February 28th, 2010
I’ve just put a new print for sale on Etsy. This is a limited edition hand printed one-colour linoprint printed with oil-based lithographic printing ink on Zerkall white paper. The illustration was originally developed for a Can covers album that should hopefully see light later this year (I’ll post more on that when I have news), hence the title which is a Can song. I felt this block stood up on its own as a nice print!
This is an edition of 50 – printed on demand so please allow a few days for printing and drying!
Print size approx 305mm x 305mm
Paper size 360mm x 380mm
Posted in Prints | 1 Comment »
February 12th, 2010
I created this linocut illustration to send out as a promo/sample to art editors and just sent my first batch out last week. I hadn’t titled the illustration yet, but as chance would have it, the Illustration Friday word of the week is ‘adrift’. Which fits pretty nicely.
Posted in Illustration, Prints, Self promotion | 20 Comments »
February 12th, 2010
It’s a while since I did the illustration and design for this safe sex educational leaflet published by HIT, but I’ve just now received a copy in the post. I do love getting a package in the post and wondering what it could be, only to find your own illustrations staring back at you from the cover of some long forgotten job. This one was pretty heavily illustrated and really fun to do. I think I finished it only a week or two before moving on to the Rough Guide to Sex illustrations which rounded off a sex-themed couple of months for me! I did all of the illustrations in Adobe Illustrator, the design in Adobe Indesign.
‘Safer Sex’ – cover illustration.
‘What is safer sex?’ illustration.
Relationships and sex risks illustration.
‘How do I put one on?’ illustration.
Sexually transmitted infections illustration.
Posted in Illustration | 1 Comment »
February 11th, 2010
Some news from the Bright Agency website:
Tim Lerwill and Kel Dyson have tremendous success with ‘The Snow Sheep’
Self-publisher Tim Lerwill has achieved tremendous success with his books in ‘The Farmer Tim’ series including ‘The Snow Sheep’ and ‘The Vegetable Patch’ – both beautifully illustrated by by our very own Kel Dyson.
Tim says, ‘I have enjoyed writing and publishing ‘The Snow Sheep’ and ‘The Vegetable Patch’. I’ve had to get to grips with how the publishing industry operates, which is very difficult to break into, especially with children’s books.’
Nevertheless Tim has achieved the seemingly impossible and will even be performing a series of book readings at schools, libraries and book festivals in 2010.
Tim chose The Bright Agency to source an illustrator and eventually settled on Kelly Dyson. Tim comments ‘Kelly’s illustrations really brought my books to life’.
Tim’s books can be bought here and here.
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February 9th, 2010
This must be one of the coolest editorial jobs I’ve done in my time – illustrations for a blues guitar lesson feature in Guitarist magazine. Phil, the Art Editor at Guitarist, decided to go with three images to illustrate duelling, singing whilst playing and bottleneck slide. I did these 100% in lino, no tricks whatsoever. The feature looks great – Phil has even gone to the effort of grunging up the whole feel of the piece by adding aged paper to the background and a print effect to the title.
Transferring the pencil sketch onto the lino block with carbon paper.
Cutting the block.
Inking up.
The final piece in the magazine – see the illustration page for the other illustrations.
The heading and aesthetic of the whole article, done by the art editor, works really well with the linocut illustrations!
Posted in Illustration, Music, Process | 5 Comments »
February 7th, 2010
Here’s an update on the Retribution Gospel Choir poster I posted a few days ago. I’ve added the gig details with the letterpress at Hot Bed Press, as it has been getting a bit tiresome trying to cut out those tiny letters in lino on previous posters.
Finished and left to dry.
The completed print.
Posted in Music, Prints, Process | No Comments »
February 7th, 2010
I’ve been back and forth to Hot Bed Press over the last few days, finishing off the two posters I have recently been working on. This one is for a Mount Eerie show in Sheffield in April. I’m a big fan on Mount Eerie and the Microphones (as might be obvious from my pseudonym). I have booked tickets for the show in Manchester too, so I’ll be seeing him twice. According to the Mount Eerie website, Phil will be playing with a full band this time, which I can’t wait to hear. The promoter for the Sheffield gig is Children For Breakfast. Check out the other shows they have coming up here.
This was a simple design. I started with a simple plain block of flat colour. I then used a few leaves I had photographed from Grin Low woods across the road as reference and cut the words ‘mount eerie’ from their centres. I did this in two blocks so I could have two different hues of green.
Once I had finished printing the three lino blocks and the prints had dried, it was time to take them down to Hot Bed Press to play with the letterpress. Martin, one of the technicians, was kind enough to give me a simple tutorial so I had the fundamentals. Here’s a photo of the block once I had made it up.
A closer detail of the letterpress block.
This is the brilliant, if cumbersome, Albion press I used for printing the letterpress block.
A test press on newsprint paper.
A detail of the final poster.
Another detail – note the lower case ‘d’. I couldn’t find an uppercase one…
The completed poster.
Posted in Music, Prints, Process | 1 Comment »
January 26th, 2010
I’ve been lucky enough to land a poster gig for a really great venue in Manchester – Retribution Gospel Choir, 11th March at the Ruby Lounge. The promoter is ‘WOTGODFORGOT’, so after a couple of pages of getting religious on my sketchbook I ended up with this. I’ll be selling them on the night for £10 each.
The Ruby Lounge
Retribution Gospel Choir
I’m planning on taking these to Hotbedpress on Tuesday in Salford to use the letterpress to finish off the gig details. And I’m also hoping to have some more good news on another poster gig soon!
Posted in Illustration, Music, Prints, Process | 2 Comments »
January 21st, 2010
An illustration I did for the Oliver Burkeman column in the Guardian Weekend magazine, published last week. The article is about the anniversary of the invention of ‘E-Prime’, a ‘new language’ which eliminates all of the forms of the verb “to be”. Pauline, the art editor on the magazine, chose my favourite of the sketches. I did the final piece as a two-colour reduction linocut.
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January 21st, 2010
The postman has just been and delivered the latest issue of Druglink magazine, for which I had the pleasure of illustrating the front cover. The concept for this one was to illustrate the sale of mephedrone from labs in China to rural England via the internet. A lot of my original ideas could have been interpreted as demonising China, which I don’t want to do, so after a bit of work on the sketch the editor decided to go with this version, which I think puts the message across without insulting anyone. Thanks to Kathryn for helping me out with the text on the test-tube!
A different process than usual this one. The editor wanted a pen and ink look about it rather than a printmaking aesthetic. I sketched it out in pencil, scanned that into Photoshop and combined different elements of sketches (the hands, the separate backgrounds) and then printed it out. Then I traced that comped image on my lightbox, deciding to do the hands on a separate sheet of paper. I then inked both drawings, scanned them and coloured the whole thing in Photoshop.
Tracing the sketch.
The inked line work ready to be scanned.
The printed cover.
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