I have already used it on another job for the ever-talented Matt Stalker; which I will post later in the month cos its TOP SECRET just now and if certain folks saw it, it would ruin a surprise. Watch this space. ;)

Fighting Cancer with Music

2010-01-07T10:46:00.005Z

In a bid to make myself feel slightly less mince for working as a dirty advertiser, it is necessary to do the odd charidee gig. This one was for a mate of a mate. She founded Fighting Cancer with Music; and is looking to hold regular fundraising gigs in and around her hometown of Austin, Texas, and hopefully featuring at this year's South by South West music festival. My mate was building her website and asked very nicely if I would have a stab at a logo. While a genius at code Mr Coco is not so hot at the illustration side of things; he did, however, come up with the pretty awesome idea of creating a treble clef out of the cancer-awareness ribbon. So basically I was scribbler-for-hire on this one. But he loved it and she loved it so I feel I have banked a few more karma points. Ah. I'm off to run over grannies now.

Eilidh's Daily Design

2009-12-23T10:12:00.002Z

So I was reading this article from the AWESOME Smashing Magazine on the merits of designing something daily, and I'm thinking of taking them up on the challenge, starting in the New Year. I reckon I need a theme to focus on so I'm thinking maybe I do a typographic layout every day based on song lyrics (whatever I've had stuck in my head-jukebox that day). Whaddayareckon? Who wants to start a sweepstake on how long before I get bored/drunk/forget to do it? I've posted a nice example of what I might do, if I have absolutely NOTHING else to do next year. I'll need to restrict myself to half an hour or I may not sleep.

More Retro Christmas nonsense

2009-12-22T15:36:00.003Z

Another quickie invitation, this time for my own agency. It meant I knew where we were going before anyone else though, which allowed for vital wardrobe preparation. Invite took the form of lengthwise, third A3 z-fold, but I've presented individual frames here so y'all can see them. Big feature numerals spelt out the times on the itinerary for the hard-of-timekeeping, whilst also acting as holding devices for the details of the evening. And jolly good fun it was too. :)

Christmas Cocktails

2009-12-02T14:35:00.003Z

A nice wee brief for a mate who is having a tarribly sophisticated cocktail party at her tarribly swish flat shortly after christmas. She said: E, do me an invite make it look cool and retro. I said: OK.

Duuuuuude...

2009-11-29T15:47:00.003Z

OK, so its entirely possible that I am simply off my face on a cocktail of antibiotics and painkillers (I have tonsilitis people; its not pretty), but I had to share this with you.

I was sitting in my kitchen, listening to the Cinematic Orchestra's 'To Build a Home'. The tumble dryer was on and steaming up my kitchen windows, and the sun was setting. I'd been putting on washing all day and had hung up a top to dry from the lampshade, which was slowly turning in the warm draft from the tumble dryer. Now, my kitchen faces south west so I do get to see some cracking sunsets, and at certain times of the year, when the sun is low for a long time (and my windows are all steamed up) my kitchen is filled with lovely, diffuse orangey light. I just had to take a picture of it. My phone's camera is pretty crap but you get the idea.

It was just lovely. I had a wee 'I bloody love my flat' moment. Sigh.

Clever bar stewards.

2009-11-13T14:12:00.012Z

Damn I know some clever boffiny types. You'll remember (if you've been paying attention) that I posted a while back about some icons I'd done for the day job. Well the app they were designed for has gone live and is already creating quite a buzz on t'intertubes. Its called iMapFlickr and a vaaary clever bit of techno-wizardry it is too. It's very very simple to use and don't it look purty?

In three steps, anyone can create a map of their geotagged Flickr sets, embed it in their blogs, post to their Facebook wall or Twitter page or simply create a link to send to friends to boast about their travels. Much as I'm doing here.

Lo! Indo photo mappo!

Indo blog 6: Gili Islands: 3rd-5th July

2009-09-05T15:02:00.003+01:00

Fri 3rd July - off to the Gilis

Got up pretty early, and made use of my final morning with a private, open-air bathroom by partaking in some naked sunbathing. Again, felt pretty weird, but worth it to get some new freckles in odd places. Hee.

Then we had to say goodbye to our hammocks and catch a cab to the harbour; about a half hour drive up the coast. Private taxis aren't allowed to drop off at the harbour; they abandon their fares 300 yards from the terminal, to allow the local horse and cart men the chance to make a bit of cash carrying Bules and their bags the last stretch to the boat. We decided they could stick it and carried ours ourselves. Carls warned me they would try to do the same thing at the boat - basically take your bag from you, put it on the boat and then demand money for 'helping you' with your bag. We manage to avoid this blatant extortion, but we did see a bunch of french tourists behind hassled for cash for acccepting the help of a couple of cheeky f**kers. Riz can't abide these people, says they have no pride. He's right.

Ho hum - all aboard the HMS Deathboat (so christened by Carly's mates Rachel and Mhairi who had a rather hairy crossing on their visit - our voyage was totally sedate, but the name has stuck). Our destination is Gili Trawangan - the largest of a group of three little islands off the north west coast of Lombok, collectively called the Gilis. AKA the party islands. :)

We sort ourselves out with accommodation pretty easily. I considered getting myself somewhere uber fancy, as it would be here that I would leave my 20s, and I figured I'd do it in the lap of luxury. In the end though, we opted for somewhere fairly modest, electing to save our rupiah for cocktails and madness. Cunning, no?

I still got myself a decent big room, with a sea water shower and air con. That'll do nicely sir. Quick shower and then out to explore.

The Gilis pretty much exist for tourists, but they're not overdeveloped yet. Gili Trawangan is the biggest, but its still tiny; consisting of basically a beach-front strip of hotels, bars, restaurants and clubs. There are signs of it beginning to be developed, as one end of the strip has some pretty swish restaurants and accommodation, while the other end gets progressively more ramshackle as you head out of town. The beach however, is beautiful, and there's a big diving and surfing contingent here. None of that for us though. We're here to party and say goodbye to my youth.

We were starving so grabbed some chicken satay and chips (aaaawesooome) in a place by the beach, and avoided the midday sun by lounging around on our private platform table drinking Bintang. Then we popped along the strip to an Irish bar (yes even here, there is a bloody Irish bar), which had private booths in which you could watch pirated DVDs. They were pretty awful quality though to be honest, which is perhaps unsurprising. We only got halfway through Vantage Point when the picture broke up completely and the DVD froze. Sigh. I may never know what happened in that movie now.

We wandered along the beach for a bit, where I got first sight of what is called a Burkhini; what devout Muslim women wear to go swimming. Its basically a wetsuit, but with a long tunic top and a waterproof headscarf. Utterly utterly bonkers. I'm sorry if that offends anyone, but seriously people; get a life.

We headed back to our rooms for a quick change and then out again to the Irish bar to refuel with pizza and G&Ts. We met up again with Josh and Margaret (from Karimun) at a Reggae bar along the strip called Samu Samu ('you're welcome' or 'no problem' in Indonesian). J&M had been on the Gilis for a week already. They were with another three lasses; Anna, Heather and some other bird who didn't ever talk or smile. Didn't warm to her for some reason. We had a few drinks and listened to a pretty good live band of dreadlocked Indonesia rasta boys.

Got a bit bored with Reggae so we moved the party back along the strip to a beach front bar, where we collectively decided to try out the local mushroom shakes (Honest Mum, these are totally legal in the Gilis). They're not particularly strong, so we just got a bit trippy and giggly.
Trip over, we hit the hay about 2am. I think.

Sat 4th July - the last day of my 20s

So the last day of my youth did not start well. Carls and Riz came to wake me up at about 11am, with the news that the airline had texted Carly to tell her our flight home from Mainland Lombok to Surabaya on the 5th had been moved. It meant that in order to make the flight, we'd have to leave the Gilis at 6am on my birthday. What's more, this was before the first public boat. So we'd have to shell out to commission a private speedboat. Bugger.

We decided we'd sort it all out once we'd eaten. For some reason we all had the same craving for burgers. Yeah yeah I know, but it was my birthday so I could be gross if I want to. We walked the full length of the strip and saw several bars selling burgers, but chose a wee place by the beach at the ramshackle end of the strip.

I can only guess that mushroom shakes must seriously impair your judgement because this was categorically the worst burger in the known universe. It was like bushmeat. I swear it moved. It was so bad that despite the fact that I was completely ravenous, I still took it back to the kitchen, dumped it on the serving counter and asked the 'chef' if he'd ever seen a burger. Suddenly nobody speaks English.

I'm starting to feel like the universe was deliberately f*cking with me. This was not a good start.

Riz to the rescue. We went down to the ferry terminal and sorted out a speedboat from the next morning (half a million Rupiah. Only about £33, but a small fortune by local standards), and then we got what Riz called 'proper Bakso'. The Bakso we'd had in Ubud was shoddy in comparison. This was spicy meatbally loveliness. Made my eyes water but it was totally worth it. An elderly local couple at the terminal seemed to find it really funny that a redhead Bule would eat local food. They kept pointing at me and laughing. :)

We spent the rest of the afternoon in the irish bar watching dvds and drinking G&Ts and Bintang. Was totally lazy, chilled perfect afternoon. Which pretty much made up for the crap morning.

We headed back to our rooms to get dolled up - if my 20s were about to run out I was going to make damn sure I looked hot seeing them off. I followed in the chinese birthday tradition and insisted on treating Carls and Riz to dinner on my birthday night, so we went to the best restaurant on Gili Trawangan. It was at the posh end of the strip (natch) and it was called Scallywags. We got these brilliant seats, right by the strip; they were massive rattan cushioned nests you could totally curl up in. Scallywags cook to order, so you pick your fish and while it's being cooked you choose from this massive salad bar, and eat that while you wait. I chose a slab of Baramundi, and while it was being grilled I had a big salad mix up of quail's eggs, spicy cous cous, fresh cabbage with peanuts, cherry tomatoes in pesto and potato salad. Followed by a mojito. THAT'S what I'm talking about.

After eating our own body weight in food, and drinking a few more lethal cocktails, we were in severe dangers of falling asleep in our massive squishy seats. So we slapped ourselves aboot the face a few times, settled up, and trotted off to find a party bar. But we ended up back in the good old Irish bar. Sounds tragic but it really had the best atmosphere on the strip. Poor Riz wasn't feeling too hot and gave in before midnight. But Carls and I struggled manfully on. When the bells finally tolled on my youth, the DJ played Stevie Wonder's Happy Birthday, we lit the 3 candles on my little bit of cake that I'd brought all the way from the UK, the barman gave us free lemony shooters and all the bar staff kissed my hand. It was pretty forkin cool. :)

In bed by 2am. My first task as a grown up 30 year old is to make sure I am awake in exactly 3 and a half hours. Owee.

Sun 5th July - My birthday

Strange birthday morning. Woke up a bit fuzzy round the edges, but hauled myself up and got dressed. All the time I was faintly aware of a humming noise from outside. I presumed it was a generator or an air con unit. Had kinda forgotten about it by the time I actually came to open the door of my room. So I got the fright of my life when I realised my porch light had attracted a swarm of wasps. I swear to god there were hundreds of them. I have never run so fast with a 20 kilo backpack on me.

So... time for a sharp exit. Down to the harbour and our awaiting speedboat. I witnessed the sunrise on my 30s travelling at high speed across open water towards mainland Lombok. Which is a pretty damn cool way to start a new decade. :) And much faster than HMS Deathboat.

At the other side some nice locals gave us the number for a taxi firm WITHOUT expecting money for their 'help'. Folks seem to be more magnanimous early in the morn. The drive to Mataram airport was about an hour long, and beautiful. We drove high up through the mountains with deep mist-filled ravines dropping steeply away from either side of the road, dotted with massive boulders. Macaque monkeys disappeared into trees as we passed, and we raced Bemo buses piled high with bales and boxes and the occasional hitchhiker.

I'm sure I'd have appreciated the beauty of the journey a lot more if I hadn't felt like I was going to blow chunks the whole time. Massive hangover + windy mountain roads = not good. This state of affairs was massively improved however at the airport with some hot sweet coffee and Pop Mie. Aaah s'better.

Back at Carly and Rizqy's in Surabaya, we crashed out on the sofas for an hour then ordered in chinese for lunch. We pissed about all afternoon, I repacked my suitcase, we played Wii, and then my older brother called from their caravan in Gairloch to say Happy Birthday. I could hear the usual chaos in the background of my baby nephew Brodan crying, the dogs barking, and my older nephew Irvine rabbiting on about being an ambulance. Irvine demanded the telephone 'I speak to Auntie Ayay?', and proceeded to sing me the cutest rendition of Happy Birthday that I've ever heard, before informing me that he had no birthday cake to give me, and obviously finding this most irregular promptly chucked the phone back at his Daddy and ran off to continue his duties as an ambulance. Best. Birthday. Present. Ever. :D

Carls and Riz took me out to dinner on my final night in Indo. We went to the posh Chinese end of town, which advertises itself as the 'Singapore of Surabaya'. The houses are ridiculous; columns, statues, fountains, lions, stained glass the lot. In the drive across town I've never seen such a rapid juxtaposition of rich and poor and in such extremis. We went from passing slum housing along a grotty river, with people living in corrugated iron lean-tos, to these monstrosities. The Indonesian rich live in gated communities and completely self-contained apartment complexes with security guards, maids, nannies, air con. They venture outside as little as possible so as not to darken their skin, which would make them look like the poor folks they try so hard to pretend don't exist.

Dinner though, was lovely. It was traditional Indonesian food, but the restaurant was Balinese in style. Sort of indoor/outdoor courtyard, with lots of sculptures and wood carvings. Which makes the addition of a country and western style four piece band serenading the customers somewhat incongruous. But they did do a lovely version of Happy Birthday for me. Which was not quite as memorable as Irvine's cover version, but it runs a pretty close second.

We had beef sate, prawns deep fried in dessicated coconut, mango and chilli sambal, fried chicken, rice and green beans, all yummy. Dessert was an Indonesian speciality: kinda weird but kinda good. It basically consisted of crushed ice and condensed milk, with syrup, jelly pieces, bread pieces and avocado, served up like a knickerbocker glory. Apart from the bread, it really worked!

On the drive home, Carls asked Riz to drive us back through Surabaya's red light district. The area is named Dolly after a particularly famous Dutch madam, and is as you'd expect, pretty seedy but jumping. Girls sit in shop windows on red couches, wearing ordinary clothes and bored expressions, chatting and texting. It looks like the queue for a takeaway. There are a few ladyboys about too, and occasionally there are shops full of TVs where guys sit on the floor and play playstation games they rent by the hour. These stores are about as popular as the hookers. Its official. Playstation is the new wanking.

Home and to bed. Goodnight Indonesia.

Indo blog 5: Sangege, Lombok: 1st-2nd July

2009-09-05T12:41:00.007+01:00

Wow I've FINALLY got around to writing the concluding installments of my epic Indo holiday blog. No idea why it's taken me so long to get round to this, as our short stay in Lombok may just have been my favourite bit of the whole trip.

Wed 1st July - Ubud, Bali to Sangege, Lombok

We left Ubud pretty early in the morning, settled up with Mr Raka, said our goodbyes, and sat out on the street to await our pick up that would connect us with the bus to Padangbai; the ferry port to Lombok. An hour's drive through the more remote parts of north west Bali saw us arrive in time for the 9am ferry. Even at this time of the morn it's a bit of a scrum of locals, backpackers, coconuts and live animals. This ferry was a lot bigger than the one we caught to Karimun, but no air conditioned 'VIP' area this time. No 'In the night garden' on TV. Gutted. We got good seats in the shade on deck and read our books, talked shite and doodled to while away the four-hour voyage.

We arrived in Lembet, Lombok and got a bus to our final destination, Sangege. Our bungalows were about a ten minute drive out of central Sangege, so we figured we'd hire a car in town so that we could pinball about the island for the three days we'd be there. While this should have been pretty straightforward, it proved more difficult than it sounds.

Let me explain; Indonesia is oddly racist against its own people. Businesses and service providers routinely distrust locals and refuse to deal with them in favour of Bules. When Rizqy called ahead from Bali to book our bungalows in Sangege, the Indonesian woman he spoke to told him they were full. When Carly called half an hour later, she was given a choice of rooms. Similarly, at the salon in Ubud where Carls and I had our massage, the receptionist made Rizqy wait outside while Carly and I made our booking, because they assumed he was our guide (and therefore expecting a commission for bringing two Bules to their salon). Riz for the most part took this sort of treatment on the chin, but it was fairly obvious it was starting to get to him. He and Carly had holidayed in Bali/Lombok before, but because I was there this time, most tourist orientated businesses only saw a young, tattooed Indonesia guy with two western girls, ergo, he must be our guide.

It was no different in Lombok. The first hire car place we went into flat out refused to hire a car to a local. They were quite blatant about it. They would hire the car to me or Carly (even though we didn't drive!) but they wanted me to leave my passport with them. Which I refused to do. Because I'm not a bleeding idiot. Some swearing may have occurred. Ahem. On to hire car place number 2. They agreed to rent to a local, without anyone having to leave our passports, but the car they gave us was held together with sellotape. Unfortunately we had no other option. Riz, being a guy, and being a guy who likes a nice car, was mortified.

Anyway, we put the experience behind us and rattled off in our dustbuster along the coast to our bungalows. The place was called Santai, meaning 'relax' and that's pretty much all we did here. I. Loved. It.

Santai was a small collection of reed-thatched bungalows grouped close together by the beach, and interspersed with towering palm trees. Every bungalow was raised on stilts about three feet off the ground, with rattan blinds that could be rolled down from the overhanging thatch for privacy. Indoors, there were two low single beds surrounded by mozzie nets, and another door leading out to an outdoors bathroom, which was open-air but high-walled, with foliage and ferns growing up over the wall so no one could see in. It was still very strange sitting on a western loo looking at the sky. The shower was ace - a huge terracotta pot sitting on a high brick pedestal, with a rubber stopper in a spout at the bottom of the pot. You removed the stopper and out poured a stream of cool water. The pot could be refilled by opening a valve at the back of the pedestal. Was kinda ingenious. And it certainly woke you the hell up.

The best bit about the bungalows though was definitely the hammock. It was on a large porch out the front of the bungalow. You could roll down the blinds and swing lazily in your hammock, listening to the sea and reading trashy crime thrillers and drinking the hot sweet jasmine tea from a thermos that was regularly refilled by the Santai elves. It was total bliss.

But we couldn't sit around in hammocks all day AND night. There was booze to be had! We wedged ourselves back into the Tonka toy and headed into town after nightfall, satisfied my thai food cravings in a place called Bamboo, then headed over the road to a bar called Papaya. Which we chose for the sole reason that they did a happy hour of two-for-one pitchers of Arak cocktails and had live music. I mean what more do you want people?

I believe at one point we had five pitchers of blue Arak moonshiney madness lined up on our table. Not for long though. :) The live band were basically doing covers and taking requests, but they were pretty good - the female lead in particular. We cheered, we swigged, we took photos of our blue tongues, we demanded more booze and then we... er... drove home.

Another explanation: drink driving, while utter madness, is not really frowned upon in Indo. Actually, given our experience of the wacky races drive to Karimun, I don't think I would want to drive sober. Sorry Mum. Won't happen again Mum.

Thu 2nd July - Chilling in rainy Santai

Day two in Lombok dawned on a monstrous Arak hangover. This is when I fully appreciated the terracotta pot shower. Three seconds under that thing pretty much firehoses the hangover out of ya. Awesome.

Decontamination complete, I popped over to the library to pick a book. This was by the main Santai house where the owners lived. The family operated an open door policy to residents. You could wander into the kitchen, take anything you wanted from the fridge - water, coke, beer, and you just had to write in a little honesty book what you'd taken and your bungalow number. NOBODY ever lied. I certainly didn't. Another reason to love this place.

The library was on a large, raised platform area that served as a central communal space for all the residents. Everyone sat and ate together here at meal times, which was lovely, as you got talking to all sorts of weirdos. :) After an hour swinging in my hammock reading a book, and another hour chilling in Carly and Rizqy's bungalow, we had lunch here with a fine selection of nutters. There was a middle-aged Dutch couple, a younger Dutch couple with a little baby girl who was better than telly, a very loud German woman and an older Australian lady. We talked languages and travel (as you do) and played clap-a-handies with the wee bubba. Oh so Boho.

It was as we were heading back to our bungalows that I got to experience the start of my first tropical rainstorm. I'd landed in Indo about two weeks after the end of the rainy season (timed that well) but this doesn't mean it never rains in the dry season. One or two very big, heavy drops instantly preceded what was basically a solid wall of warm rain. It was a deluge. Utterly bonkers.

We all bolted for cover in our bungalows. As soon as I was in I locked the front door, and sat at the door to my open air bathroom, watching it. Now, if you ever find yourself caught in a tropical rainstorm, do yourself a favour; get butt naked and take a shower in it. Its bloody awesome, and bizarre, and totally liberating. I was giggling like a bairn. I even washed my hair.

When I was done communing with nature I got into my hammock (clothed), and passed the entire afternoon reading my book, drinking tea and watching the continuing rain.

The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun at about 4pm, and Carls and Riz and I went for a wander along the beach, watching sea fishermen and walking along the sea wall to a rocky outcrop where we got some pretty awesome shots of the waves breaking.

We headed back and joined the other Santai guests again for dinner at about 7pm. Discussed the weather like a right bunch of brits. Turned out Carls and Riz had had the same idea as me. Great minds...

Dinner was egg curry, salad, steamed veg and rice. Which doesn't sound like much but it was totally delicious. We sat up til late with loud mad German woman, polite Ozzie lady, and older Dutch couple, digesting dinner, drinking Bintang and talking politics, US foreign policy and religion before we were rudely interrupted by a power cut. Santai elves appeared with lanterns to guide us back to our bungalows. You didn't want to go blundering around pissed in the dark. There be giant spiders in them thar bushes. Ai haz seen dem.

More Iconnery

2009-08-05T10:37:00.005+01:00

Now I'm aware I have yet to finish my epic Indo blogs but we interrupt this broadcast to bring you some yummy iconniness. These are a wee favour for the day job's digital arm. I am not allowed to tell you what project they are for but I did have rather a lot of fun doing them. Three large illustration icons and lil' polaroidy ones for buttons. Huzzah.

Indo blog 4: Ubud, Bali: 27th-30th June

2009-07-14T21:06:00.009+01:00

Sat 27th - Off to Bali

Another early start had us rocking up to Rizqy's Mum's place to return her car that we borrowed for the great food tour. We met Rizqy's Gran who speaks not a word of English and is very, very sweet. Spent a chunk of time just laughing at me. I wasn't doing anything particularly amusing, she just thought I was funny lookin'. She also encouraged me to try some fresh Durian fruit - famous in Indo/Thailand as perhaps the smelliest, oddest tasting thing to fall out a tree that ain't a drunk grizzly. Its an... interrestiiing flavour. Apparently you can get pretty mabuk (drunk) if you eat a lot of it. I had three mouthfuls and I was burping the taste of Durian for about 2 hours.

