All Big Letters But It Isn't No Acronym

DOOM!.. I bought tickets that I couldn't really afford for The Super Villain's first UK appearance as soon as they hit the virtual shop, and when no official gig poster emerged for the show I set about bothering the event organizers Sonar, and eventually DOOM's label Lex to see if I could produce something for them. The nice folk at Lex said that if I knocked something up and sent it to them, they would forward it on to DOOM's people and perhaps His people would contact my people (me) and that maybe it might end up being used in some way, but not to be offended if it didn't as there's a lot of industry red tape to snip through in matters like these.

Anyway, I haven't heard anything yet but I thought I'd post this currently un-official poster for the 'Taste of Sonar' event, where I'll be head-nodding to the sounds of Daniel Dumile's alter ego (or his stunt double!) next week.. Click it up big and see if you can pick out all the nerdy references to all His characters and projects that I snook into the patterns on the mask.

After pestering Metal-Face, I was actually invited to do this poster for the awesome home-made instrument tinkerer, Thomas Truax.. or at least a bit of it anyway. Designer Alex Warren has been producing a nice series of images for Dead Young's shows at Oporto in Leeds, with simple layouts, bold colours and one main central image. Dead Young asked me to provide the image for this one that I dropped into Alex's template and colour scheme, and I think it came out looking pretty fancy, with more than a nod to Charles Burns and a shiny-quiffed, zombified Truax shouting into his 'Hornicator' that twists round and turns out to be him.. Infinity and snakes eating their tails n' all that jazz, yeah?

Oh, and my old pals The Heebie Jeebies are on the bill too.. sweet!

'When the East is in the house'.. My mate's band The Great Eastern are gonna play a few shows at The Grapes in Sheffield, so here's the first of a series of posters that I'll be doing for them. They'll be different colours and will each feature a different animal wearing a hat in the steam cloud. I've got a few posters going on where I switch the colour schemes around at the moment, and as well as being a handy corner to cut for a time saving technique, I do generally have an urge to see the same image in a different set of colours.. I think this stems from the later releases of Street Fighter II where small sparks of joy were often attained from simply seeing a character in a different coloured set of pee-jays.

..and here's another one I did recently for Dead Young Records, who've got their Blues buddies Mojo 57 to host a monthly shindig at The Angel's Share in Chapel Allerton.

The Space In Between..

.. I'm currently squeezing in as much work as I can in between working weekends at an art shop in Shoreditch.

Dazed contacted me yesterday and I'm gonna start work on a new Mixtape illustration for them in a few minutes, but before then I just wanna bring the Blog up to date and post the stuff that I did last week..

This is a logo that I drew for Lulu that she's gonna use to promote her new bunting business venture. Lulu is Charles (from Slow Club)'s sister, and she contacted me with the tornado concept that her and Charles had come up with to see if I'd be up for translating it to paper.. I was, so I did and she's gonna screen print it onto some fabric soon to hang behind her bunting stall that's gonna be set up at some Northern vintage clothes markets in the coming months. I'll post a photo or two of the banner up here soon, and I also want to fully endorse 'Lulu Bunting' as thee premier bunting stall catering for all your bunting needs..

Last week also saw me mark the occasion of producing posters for Dead Young Records' gigs at The Angel's Share in Leeds for a whole year, by producing a poster for the sequel to their Halloween event 'The Witches Brew', which was the first proper poster that I did for them a year ago. 'The Witches Brew II' is billed as 'The Mummy of All Sequels' so I drew the Witch characters from last year's poster shooting off on their broomsticks and using their magical brew to awaken a big ol' Mummy head which (conveniently) has all the details of the gig displayed on its bandages. You can see last year's poster by clicking on this link.. if you want.

Finally, for last week's round-up I'll quickly mention that I did a little interview for an upcoming free Liverpool magazine that I don't know too much about yet. They're gonna print a bit of my comic and a few of my gig posters and plug the 'fact' that my comic's for sale up there in FACT. I also used the opportunity to give a shout-out to my friends at The Kazimier and all of my Scouse family, so I'll post more about that when it comes out.. Oh, and The Heebie Jeebies swung by Clapton Pond on a quick break from their tour supporting Slow Club the other day and gave me a real-life, f-fr-fresh t-shirt featuring the 'JeebieBurger' that I designed for them t'other week!.. The first proper printed t-shirt with one of my doodles all up on it.

Here's a photo of me (with the Ultimate Warrior's face Photoshopped onto mine) wearing the sweet-T..

T-Shirt McGirt

These two chuffers are gonna be whacked onto some t-shirts in a few days. I was trying to keep 'em on the down low until they got printed, but I'm really pleased with how they came out and I couldn't wait to show 'em off on the bloggety blog. I'm not even actually sure if anyone is even reading this or looking at these pictures anyway (I'm not exactly Kanye West Twitterin' about what's currently grindin' his gears), but I'm pretty excited about getting my first proper t-shirts out there that's f'shizzle.

The first one is being released by my mate Lord Bunn's Sheffield based t-shirt company 'Royal Stock'. It'll be part of a new range that they are releasing featuring designs by various Sheffield affiliated doodlers. They'll be available in a few shops up there for sure and maybe in some other places too. You could probably get one off the website if you really wanted I think.

The second little doozie is a big ol' JeebieBurger that I did for Hot Club De Paris' new favourite band (and my current house guests while they're down playing a few London gigs).. The Heebie Jeebies. They're getting a few printed up to take out on their upcoming Slow Club support tour tha' knows, so if you fancy one of them you best get to one of their shows and hang about the merch stall.

Dunno why I'm going off like there's any kind of huge anticipation for these shirts getting released. Maybe no chuffer even gives a wiggy-what, but I'm lookin' forward to rockin' 'em anyway! Maybe it's not the done thing to rock a t-shirt with your own drawings on, but I could always pretend like I didn't do 'em and lie if anyone asked me. I've asked for them to be printed as big as the shirts will take anyway, so they should look pretty sweet. I'll post some photos and links and stuff about them as soon as they come out. Gizza shout and let me know what you think if you want..

tomjnewell@hotmail.co.uk

No Sleep 'Til..

This is a poster I just finished for Everything on Toast's upcoming student mash-up 'FEAR OF SLEEP' at King's College Londonshire. Should be a good 'un what with all the NUS debauchery, Hot Club De Paris, Poppy and the Jezebels, and none other than The Fantabulous Heebie Jeebies bringing up the rear. (Fnar-Fnar!)