WIWT 2022 | 01

While I don't strictly set any New Year's resolutions, one of my goals for 2022 is to draw more. That's an odd goal for a proffessional illustrator but one of the weird quirks of the game is that drawing very much becomes work and work is something that's easy to put off. And I'm very good at putting things off.

I'd like to change that. Drawing more ONLY leads to good things.

This is a drawing of what I'm wearing today. I do these WIWT drawings from time-to-time after finding Gemma Correll's brillso WIWT Flickr group many moons ago.

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

This Will Ruin Everything at The Lighthouse

In my previous post, I mentioned that, alongside their 10-year retrospective book (which was successfully Kickstarted - dancer!), Recoat are putting on a huge group show called This Will Ruin Everything at The Lighthouse in Glasgow. I said I'd write more about it nearer the time. Well, it's nearer the time, so here's me writing more about it.

This Will Ruin Everything opens on Friday (14th July). I dropped off my work at The Lighthouse this morning and got a wee glimpse. It looks amazing. TWRE features work by 40 amazing artists (39 + me) from all over the world who have worked with and/or influenced Recoat over the last 10 years. Every artist is tasked with submitting a piece of 'art' and a piece of 'design' and the exhibition deals with where the boundaries of both disciplines fall.

The space is FULL of great work - paintings, drawings, sculpture, records, clothing etc. and will expand further over the next few days with murals and installations. It's probably gonna be Recoat's best show to date and will be a contender for the best show in Glasgow this year.

The launch party is on Friday 6-9pm. It's free entry, open to all, and will have free beer provided by my pals, Innis & Gunn. Recoat openings are a great laugh whether you're an art show regular or a total newbie. There's no snobbishness at these things, just a bunch of good folk and a bunch of amazing work. It'll be really busy so you don't need to mingle or anything if that's not your bag (though say hello if it is). Make it part of your Friday night.

Beyond that, This Will Ruin Everything runs until the 30th of July so you can stop in when it's a bit quieter too. Amy and Ali are also hosting some events in the space (talks, film screenings etc.). More info about that stuff can be found over on the This Will Ruin Everything Facebook page.

The details at a glance:

This Will Ruin Everything
The Lighthouse, Glasgow
Mitchell Lane (just off Buchanan St.)
15th - 30th July
Open Mon-Sat 10.30am-5pm / Sunday 12-5pm

Opening Party
14th July 2017
6-9pm
Free Entry

Featuring work by:
44 Flavours, Ade Adesina, Jennifer Argo, ASKEW, Will Barras, Erin Bradley Scott, Rebecca Davies, Elph, EMA, FiST, Emily Fong, David Galletly, Good Wives and Warriors, Fraser Gray, Lee Ivett, Jamie Johnson, Kid Acne, Chris Macfarlane, Mark Lyken, Lucy MacLeod, R.Liwen, Tommy Mason, Neil McGuire and Imogen Ayres, Lucy McLauchlan, Martina Merlini, Matt Mignanelli, Matt,W.Moore, Morag Myerscough, Nawer, Tommy Perman, Gabriella ‘Risotto’ Marcella, Roid MSK, Rue Five, Emer Tumilty, Al White, Kirsty Whiten, Maya Wild, Susie Wright, Denise Zygadlo

So there you go. There's a great interview with Recoat about This Will Ruin Everything in the Skinny which is definitely worth a read. If you want to share this post or anything else about the show, that would be massively appreciated. Official orders are to use the hashtag #thiswillruineverything. I'm really proud to be part of this project and I'm really proud of Amy and Ali. Well done guys. Here's to 10 more years x

Come along. Support the arts. Have fun.

Jonathan Demme / Stop Making Sense / David Byrne GIF

I didn't know too much about Jonathan Demme, who died yesterday, other than that he directed The Silence of The Lambs and Stop Making Sense. Even if he did nothing else, that's a hell of a CV.

I remember first reading that Stop Making Sense was 'the greatest concert film ever made' in Q Magazine when I got into music as a teenager but I never watched it. It floated in my periphery for years before I finally bought the DVD in Fopp for a fiver.

A decade of hearing that something is unequivocally the best had me ready for disappointment but I was sold before Psycho Killer (the first song) was over. Stop Making Sense is the best. If you've never seen it, you should. Look, here it is here:

Seeing clips from SMS all over Twitter put me in the mood to sit down and watch the whole thing. I had my iPad to hand at the time and I started doodling David Byrne dancing in his big suit. The doodle became a couple of poses which became an animated gif (above).

I also added some music and put it on my Instagram. He dances in time! That was a lucky accident.

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.

Lacey Baker Kickflip Illustration

Lacey Baker just put out a great part on Thrasher. I was so hyped on her kickflips I put pen to paper or, um, Apple Pencil to iPad. I didn't quite get her likeness right but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out for a quick little drawing.

I swing back and forth on drawing skateboarding stuff. On one hand it's really fun, plus I know enough of the nerdery to get the details right. On the other, I'm totally aware that there's the risk of becoming an uncool fan-art machine and ostracising myself from the entire industry (that I've never worked in but might like to one day).

Anyway, watch Lacey's part. She's great.

BTW if you follow skateboarding, Chris Roberts' The Nine Club is probably the best skate podcast at the moment. For such a creative, picky bunch, you think there'd be more skater-run audio out there that wasn't totally unlistenable. Good on C-Rob for raising the standard. Good guests too.

Animation Showreel

Although I'm not an animator, I often have reason to make animations. Sometimes they're pretty full-on but mostly they're small and silly. I've now made enough to edit together this showreel, though I'm kinda reluctant to call it that (I'm not an animator after all).

While most of the work isn't exactly slick, I'm pretty happy looking over everything as a whole. I had a lot more stuff than I was expecting and I can definitely see a style starting to form. Most of the included animations were completed in an afternoon or two as I was usually working to a short illustration deadline rather than a longer animation one. This, combined with the fact that I'm not an animator, is my get-out-of-jail-free excuse for any and all wonkiness.

If you haven't seen them before, the three longest animations I've made are The Dancing Lion for Pringle 1815, You Only Went Out to Get Drunk Last Night for Kid Canaveral and the Snow Giant for Lost Map's 2016 online Advent calendar (which I'll write about properly soon). The Kid Canaveral video was my first try at stop-motion and, in retrospect, it could've done with more time spent on lighting / framing / white balance.

I hope to animate some more throughout 2017. To trot out the old cliché, it's really satisfying seeing drawings come to life. Playing through a sequence for the first time is fun - you kinda know how it's going to look but seeing things actually move is always surprising. I find myself laughing at my own work fairly regularly, which is good.

The music in my showreel is by the fantastic Jonnie Common. The track is a remix of 'Bed Bugs' by the also fantastic GRNR. I chopped it down into a short instrumental version but you should listen to the original. Also worth watching is their live version for BBC Radio Scotland.

BTW, if the video looks particularly grubby, make sure you're playing in HD. Oh, and subscribe to my YouTube channel if that's your bag.

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.

All the 3s

In 2001, I bought a bunch of CDs on Fence, one of which was King Creosote's 12 O’Clock on the Dot. I was 18 and had just started my degree.

I can vividly remember listening to the album on the little stereo in our studio after my classmates had gone home. I was working in my sketchbook and it was raining outside.

For whatever reason, All the 3s caught my ear. It's a short, funny song about ageing, specifically about turning 33. I've uploaded an extract here:

33 seemed forever away. 2001 to 2016. 15 years. No matter how you square it, 15 years is a big chunk of life. My 20s hadn't started yet - in 15 years they'd be done and dusted. At 18, I'd barely had a drink. I'd barely had a girlfriend. 15 years was definitely forever away.

The idea stuck in my head and I've thought about All the 3s on every birthday since.

Yesterday I turned 33.

Left: me at 18 (I think). Right: me today, at 33.

What's happened in 15 years? Things: I graduated. I went to the pub. My 20s. I got married. I bought a flat. All these things feel like they happened yesterday. 15 years is no time at all.

I still feel exactly the same. I still own 12 O’Clock on the Dot. I still work in my sketchbook. It's raining outside.

I've got all my hair and I've got all my teeth (going by Facebook, that puts me ahead of some of my schoolmates). I'm carrying about 10lbs more than I should be. Here's a time-lapse of me trying to sort that out:

I imagine I'll continue to think about All the 3s every July. My 33rd birthday'll be further behind me each year and, instead of being some beacon of age, it'll be a memory of my youth (albeit one that I'll swear just happened).

15 years only feels like forever when you look this-a-way. When you look that-a-way, it's yesterday.

Boris Shat It

There's lots of big news going on in the UK. Yesterday's was big enough to compel me to put pen to paper (or Apple Pencil™ to iPad™).

Shitey Boris here spread fairly widely, probably because it's so stupid. He even got politicised TO THE MAX by the amazing Jez Burrows.

Big thanks to anyone who shared him and hello to any new pals.

WIWT: Glasgow International / iPad Pro Edition

The launch of the new, smaller, iPad Pro coincided closely enough with some money burning a hole in my pocket that I had all the excuses I needed to pick one up. I've been long considering a portable setup for digital drawing and, compared to a laptop + small Wacom, the Baby Pro + Apple Pencil was a no-brainer.

While I've not used the Pencil enough to have it sussed, I'm definitely impressed. The drawings I've made on the iPad Pro feel like my drawings and I've already been able to send roughs over to a client that were created entirely on the device.

This quick wee WIWT drawing was made in Pixelmator, one of the many iOS image editors that support the Pencil. It's a good app. One thing that I didn't expect when I picked up the Pro is the potential for working cross-platform. Pixelmator can ping images straight into Dropbox as PSDs, meaning you can open up (layered!) drawings in Photoshop on your Mac. That's incredibly useful.

Anyway, WIWT drawings (What I Wore Today) are a thing I do from time to time. Here's what I wore when I set out to visit some Glasgow International preview shows. The descriptions may-or-may-not be retrospective rubbish about things I was already wearing (and wear most every day).

Also worth mentioning: this post was written, formatted and posted using iOS too. I still prefer to work on a computer, but these wee machines are definitely becoming more useful to the way I work.

Jonnie Common - Kitchen Sync

Jonnie Common has made an album using only sounds from his kitchen! It’s called Kitchen Sync and is available for preorder on Song, By Toad Records as a digital download and as a set of limited edition fridge magnets(!). This blog post has more info.

I've worked with Jonnie on a few things now and he's asked me back to draw some bits and pieces for Kitchen Sync. My work features in Jonnie's promo video (above) but I've also dotted some of my favourites around here as animated gifs.

Because I didn't have much time to spare, these are all first-try little drawings of the different 'instruments'. Some are pretty wonky (bottles, I'm looking at you), but I'm happy with how they turned out.

Once I'd scanned everything, I added a little animation using Photoshop. Again, there's some perspective dodginess going on here and there but I'll hold on tight to my 'don't blame me, I'm not really an animator' excuse forever.

To launch Kitchen Sync, Jonnie is playing a couple of live shows in Glasgow and Edinburgh in early April. I’m 100% positive that they’ll be amazing. Jonnie says he’s gonna go into the process of making the record as well as performing some of the tracks live.

I've had a preview copy of Kitchen Sync for a while now. It's beautiful - all instrumental and ambient and intriguing. It's also got some of the best song titles going: Harder, Faster, Washer, Dryer?.. C'mon! That's textbook JC.

Big thanks to Jonnie for having me on board. Go buy the record.

Skateboarder, Glasgow

I've started drawing people I see around Glasgow. Partly for fun, partly for practice, partly as documentation for something or other. I'll try to share some here from time to time.

This guy was at Kelvingrove skatepark in Glasgow. I was feeling his camo trousers. I'm frustrated that I can't remember what brand of shoes, jumper and skateboard he was rocking.

Someone out there probably knows him. If you do, please keep it to yourself because that's pure embarrassing and I'd like to go to the skatepark without feeling more uncomfortable than I already do (I'm old and not very good). Cheers.

Valentine's Twig

Happy Valentine's Day!

I've been drawing in my sketchbook more than usual recently in a conscious effort to get better at, y'know, everything. Last night I drew a twig* and posted it on Instagram.

I put a cleaner version down on paper this morning. It's rare that I'll have a stand-alone drawing these days and I figured someone might like it so I slapped it up on my online shop for £24 (pretty reasonable, I reckon) and pointed Twitter its way. Someone snapped it up within half an hour. Easy peasy.

The whole process went so smoothly that I'll probably try it again in the future. Even if nobody buys anything, it's incentive for me to draw and share more stuff, and that's something I'd like to do.

So aye, follow me on Twitter (@davidgalletly) and on Instagram (also @davidgalletly, and where I'll probably share my next drawing) if you'd like the chance to snag some discounted originals.

* ps. I started a little Sketchbook Blog for posting odds-and-ends that don't belong anywhere else.