So, following a taxi to the airport – where we killed time eating Soto Danang and Rawom, a couple of Indonesian meat/noodle soups – a short Lion Air flight to Denpasar and an hour-and-a -half's drive in a rickety taxi with no air con, we arrive in Ubud, Bali and Mr Raka's family-run hotel.

Mr Raka's was a typically Balinese house (aside from the swimming pool, of which Mr Raka was inordinately proud); you enter through a door in a wall on street level and walk down into a shaded courtyard dotted with elevated open pagodas, richly decorated with golden carvings and stone statues. There is a main house and several bungalows, all with their own porches and seating areas, and the pathways connecting them all are decorated with mosaic lotuses and water features. Since Bali is a predominantly Hindu community, all statues are modestly covered with sarongs, and have offerings at their feet: little folded square trays of banana leaf, containing flower petals, grass, biscuits and a burning incense stick. The result is that the whole of Bali smells of incense. Its lovely.

We eat at a pretty cool cafe bar over the road from Mr Raka's, sitting cross legged on a wooden platform and eating Beef Rendang (like Ghoulash) and drinking Bintang, then back to Raka's to settle in and freshen up before heading out to explore. Carls and Riz were excited about a band they'd seen before who were playing at a local Jazz Cafe. Turned out to be a bit of a disappointment however, as the band were not the musicians the guys had seen before - they were just using the same name. They weren't bad, doing covers of old rock, blues and jazz standards, but Riz was really disappointed as the previous front man had sounded like Louis Armstrong and they didn't do any of our requests for Billie Holiday, Howlin Wolf or BB King. The cafe was more pretentious than the guys remembered too, saying that the Bintang was off (not having Bintang on draught or bottled is unheard of in Indo - its practically a food group), and so forcing us to buy the far more expensive Carlsberg and cocktails. Not. Impressed. Hmph.

We made up for our disappointment by having some proper street food at a very basic open-air warung at the side of the road. We sat on plastic milk crates and ate spicy fish satay cooked on an open bbq, and Bakso; a spicy meatball soup. Altho this particular incarnation had no meatballs and a few crunchy peanuts floating in it, but Riz promises me that proper Bakso is awesome.

We stop at the market and get bintangs and snacks and head back to Mr Raka's where we sit on Carls and Rizqy's porch drinking and talking until the neighbours in the bungalow opposite finally crack and tell us to shut it. Whoops. Ho hum.

Sun 28th - Shopping in Ubud

Right. Enough of this eating bollocks. Let's bloody shop. We do a couple of circuits of Ubud market, which is a cornucopia of brightly coloured and patterned textiles, decorated boxes and ceramics, wood carvings, tin sculptures, toys, paintings, clothes, accessories and spices. I am introduced for the first time to the joys of bartering in an Indonesian market. Its total pantomime and lots and lots of fun. Particularly if you have a couple of locals coaching you. The technique is pretty much the same wherever you go, and the stall holders all speak english when it comes to numbers and haggling, funnily enough.

It goes something like this:

See something you like but pretend not to be interested in it, choosing instead to idly inspect other wares round about it.
Finally pick up the item you like and look at it as though bored. Prepare to be pounced on by the stall holder...
...Be pounced on by the stall holder; who will exclaim what a fine choice you've made and how you obviously have excellent taste, and look how fine the craftsmanship is etc etc. All in Balinese obviously but you get the gist.
Feign indifference and inquire 'Berapa?' (how much?)
Stall holder quotes, say, 100,000Rp (about £7)
Look appalled, screw up your face at this extortionate amount and offer 40,000Rp instead
The Stall holder will look mortally offended that you would so undervalue this fine piece of Balinese craftsmanship, before dropping their price immediately to 70,000Rp.
Look unimpressed and put the item down, saying you will go to 50,000Rp for it but absolutely no more. Start looking away at other stalls, maybe say something to your mate about something nicer you'd seen elsewhere...
The stall holder will either accept your offer or choose to be a hard ass and refuse to budge on their price. If so...
Shrug your shoulders again as though you weren't that bothered about it in the first place and start to walk away. Stall holder will usually shout you back, accepting your offer.
Sometimes however, rarely, they won't. And pride dictates that you have to keep walking. This has only happened to Carls once in Indo.

But I was surprised at how easily I got over my British reserve about talking money and became a complete skinflint haggler from hell. With Carls as my excellent coach and straight man, we walked off with pretty good deals on almost everything. No Bule prices for me! (The above technique doesn't just apply to markets - you can haggle in shops and boutiques too. Once back in the UK, I had to mentally check myself from haggling for stuff in WH Smith. Its addictive.)

I bought myself a Wayang Kulit, a shadow puppet, from a guy with four inch fingernails (bartered down from 250,000 to 125,000 - had to do the walking away bit on that one), and a couple of pashminas. Still looking for some nice wood carvings for the family. Plenty time though.

Lunch at a padang warung near Raka's; Bintang, rice, sweetcorn fritters, soya bread, tofu and fish. Bought some extra munchies off a passing vendor; weird frogspawny jelly pieces in condensed milk, spicy pork bits and odd nuts. Pretty good.

In the afternoon we visit Ubud's famous Monkey Forest. Over 200 Macaque monkeys rule the roost here; a dense forest surrounding a sacred Hindu temple where all monkeys are protected. Its all great photo-op stuff, as the little blighters have become so used to humans that they have no qualms about coming right up to you and demanding a goddamn banana. To the extent that if you don't give them a banana, they'll bloody well take your sunglasses. Erm... cute. I got my photo taken with a particularly forward little Macaque who was all sweetness and light until I ran out of noms, whereupon he attempted to sink his fangs into my forearm. Cheers, little dude; you're f***ing welcome. Another wee guy proper mugged Carls and robbed her of a whole bottle of water, opening it easily and drinking the spilled contents. Hmm... anyone for monkey satay?

We wandered back to Raka's for a dunk in the pool and a hot shower, then back out for dinner. Went to a Japanese warung, had chicken teriyaki don (rice, seaweed, chicken teriyaki). It was delicious but not quite enough for our Riz, who had to stop at a snack stall for more noms on the way home. We got ourselves Mansion House Gin, Tonic and Bintangs (Mansion House is a bog standard Indo alcohol brand - imported spirits are pricey, so MH is the only alternative. Their whisky is bloody awful but the gin goes down a treat) and sat out on the porch again and talked about Britain and what a bloody attitude problem we've got.

Mon 29th - Hire car to Kuta

Carls and Riz get up early and head out to find a place to hire us a car. They kit us out with a big four by four thingy, and then we all drive back towards Denpasar and Kuta; Ozzie tourist central.

Kuta was the location of the 2002 Bali bombing, in which more than 200 people died. There's a beautiful monument to the dead in the town centre near the site of the blast. The immediate area around the bomb site has never been rebuilt on, out of respect, but the town itself is still bustling, touristy and full of surfers. Because its very touristy vendors are a bit more pushy here, sometimes trying to physically drag you into their stalls, and do not take a simple 'no makasi' as an answer. This gets a little wearing, but we still manage to get in a decent amount of shopping. I buy no less than 26 bangles from a variety of stalls and shops, including some gorgeous Batik printed ones at the only place from which Carls, on a previous visit, has ever had to walk away empty-handed. She was determined it wasn't going to happen twice, and we successfully managed to haggle the guy down to a good price. Hoorah. Also got myself a Bintang branded towel which I am very excited about. After several hours of shopping, we is hot and hungry. Need eats.

We drove out to Jimbarra, about ten minutes along the coast, for dinner. Its worth getting out of Kuta to the quieter beaches, especially as Jimbarra has lots of seafood grills with tables out on the sand, so that you can watch the sunset while the unfortunate fish of your choice is flambeed. Carls and Riz got a red snapper between them, while I got a mix up platter of fish, squid and shellfish. We ate, we drank Bintang, we watched beach vendors sell grilled corn on the cob, with side orders of glowsticks and laser pens. Bonkers.

The drive back to Ubud is far from direct (we get a leetle lost in the dark), but successful in the end; rocking up to Raka's at about 10pm, and drinking more MH gin and Bintangs until late. Zzzzzz.

Tues 30th June - Last day in Ubud

After a relatively long lie (9am is a long lie in Indo), Carls, Riz and I get a bit more shopping done. I'm determined to get decent presents for the family and, with a bit of focus, I succeed in buying a cool carving of a gecko on a tree stump for my older bro and his lady, a very fine stained wood carving of a praying lady for the parents, and a very chic minimalist set of wooden salt and pepper shakers for my younger bro and his wife. Ah, job done. To celebrate, Carls and I book ourselves in for a traditional Balinese massage at the Nur Salon. Then we head to the Dirty Duck diner. Its a beautiful restaurant. We sit crosslegged on our own covered raised platform with ponds and trees either side, and eat Bebek Bengil (crispy duck), rice, sambal and green beans with more Bintang, and a pear and mint smoothie for me. YUM. We eat the traditional Indo way, with our fingers. Right hand only! The left one isn't clean apparently. And I was sure I just washed it...

After lunch we went back to the Nur Salon for our massage. The salon was in a traditional Balinese courtyard house, with several buildings, pagodas, open air bird cages, trees, flowers and water features. You are taken to your own private room, open air but high-walled for privacy. Once I got over the initial shock of being completely naked in front of a total stranger, the massage was absolutely blissful. I had warned the lass that my foot was very sakit (sore) and she understood and avoided that bit, but thoroughly massaged everywhere else!

Balinese massage involves scented oils and a lot of deep, pressure point stuff, acupressure along your spine and limbs, even massaging your hands, feet, fingers and toes. The masseuse often gets up on the table to stand over you to work your back and thighs.

The massage is followed by a full body seaweed scrub, a good douse with warm and then cold water and then a soak in a warm bath full of flower petals. Felt totally chilled by the end of it, and my skin felt AMAZING. Aaaaah.

Floated back to Raka's to sunbathe, shower and change, and then we headed out for a very very cheap but really tasty warung meal (seafood nasi goreng for me, two other mains for carls and Riz, 6 large spring rolls in satay sauce, a large Bintang and a water, all for about £4), and then we boosted to catch a traditional Balinese Barong dance around the corner.

The Barong dance is the sort of thing you'll see if you do a google image search for 'Balinese culture'. Its a pretty touristy thing to do, but its still a cool spectacle. The singing, the music and the moves are strange, discordant and jerky, but the characters are pretty familiar. There are the girls playing male roles, the comedy duo, the villain, the hero, the big, bad monster, the dame. Its basically panto, just with more gold, sequins and facepaint. Rizqy got some awesome close up portraits with his SLR. You can see a selection of his shots here as I don't think my description really does it justice.

We finished off our last night in Bali with a quick drinkie at the Gaia cafe round the corner from Raka's. Tried a sip of Carly's Arak Attack (Arak is the local moonshine - its lethal stuff), but stuck with my Bintang. Only the one tonight, as we're up early tomorrow to leave for Lombok.

