Part of me is really uncomfortable with the idea of making this post, which is one of the reasons I’ve put it off for so long. The thing is, it feels a little bit narcissistic, like I’m trying to large myself up for being charitable in public. That’s not really my intention, but being charitable for good causes is good, and the work is nice to have on my blog archives too, so here goes!
I’m sure we’re all aware of the string of disasters that hit the pacific earlier this year. They were particularly devastating to all of us at Hospital Records, as we all have a lot of friends and family from New Zealand and Japan, so naturally everybody at the label wanted to do whatever they could to aid the cause.
First up were CEO Tony Colman and his wife, who is Japanese herself. They held a little fundraiser morning where the Lady Colminator and her friends were selling Japanese food, face painting and generally doing whatever they could to raise money, including selling some ‘Love Japan’ T-shirts and pin badges I designed for them. The pin badges sold so quickly that I didn’t even get one for myself, which was nothing but a good thing, but I did manage to get a T-shirt:
We wanted to do more as a label though, so champion of Hospitality Josh, our events manager, got together with London superclub Fabric and between them masterminded the organisation of ‘Don’t forget’- two nights which took place at the venue last month. Not only was the lineup ridiculously huge, but everybody involved waived their fees, myself included. The artwork I did followed on from the Love Japan tees and pinbadges, with this nice loosely-grid-based design:
The nights were a huge success, with the Hospitality night alone raising over £18,000 for the four nominated charities: Red Cross disaster fund, New Zealand Embassy Christchurch earthquake appeal, Red Dot Relief and The Japan Society Tohuku earthquake relief fund.
As I said above, posting this does feel a bit self-fulfilling, but I am proud to have been a part of these charitable efforts, and I hope the money everybody raised has helped the affected areas to get on the mend!
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I should probably start this post off by explaining that I’m by no means under any obligation to make this post! This might actually be one of the first good things to come of my Something Creative Every Day project though, so I feel like I should write a little bit about it here.
This summer I got a random email from a company based in Australia called Makedo, which appeared to be offering me free stuff. No, this isn’t advance-fee fraud- they said they really liked Trashbot 2000 and all of the other junk I have on my flickr, and wanted to send me some samples of their product to make stuff out of. Score! I agreed and a week or so later I found this package in my letterbox:
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I’ve realised my weblog was becoming exactly what I didn’t want it to lately- the lazy man’s way of showing new work. So I have decided to remedy that and have updated a load of junk on the portfolio, so if you want to see some new pictures, go dig around there, particularly in the Hospital Records section.
Anyway. On with the interesting stuff.
Finally some new Wallpapers!
Yes! I hear your cries of bewilderment! You can download them from the Wallpapers section, as ever.
On a creative randomnity tip, here are a couple of strange things.
The Lilly and I baked this loaf of bread the other day and much to her dismay, I had some googly eyes to hand, ready to turn the loaf into a breadmonster!
Now on his fourth protoype, the cuddly Purple Dude is starting to make sense. I’m experimenting with different fabrics and different kinds of stitching and the like, but he’s coming on famously!
And with that, I bid you Adeau!
New Beta Things
Weapons 3
Here is a preview of the Weapons of Mass Creation Three album artwork:
I had to master the Super Badge-It and get the needle and thread out for this cover… It was quite a picture, believe me! Anyway, we brought the always fantastic Andrew Attah in again to take the photos for this.
The cover of the cd folds out to reveal the full image:
On the Weapons/War front, I’ve been helping envisage the Stop the War on Vinyl campaign, coming up with the commie-style identity for it.
Threaddage
Apparently the Panda Style 7″ became massively popular in it’s limited glory, and following numerous enquiries about them, I am happy to announce that Panda Style Trickartt T-Shirts will be available from Hospital Soon! You can rest assured I will make some noise on my site when they’re actually available to buy.
That’s about all i can show right now. In case you don’t venture into my portfolio much, I suggest you have a look round, cos I’ve retaken all of the Threads photos and added a few new items to boot!
Keep it Cakey!
Here are some photos of the finished The Eleventh Hour artwork, in all it’s metallic and varnishy glory
More clothes!
Panda polo taken from My mighty panda style 7″ artwork!
Also coming from Hospital soon is the Future Sound of Tokyo. Illustration by me, type by Chris Goss
Lots more Critical colours:
And lastly, a couple more herbal flyers:
Here is a t-shirt I painted for Adam, to match the hoodie I painted his daughter for her birthday… only the one cloud on it tho!
A scarf i got involved in for Chris Goss- a tiny goose badge I painted and stitched on to the scarf. bit of a Lyle+Scott vibe going on!
Here is a t-shirt for Alyssa! A nice simple design cos she seems to like running around and shouting ‘RARRR!! I’m a monster!’ which is rather cute!
Here is the absolute piste de resistance this christmas- I completely designed from scratch and sewed by myself this silly belted cow pencil case for Lilly! How I came up with the idea is a long story tho!
Everything I made this christmas came in elaborate purple packagaing too:
Finally, here is a t-shirt i painted this week in a bit of a post-christmas style for Tony Colman- the original Hospital gay reptile crest!
Expect another entry soon featuring real work that’s been going on of late!
Anyway! After an admittedly quiet spell in late autumn (the weather may as well still be late autumn too, despite only being a week from christmas now… Good old Blighty, keeping weather worth making smalltalk about), I have plenty of stuff to show here.
I put a couple of new wallpapers up last week for your aesthetic pleasure. The winter sun was designed to cheer Lilly up, but proved popular with friends too, so I decided it was only fair i shared it with the world. The second one was actually a pitch for the cover of the forthcoming Future Sound of Tokyo album on Hospital that we all decided against, but still made a nice wallpaper. It was deeply inspired by Tokidoki, so sorry Tokidoki- it’s cos I love you!
Speaking of Hospital, here is a project I’ve been working on for them of late- Herbal Flyers. A few months back, Chris decided to change the format to the Square and has left me in charge of the design of the fronts, as long as I maintain the H logo at the same size on it.
It’s turned out to be a really fun project as I’m being given a lot of creative freedom with the designs, involving all sorts of crazy junk like fairy lights, underfloor insulation and thinking up cheesey january sales tags… The flyers here are for November, December, New Year’s Eve and January.
If you’re in London in January, I reccomend you come down to Herbal (182-184 Kingsland Road, E2 
) on Friday the 19th, to see my good self pushing some records together for the early set, anlongside friends such as S.P.Y, London Elektricity and Cyantific in the main room and The Goose, Zac Vibert and Riley bringing the upstairs freestyle funk. You don’t have much of an excuse as it’s FREE ENTRY all night as a happy new year gift from us at Hospital!
Been getting involved with Knowledge Magazine this winter. Here is an advert / poster for BarKnowledge in Chamonix i knocked up for them, complete with a tiny marmot, who is wearing headphones and a very Isadora Duncan -esque flowy scarf.
Knowledge also kindly offered to run an editorial article on myself in their regular art section too, so you can check that out in the issue with Mistical on the cover (not the Ed Rush + Optical cover tho! After some editorial errors in that issue they graciously offered to reprint the article correctly, so we’ll pretend that issue never existed in Casa del Trickartt…) for a nice little article about me and some pictures of my work!
Speaking of Mistical (are you getting tired of the links between everything I’m writing about yet? No more now, I promise!), I managed to get in contact with the boys at Soul:R and pitched some ideas for their album at them, which I can now announce is going ahead! Here is the cover- very minimal, like their style, and a clever play on the title. It’s worth noting this will look considerably different in print, so expect some photos of it put online when it is printed.
Here’s an odd little project I undertook lately. I did the coding aspect of the design of Lifted Music’s forum last month. You are probably thinking ‘that doesn’t look very Trickartt!’, and if you are, you’d be right, cos the artwork isn’t my work. it’s done by a chap called Carlos from NitroCorp, who is a talented fella and did a lovely job of getting the artwork appropriate for the label. Again, this is one of those projects that doesn’t really deserve a place in my portfolio, especially as it’s not my artwork, but the design is still my work so it’s worth showing here.
Last thing to show for tonight. In a bid to get more people wearing my designs, I’ve decided to start painting more tshirts for people beside myself. here is one i did this week for my friend Budgie, hence Trill, the popular Budgerigar feed. simple and silly, but a cool design nonetheless.
That’s enough for now. My next update will prolly be after christmas, showcasing some of the gifts I have made for other people… I don’t want to put these things online before they’ve recieved them tho!
Self Portrait
I’ve really got into the habit of drawing on post-it notes recently. at least it’s drawing on something, i guess. i’ve been coming up with some funny little doodles tho!
here is my favourite of late: a self-portrait on a post-it note! according to my dear brother, it’s funny cos it’s a great likeness of me. hah.
City Life
This is the follow-up ep to logistics’ album i worked on this summer. nice and simple, but pretty effective.
Happy Birthday Alyssa!
I painted alyssa a hoodie for her birthday, with lots of silly clouds dotted around it- here she is trying it on on her birthday. i came up with the idea on a bit of a whim but i’m really rather happy with it now! there are better photos of it Here. 
that’s about all i can think of at the moment. i’m sure there’s plenty more to come tho!
i fell in love with php inserts (my first php script! haha) and they’re the basis of my entire website. the new site has been completely redesigned to be a lot more corporate, full of less junk, and the focus taken away from my random writings here. it’s also considerably easier to update now too!
now it’s all online i’m starting to worry it’s tooo corporate and not artistic enough, but whatever way i look at it, it’s better than it was. maybe i’ll get the hire me! and artistic blend right whenever i feel the urge to start work on v4.
i just want to mention a quick thankyou to tom at hospital for helping write my about text! it’s so much more fun than the excuse for an about section i had before, not to mention more accurate! hehe.
anyway, i hope you enjoy looking at the pictures and reading all the junk i write about here more than ever. hehe.
here is a blurry photo of everyone mingling at opening night:
and here is a photo of most of the work up on display:
so that went well!
Fruity
here are a pair of non-purple purple dudes, in fruit form.
Happy Birthday Lilly!
It was Lilly’s birthday this week, so i painted her a new hoodie:
bit of an adventure behind this, but i won’t go into full rambling detail. the inside is custom-lined using fabric from a pink babyblanket, which is really soft! and the entire thing is hand-painted in shimmering pink. i wasn’t sure i was happy with it until Lilly said she loves it!