WE'RE BLOOD IN THE DUST

///







GIVEN TO THE RISING

going to see godspeed you! black emperor, neurosis, wolves in the throne room and others tomorrow at all tomorrow's parties. here's some inspired work in the run up to what's looking to be a fantastic weekend.

advertising pt. I

---

some work produced by myself, finn clark, josh hurley and tom turner over the last two weeks: raising awareness of rainforest destruction by literally bringing it home. the campaign - a run of bus shelter prints, billboard posters and magazine spreads - was to show workers destroying a rainforest, or what we have come to ignore as something else's home, only instead of trees and nature, they are invading our own sanctuaries and privacy by tearing up our homes. it's best explained in person i guess, but nevertheless it was a lot of fun. we did another project but the artworks and visuals are sitting on our desks in the studio, so i'll throw them up another time.....

bear in mind these are visuals created in one night and are only created in concept to show off the basic barebones of an idea; in reality, with a budget, we envisioned actors, a proper photo shoot, a set... but instead, given the timeframe of one day to bounce ideas, a second to create, we went with cut out models and a camera, whilst finn created some lovely photoshop mock-ups. all in, a good two days work, we reckon. good fun.

good things: team sleep s/t, bats for lashes, glassjaw 7'' singles, bad brains s/t, deathspell omega ''paracletus'', post-damnation weekend rest, talk, plans, new shoes.....

unused image from the summer, later cannibalized, stripped down and turned into a two colour flyer as seen further down the page. looking back on this now, it seems a shame i looked to this image to get something up quickly and on the spot at the time a flyer was asked from me, as in it's coloured form i really quite like it. maybe there's still use for it yet.....

all i ever asked was for a clean b r e a k

i have had a fantastic weekend.

''oubliette'' / narrative illustration

(in order: artworks i & ii, visual ideas/literal brainstorming/rough outline for third artwork - illustration year 2 LOVE a good visual over a final artwork sometimes)

three images for a two week narrative project; visuals taken from picked elements of a selection of texts given to us as a brief, two final artworks and one simple visual to be rendered depicting said text. ''oubliette'' is the claustrophobic, dark and paranoia-inducing thoughts of a man who is troubled by his environment and mental status, believing himself to be part man, part rat, or perhaps one or the other but trapped inside of the others mind. it's a very personal short-story, relying upon the readers own interpretation to determine a suitable finish and concluding thoughts, and that i found quite interesting.

i wanted the images to really give off an atmospheric sense of claustrophobia and a quirky, almost schizophrenic energy within the mark making and imagery to reflect the characters thoughts on himself and his surroundings, never quite creating anything too clear or obvious but instead using a continous theme of obvious sewer references amongst a whole jumble of less blatent marks and drawings. my thoughts on the text are that it's loosely refined for the reason that the viewer must create his or her own image of the character and his place of habitat through what is told in the writing and i wouldn't want my images to influence or pursuade their train of thought otherwise - simply, i wanted to create visuals that the reader could take in at their own pace and to really just create backdrops for the narrative. whether or not this is a ''correct'' method for commercial narrative illustration is beyond me, i personally prefer the writing to reinforce my thoughts. i took a lot of influence from henrik drescher's book ''turbulence'' during the creation of these, which might explain a lot, both in visual form and for my ethic towards the illustrations.

fun project, nonetheless.

driving force: chickenhawk s/t, clouddead s/t, the arteries ''dead sea'', 65dos ''heavy sky'' ep, &u&i ''kill the man that shot that man'' ep, vessels ''white fields and open devices'', rival schools s/t, zine ideas, two weeks of free out of studio time, autumn chill, burnt umbers and oranges from withered trees, damnation festival on approach.....

cпутник-2

second year has started, here's first weeks work; lateral thinking related to a random object handed out; ''rocket'' was mine, it was sort of fun. a good way to ease into the year at least. second project (just over) was editorial, now we have narrative briefs. more in the next post.

joyous ep artwork / back

just realized i never put the back of the ep up after stumbling across a post from the band showing it. completely forgot i did it. quite happy with the text and had wanted to use the image of the construction site with the black print for a while now, it was approved by the band so it all worked out in the end.

on the subject, talk of a joyous 7'' design in the works... hopefully. more on that soon (hopefully)

some things

two more flyers for thirsty and miserable promotions.




taking the free-to-do-whatever to new lengths, and then some! just painting for the enjoyment now, and if that can be used to promote some cool-ass shows and get plastered about a bit, why not.

