Willowen Print

New Willowen single and print by me...

Available from Saint November, My Life's Mine is the new single from folk three piece Willowen, the follow up to 2012's Monster EP and the first track to be released from their forthcoming debut album. 

Find out more about the band here: Wiilowen Facebook

It was a nice opportunity to draw a bear and make a fun composition, I think the London Underground could really benefit from this approach... 

Awesome Merchandise Caption competition, and a word from Dave Mckean

I won!

So, with this in mind and looking at all the great stuff Awesome Merchandise create I am going to be bringing out some tote bags soon, with images related to 'Parliament' and 'Love Will Tear Us Apart....'

They also print on a wealth of different materials, so look out for greeting cards and badges real soon!

Will be getting constructing and printing soon, so keep your eyes peeled....







Also on the horizon are more postcards but completely removed from the prints that have been available so far. I am aiming to create a box of 10 -12 postcards around this idea...here's a taster...

This particular image is recommended by Dave Mckean. A while ago now, I posted this image on the wall of his film Luna as part of a photo- image competition and he had these kind words to say about it:

Martin Lye – A fascinating digital composite. Symmetry always creates compelling patterns, and we look for structure and meaning in the same way we look for recognition in the features of a face. Love the
strange plant-like element in the centre.


Awesome!

And..just because I find it exciting, check out Frank Turner's photo album here for more fatal raft peril...

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151515163524138&set=a.10151515163379138.1073741825.6416249137&type=3&theater

Wolves, postcards and other nonsense.

New from me is a lovely print of a man in a wolf's mask up a tree. He has got rid of his shoes in a 'Big Fish' Stylee and is thinking about how nice it would be to stay in the woods forever. Seriously.

http://causticsoda.bigcartel.com/product/lost-and-found


Here's the print:

It is now available in the shop and will be dispatched to you within one week of order, unless you live in a different country, then it might be a little bit longer. All my products are handled and packaged with love. Below you can see an example of the power of my stamp(thanks English stamp company, http://www.englishstamp.com/) and you too, Euro Office.com. May your office stationary and packaging continue to deliver excellent service and discounts...

Also in the works are a few different pictures, most I hope will make it as prints including some more book cover re-imaginings. One of which is 'I am Legend.' I've been fiddling around with it a bit this week and should be up on Facebook/website soon. Here's a WIP of it as a taster...







I have a bit of an inward battle with myself every time I make something whether it will sell or not, but I am starting to realise that everything I make could appeal to someone so you might be bombarded with more and more over the next while.

In even more exciting news, I am now selling Postcards! At the moment, there are 4 designs; small versions of my first 4 prints, and can be yours for £1.50 each. Soon I will have a mini box set ready which will contain 12 designs related to the love/forest theme which I was going to entitle 'I love Wood' but after some hard thinking I decided against it. In any event, that's a while off yet, though in the meantime there will be more prints related to the theme.

Here are the cards, available from Monday!!!

Love Kills.
Parliament.      
Love Will Tear Us Apart. Actually, Sharks Will.
Amongst The Trees.

Also, NEWS JUST IN, 'Love Will Tear Us Apart. Actually, Sharks Will.' has been featured on the Etsy uk Facebook page!!!!

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151974962263625&set=a.463141973624.239979.206104408624&type=1&theater

Hooray!

New Products from old favourites

Over the next week I will be creating prints for two book covers I made over the last year:

Moby Dick( the book I will never finish) and The Catcher in the Rye.

Also, coming in the next two weeks are two prints more in tune with the rest of my shop, and I plan to put out  some postcards/greetings cards as well for June.

Options and Antlers.

So, I have been working on a few new things lately. There are a number of new products coming along very soon, I will be updating the shop in the next couple of weeks with some exciting things.

Firstly there is this: It's called 'Antlers.' (Shoes and purple carpet not included.) This is a colour test I did; I'm not branching into Sub- Warhol territory just yet. Thought it might be interesting to show the process and all that...


2 colours available - Autumn Antlers
                             - Winter Antlers

Printed on Giclee Hahnemuhle Photorag 308gsm paper. 
Limited to 100 prints, signed and numbered.

There's been a bit of a delay on these but will be fully available next week!!!!
















More products in the next few weeks!

Caustic Soda Update: Ebay, Like buttons and a new product.

I've been going one week, and have successfully made some sales which is both amazing and scary. I have also got a new(ish) print now fully available:

The Heart Of The Forest. 
Printed on Giclee Hahnemuhle Photorag 308gsm paper. 
Limited to 100 prints, signed and numbered.ned and 











I'm also working another new print which might be sorted next week which is exciting. I've also managed to work out how to install a like button on my site as well as an ill-fitting twitter symbol - will have to work that one out...

All items are up on Ebay too just as an experiment, they seem to be picking up views without much advertising which is a nice surprise, but it all helps!