Indo blog 3: Rizqy's Great Surabayan Food Tour: Fri 26th

2009-07-09T06:43:00.004+01:00

Right, no messing about, serious business this. Pretty much one of the main reasons I go on holiday at all is to try new noms. And to have a fellow nom-lover as a free guide around the delights of Indonesian cuisine is pretty darn cool. I'd made the mistake already of telling Riz I'd eat just about anything. Which, naturally, he takes as a challenge. Ahem. So here goes...

Stop one: Breakfast - Pecel

We kick off the tour with breakfast at a roadside Warung. A Warung is a street cafe and they vary quite radically in quality from an open air BBQ on a plastic crate to pretty nice sit-in restaurants, however they are always very, very cheap, and yummy. We had Pecel, which is kinda like Padang food: a big buffet from which you choose a selection of meats and sides to go with your standard rice, satay sauce, sambal (chilli sauce), tempe (soya bread) and steamed spicy veg. I didn't have a clue what anything was so just pointed. I had Usus (chicken intestine satay - tasted like chicken), Otak Otak (fish brain cake - like a wee omlette), Ayam Goreng (fried chicken leg), Peyek (peanut rice crackers) and Dadar Jagung (sweetcorn fritters). Was mountains of food, and didn't want to fill up on brekkie so I tried everything and then fed the leftovers to Riz, who, it turns out, is never, ever full up.

To aid breakfast's digestion, we went for a bit of a shop in Mirota, a crafts shop that Carls had been raving about. Bought a couple of gorgeous batik house dresses (for slobbing about the house in when you can't be arsed getting dressed - that's most days then), notebooks, chopsticks and a Nemo mobile for the nephews.

Stop two: Lunch - Car picnic

We headed to Pasar Atum, which is a vast indoor market selling knock off goods and tacky merchandise, but also has a big food section. I bought a bunch of classic Indonesian sweeties for the office, smelled Durian fruit for the first time, and we bought a bunch of tasty treats to take away and eat in the car.

They were:

Sate Babi - Pork Satay. Tasted just like chinese spare ribs, sweet n spicy sauce.
Pastel - looks for all the world like a cornish pastie, but filled with sweet glass noodles, carrots and beansprouts and egg, you eat it with a lombok chilli, a wee radioactive green thing that you nibble before taking a bit of the pastel. HOT AS F***.
Pisang Goreng - deep fried banana in batter. Not so keen on this, was a bit heavy for me.
Serabi - a pancake/crepe cup, filled with cooked coconut milk, and topped with either cheese or chocolate sprinkles. This was pretty awesome. The cooked coconut milk goes like custard, and with salty cheese on top its pretty yummy. My fave I think.

More shopping next. Went to one of the HUGE malls in Surabaya: Tungungan Plaza (TP to the locals), very western and mostly patronised by Surabaya's rich chinese population. Lots of western stores - Zara, M&S, Gap, French Connection, Starbucks. Got a frappucino and then Carls and I went nuts in the Zara sale. When in Rome...

Back to the house to have a lie down in a dark room, drink Bintang and decide what to do for DINNER.

Stop three: Dinner - Dim Sum

Off to Galaxy Mall for dinner. Eating in shopping malls is a quite different experience in Indo compared to the UK. Instead of dodgy food courts and shabby branches of McDonalds, they have whole floors dedicated to pretty swish restaurants with international themes, and since Surabaya has a massive chinese population, dim sum restaurants are in abundance. I also confessed to Riz that I'd never had dim sum and had missed out on the op to have some in NYC, so that pretty much settled that.

This Galaxy Mall Dim Sum place had a selection of ready made steamed and deep fried dumplings, with free Jasmine tea thrown in. You basically make a selection of dishes and they're brought to your table. The empty dishes are then counted at the end of the meal and you're billed accordingly. Simples.

Most of the dumplings are just variations on a theme and contain a delicious pork/prawn combo, but we also had yummy chunks of pork ribs, stuffed bread balls aaaaand... chicken's feet. Now there's not much meat on chicken's feet so I'm not sure why they're considered such a delicacy. I thought after squid babies and fish brains that chicken's feet would be a cake walk but its actually pretty disconcerting to put what feels like a small bony hand in your mouth and bite the fingers off. I don't care how much sauce you put on it.

We ended the meal with a teetering pile of empty plates, and so full up I needed to be rolled to the car a la Violet Beauregarde. * burp *

Here endeth Rizqy's Great Surabayan Food Tour. Sir, we salute you.

Indo blog 2: Karimunjawa: 22nd-25th June

2009-07-09T05:29:00.005+01:00

Monday 22nd - First night:

We have a quiet first night in Karimun. All food is laid on, and the family-run hotel feeds us whole spicy crab, dried fish, soya-bean bread and rice. Messy eating but yummy. We take a wander down to the harbour and take a few photos of the sunset and the fishing boats and just generally chill.

Karimun is an as-yet undeveloped island for tourists. There are a couple of resort-like hotels but for the most part Karimun is what Bali must have been like thirty years ago; unspoilt and unused to Bules (foreigners). The kids who sit by the dusty road outside our hotel use their one word in English (Helloooooo) every time we pass, giggling to each other and gawping at our weird clothes. It's a Muslim community and I hear for the first time the chorus of muezzin calling folks to prayer. This happens about five times a day; first call at 4am, the final about 9pm. It's quite haunting to sit on the flat roof of our hotel looking out over dense palm trees at sunset and listening to four different loudhailers broadcast prayers sung in arabic to the community.

Such quiet contemplation is often followed by the strong desire to get pissed. So we set about locating some Bintangs. This is not actually very straightforward. A reliable power supply is not something you'll find in many places in Indo and Karimun is certainly no exception. Regular power cuts mean refrigeration is pretty pointless and street lights non-existent. We are attempting to locate cold beers in the middle of one such power cut; traipsing up a dirt track illuminated only by the headlights of passing motor bikes, none of whom see pedestrians (bule or not) until they're almost upon them. But I would quite happily die for beer so we soldier on.

As it turns out we locate Bintangs in a roadside grocery shop, they ain't cold but we figure we can find a way to chill them back at the hotel. We stick the bulk of the bottles in the hotel freezer (which works - hoorah!) to quick chill, but in our impatience we decide to pour one over ice. Only we don't have ice cubes; we have a single, large solid block of ice we have to break into bits. Without an ice pick. Cue total slapstick that culminates in Riz and Antok trying to break an ice block into bits on a water pipe in Antok's bathroom (????) which singularly fails to make a dent in the ice, but succeeds in busting the pipe and flooding Antok's bathroom for the rest of our stay. Eh.. oh dear.

However, all vandalism is totally valid in the pursuit of cold beer so we have no regrets yer honour.

Tues 23rd - First full day in Karimun:

Earlyish start this morn. Antok is our guide and has sorted out a motorboat to take us island hopping along the archipelago and snorkelling in Karimunjawa national park; a protected coral reef environment where the boatmen aren't even allowed to drop anchor, they have to jump into the water and tie the boat off manually. Quite right too.

Our boat is basically a floating four poster bed; a longboat topped with a flat platform open on all sides, and covered by a ramshackle roof made of tarpaulin. We sit on reed mats with our legs dangling over the side until we reach our first snorkelling point.

Now I think the last time I used a snorkle I was nine and on holiday in france and I made the schoolgirl error of trying to snorkle close to shore which meant every wave ended up near drowning me, and i didn't see very much of anything.

This was pretty much the opposite of that.

Even in shallow waters the Karimun reef is STUNNING. Bioluminescent coral, huge spiky black sea anemones, bright blue and yellow parrot fish, HUGE blue starfish, sea cucumbery things, Nemos and massive coral formations that looked like church organ pipes, housing more spiky anemones and wee fishes. Got frustrated with paddling about on the surface and tried ditching the snorkle and free diving down a few metres to see things closer up. There were a couple of spots where the reef dropped off into blackness and I wished I was proper diving instead of snorkelling so I could go see what was further down. But I wasn't too hot at getting my ears to equalize and so free diving was limited to about five metres before my head felt like it was gonna pop. But I did manage to get down pretty deep to grab a pretty mother of pearl shell that I saw catching the light. A trophy!

Back on the boat, we had time to dry off in the sun before our next island stop.

Now, you know that cliched bit in The Beach where they walk out onto the beach in question and that Moby song kicks in? This felt just like that. Shaped like an elongated apostrophe, it was a wee paradise island of palms with a tail: the most perfect crescent of totally white sand, surrounded by neon blue water. Carls and I had a wee moment of just sorta looking at one another and laughing. Like, WTF?? These places aren't supposed to actually exist. It felt like Penny Crayon had drawn paradise just for us. Unreal.

We all got a bit giddy - doing headstands and Baywatch running and guddling in the water until the boatmen chivvied us onto paradise island number 2. Now this one was a total bounty ad. Much bigger than the last, with huge palms leaning drunkenly out over the beach, and again, perfect white sand and neon sea but with rocks to climb and large lumps of washed up coral. Carls found some cool shells and I found a spotty pink bit of coral to take home. Purty.

We headed back in towards the harbour, but stopped at one of the wee houses on stilts that dot about the shore. This house came with a couple of enclosed sea pools homing, in one, wild baby sharks that would eat you if you so much as dipped a toe in the water, and another that housed tame baby sharks that you could swim with and pat on the head and feed chocolate buttons (ok not really). The key thing here being not to get the two pools mixed up.

So snorkels on again and first in the water was Riz. Who must have broken some sort of record for fastest vertical exit from a pool by proper shitting it the instant one of the sharks came anywhere near him. Which was most amusing.

The sharks were awesome though. The biggest was probably about two metres long, and they liked to lurk in the cooler shaded waters near the bottom of the pool. That is until some besnorkelled ginger bird appeared and chased them about. Arf.

The pools other more lethargic resident was a giant turtle I shall name Barnaby. He was a right grumpy old bastard who didn't take too kindly to having his shell patted. But he was MASSIVE, about 70kilos. And surprisingly spry for an old fella.

Had a snack on the pier of fresh coconut straight out the shell. Freshly prepared by one of the boatmen and his machete. Mine was a young coconut, you can tell cos the 'milk' tastes fizzy. Its awesome.

Ah, now you may ask. All this pleasure? Where's the pain? I shall tell you my friends. It was on my back. At some point (probably bounty ad beach number 2) I had been so distracted by the bonkers gorgeousness of the place, I had forgotten to reapply my SPF 3million, scottish-edition sun lotion. And had FRIED my back. Oweeee. I'd also stood on something at some point that was making my left foot sting like Billy-o. But more on that later...

Back at the hotel, dinner was dried fish, whole squid (with baby squid still inside - bleee), rice and veg, with more Bintang beer for afters. We also discovered some sort of Chinese Buckfast which we used to toast every on and off of the power. Which is a LOT of toasting. We talked religion, school days and hometowns before meandering off the bed about 1ish. Um... I think.

Wed 24th - Second full day in Karimun:

Early start again this morn (no hangover either - ah the magic of chinese bucky). Our motorboat headed out from the harbour in the opposite direction this time, out to open sea and rougher waters. A leetle alarming at times sitting on a flat platform with no barriers between you and the waves on a boat that carries a car tyre as a life belt. Errrrr...

Anyway. We all made it to the snorkelling point, which was, like the previous day, stunning. It also got pretty deep, pretty quickly. One of the boatmen came out snorkelling with us and pointed us in the direction of the cool bits. Seemed to be more fish traffic in this reef. All good. Tried chasing parrot fish but those little buggers are FAST.

