weekly make #38

I made an adjustment to an existing picture:

I also made progress on my new book, I Walk With Freer Step, and, among other things, a new picture:

The Mistletoe Bough

Whilst scouring old books for words to collage recently, I stumbled across a great story. G. M. Valois, in Antiques and Curious in our Homes, was regaling his readers with some scintillating facts and figures about bridal coffers and wood worm when he recounts the story of the Mistletoe Bough:

It all fits on one long page because I photoshopped two pages together; rest assured the content remains exactly as printed in the book. I like Vallois' telling of the story a lot, but then I just looked it up on Wikipedia and that spoiled it. So, don't do that!

weekly make #37

After what is fast becoming a fairly typical day at work:

weekly makes #s 35 & 36

So I didn't post anything last week because I spent ages trying to assemble the preface for my new book I Walk With Freer Step and couldn't get it right. After another week it still isn't finished but it's getting there: 

 

In the process I came across enough good words to assemble a new diagram poem, this one inspired by the evangelists that haunt Tooting Broadway underground station on Saturday afternoons:

That's one good looking theological knee jerk!

weekly make #34

I was just out shopping in Tooting when I noticed one t-shirt on a rack of many which read: BODY OF A GOD, SHAME IT'S BUDDHA 
It worried me.

Anyway here's another "theological" diagram:

I'm going to hold back from calling this one a poem, I think it's more like a map, maybe because I've been reading the Selected Works of T.S.Spivet, a novel with supplimentary diagrams by Reif Larsen, this week and it's made me have new thoughts about diagrams as maps.

weekly make #33

Finally, a recording of "First Song" by the Death of Me, it's on myspace, not here... HERE

weekly make #32

weekly make #31

This week I have made slow progress with illustrations for my next book "I walk with freer step", here's a shoddy photograph of one of them:

weekly make #30

This week I have been taking advantage of a one week unemployment break to knuckle down on the Quartershade Warning Lights video. I made the following 2 seconds yesterday:


Also, I finally got some video footage of Heather and I performing the song we wrote for our wedding at a mini festival so I made it nice (as far as possible) for YouTube, here is that too:

weekly make #29

This week I have been catching up on things that take longer than a week to make like this book that I started about three years ago(!):and my animated music video for Quartershade's Warning Lights single. Here's a screen shot of the scene currently in production:

weekly make #28

weekly make #27

Dabbling in other genres of diagrams:

weekly make #26

No.s 6 and 640:I gave them to my best man and his wife for their house.

weekly make #25

So, I missed five weeks of weekly makes due to the mayhem of planning a wedding, getting married, going on honeymoon, moving house and still having furniture to buy and boxes to unpack... Here's a leafy picture for your delectation though:I'd be lying if I pretend I made it this week, I made it a few weeks ago. It was a rejected wedding invitation design that resurfaced and was amended and framed to become a piece of wedding party decoration art work.

weekly make #24

The last two weeks have beentaken up with house hunting, paper work and packing, so I've had little time for making. Having not posted anything last week, here's two weeks worth in one image. It's a triptych called THE PURSUIT OF LOVE:I am moving house today and my not have the internet now for a week or two, but then I'm getting married after that and going away so my weekly makes may not be quite so weekly. Bye for now!

weekly make #23

This week:
I made little progress in the search for a home
I made myself very tired trying to do to much
I made journeys and dinner
I made most of a new song
I made progress on my next book

But none of these can be shown to anybody because they don't actually exist. I also made 3 seconds of animation for Quartershade's Lights Out music video:



Not the most productive week!

weekly make #22

I'm working on a book of diagram poems made exclusively out of words from Brian Behan's literary travesty Time to Go. All of the poems are on post it notes. Here's the yellow ones:Y'all can see the rest when you buy the book, when it's finished. In the meantime I'm writing a couple of new songs, having ideas for comics that I haven't the time to draw and generally trying to work out how to make all this into a career.