Anyway massive thanks for all the views/shares/likes, and of course sales. Here's hoping for a second successful week!

Caustic Soda launches

So for the last week or so I have been furiously working on getting my online shop sorted. Well it is all done and up and open for all to see. So far I've added 4 active products.

1. Love Will Tear Us Apart. Actually, Sharks will.
2.Parliament
3.Love Kills
4.Amongst The Trees


All for £22 each, they are A3 and printed on Giclee Hahnemuhle Photorag 308gsm paper. 
Limited to 100 prints, signed and numbered.

Here's the shop: Caustic Soda - online shop


I'm working on two different strands with this work. Love and Forestry. The two themes are obviously made for each other clearly. I have one more that's not quite available but will hopefully be joined by some more wood themed friends soon.




I am planning on creating a larger range of products in the future and am Caustic Soda - hopefully soon there will be a newsletter too.
looking for collaborations for anything from t-shirts to furniture to absolutely anything interesting to print on. I also have a Facebook page where you can directly interact with the store here:


If the name of the shop seems strange, it comes from my surname. I used to think my surname was really cool, it was short and sounded awesome. Unbeknownst to my youthful exuberance  the name was used for Sodium Hydroxide aka Caustic Soda aka body-melting cover up chemicals. Nice.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lye


Anyway, Caustic Soda has quite a nice ring to it so there you go...

If anyones interested, (and I know you will be) other famous Lyes include Len Lye (famous animator from New Zealand) and the town of Lye in the West Midlands.


Thanks for reading, please help by sending this blog and the following all around the world via the internet machine...Cheers!

Help! My Vagina is Falling Out!

Happy Friday!!!


The above images were made for Help! My Vagina is Falling Out!  - a non-for profit organisation run by volunteers that have experienced - either personally or professionally - the struggles of being a mother.  They want to work together to help anyone struggling with postnatal depression, pregnancy or being a mother.

I had loads of fun making these, particularly that elephant.

The site is here:

http://www.helpmyvaginaisfallingout.co.uk/

Moby Dick

Moby Dick illustration -  inspired by my inability to get through the book. I  borrowed this book ages ago from a friend and have so far failed to get though it. I believe we even had some sort of bet that I would get through it in 3 months or something. Try 3 years.

Inside the book is this inscription:

"To my long lost friend Ernie, may we live forever

love, John Gray."

I think that's pretty beautiful and inspired me to really really want to want to try to read this book. It was going great, then I stopped. Perhaps this post will really relight my desire to find out what happens. Or perhaps as is more likely, it won't.

It really is a great book though, I'm about half way through it, and will endeavour to get it read. The illustration came from the feeling that I had to get back into it. I also wanted to make some more covers as I had done for 'The Catcher In The Rye'.

There's something really nice about making book covers, especially a book like this, where there is so much to draw from, which incidentally I have made it all the way through. This was made for a Forbidden Planet Blog I wrote about in a previous post. I don't know if there was ever a winner but it was good to do and was posted here:

http://forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/2012/where-have-all-the-illustrators-gone-a-gallery-of-entries/

Pullman Porter, Grotbags and a really old music video

I recently created this image for my friend Dave's Folk Punk project, Pullman Porter. His music can be viewed here, the first song is my favourite, which incidentally has me and my wife to be on backing vocals on the chorus. Hooray!

It's all here:

http://pullmanporter.bandcamp.com/

While we're on the musical thread I also made this for my band 'The Dead Anyways'.(also with Dave) We needed something green and anarchic, so who better than lovable Children's TV pantomime villain/Witch, Grotbags. I'm pretty sure she didn't dribble like this but these things just happen when I'm drawing. Will possibly be coming at you as some sort of tee shirt soon!

We play some exciting 3 chord punk music, a selection of which, as well as my face in deep concentration can be heard on bandcamp:

http://thedeadanyways.bandcamp.com/album/demo-2012


Over the years I've made a few different things with Dave; I made the video below for him about 6 years ago,  for an acoustic song called 'Bred From Honour'. Basically, it's filled with big robots destroying stuff with an underlying message about big corporations and all of that. The robots themselves are now being incorporated into a new project I'm making with my studio mate Anthony Lamb.
I think it is always good to revisit old pieces of work -  I think there are a few faults in this, but there's a lot of fun bits and pieces in it -  it's pretty simple too.  I'd almost forgotten it existed up to a short while ago, and enough time has passed where I don't look at it and feel too critical, it's just having fun creating something for someone else.

The Catcher in the Rye..after what seems like forever.

Oh my goodness - it's been a long old while...

Here's a cover made for Forbidden Planet's blog about book cover illustration. Don't know if anything ever came of that particular call for entries but here's mine anyway...they are all up on the blog still - I think it's a bit of a shame the FB guys never sorted out a shortlist.

They are all here in any case:

http://forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/2012/where-have-all-the-illustrators-gone-a-gallery-of-entries/