Our next stop off the coast of another large island was cut short by the presence of a machete wielding janny who took exception to us parking in the waters of his boss' island. There followed angry exchanges in indonesian between our boatmen and the machete janny, before we thought it wise to hightail it somewhere else for lunch, giving the Vs like a bunch of school kids as we left. Arf.

Island number 3 was another wee bit of paradise. We sat in the shade and ate Nasi Goreng, egg, tofu and prawn crackers, with fresh coconut for afters. Nom. Got my new facebook photo taken in the sea, drinking coconut milk out the shell. We found a family of Nemos hiding in an anemone in the shallows. Aggressive little buggers so they are. Didn't like us popping by to say hiya AT ALL. Pixar won't tell you the truth but I WILL. Nemo is a THUG. Oh yes.

We carry on around the island to calmer waters and the boatmen circle for a bit before finding us the 50 year old wreck site of a container ship. Now THIS was cool as F***. Like a documentary I'd seen once about the wreck of the titanic. Obviously not as big but was very very creepy to see the prow and guardrail of this massive container ship looming out of dark. It was covered in coral and shells and barnacles and hid all sorts of fishes. Riz and Antok tried to convince me that a giant squid lived in it but I ain't no gullible bule. Didn't stop me pooing myself when Riz sneaked up behind me in the water and grabbed my flipper though. Bastard. :)

I stuck the flippers on and tried the free diving again, getting down deep enough to see more of the ship; part of the control tower, looked through a porthole and grabbed the guardrail. Was very very cool.

Headed back to Karimun harbour and tipped the boat guys for not killing us and headed back towards the hotel. On the way we started to hear loud music. Turning a corner we came across a street party, the whole neighbourhood was out. They had huge crepe paper 'fireworks' on sticks and guys dressed up in stripy dungarees with weird paper-mache heads and fake boobs(?). Everyone was dancing to the tunes coming from an improvised sound system playing off the back of a truck. Turns out this was a celebration for one of the local boys who was being circumcised! The young lad in question was eventually paraded, in full golden batik traditional dress and post-circumsion, through the streets (looking a leetle uncomfortable I have to say) on a gold sedan chair, decked out with gold cymbals and petals, with a band also in traditional dress playing drums, cymbals and maracas. All gloriously bonkers. Got our photo taken with the paper mache head guys (copped a feel of the fake boobs, just to check. Had to be done).

Back in hotel and my stingy foot was demanding inspection. Had been getting difficult to walk on but hadn't noticed it while on the boat cos we'd been in and out the water. Now it was too painful to put any weight on. Had a squiff at it and it was very red and inflamed around this little puncture wound. Also, worryingly, a wee red line was creeping up from the puncture onto the top of my foot. Infected then. On a bloody remote island with no hospital and twelve hours from civilisation. AWESOME. Got the iodine antiseptic out and tried to clean it as best I could and hoped for the best. That bloody foot was to become the bane of the holiday. Small price to pay for paradise though.

Our last Karimun dinner was pretty awesome. Chicken Satay (Sate in Bahasa), prawns, squid rings in batter, spicy green beans and rice, watermelon for afters. NOM NOM. Drank vast quantities of Bintang and Chinese Buckfast (for medicinal purposes you understand) and talked languages, weddings, hen parties and misspent youth. Great banter. Oh, and I got pooed on by a gecko. Which I like to think is good luck. But maybe only for the Gecko.

Thursday 25th - Journey back to Surabaya from Karimun:

Up early doors to catch the 8am ferry back to Japarra port. Had Pop Mie (Indo Pot Noodle) for the first time on this crossing. Was to become something of a staple food for the holiday. Riz loves em. In Japarra we grabbed lunch at a Padang place. Padang food is kinda like a buffet, all the food is already made and laid out. You get rice, sauce and veg and then a choice of one other side and a meat dish. I had Beef Rendang which was kinda like Ghoulash, and a spicy egg in breadcrumbs, with Sembla and spinach. All washed down with full fat Coke out a glass bottle (standard issue here - why does coke taste better out a glass bottle?).

Nom and, indeed, double nom.

The 8 hour drive back to Surabaya on the Road to Hell was much the same as the journey out. I closed my eyes and pretended it wasn't happening. To cap it all I used a squat toilet for the first time at a petrol station. Prob not the best place to have one's first experience of such a convenience. I shall spare you the details. One word: Eeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwww.

Finally back in Surabaya and despite the iodine antiseptic my foot was KILLING me. So decided to channel Chuck Norris; drink a few beers and then get at it with some dettol and sewing needle. Whatever the hell was in there wasn't staying. Much swearing and rooting around in what turned out to be a pretty deep hole in my foot failed to eject anything , so I poured Dettol into it, stuck a plaster over it to keep it clean, and crossed fingers and toes on right foot. Hmmmmm.

Riz and Carl tell me the plan tomorrow is to do Rizqy's Great Surabaya Food Tour. Riz likes his food. So do I. I can't think of a better guide. Bring it.

Photos: Rizqy Renan

Indo blog 1: Getting there: 20th-22nd June

2009-07-09T05:15:00.004+01:00

I shall spare you the dull details of a long haul flight from Glasvegas to East Java, save these: if I could only take three things onto any long haul flight they'd be a decent sized pashmina scarf, a cushee travel cushion and one antihistamine sedative. Job done. Oh, and small, fat, indonesian kids with a propensity for staring should be stowed in the hold with all the other overweight baggage. Zat is all.

Ah, now where was I?

Oh yeah. So I arrive in Surabaya, East Java at about 7pm local time. Instant geography FAIL: I didn't realise that on the equator it gets dark about 6pm. And it gets dark fast. But to be honest this is a bit of a blessing when, even after dark, getting off an air conditioned jet in Surabaya airport is like walking into a city-sized Swedish sauna: 38C and 90% humidity. Oooft.

However, before i can meet the lovely Mr & Mrs Renan I have to be visa'd, scanned and decontaminated. Simple enough process, but I nearly cock the whole thing up by pissing off the Officious Fat Man at the visa counter. I got the long-haul hysterics cos I had just noticed that 'Closed' in Bahasa Indonesian is 'Tutup'. Which reminded me of that 'Supplies!' joke so much I cracked up (if you don't know the joke email me and I'll tell you it. Its mint.). Officious Fat Man thinks I'm laughing at him; decides to try to find a problem with my passport, and takes his damn time sorting it. For several long horrible minutes he lets me think I'm not going to be allowed in the country. I nolikey OFMs.

Decontamination was fun tho. Since I is a diseased foreigner from diseased foreign climes I must be liberally spritzed with some unidentified gassy substance in a metal booth. Yaaas. Some people pay for that kinda shit.

Anyway. Fun bureaucratic procedures dealt with, I meet the lovely Mrs Renan in departures and she and her heavily tattooed teddy-bear of a husband Rizqy drive me back to their place in their big red jeep. We have just enough time to have a few Bintangs ('Star' beer; ubiquitous, like Indonesian Tennents), grab some munchies from some street vendors (chicken satay and a sorta veg roti), have a quick Mandi (Indonesian bath; basically a square, floor-to-waist-height basin of cold water and a plastic saucepan in a wet room; go nuts) and repack, before Rizqy's mate Antok comes to pick up us and our new travel companions; Josh, Margaret and Margaret's Mum Samantha, to drive us all to the coast.

Now that sounds rather nice doesn't it? A wee jaunt to the coast in an air conditioned MPV. Lovely. Only driving in Indonesia, even in the major cities, is like taking part in a demolition derby. The road we took to the coast, I find out much later (blessedly), is notorious for traffic accidents. Not hard to believe when the road is only occasionally tarmac'd, barely two lanes wide, and rammed with motorbikes carrying two or three people, trucks carrying live chickens, jeeps, MPVs, cars and vans. Oh, and every single one is driving at breakneck speed, often on the wrong side of the road.

Indonesian overtaking procedure:
step 1: Pull up to the bumper of the live-chicken-stuffed truck in front. Beep horn.
step 2: Veer out wildly into oncoming traffic. Repeat as required. Continue beeping horn.
step 3: Overtake, beeping horn angrily at whatever vehicle had the temerity to be travelling in the opposite direction of what is now OUR side of the road.
step 4: Return to step 1.

We continue on this awful mobius loop of attempted vehicular manslaughter for approximately six hours, until arriving, miraculously intact, at the ferry port around dawn. The ferry to Karimunjawa leaves a couple of hours later, giving us time to grab breakfast (Nasi Goreng, thai green curry, jack fruit and sambal chilli sauce. FOR BREAKFAST) and stop hyperventilating.

The six hour ferry crossing over to Karimunjawa was pretty uneventful by comparison. We get to sit in the VIP area (nicer seats, with air con and a TV showing 'in the night garden'- ???), while the locals mostly sit on the car deck below on heaps of coconuts and cardboard boxes. A small child called Karin stands by our seats and stares at us all for about two hours. Completely unabashed. Cute for the first five minutes and after that just plain unsettling. Omen music stuck in head.

By the time we arrive at Karimunjawa and check in to our basic but pretty wee hotel, I calculate I've been awake for 52 hours, taken three planes, three cars and one ferry, and stared death in the face; all to get here: Karimun. Which, as it turned out, was totally, totally worth it. :)

Photo: Rizqy Renan

Vote for Sazbar; save the world

2009-05-19T09:55:00.002+01:00

My supremely talented and sadly distant best mate Sazzle has been at it again. She's created this very simple and powerful ad for Oxfam, and if all you go and rate it 5 stars and leave her a wee comment on youtube then she may get to come to Cannes and I might see her lovely wee face before she gets married in 2011. SO VOTE GODDAMN YOU. :)

Lip service

2009-03-31T16:18:00.004+01:00

My bessie mate (and sometimes client) Brazen is about to join a very select group. Stockists of Lip watches. These are a range of superfly timepieces based on original 1970s designs by some fella called Roger Fallon. Everybody's twittering about them. That's cos they are MEGA-COOL. Here's a selection, but there are loads more and they come with plenty of options for strap colours/materials/faces etc. All this and the packaging's pretty durn cool too. I wants one. I does. For more info or to buy/reserve, go see Brazen's website or email her.

It's contagious...

2009-03-02T11:14:00.002Z

I knew it! Carly has started the mass exodus from singledom! Another bessie mate, the beautiful and talented Miss Sazzle McLongworth has announced that her wonderful boy Otis asked her to marry him last week. In Samoa. On a beach. At sunset. I mean how much more perfect a proposal could you ask for?

She's given me two years notice so I can start saving to get my bahookie down there and watch her get hitched. Dude, she could be getting married next week and I'd find the goddamn money! No way I'd miss it!

So there you go lads - another perfect girl off the market. Singledom's loss is Otis' gain. And he is suitably smug. Oh yes - just look at his face. Heehee.

Congrats you two - you're made for each other and I'm made up for ya!

Tis the season to get married... lalalalalalaaaaa

2008-12-23T08:14:00.002Z

My beautiful bessie mate Carly got married last week to the very cool Rizqy. They met out in Indonesia, where they both live now, but got married on Carly's home island of Arran. It was a beautiful, laidback sort of affair that suited them both very well. A few of the old ECA-Team made it to the ceremony and the after-party (music provided by Carly's very musical family), and I'm pleased to report we didn't let the side down. There was champagne, there was air guitar, there was knee-sliding. In short, we rocked. Carly rocked. Rizqy, you rock too.

Carly's stepdad and Uncle are both photographers and their shots can be found here, my shoddy efforts are here. Ain't they gorgeous?

Aw. Why do all my favourite folks live so damn FAR AWAY?

Merry Mickelmass!

2008-12-22T21:29:00.002Z

I've just returned from a bloody lovely couple of days in sunny Sunderland with some of my favourite folks (and a few new ones).

I couldn't blog about this poster before because it was all top secret and Mr Mick might have seen it and the game would have been up. Matt Stalker of Matt Stalker and Fables - who, you may remember, I've blogged about before - held a gig entitled Mickelmass for his big brother Mick, who was back from NZ for the first time in two years for Crimbo. I've known Mick for yonks and I've also met their eldest bro Chris before too. So there were three very good reasons to haul my ass down to Sunderland to surprise Mick and see Matt and the band play live.

Well they didn't disappoint. I've said it before, but that Matt Stalker is a talented bastard and deserves bloody great things. The set was completely mesmerising, and while I'm in awe anyway of people who can play instruments and sing at the same time, there really isn't anything like standing a few feet away from a cello, a double bass and a guitar (and occasionally more esoteric instruments!) while they are played by folks who really know what they're doing with them. Absolutely awesome.

Mr Matt even got me a bit choked up by dedicating a beautiful cover of Radiohead's 'Let Down' to me and thanking me for doing their EP and the above poster for Mickelmass. Matt, you are more than welcome, buster!

And to the lovely Mick, who'll be heading back to NZ for New Year, it was bloody marvellous to see you and your cheeky grin again. Bon Voyage baby! I'll see you real soon. Sniff. Hopefully.

Gold Rush

2008-12-11T14:11:00.004Z

Brazen's Christmas theme was a tricky one this year; because the good lady, in a fit of credit crunch-induced frugality, wanted the theme to extend well into the new year. So it couldn't be 'too Christmassy'. Riiight.

Other key pointers in the (actually excellent) brief were: Art Deco, Jazz, Hollywood, 1930s, Lalique etc. With the help of the lovely Lynn McHattie the name 'Gold Rush' was decided, and I set about creating a central identity, illustrations for web and print, window vinyls and bag stuffers (for to stuff bags with). The central identity took pride of place on the lovely gold-foil blocked bag stuffer: an art-deco stylised bullet hole links back to Brazen's original 'diamond and guns' branding, but also looks just snowflakey enough to be christmassy. The photo really doesn't do it justice (I'm a shit photographer) - and I'm so glad my lovely mate and favourite client chose to splash out on the gold foil on this one. It looks sexy as f*ck.

Some equally sexy illustrations will be rotated on Brazen's brand new online shop in the new year, and in the meantime one of them is appearing as a window vinyl in the shopfront. (Pics to follow once I get myself a decent camera).

Brazen and I were so pleased with ourselves after installing the window vinyl last Sunday that we simply had to celebrate by getting trollied and 'high-chebsing'. I can't attach a photo of that but trust me it was funny.

Phone's Teeth

2008-12-11T14:07:00.003Z

A wee illustration for the day job. Yet to go live so I'm showing you it in progress. Was a fun one though. I do like to get the odd illustration job at work. Keeps me happy. This one is meant to look like a mobile/joke teeth. The reasons for which will become clear once the job goes live. 3D render done in Illustrator with textures/shadows highlights/details added in Photoshop. I am so loving the 3D thing right now. Yum.

Irresponsible Auntie Alert

2008-11-15T23:04:00.002Z

It was my oldest nephew Irvine's 3rd Birthday last weekend. So I bought him a guitar. I didn't get him a hotel room to trash or a TV to throw out the window though. So I'm not completely irresponsible.

End of an era

2008-10-26T14:46:00.002Z

After nearly three years of fun and frolicking with the wonderful Club Noir, we have agreed to go our separate ways. My day job commitments are increasing, and Club Noir are doing ever so well and expanding out to London and whatnot, and really needed someone who could devote more time and energy to them. I've punted a couple of mega-talented designery folks their way, so hopefully they will be producing posters of graphicy vintagey loveliness for Noir into the future. Bon voyage friends! All the best. x

Before they were famous Part II

2008-10-26T14:31:00.004Z

My good friend and mega-talented chappy Mr Matt Stalker is currently a very happy mega-talented chappy, as his band, Matt Stalker and Fables, have just got themselves the gig of their lives. (So far, anyway - it'll be Wembley next you mark my words).

They will be playing the amazing looking Sage Gateshead on the 28th November, supporting Scottish folksters Frightened Rabbit. And Matt is so excited he using lots and lots of capitals and exclamation marks and stuff. Bless him.

I can't tell you how much these guys deserve this gig; I'm thinking its the start of something beautiful for them. Check out the band's myspace here. Warning: screaming fandom will ensue.

Gone like Clockwork

2008-09-21T11:20:00.003+01:00

Yet another illustration project that is destined never to see the light of day, except here on my lovely blog. Talk about vanity publishing. These lil' clockwork fellas were for a client's christmas ads. I really liked them too. My creative director however, didn't. So aside from giving him the V's behind his back and putting laxatives in his tea*, there's not much I can do about it. Do let me know if you like them though. I'm still feeling sensitive.

*this is a lie. I never make the tea. I have minions who do that for me now.

Together in Electric Dreams

2008-09-17T15:25:00.003+01:00

My bessie mate Vivienne is having a birthday party at some point in the near future and she asked me to do her an emailable invitation. Miss Vivienne is the queen of dressing up and parties in general, so she always themes her parties. She did Alice in Wonderland one year, and had a mad hatter's tea party in a secret garden. This year it's going to be an 80s themed elecxtravaganza titled 'Electric Dreams', and in the spirit of both the excessive 80s, and Vivvy's madness, this was the final result. She likey. Yes she do.

Iconography

2008-07-30T15:44:00.003+01:00

I've discovered I love designed icons. I've been doing loads of them for the day job. I prob shouldn't name the client or say what these icons are for as it isn't live yet; so you'll just have to guess. Or simply enjoy their gradienty splendour. Mmm... icons...

Squidge Alert

2008-07-08T22:09:00.003+01:00

Now I think you should know the answer to this question, but: HOW CUTE IS MY NEPHEW BRODAN? Squidgy Scrumptious.

What a Nightmare

2008-07-08T09:19:00.002+01:00

Actually, misleading post title. This was actually a pretty painless job. Here be the latest Noir poster. This year's Halloween club won't be restricted to Glasgow. The guys are taking the show on the road to Edinburgh and London too. This poster will double up for the Scottish leg, but a new poster may be required for London. We shall play it by ear!

I used both hand drawn and photoshopped elements in this one and I quite like the combination. Pencil line scratchiness meets slick looking photographic bits. A new technique methinks. Some recycling may occur.

The Halloween club is always massive, so see you there?

I have the best friends

2008-07-06T23:00:00.002+01:00

It was my birthday this weekend, and aside from receiving lots of lovely messages on my facebook page, I also met up with two of my very favourite people and did lunch and cocktails and cava and dancing in not-so-sunny Edinburgh, and received the most wonderful gifts.

I'm always a bit surprised when people get me birthday presents. Its genuinely a part of the birthday process that I forget about, looking forward instead to having a boozy giggle in a pub somewhere. However, when you have friends as thoughtful as mine who know me so well, the gifts they give are really really touching and I completely adore them all.

My mate Lizzie found this completely glorious vanity set - something I've been idly looking for for years and never found one in quite the right colour/condition to merit buying. She found the most perfect one possible in an antiques shop in Peebles and delivered it up to me as a 29th birthday present. I nearly cried.

My other bessie mate Viv gave me a whole series of beautifully wrapped little trinkets. Not least of which was this stunning pillbox she found in a flea market in Spain. This photo really doesn't do it justice, and my shots of the other two completely gorgeous tins she got me (of paprika and violet lipbalm) are equally shoddy so you shall just have to trust me that they are gooorgeous. She also got me a lovely little purple babushka Russian doll who now lives on my mantlepiece.

Yet another bessie mate Sarah, who lives in New Zealand :-(, sent me a bloody brilliant button eyed rag doll who I have named Vern, which she bought while on a shoot in Singapore and who is going to come live on my desk at work. She knows I love crazy little characters, and florals and teal/turquoise so Vern is my new favourite mascot.

I'm a lucky lucky bugger.

Knew that would come in handy...

2008-07-06T22:31:00.002+01:00

See? Even if a job doesn't work out, you usually find that in the process you have discovered a new style or technique that can be recycled in another job. No work is a waste of time in that respect. So even though the Smart car thing didn't work out, developing that style of illustration meant that I saved time when it came to doing this job for a very good friend of mine.

A mate of hers is getting married (seems to be all the rage) and she commissioned me to do her a series of illustrations as her wedding gift. This is the first. They are all of a theme; that this friend of hers is always throwing herself into whatever she does. At men, at the bar, out of planes, etc.

Time pressures meant that I couldn't do my post-production photoshop texture bit, as in the Smart car job, but she was very very happy with the result and toddled off to get it framed.

Style-recycling. Its the new plagiarism.

Oh poot

2008-06-30T13:43:00.003+01:00

Wee bit disappointed this morning. A nice illustration job that came my way isn't going to happen now. Sniff.

My bessie mate Sazzle (who is 27 this weekend - the day after yours truly turns 29 - happy birthday to us!) works for a big ad agency in Auckland, and was kind enough to give me the opportunity to have stab at some illys for Smart Car. As is often the way with such projects though, my services aren't required anymore. Oh well. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Something good may end up coming of it! And so it is posted here. Its kinda along the lines of the illys I did for my Mum's book - that sorta screenprinted, retro, grainy style thing.

I'm liking this new style, and I'd like to do some more like this so if anyone knows anyone...

Before they were famous

2008-06-23T10:53:00.004+01:00

I recently completed the longest running job in history, and I felt the need to mark this momentous occasion with a blog post. Due to my own crapness, and various other reasons we shall put down to the fates buggering with me, I have only just managed to fulfil a promise I made to my very good and talented friend Matt Stalker a year and a half ago. Mr Stalker and his associates the Fables have produced an EP of completely beautiful and haunting folk songs called 'Press your ear to my chest, listen', and Matt asked me to design the EP artwork (in January 2000-and-bloody-7).

No doubt if the pressing urgency of a gig in Newcastle hadn't arisen, the job would have rambled on for quite a bit longer. But I seem to work better when there's a big fat deadline looming over my head. So I promptly pulled my finger out my ass and got on with it. Luckily for me, budget being an issue, the sleeve was pretty simple - just a folded card really, into which Matt, presumably with his ladyfriend Laura, had to hand apply 150 foam dots to hold the cds on. But God love em, they did it, and by all the accounts the gig was a triumph, with punters asking for the CDs to be signed (down solely to Mr Stalker's talents I might add, and not because they were so enamoured with my illustrations, but, still...).

So anyway - here is the finished result. It doesn't look like a year and a half's work because, erm, its not - but its still rather nice. We went for the carved-into-wood look to compliment the folky, crafty, love-lorn nature of Matt's music, and the swirls were inspired by the EP title suggesting breath, and snatches of lyrics relating to smoke and stormy water. All a little cryptic, but who cares? Its pretty.

Have a listen to Matt's music on his myspace page here. You heard him here first.

Word of the day: Ambigram

2008-05-31T12:48:00.003+01:00

A lovely new client of mine is getting married later on this summer, and she asked me to have a look at doing her wedding invites. Now its going to be a very classy affair and she's a very classy lady so we are going the whole letterpress, lined envelopes and cream stock route. BUT, she really wanted me to look at creating a monogram based around her and her future-husband's initials (L & J), and the date of their nuptials (8th Sept 2008). So we can blind emboss it and do all the touchy feely stuff that graphic designers get so excited about.