weekly make #21

A musical make this week. I've been working on this song for a while and it finally feels near completion - only near though, not quite complete yet. It's got to the point though where it can't go any further until it's been tested in public. So, with no gigs lined up youtube must suffice:

weekly make #20

You may remember, or you may not, that in February I mentioned I was working on a new collection of diagram poems. Well I finished it and printed and "bound" it in the form of an A7 four-fold pamphlet book or one of these:They're £2 (1.50p + 50p p&p) from folksy, and some are printed on recycled white sugar paper, others on recycled white cartridge paper.

weekly make #19

Thanks to Brian Behan (see #17), an "earthy" diptych:There shan't be many more like this - I put the book in the recycling!

weekly make #18

It's been a busy week and I've made a few different things but I don't know what counts as a "weekly make" and what doesn't...
I made spin paintings with the 2 year olds at work:and I've been making bunting with Heather, here's some from a couple of weeks ago:
And here's another adapted wedding invite design:

weekly make #17

I bought some old books from charity shops to cut out words for diagram poems. One of which was Time to Go, a deplorable novel by Brian Behan which seems to be a badly written account of murder, affairs and general misogyny. Think Bukowski without any of the skill, beauty, clever turns of phrase... it's terrible, from what I can tell from skim reading it to pick out the good words. The only words that stood out during skim reading were not suitable for the sort of diagram poems I have been, and was planning to make. They are only really suitable for "earthier" poems. So I decided to make some... I made a great one as a present, so I can't post it yet because I haven't given it yet, but I can reveal this little gem:I also made the little book below. I was cutting out eyes and mouths again for work and found some interesting products and services on offer in the classifieds, mostly ridiculous and unecessary, and I wondered, who even wants any of these? So I mis-collated some:


If anybody wants it, I'll put it on folksy for a fiver. Which, by the way, is a bargain as it took me a lot longer than 20 minutes to make!

fun at work

At work I have to choose an artist of the month, each month, on whom to base most of my lessons. Last month it was Jon Pylypchuk, here's what we got:

Pylypchuk's Now How Will We Get Around?:(Of course I didn't show the children this particular sculpture, it's inappropriate)

My example:
The 3 year olds':

weekly make #16

Amongst other things:

weekly make #15

This week I have been working on a small animated film to go on our wedding web-site. It's sound track is a lesser known hymn we are planning to have at the wedding, so hopefully every body will be able to sing along on the day. Here it is:

weekly make #14

1: I made a sad discovery. Between the people that come up with ideas and those that actually make products, there was no-one in Sainsbury's chain of command who flagged up Easter crackers as a bad idea...

2: I made a triptych out of wedding invites designs that we decided not to use, adapted with the addition of some cut-out words. Like this:

weekly make #13

This week I have spent a lot of time turning a story and pictures by the children I work with into a proper story book. It begins like this:and ends like this:In the meantime I have also been working on leaf and diagram poems, for books and for wall display. Also, I was cutting out eyes from a magazine at work for the two year olds to make collages with and Aggie thought the remaining faces looked creepy so I made a special picture just for her, like this:

weekly make #12

Over a year ago now, I started this comic, the first page was embarrassing, it went like this:It was the first half of what was supposed to be a one page introduction to another comic that I'm struggling to make headway with. I don't know if these are things I should be admitting... Anyway, I was not particularly happy with this half way point so the remainder went unfinished, until this week. So here it is, continuity errors and all:

weekly make #11

This is one that I actually drew about this time last year. But it's just been lying in my sketch book - I took a photo of it for a previous blog but never had a chance to properly clean it up and make it look nice. So that's this week's make - making an old thing presentable, here:

weekly make #10

It's pretty self explanatory...

weekly make #9

Rebecca Dyer made an awesome run of Being and Tim 2011 Diaries, I got one for my birthday. Heather was jealous, so I made her a diary for her birthday, this one has diagram poems in it, look, see:
In the process I made a bunch of extra diagram poems. I like this one: