Blewitt's

In November of 2018, after nearly 10 years of living and working in Glasgow, Alex, Beth and I moved back to Stirling. We now have a little bungalow and a garden and can hang out with our parents without a massive hassle.

Instead of setting up a home studio like I had in Glasgow, I've taken the plunge on hiring a place in Stirling city centre. Fortuitously, our move lined up perfectly with the opening of Creative Stirling's new hub at 44 King St. and I've been working from my own little room upstairs for a few weeks now.

I'll talk more about 44 King St. some other time but, as the first resident artist, Creative Stirling asked me to put on a little show in the Made in Stirling gallery space on the ground floor.

I've called the show Blewitt's and it opens on Friday 25th January. There's an opening party on Thursday 24th 6pm-8pm. All welcome. There will be booze.

As Blewitt's has a very tight turnaround, it will feature mostly pre-existing work. That said, I have made some new stuff and I'm trying my best to make whatever else I gather together as interesting as possible. The idea is to present an overview of everything I do rather than chucking up the same 10 drawings everyone's seen before*. Illustration, sketches, prints, design stuff, animation stuff etc.

One thing that I'm excited about is that I'm including a Lost Map section. I've done a lot of really interesting stuff for the label over the last five years and I thought it'd be cool to put it all in one place. Team Lost Map have been great in helping me out with a bunch of records and merch to include / sell.

If you'd like to come along, the details are as follows:

Blewitt's by David Galletly Runs: 25th January through February

Made in Stirling
44 King Street
Stirling
FK8 1AY

Opening party: Thursday 24th Jan, 6-8pm

If you use Facebook, you can confirm your attendance on the event page. This helps give the Made in Stirling team an idea of numbers (don't worry if you don't, though, just rock up).

I'll try my best to put out as much behind-the-scenes stuff as I can on my Instagram and my Twitter. Important info For Beth-fans - she will attend the party, but only for a little while at the start.

* that doesn't mean those same 10 drawings won't be there

Pictish Trail Live at The Stand: Animated

In 2015, Johnny Lynch (aka Pictish Trail), toured with Josie Long. The mighty Lost Map Records has preserved his set from The Stand in Edinburgh as a limited edition cassette available exclusively at Pictish Trail live gigs.

To promote the release, Johnny asked if I'd be up for illustrating a 7-minute excerpt to share online. I was definitely up for illustrating a 7-minute excerpt to share online. I finished it yesterday and it's available to watch at the top of the page, on the Lost Map YouTube channel and on the Pictish Trail Facebook page.

Anyone who has seen Johnny live will know that his stage patter often veers into all-out stand-up comedy, particularly when he's playing songs from In Rooms, his fantastically weird 30-second song project. The new cassette captures the magic and even includes the infamous 'Birds' - a one-word singalong that hangs over Johnny like 'Creep' hangs over Radiohead. A true albatross (ho ho).

The plan was to create a simple slideshow of drawings to accompany the audio. Given that I've caught the animation bug recently, I tried my best to add as much movement as I could in the fairly tight timeframe I had. The end result is something in between - it's not a slideshow but it's not a full-blown animation either.

Regardless, I'm happy with it and it's definetly worth a look/listen if you've never caught a Pictish Trail gig before. He's on tour next month btw.

Pictish Trail Edinburgh Gig Poster

Pictish Trail is playing at the Caves in Edinburgh in April. I designed the poster.

If you didn't grow up in the UK, you might miss that there's a Beano parody thing going on. The Beano is a children's comic that launched in the 1930s. I subscribed to it when I was younger and the art style of the period (late 80s - early 90s) forever has a place in my heart, despite it being kinda ugly.

I've been looking through a few issues from my childhood recently. Hunting down No. 2540 from 1991 specifically, which featured a modern re-style of Dennis the Menace (which, luckily, was a publicity stunt - I was furious about it at the time). When Johnny asked me to put together a poster, I guess cool-dude Dennis was fresh enough in my mind that I figured I'd try to make a Beano cover of my own.

Time was pretty tight so I had to sacrifice authenticity to get a serviceable poster together. Given another day or two, I would've tried to get all the line weights, colouring, lettering etc. bang-on. Ach well, it's nice and bold at least.

I drew the illustration of Johnny using Procreate on my iPad. I mixed my Beano time periods a little and gave him the paper-white skin of the early-80s. My inner 8-year-old isn't impressed but it makes for a stronger poster.

You can buy tickets for the gig over on the Lost Map web shop and you can find out more information / register your interest over on the Facebook event page.

Christmas Tombola 004: After Life by Pictish Trail

This December, I’m sharing 31 things that I like. This is number 04.

While I’m on the subject, Johnny’s new video for “After Life” is an absolute banger and gets a spot in my Christmas Tombola (which I got 3 days into before neglecting).

The 3rd single from his phenomenal Future Echoes album (seriously, buy it, it’s the best thing he’s ever done), “After Life” was recently playlisted by BBC 6 Music and it comes on fairly regularly while I’m working. Hearing your pals on the radio is cool as hell. That bass, man.

For the video, Hankin Films went appropriately nuts. Johnny can be silly on-camera in a really unselfconscious way that’s fun to watch. He reminds me of Adam Buxton in that respect. Loads of great wee moments - finger-guns in time to the handclaps at 1:54 is my fav bit.

Lost Map Advent Calendar Day 17, Merry Pictmas

Lost Map Records are counting down to Christmas 2016 with a great wee online Advent calendar. Every day, members of the Lost Map family share Christmassy things (songs, old photos, oddities) on the Facebook page.

As part of the team, I’m contributing a couple of things. The first is this little Procreate illustration of my boss, friend and king (of kings), Johnny Lynch, aka Pictish Trail, causing havoc amongst the Lost Map elves.

I quickly battered this together when I realised that I wasn’t going to finish my planned contribution in time (it’s now pencilled in for the Christmas Eve slot, yaasss). I wish I’d given a little more thought to the elves and their activities but hey, done is better than perfect.

A bonus of working in Procreate is that it automatically generates neat time-lapses. This gives me more CONTENT to SHARE. When you slap a cover of Deck the Halls by the wonderful CathyMay15 on top you’ve got a guaranteed15-liker on your hands.

Vote Rozi!

'Actually' by Rozi Plain. LOST MAP RECORDS www.lostmap.com Taken from the forthcoming album, FRIEND.

Rozi Plain's brilliant new single Actually is part of this week's BBC Radio 6 Music Rebel Playlist. The track with the most votes at the end of the week secures a regular airplay on the station.

As part of team Lost Map, I'd appreciate it if you could vote for Rozi. We're a small, truly independent record label (we fit round a small pub table) and radio play really does wonders for the artists and for everyone working hard behind the scenes.

Here's the link. No registration or nothin' else needed, just a click: BBC 6 Music Rebel Playlist - Vote Now

Thanks!

Monoganon's FAMILY Gathering at CCA, Glasgow

Tomorrow (Sat 9th November), Lost Map's own Monoganon will play at the CCA here in Glasgow to celebrate the launch of their brilliant album F A M I L Y. I'm very much looking forward to this.

Support comes from Eugene Tombs and my good friend The Pictish Trail. You can buy tickets from the Lost Map Ticket Shop (only £6 adv!). As you'd expect, there's a Facebook event with more info.

Don't know Monoganon? Here's a wee introduction:

Say hello if you can make it along. I'm pretty deaf so, if it's noisy, please forgive any inappropriate nods or headshakes when I play guess-a-response.

The above poster was battered together by myself using a photograph by Sebastien Marciak.

Lost Map

Last week, my good friend Johnny (aka The Pictish Trail) announced that he is finishing up things with Fence Records, a label he has headed alongside King Creosote for many years, and is starting a new project with many of the artists involved. Today he launched Lost Map, a record label from Eigg.

To fans of Fence Records and the Scottish music scene, this is big news. It's big news to me too, having worked on a whole bunch of different odds & ends for Fence over the past wee while. Posters, album artwork, music videos and, um, Hott Loggz have all put food on my table (at least a couple of Mars Bars-worth).

More than that, I've been a fan. A big fan. Not as big a fan as some (there are some giant fans out there), but a good fan. An honest fan. A hairy fan. I bought my first Fence 'record' in 2000, Fence Sampler #03, from Avalanche in Edinburgh. It's still one of my favourites. That CD got me through college. From there, I bought albums, read zines, attended dozens of gigs (+5 Homegames), made friends and, eventually, got on the books. Fence has been a part of my life for 13 years and has influenced my work, my taste in music and helped me pass my driving test.

The what-the-hell-is-even-going-on events of the last few days have unsurprisingly caused much (mostly positive, I'm happy to say) a-twittering and a-beefering (?), but I don't wanna talk about that. I'm sad to see the end of this iteration of Fence, but I look forward to seeing whatever direction Kenny Creosote steers it in next. I also look forward to seeing where Lost Map goes too (hopefully to the Bahamas) because, if Johnny's involved, it'll be bloody good. You can like 'em both, y'know, that's ok.

So aye, Lost Map. I'm involved in a pretty major way. I could probably give myself a proper title but I can't handle the pressure / scrutiny, so I'll go with Chief of Winging It. I'll be working closely with Johnny on all the visual stuff - doing a fair amount of it myself and hopefully also getting some other artists involved where I can. We do have an art-direction direction, but fully intend to stay loose and playful as we go. The last thing we want is something cold and clinical so please forgive the wonkiness.

What you see on lostmap.com right now is our starting point. The above animation is hidden behind the main banner and will play when you click. It was made incredibly quickly and features a wee snippet of music from the upcoming Monoganon album, F A M I L Y, which is set to be the first full-length Lost Map release. It's brilliant, by the way. Incidentally, John B. Monoganon (MonogaJohn?) is good value on Vine.

From here on out, things'll get colourful.

Visit the site to download a free sampler, featuring music by Monoganon, Rozi Plain, The Pictish Trail, Kid Canaveral, eagleowl, Seamus Fogarty and Randolph's Leap. You can also follow @lostmaprecords on Twitter and like Lost Map on Facebook.

Stay tuned x