Now, since the date was almost palindromic (8.11.8), we both really wanted the monogram to be as symmetrical as possible. I had a bit of a eureka moment when I realised that in some script fonts, if you invert the capital L you get something that looks a lot like a J. Cue two romantically entwined initials, bound together by the date of their wedding. Which looks exactly the same when you turn it upside down! Wow. That's, like, symbolism.

My client, however, pointed out that I had not in fact invented anything new. Such things are called ambigrams and you can find some absolutely stunning examples of them here. All of which make my efforts look a little shoddy. Rats.

Witness the cuteness

2008-05-05T16:37:00.002+01:00

HOW CUTE IS MY NEPHEW IRVINE?! Correct answer: extremely cute, Auntie Lele.

Scrumptious. x

We wants it

2008-04-29T20:13:00.003+01:00

GIMME!

Wallflowers take note

2008-04-29T17:19:00.002+01:00

A one off brief came in from my lovely Club Noir clients a while back. It kept getting bumped due to other more pressing projects for them, but we've finally got round to putting something together.

They've been running sell-out Burlesque Workshops for a few months now, and felt the need to start publicising them properly, so briefed me to come up with a poster concept. I came up with the idea of an old 'before and after' ad, with real oldstyle ad-language and with the Workshops presented as the answer to all your problems. And here be the result.

Hello Dave

2008-04-29T16:53:00.003+01:00

I have a lovely new freelance client who's been putting some nice work my way (including more SODDING WEDDING INVITES). I rebranded a friend of hers' IT company. The company was named after the street where it was based - Blackrock Road. I thought the Blackrock thing was too good a chance to pass up and decided to reference the famous black rock monolith from Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The monolith, or TMA-1 as us sci-fi geeks know it, was a representative of a technologically superior race, sent to earth to advance the technological capabilities of early mankind. Which, given that the Blackrock are an IT company, was just asking for it. EVEN better, TMA-1 had very particular proportions 9:4:1, so I kept these for the logo and used a monospaced font and underscore to reference oldstyle computer programming.

End result: Client was very pleased with the outcome, despite not being familiar with the monoliths (cretin).

GODAMMIT

2008-04-29T16:45:00.005+01:00

I hate it when a plan doesn't come together.

I recently did a rather large illustration job for my former employers that required several very late nights hunched over a desk, sketching and inking almost 40 illustrations for a document intended for the NHS, with a very tight deadline.

Annoyingly, despite meeting the deadline, the client decided to revert to a previous illustration style. I bowed out at this point as I unfortunately couldn't commit to redoing such a large job; my back just couldn't take it! It means that all my hard work will never be seen in print - so Praise Be to Blogger. Here are a few samples.

Wedding Bells

2008-04-29T16:37:00.004+01:00

In a bid to prove to the world that I don't care that they're all getting married and I am going to be an old maid, I've also done a wedding invitation recently for my friend/colleague Keli and her man William. They tied the knot last week in a very low-key but stylish ceremony at the Ubiquitous Chip.

We agreed on a lovely palette of reds and beige as red was to be a highlight colour for the tables and the couple's outfits. We didn't wanna go full on Valentine's red though, so the dark burgundies and beige helped tone it down a bit. The typography was created by halftoning a photoshop file with lines instead of squares/dots, then live-tracing to get the stripy effect that allowed me to slot Keli and William together with an ampersand. A wee tying the knot metaphor that hopefully erred on the right side of cheesy.

The bride looked beautiful and the groom looked handsome but their invites and place settings looked EVEN BETTER SO THERE.

Hi Strangers

2008-04-29T16:21:00.004+01:00

Ok, yes, I know, its been a long time. Its a shoddy state of affairs and I feel suitably ashamed. Although I do have an excuse. I've been working my ample bottom off. Not literally (unfortunately), I've just been doing a lot of work for friends and relatives and some freelance jobs too that have left little time to share the fruits of my labour with you lot.

The most time consuming of these not-so-little jobs was a present for my Mum, who turned 60 years young on Friday 25th April. I had an idea to write a kids book about her life that she could read to her grandkids (who she completely adores of course). My Dad's pet name for my Mum is 'Maggie Anne', so I got the idea for a title first and the story stemmed from there.

So 'Maggie Anne's Magic Hats' was born. My mum's life story is told through all the hats she's worn in her time; a metaphor for all the roles she's fulfilled - Daughter, Friend, Wife, Mother, Boss etc. The punchline being that its not the hats that are magic at all, but Maggie Anne.

I illustrated the book too (obviously), taking my cues from 60s-era retro animation (like Bewitched titles), and the fact that as a kid, whenever I drew my Mum I drew her curly hair first. So that had to be a big feature. I hope she didn't take offence. She's been battling her curls all her life.

So Happy Birthday to my totally Magic Mum. You were worth every second.

An Enchanted, Brazen Christmas

2008-02-06T22:32:00.001Z

OK so this post is a little late - apologies. Ms Raffel of the illustrious Brazen studios asked me to do her some lovely stuff for her Christmas window. We bandied some ideas about and settled on the theme of an enchanted forest - where bewitched trinkets hang off every branch.

Having just had the interior and exterior of the shop repainted in a boudoir-esque rubine red and cream combo, we decided to use this colour scheme, and I set about creating some suitably enchanted looking flora and fauna with which to bedeck the shop window and the interior windows into the workshops.

Ms Brazen also required a device to announce the fact that her wee shop has been named 'Most Stylish Boutique 2007' at the Scottish Style Awards; all that even without the new paint job.

Well deserved.

Backstage

2008-02-06T21:52:00.000Z

Club Noir, not content with selling out their existing club at the Carling Academy, have decided to launch a spin-off club in the much smaller and low-key venue of the Winchester club on Bell Street. The idea is that this club will be the notional 'after party' or Backstage of the main club. The performers will be present; but mingling, rather than performing. The whole affair will be much more laidback and about seeing and being seen, rather than a major club night.

Bearing that in mind, the Noir troupe tasked me with designing the new branding for the spin-off club (called Backstage just in case you hadn't already figured that out) and a new flyer. We talked about a photographic route to contrast our now traditional illustrative style for the main club, and this was the result. The brand is the photo effectively - a comp of several shots, treated to look like a spot-lit, dark alley and 'signed' in white by the people who brought you Club Noir (as though they are the stars you waited hours to see at the stage door). You feel like you have to know someone who knows someone who knows the password to get into this place, and even then you'd better have the right threads on or you've no chance.

A speak-easy, a secret hide-out, a den of iniquity.

Dontcha want in?

Lions and Tigers and Pears

2008-01-22T17:10:00.000Z

OK so I've been wanting to have a stab at hand lettering for a while - sketching out a typographic layout in pencil, inking it the old fashioned way, then scanning and tracing in illustrator, tweaking, filling, outlining etc etc and generally messing with it. I've been studying all my sheet music you see and all of that has been hand lettered and looks yum, so thought I'd give the old calligraphic skills an outing.

Anyway - I got the opportunity to try out the technique recently and this was the result. Its a bit rough still and I'd like to spend a few hours working on getting the type and the image interacting better. Maybe more foliage/tendrils and tings, and a bit more texture. Actually, looking at it now the top of the B looks a bit heavy. Hmmm. More practise required methinks.

I dunno. What do you reckon?

Gigantic, angry baby

2008-01-03T14:32:00.000Z

Two and a half hours before 2007 ceased to be, Brodan McDonald made his weighty entrance into the world. Boy number two for my older brother and his partner Carol and eleven days overdue, Brodan tipped the scales at 11 pounds, ten ounces, drawing nurses from other wards to witness the hugeness.

So here he is in all his glory (filling a babygro designed for a three-month-old) and boy does he look f***ed off. Well if somebody had bent your head all out of shape with a set of forceps, you'd be mighty unimpressed too.

I wouldn't mess, personally.

One night in Paris (not THAT Paris)

2007-12-17T22:00:00.000Z

Well here you go: a sneak preview of Club Noir's Valentine's flyer/poster. My lovely Noir clients have agreed to make this 60x40 full colour too and I can't wait to see it in all its gigantic technicolour glory. Now, before you start I KNOW that this poster looks like Alexandre Theophile Steinlen's 'Le Chat Noir' poster. Its DELIBERATE. Chat Noir=Club Noir. You see? I just made the lovely Noir girl into a feline temptress et voila! Referential city!

Incidentally I was rather pleased with myself at drawing the girl off the top of my head. Bit of a first for me, as I usually need to work from photos/life - but might have something to do with all the life drawing classes I'm doing at the mo, pretty good practice. I'm a frustrated comic book artist at heart, you see.

Anyway. Flyers will be in all good goth shops in the New Year, and the 60x40 will be plastered all over Glasgow in late January. Camera phones a-gogo!

Smoke and Mirrors

2007-11-24T11:59:00.000Z

This design for Smoke and Mirrors, Noir's Christmas club, looked like it was going to be a bit of a problem child. My lovely clients and I had a bit of a communications breakdown and a couple of redesigns were required. Lessons were learned though, and the end result was pretty cool. Although to be honest I can't bear to look at it any more. I'm glad that in this instance though, my clients at Noir were convinced to go for a full colour 60x40, instead of their usual 2 colour. The number of positive comments they have received, and the number of requests I've had for copies will hopefully convince them to continue spending a wee bit money on their posters from now on (fingers crossed!).

Smoke and Mirrors is on the 1st December - I think its going to be a popular one, so buy your tickets in advance or risk disappointment!

Incidentally, this was also the first job designed on my BRAND NEW MACBOOK PRO. And very happy we are together too, thankyouverymuch.

Scandinavian Ceramics

2007-11-05T13:54:00.000Z

Now, as those of you familiar with the inside of my kitchen cabinets will know, I am a proud (read: sad) collector of patterned ceramics from the post-war period (up to the 70s). Sourced from flea markets, car boot sales, the Barras and good ol' ebay, my collection mostly consists of American, Eastern European and British pieces and ranges from complete coffee sets to one-off tea pots and pin dishes.

However, in recent months I've become a bit more picky about the bits that I buy, and even ebay no longer seems to be able to provide the interesting or unusual stuff. So I suppose I have this rather excellent blog to thank for giving me a few new names/potteries to look out for. Check out the link 'vintage ceramics' and have a look at all the absolutely gorgeous patterned ceramics from Sweden, Denmark and Finland. For some reason these ceramics are hugely popular in Japan, and this website seems to have snapped up all the good stuff already - which may make it harder to find cheaper bits on the likes of ebay. But I do like a challenge.

Hello Mr Easyjet? One flight to Helsinki please.

OddBallMall

2007-09-16T12:19:00.001+01:00

I almost forgot. A couple of months ago I did a quick job with Newhaven (advertising agency in Edinburgh for those of you who don't know 'em), for a shop in Edinburgh called OddBallMall. Based at 28 Lochrin Buildings near the King's Theatre, OddBallMall specialises in skatewear; jeans, t-shirts, hoodies - for boys n girls. Newhaven were asked to produce a campaign to increase the 'Mall's profile.

They came up with a character called OddBall and his perky female sidekick NoBall. Coming up with the strapline 'Clothes are important', the lads at Newhaven (Rufus Wedderburn and Chris Watson - hi guys) wanted the characters to be butt naked; I shall spare you the protracted email exchange we had debating the suitable size of OddBall's wee fella. Methinks the boys were a bit threatened by my early renderings. Bless.

