For want of a paint finish   Wednesday 1st September 2010

Hey Internetters! Today’s creative activity has taken me so much time, money and effort, I am trying to quantify it by making a blog post out of it, despite it not really being exciting!

This is what I made! Read the rest of this entry »

Rickmansworth: my modernist motherland   Saturday 21st August 2010

I live in Rickmansworth. It isn’t really fair to call it my motherland; I just couldn’t resist the alliteration! I might not have been born or brought up here, but I have been living here for a good few years now and am kinda attached to it. In fact, the townspeople seem to like having me here too, as every May, they get together and celebrate ‘Ricky Week’!

At Ricky Week a couple of years back, the church at the bottom of my street opened its tower to the public, so Lilly and I went up there as it offered a nice view over our village. While we were up there, I overheard an older fella muttering about how the village has been ruined by all the modern architecture.

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DJ Flight’s label play:musik is back! I was only nineteen when Flight very kindly gave me the opportunity to create the original artwork and identity for the label, but I have learnt a lot in the past five years, so the label’s relaunch was a good time to make some improvements to the artwork. This post is about the changes I have made, the things I have learnt, and the artwork, so if you’re interested, Read the rest of this entry »

It’s that time again!

Squali e FormaggioAnother pointless but pleasant enough painting on a tiny canvas made of scrap materialsI Ate The Whole ThingHorse MatchBwahhAlthea and DonnaSeetierB-ComplexLanding CardSunny OutlookRickmansworth Telephone ExchangePink CarsMy Arms are PeelingMultiply is fun!My iPod jumped shipViewTreetopSpace DredgerIt's a Bunny!!Black FaxI Rule!!Hospital AccapellasIndependenceBlindHospitality WebsiteHaute JunkeClasses, Objects and their PropertiesReagotron

Well it’s not all just July, and it’s not July in its entirety either as I took a little holiday this month, but here is another four weeks worth of daily creative nonsense anyway!

Some of the better stuff this month includes a couple of tiny stopmotion experiments, and I’m also weirdly satisfied with this picture of a building near my home. The rest of the month is a bit random, but I’m sure a couple of the ideas in there have some merit to them!

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Little Oranges   Monday 19th July 2010

Good work comes from good projects, which in my line of work, usually means good record titles to design for. ‘Little Oranges’ has to be the best track title I’ve had the pleasure of working with since Credit Crunch! Was B-Complex thinking of satsumas? Clementines? Tangerines? We may never know!

More pictures after the fold. Read the rest of this entry »

I like a good Washing Machine   Monday 5th July 2010

I should probably write about the things that influence me more often. A couple of weeks ago, I rediscovered The Secret Life of Machines, a Channel 4 TV series from the late eighties / early ninties. I used to watch this with my Dad when I was really small- it was on TV when I was between the ages of 2-7 apparently (!) – and despite being so young, it clearly made an impression on my tiny mind!

Here is a clip from the show, where Tim Hunkin describes what the concrete ballast in a washing machine is for, with the assistance of Rex Garrod:

Genius. They picked such an expressive washing machine for the demonstration too! It’s great watching this stuff again as the longstanding lines of influence are pretty apparent. For example, here’s a series of post-it notes from 2007 that bear a subtle resemblance to the above clip:

Which is a concept I revisited last week:

Now there’s an idea that is going somewhere!

Anyway! If you like washing machines, you can see more of my washing-machine-related daily artwork by clicking here, or if you just like machines in general, you can find links to watch more of the secret life of machines on Tim Hunkin’s website.

Independence   Sunday 4th July 2010

Yeah America!

This weekend, we have been celebrating Lilly’s independence from the country she is now somewhat dependent on! I have some nice pictures to share after the fold if anyone is interested! Read the rest of this entry »

June SCED Excitement   Sunday 27th June 2010

Well, another month has passed since my last Something Creative Every Day roundup, and sadly that also means a month has passed since my last blog post. I guess I haven’t been doing anything exciting enough to warrant a whole blog post outside of these daily nuggets of creativity:

Three LionsPickle MachineX-Raying a DishwasherRunawayMystery White AnimalR2-WM2Pigeons VisionsFarthing's DayTall CakeWindowsCatching a WaveThe Elevating StaircaseSwashbuckling in StopmotionWhat the weather sounds like outside my windowCreamy Horse Rides AgainNone More BlackGibbon eating a waffleScantastic!SVPsHospital World Cup T-shirtsUSB OnionCool CliveSix Years' WorkJontyboyComedy Panel QuizSmall AlbumTo Good 2 ScrapLighting the Lampposts

There are plenty of good ideas here- I am particularly pleased with my USB Onion and think the Runaway could have legs. It was nice to paint a couple more T-shirts this month too, particularly as the weather seems to have nicened up a bit!

Also, while I’m writing here, Last month’s Paper iPhone TV Set got some attention on the wider internets: Most of the traffic came from Gizmodo, which pleasantly puzzled me considering I only sent a link to Engadget and Giz posted their story first? [In the unlikely event that someone from Gizmodo is reading this, I'd love to know how you managed that?]. It also made it to a whole host of other european tech/gadget news websites too, so thanks to all for linking!

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Paper iPhone TV SetBrainswitch!!! !!Big StaplesMy Little PonyTall AppleSea DogTan StripesIron HeartATMTen Pounds80s SeasonAhoy There Whale CardPhotoFarewell Sausage ManLong HorseVince and the Laws teach George to ride a bikeOne Hundred Followers!Two Inappropriate(/Ironic) Occasions for SmokingSunken Treasure!Upside Down CakeCardboard CopierNick Clegg's Tie RackA Day in the Life of DJ QLondon Elektricity TidyupEver Spiralling Circles2001: A Space BananaHarlem PowerReady for Battle

This month in my world of nonsense, I finally reached one hundred followers on Twitter, gradually managed to fix my Vespa, and avoided the election fever/confusion. Craft magazine also Blogged about my Cardboard Copier this month! thanks for that, Craft!

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Paper iPhone TV Set   Sunday 30th May 2010

This was going to be my creative activity for yesterday, but it ended up taking me a little bit longer to make than I was expecting, so it counts for the whole weekend! It’s a paper TV set for an iPhone!!

I’m not sure where I came up with the idea of making a little TV set to slot an iPhone into, but the thought came into my mind to use a magnifying glass lens to give it a nice curved CRT-like look to the screen. I copped this ramshackle bargain off eBay (complete with vital safety instructions) to make it out of.

The iPhone slots into the side like so:

And to prove it really works, here it is playing the title sequence to M*A*S*H, the only TV show Lilly has on her iPhone. The show happens to have post-it-yellow titles anyway, which matches the TV set rather nicely :)