I keep a running list of daily creativity ideas for days when I feel less inspired. The great thing about looking back at the list for inspiration is I’ll have no idea what I was thinking when I wrote these things down (High-definition Hands? Berlusconi cheese!?), which can lead to unexpected reinterpretations. One of my favourites from this month emerged under these circumstances: I’ve no idea what I had originally thought when I made a note of Counterfeit Dog, but as an illustration, I’m pleased with the end result.
It’s been a surprising month in Rickmansland. After feeling like I had such a powerful month last month, I spent the past four weeks feeling largely uninspired, but in retrospect it’s been a pretty good month too. The cardboard tree was (physically) the biggest thing, while the Pool Clock was the biggest virtually – it developed a life of its own on Tumblr, where it has had hundreds of likes and rebloggings since I posted it. Apparently there’s a big swimming contingent on that platform!
I’m also really pleased with Wasted Udder Juice – a typically cryptic commentary on Margaret Thatcher’s death that also happened to be a neat little illustration. The Post-it Pac-man is definitely worth a mention too – it’s the first animation I made this year, and by some fluke it also happened to turn out pretty much as successfully as I had imagined, which is a welcome rarity in my universe!
Wow, it’s been another month already, but it’s been a pretty good one! I’m surprisingly pleased with my overall output this month, which I’m ashamed to admit hasn’t always been the case over the years of SCED past.
As usual, I’ll mention some favourites here! All The Mod Cons is the best thing I’ve drawn in a while – I’m beginning to learn that if I develop and redraw an idea a few times over, the results often get better, as was the case with this drawing of a treehouse. With a washing machine in it, of course.
Friends Reunited was a surprise success as well – I was worried that everyone would have forgotten about the Ikea monkey (and the ‘I was supposed to pick up Carl’ image macro) by the time I posted it, but it ended up being incredibly timely for a completely different reason. As it was Ikea, I couldn’t resist slotting in a gag about the quality of their hot dogs and making another reference to the ongoing horsemeat scandal in the process. In a great example of life imitating art1, the very next day news broke that Ikea’s meatballs had horsemeat in them too.
The Washing Line is a great piece of work too – even Lilly seems to approve of it. I’m building up quite a substantial body of washing machine based artwork, which also includes WashMa.ch, another daily from this month which I will go into a bit more detail about at some point in the future.
1 This isn’t the first time I’ve experienced this – here is a daily creativity motivated by a sense of wonder at how much Samsung was trying to make their then-new Galaxy phone look like an Apple iPhone, particularly in their commercials, which were pretty inescapable at the time. A couple of days after I posted this, news broke that Apple were suing Samsung over this very issue.
While it’s nice to believe the world secretly revolves around my Something Creative Every Day project, I think the safer conclusion is that these things are just really obvious. Of course Ikea’s meatballs were going to test positive for horse2 – we’re talking about one of the world’s biggest cost-cutting companies here!^
2 A footnote on a footnote? Am I mad?! If nothing else positive has come out of the horsemeat scandal, it has to be the frequent use of the phrase ‘test(ing) positive for horse’ – one that eight weeks ago I would never have expected to hear coming from serious journalists across the media!
What do you know, it’s time for another SCED monthly roundup, and I had no idea it was that time already!
It’s been a colourful month! This month I have started working on drawing all of the international code of flags and drawn plenty of post-its. By far and large the greatest thing I’ve done this month is Robot Factory. I’m still surprised that came out of my mind/fingers. It’s been a relatively solid month of ideas by my standards… I wonder if I’ll keep it up next month?!
The Hospital Records website and I have been on a long journey since I began working with the label. I’ve been planning on writing this piece about it for what must be several years now, but the thing with working on the internet is there’s never a finished point. You can’t carry on tinkering with a product once it’s been printed, but you can when you publish something on the internet! We launched a major redesign this winter, so now it’s had a few weeks to settle in, it finally seems like a good time to look back at how it evolved.
Back in 2005, before I got my foot in the door, their sites looked like this:
They had their own website, which could only be updated by one member of staff, and their webshop was run by a third party. Oh how I remember that store – I used to buy white labels from it as soon as they were available, only to regret being impatient and not waiting a few weeks for the full artwork. Sometimes I would buy both anyway – Sainsbury’s must have paid me well if I afford so much Vinyl back then! Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Internets, Work | Permalink »
It’s back and it’s unfocussed as ever – I’m doing stuff on a daily basis once again, and have already racked up another four weeks of it:
I sort of fell back into the habit over my winter break in the capitalism nexus – I got home and realised I had pretty much done something for every day I was away, which is most of what you’re seeing here. You know, the usual stuff people do while on holiday – take photos, draw on their iPad, make plush jackalopes. Nothing strange there.