As if that wasn't enough; true to his name, OddBall is one scotch egg short of a picnic, and NoBall... well NoBall is just nekkid. Copy was along the lines of 'I wonder if they'll have something to cover my fu-fu?' and 'I must buy some trousers from OddBallMall, I just followed through at the bus stop'. The guys artdirected (I was doodler for hire on this one) and while I wasn't jumping up and down about my work, I was still pretty satisfied with the outcome.

The upshot of the whole affair is that the OddBallMall campaign has been nominated in five categories (including Best use of Illustration) at the Scottish Advertising Awards 2007. I so did NOT see that one coming. Have a look at the other nominees and see all the finished ads here.

It's ALIIIIIVE!

2007-09-16T11:37:00.000+01:00

Here's my latest flyer for the World's Biggest Burlesque club (official) - Club Noir.

La Noir are back after their summer recess on the 20th October with a cracking theme; Shlock Horror. I love that Noir's comeback club is at Halloween. It's always a a record breaking club and the outfits are awesome (I went as Queen of Darkness last year, my kiwi friend Stacey dressed as a dead Wren, complete with WWII cap, and a military skirt with bustle that she made herself. Oh, and peeling skin).

If you can make it and like a bit of dressing up (oh come on, who doesn't?) then I can thoroughly recommend it. Don't ask me to get you on the guest list though - my 'plus 1s' are all taken.

I've included a wee close up of the rendering I did on the illustration after exporting from Illustrator. Bit of unsharp mask to get the eerie glow and good ol' noise to get that grainy, B-movie poster print quality. Yum.

See you there?

Pastures new

2007-09-12T15:33:00.000+01:00

Sorry - I sort of disappeared for a while there didn't I? Apologies for that. I have, however, been rather distracted and busy. You see, I am leaving the only agency I have ever worked for, my workplace for the past four years, and heading off to join a shiny new one. All the cloak and daggery associated with a job switch has been eating up my time, which meant no posts for you good people.

I hope you've missed me. I promise I'll never go away again.

whine, whine

2007-08-23T13:07:00.000+01:00

Why must I pine for things I cannot afford?

Sigh.

Its just... the thing is... I KNOW we're meant to be together. Maybe one day...

We like you, Adrian Johnson

2007-08-18T10:02:00.000+01:00

Those of you who have been admiring the lovely new illustration/animation work in the new Robinson's adverts (raise your kids on Robinson's) should know its all the work of Adrian Johnson. His other work is in a similar style but less sweet; a bit darker and more satirical, but that makes me like him even more.

Go see.
Go.

No, SHEET music.

2007-08-13T23:11:00.000+01:00

I am constantly amazed at the sort of stuff you can access on the internet. There are all these databases and resources that are completely free to access, and contain thousands of hi-res images and scans available for download. Most of them are academic or publicly funded institutions opening their archives to the public.

One such institution is Duke University. Situated in North Carolina, Duke Uni has a rare book and manuscript library that they have spent hundreds of man hours scanning in to create a vast digitized collection of books, manuscripts, advertising ephemera, writings, photos and sheet music.

I'm a big fan of old sheet music. Last year, when I couldn't afford to go on holiday, I took a week off and just 'did' Glasgow. I spent a day wandering the west end and came across a second hand bookshop tucked away somewhere behind Otago Street. They had a huge collection of ancient sheet music dating back to the 19th century. I bagged a couple of completely gorgeous examples for less than a tenner each and now have them framed in my flat.

If you fancy some for yourself, Duke Uni has dozens of similar examples at fairly high res (About A4 150dpi) available to download, but it ain't the same as having the original, oh no.

Carrie Chau, carrie chau, wherefore art thou?

2007-08-08T11:54:00.000+01:00

I came across illustrator Carrie Chau when i was on holiday in New Zealand earlier this year. I was having a wander up High Street (parallel to Queen St) and found this mall of great little boutiques and vintage shops. One of them had a whole bunch of Carrie Chau products - bloody great hessian bags, postcards, dolls, matchboxes, badges and prints. It was right at the start of my hols and I didn't want to blow all my spending money at once but now I'm kicking myself that I didn't buy any. Because I can't find her work now for love nor money. A google search fails to find her, bar a few random mentions on other people's sites. I actually eventually found her real website through a pdf online magazine called Jolipunk (lovely pics, shame about the writing) that had a short article on her and finally gave me her website [link].

Aside from being the most uselessly-titled website IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE, and the fact that she proudly states on the splash page that she made it with her own fair hands and it requires no plug-ins to view, its AWFUL to navigate and really doesn't showcase her marvellous work to its full potential.

Now Carrie - I realise you may be the lo-tech, old-school, get-your-hands-dirty sort but hire some web-genius whizz kid will you? This simply will not do.

Rene Gruau

2007-08-01T15:29:00.000+01:00

Dontcha sometimes wish you'd been born decades earlier? My parents got me (with no prompting from yours truly, I swear) 100 years of Fashion Illustration for my birthday last month. One of the illustrators featured was Rene Gruau. His career spanned almost nine decades; beginning in Paris in 1924, and ending in 2004 with his death at the grand old age of 95.

I confess I'd never heard of him before I read about him in this book, but I fell in love with his stuff immediately. I've been fascinated with fashion illustration for as long as I've been drawing and his style is where I think I've been aiming. Got a long way to go though.

I instantly regretted not coming across him sooner. I kinda wish I'd been around in the 50s when he was in his heyday.

I LOVE the way he does hands. Actually I love the way he does everything. Sigh.

Marian Bantjes

2007-08-01T14:36:00.000+01:00

Alright, can someone please tell me why haven't I heard of Marian Bantjes before?

I came across her site following a random link from a flickr set of cool business cards. Her stuff is head-meltingly good; ornate and loss-of-eyesight-inducingly intricate in the vein of Si Scott. She works in lots of different media; hand-drawing (!!) a lot of it, but also working in lace. embroidery and plain ol' vector art too. She's been in the business for about 23 years and has recently collaborated with Sir Sagmeister, and Alessandro Tomassetti, and has appeared in Eye and Step magazines. She now teaches at the Emily Carr institute in Vancouver, and writes for the website Speak up, while simultaneously pursuing her own projects.

She's so good she makes me feel like I'm really not trying hard enough. Felt exactly the same way the first time I saw/read Chris Ware's Acme Novelty Library, and weirdly, the gold embossed pattern on the hardcover looks like Bantjes' work. WTF?

Vitamins & Minerals

2007-08-01T10:43:00.000+01:00

Another day spent googling random words (and occasionally obscenities).

Today's foray into the unknown unearthed excaliburmineral.com. Now, I've always been of the opinion that the sort of people who are into crystals are also the sort who believe in unicorns, wear a lot of tie-dye and are completely unfamiliar with the wonders of frizz-ease. I also know that the reason the makers of this site called it 'excalibur minerals' was because their products have all been pulled from the stone, blah blah, but I'm also pretty sure its cause they're members of one of those historical re-enactment societies that spend their Sunday afternoons wearing armour and shouting things like 'forsooth!' and 'Have at ye!' and taking it all very seriously indeed.

HOWever... their products are nevertheless really rather pretty, so have a squiff at the photo gallery.

Its also kinda interesting to read where all these crystals have come from. Their countries of origin read like a 'where I've been' list written by Indiana Jones; Showa Province, Ethiopia; Huanaco, Peru; Llallagua, Bolivia (colonised by the Welsh, clearly); Shaba Province, Zaire; Graubunden, Switzerland. All let down somewhat by the names of the minerals themselves which I think they're just making up as they go along, or have nicked from the names of baddies in Star Trek (which you KNOW they watch too. Oh yes.).

I mean Labradorite. Honestly.

New toy

2007-07-31T22:12:00.000+01:00

OK so I recently started working with Creative Suite 3 (having skipped straight to it from Creative Suite 1) so I'm not sure if this filter was introduced in 2, and I therefore run the risk of looking soooo five minutes ago, but f*** it. THIS IS BRILLIANT. A filter that actually does something USEFUL (apart from Noise, I like Noise. Oh alright, and Unsharp Mask. And maybe Lighting Effects and Blur. But APART from those...).

Lens Correction. Where have you been all my amateur-photographic life? I can fix the dodgy fish eye on my ancient cheap digital camera! I can make aerial shots of brochures look FLAT. Skew-wiff perspective? Gone! And it even fills the transparent edges left by correcting dodgy fish eye! Oh these Adobe boffins are rather clever aren't they?

I think I'm in love.

Bumblebeez

2007-07-31T15:45:00.000+01:00

Aside from the fact that I LOVE the Bumblebeez, I also happen to think their video for Dr Love is shit-hot too. Fat, dancing men with drawings on their tummies. What more do you want? Hmmm?

PS may I also recommend their track Pony Ride? Not such a great video but a TUNE.

Automata II

2007-07-31T14:11:00.000+01:00

Also on the subject of automata, and slightly less creepy, I also came across this site: automatashop.co.uk. Absolutely amazingly crafted mechanical theatre pieces of varying complexity, but all with a real sense of humour and some beautiful little touches. This one is designed by Paul Spooner and made by Matt Smith. For some reason the character design reminds me of the work of Belleville Rendezvous artist Sylvain Chomet. Whose film studio, Django films, is based in Edinburgh (budding animators take note: they're hiring).

Check them both out.

Automata

2007-07-31T13:43:00.000+01:00

Did I mention that my day job is boring the tits off me? The silver lining is that I get to spend some time surfing the net looking for curiosities and interesting things. Usually helps to type random words into google.

I haven't a scooby why but the word 'automata' popped into my noggin, but it was duly googled (think I was listening to Handsome Boy Modelling School at the time so this may have had something to do with it). Some very, very interesting links resulted. There is a whole industry of artists producing kinetic sculptures, wind up 'toys', mobiles etc etc.

And then I find a youtube link to this fella, Theo Jansen. His kinetic wind sculptures move in a rather creepy fashion but you have to admire the dedication and sheer savant-like capabilities that allow him to 'see' how such a complex mechanism will function AND build it (from chair legs and such). Mind boggling.

Photo by Loek van der Klis

The devil gets all the best songs

2007-07-30T22:02:00.000+01:00

Every now and then I watch a film that leaves me itching to draw. Like, spend an afternoon with all my crayons and shit out and some weird music on and just draw like there's nothing in my head and all I am is a pair of eyes and ears and hands. The last film that made me feel like that was Great Expectations (mediocre 1998 rehash with Gwyneth and Ethan Hawke, but featuring the fucking amazing artwork of Francesco Clemente). Now I've gone and watched The Devil and Daniel Johnston rather late in the day and I'm thinking about staying up way past my bedtime to do exactly that.

The man is loopy, but when the loopiness or the anti-loopy drugs aren't getting in the way, he is pure, unadulterated, genius. Lovely.

Hi there

2007-07-29T20:37:00.000+01:00

Ok so I'm pretty new to this blogging malarkey so bear with me. I need to learn me some HTML so I can customise this page because these templates simply will not do. I'm planning on using this blog to showcase my new work and what I'm up to creatively speaking. I'm also going to be using it as something of a scrapbook of cool stuff I've found that has interested or inspired me. So its as much for my benefit as it is yours. Unless, of course, you think its all shit.

The illustration above is one of my recent 'favours for a friend'. A mural in her jewellery shop as part of a temporary exhibition. I do a lot of these favours for my mates, it doesn't pay the bills but they keep me interested when the day job is boring the tits off me.