thirsty and miserable

i am not actually thirsty nor miserable i am refreshed by the countless amounts of spar value orange and apple juice cartons that are dotted around my NEW ROOM and living in falmouth is anything by miserable, i have however latched/leeched on to a new line of work by way of a music promotions outlet thanks to one ben adsett (http://www.weareoutofstep.blogspot.com/ and others) so here's some work i've been doing for that with more to come soon





simple two colour flyers that i think are going to get printed and plastered around. either way a good chance to use what i've been messing about with lately which is well it's dead fish and volcano ... things. that and just simple blok colours you know whatever shut up. again some more to come, i'll compile these with the manatees/taint flyers and use them to bulk up my summer project work that i have to hand in sometime soon before i start uni. exciting times

before these i was asked to create a logo for said promotions, here's some of those and then the final image that was chosen





in running order: first, second and third design, it was decided the more written (last) one was preferable which was the one i liked the least so i went and re-did it and came out with this





what else? i am also working on a really messy and horrible book called NATASHA based on the fantastic pig destroyer song of the same name. it's really tatty and rubbish and based on a book of black and white photos based in tiverton, devon. it's really just a glorified sketchbook but it's got a (creepy) narrative running throughout. that said i haven't touched my regular sketchbook in long time but i'm using a really thin throwaway scrappy-like book to throw down ideas dead fast and that has kind of spiraled into a storyboard for a comic that i'll maybe work on when i go home tomorrow. maybe i dunno it started off pretty simple about these russians who just... fight i guess but now it's kind of twisted it's way towards being a mix of the thing meets the first alien film with a bit of the game dead space thrown in for good (gory) measure. more on that some other day

here's a small portion of things that have happened this summer with, like always, more to come as i need to develop some photos as i've been using my film nikon more than my digital.






1-4: moving in, good burgers, the red arrows being ridiculous

this summer also saw 2000trees festival with the likes of and so i watch you from afar, tubelord, 65daysofstatic, three trapped tigers, vessels, pulled apart by horses, frank turner and new found discover cats and cats and cats. all were pretty fucking fantastic to be blunt, the entire festival was blindingly good and it's inexcusable of me to have not gone in previous years. downsides were a bit of rain and missing maybeshewill, but i could hear them from the entrance que and anyway i saw them the next week at off the cuff in festival which was EVEN BETTER. saw a lot of well-looked forward to bands and was introduced to a whole host of exciting bands that have further proved there is so much hope for the uk music scene. bands caught, enjoyed, sweated-to and made laugh by; adebisi shank, &u&i, bronze medals, tubelord, tall ships, the computers, men, hold your horse is, run, walk!, maybeshewill, holy state and a whole fuckton more. great weekend, great bands. again, inexcusable to have never attended before.

summer supplements: adebisi shank ''this is the second album of a band called adebisi shank'', tubelord ''tezcatlipoca'' EP, fucked up ''the chemistry of common life'', boris ''BXI'' EP, devil sold his soul ''blessed and cursed'', isis/melvins split, this will destroy you ''moving on the edges of things'' EP and probably lots more stuff.

MANAINT

taint + manatees tour... or sporadic dates at least. i wanted to do all howevermany dates there are but alas, time....... still, there you go.

damned extroverts

first year of illustration at falmouth is officially over... bar one tiny little bit of work to catch up on, mind, but otherwise, i'm done.

inspirations in barren plains: seminar II

a big flyer project is currently underway, hopefully to further my portfolio of gig posters so that eventually i'll have a nice varied body of work to actually promote to bands instead of just sending out random emails to bands that happen to be touring soon. more on this soon, until then... differing directions of influence regarding the direction of this activity. all images property of their respective owner/these are not my own.

joyous EP artwork

after many headaches, skull scratchings and early morning confusion regarding mirrored images, horizontal and vertical openings, the artwork for the joyous EP is finally done. my first *proper* CD design, lucky enough for it to be a fancy cardboard gatefold type and with a free reign to do whatever i wanted, though it was decided to contrast heavily on the inside and outside, but mostly what i wanted. this is going to be printed and assembled by the band themselves.

in the pipe: tour flyers for MANATEES, logo for HAMMERS, logo for italian band LIFELESS, applied illustration final images, assorted side projects... busy busy busy, yet so tired, sleepy and lazy.

offshores 1 thru 3

applied illustration.

inspirations in barren plains: seminar I

i don't know how many people read, care or indulge in this blog, but from time to time i thought i'm going to start blogging (what a terrible, terrible word) about stuff aside from my own work - influence, recommendations, inspiration, new finds, etc... mostly record covers, probably, but other stuff too.

the project i am working on right now involves the graphic construction of a cd release, and here's what's frequenting my desk as a bit of influence at the moment...

top to bottom: agoraphobic nosebleed - pcp tornado/pcp torpedo re-issue, botch dvd, helms alee release.