So on to picking favourites, I think my best effort this month is The Upstairs Whale. No explanation for the satisfaction it brings me though. Also a big fan of Dollar Bill – it’s dumb, it’s a play on words, it’s a bad drawing, it’s classic me.
Now I’m back into the habit, it’s worth reminding you that if you like Tumblr, I am still posting the dailies there too, to varying degrees of success. Check it all out at daily.trickartt.com now!
Lilly's brother Michael decided he wanted to motivate his troops with a trophy that can be passed around his team whenever anyone does anything sufficiently awesome. He had the idea of a trophy jackalope. Despite this being America we're talking about, his colleagues were a bit squeamish about the idea of taxidermy, so he asked me if I had any ideas.
A plush jackalope seemed to be the logical solution, so while I was stateside this winter, I got to work. As accosting a sewing machine is much more my idea of fun than getting sloshed and/or cold, I spent my New Year's Eve wrangling with a handsome 1970s Kenmore:
...Well, you wouldn't want to be kenless, would you?
The antlers are the coolest thing about him - I stuffed each branch with pipe cleaner, so they can be bent into any shape and will stay there.
He's hardly perfect - his head is too big, backside too small, and due to my low-rent sewing skillz, he is a bit twisted around, kind of reminiscent of the dramatic squirrel. I'm happy with him regardless, as he does actually look like a jackalope, and it always pleases me when the things I create end up looking like they're meant to!
I named him Treehorn, and got plenty of photos of him before I left Americaland, including a full 360° of him. Try dragging or doubleclicking the above photo to see!
Posted in Hand-made | Permalink »
White: The colour of the arctic, and of the polar bear. It’s the perfect camouflage! Perfection aside, it could be a little more festive.
Like all of my best ideas, this one started out life as a post-it sketch.
Surprisingly, Lilly liked him, so in an unusual strike of decisiveness, I traced him up and off he went to Centurion for another nice plate.
We dusted off the Adana, and got printing.
We figured it wasn’t really efficient to print each colour on the letterpress, so to make things even more unique, Lilly and I painted 2,700 tiny fairy lights in watercolour.
Because we hand-painted them, every single card we produced this year is unique. Cool as a polar bear!
Considering that it’s probably the biggest project I’ve had the pleasure of working on to date, I’ve come to realise I haven’t said much about the work I’ve been doing for Netsky over the past twelve months!
2012 has really shaped up to be our Belgian friend’s year- I remember being astonished at how quickly he ascended over the course of his debut album in 2010, but that was nothing in comparison to his follow-up! The sheer expanse of this project has really brought it together – it’s not just record covers; the artwork goes much further! Read the rest of this entry »
Aside from having to say goodbye to my old Vespa, one of the projects I worked on this Autumn was that of Enei’s debut album, Machines, on Critical Music. When I was given the heads-up, the first thing that struck me about the project was just what a great title Machines is!
I immediately thought ‘I like machines!’ and began dreaming up all the ridiculous things I could draw for the artwork: Washing machines, sewing machines, vending machines, washing machines, fax machines, robots, washing machines, salami-slicing machines and so on. Did I mention I wanted to put a load of washing machines on his album cover?
The daydreams didn’t last long, and from the giddy highs of domestic machines, I fell to the low of realising that all of my typical inclinations would be way too kitsch for the album, and my usual tact of just-getting-on-with-it wasn’t getting me very far either. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Cover Art, Design Process, Work | Permalink »
“I always told myself that I would ride this bike until death do us part”
It’s been an intense few months in Rickmansland. You may have noticed my daily creativities have not exactly been daily lately, as in the last day one was posted was way back at the end of June, which is when it all started.
My beloved, loyal little Vespa had another breakdown, and this time it was on the South Circular, about 25 miles from home. I had to abandon the bike in Clapham and get the tube home, so I could return the next day with a rental van and take it to a garage to get fixed. This experience was made that much more intense because I only had one day before Lilly and I were set to go and spend a week off in Sicily, where I tried to spend as little time as possible sulking about my dead Vespa.