The List: Sex Issue

I've put together a few drawings for the latest issue of The List. It's the sex issue so, y'know, there's entendres doubling-up all over the place. The deadline was quite a short one and there was quite a few drawings needed so I'm still undecided whether I got away with it or not - I hope I did. A learning experience through-and-through. The weirdest part is that Alex & I are now officially cover stars thanks to our modelling for the image above. Brilliant!

I was super happy to be asked to work on the project. Getting to draw balls for a living is a dream, of sorts. The rest of the illustrations will make their way to my website eventually - in the meantime, pick up the magazine from all good newsagents and have a gander. Inside you'll find all sorts of secrets from behind the closed curtains of good, honest Scottish people.

Right, I've got to get back to work. I'm putting together something I'm very excited about. Fingers-crossed I don't arse it up. It should be up on this old blog by the end of the week for your eyes (...and ears!) to form an opinion on.

Buchanan Street at Christmas

While looking through my camera I found this crazy little clip of Buchanan Street in Glasgow a couple of days before Christmas. Sorry it's a bit shoogly. (looks best in HD)

Penfall'd

Since moving to a flat with wooden floors, I've broken countless nibs by accidentally knocking my pen off the desk. Today I ruined one with a flourish.

Actually, it might be fine. Tough little beggar.

Homegame Logo

Every year for the past, I dunno, 5, we've attended Fence's fantastic Homegame up in Anstruther. So how chuffed do you think I was when Johnny asked me to put together a logo for this year's festival? Exactly, Chuffington World of Adventures.

Now, logo design isn't something I've ever particularly had a knack for, but I gave it a go nonetheless. After a false-start or two I finally settled on the above. My Homegame logo was constructed entirely from collaging together letters and shapes from an old, old stamp collecting book of my Dad's (not the stamps, just using the book itself). All the little scraggles and wonks are genuine been-in-the-loft-for-50-years scraggles and wonks.

Also, I unconsciously managed to hark back to Kirsty Thomas' lovely cut-out design from last year, with the bunting-esque elements. A good thing!

As for the festival - get yourself there if at all possible, it's always brilliant fun. I've posted about it many times on this here blog. Head to fencerecords.com for details of acts, tickets, times, dates etc. etc. Perhaps I will see you there, dogg.

The Follow Friday Rule

On Twitter, on Friday, it's a wee tradition to recommend your favourite people out to those who follow you. A nice way to help funny/interesting/entertaining folk gain a larger audience. These tweets usually comprise of a little #ff hashtag and a list of names. Simple and effective.

Well, kinda. I've noticed a little problem that can sometimes occur because of the way Twitter handles @ mentions. It is not a fault with Twitter at all, just something that can catch people out when they're trying to be nice. Here we go:

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THE FOLLOW-FRIDAY RULE:

When composing a Follow-Friday tweet, do not start it with an @ symbol. Doing so will restrict who can see the post to those mentioned in the tweet and to people already following those mentioned, defeating the purpose of the tweet.

or,

TO MAKE SURE YOUR #FF TWEET REACHES EVERYONE WHO FOLLOWS YOU, START IT WITH ANYTHING BUT AN @

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Now, I'm not the most eloquent of writers so that might not be the clearest thing to follow (ho ho). The formatting of this blog probably doesn't help either. I'll give some examples that might help explain a little better, starting with the wrong way. Imaginary tweets in bold with imaginary usernames:

@personA, @personB, @personC - check these guys out #ff

Bad! Twitter presumes this tweet is for @personA and hides it from the timeline of anyone who isn't either mentioned in the tweet or already follows at least one of those mentioned. This means that your recommendation is mostly being seen by people who already know about the people you're trying to promote. Silly Billy. A much better way to go about it would be either:

#ff @personA, @personB, @personC - check these guys out

or

check these guys out #ff - @personA, @personB, @personC

Good! Make sense? Oh, probably not. Anyway, the idea is that if you start with anything but an @ symbol, Twitter rightly presumes the tweet is public and it goes out to every single person who follows you. People find out about new people and everyone wins.

Jeez, if someone wants to write that out more clearly, go for it. If you found this useful in any way, please point people here (use the tweet this button below). If you don't use Twitter and this was just an impenetrable wall of rubbish, I'm sorry. Also, follow me.

SLAP: One In A Million

This is another little thing I've been meaning to post for a while, mainly because it's currently running and if I leave it too late, I'll have missed the boat.

Every year, Slap magazine run a contest called One In A Million with the intent of finding up-and-coming skateboarders and giving them a little career leg-up. A handful of dudes are taken to some spots around San Francisco for a week or two to film tricks. Everyone gets a nice little bit of exposure and the fellow deemed most worthy gets hooked up with some sponsors.

This year's contest is a particularly good watch, however, thanks to it being put together in a slightly more reality-show manner than previous editions. There's no major 'drama' or clever twists, just a fair smattering of off-board footage and interviews mixed in with the skating.

As you know, every reality show needs a baddie and one dude in particular, Forrest Edwards, ain't there to make friends. Possessing both an incredible talent for skateboarding (360 flip 50-50 clipper!) and an incredible talent for not keeping his big mouth shut, Forrest is causing ripples by many a water-cooler (well, messageboard) by talking trash and generally isolating himself from the other, more light-hearted, contestants.

Of those other chaps, I'm a big fan of Matty Hunt - we short dudes gotta stick together. He's easily winning on style-points at least, his switch tre about a minute in to episode 12 is tasty. I also love his ridiculous full part on Youtube. John has been consistently killing-it (as they say), his dicing-with-death hillbomb (top of page) is terrifying. Mango seems incapable of having a bad time and Reuben seems an all-round nice chap.

Anyone with even the hint of a curiosity, check out episode 1 and go from there. They're only a few minutes a pop so it's not gonna take much of your time. Sorry to all non skate fans who would rather scratch out their eyes than watch any of this rubbish. New episodes on Slap every Mon, Wed, Fri.

Oh Comely Magazine

Really should've posted this up a little sooner but, well, the whole Christmas thing happened. No harm done.

I have contributed a few small drawings to the latest (Jan/Feb) issue of the absolutely-bloomin-fantastic magazine Oh Comely. They accompany a lovely article that asked people to go out and meet their neighbours. Rachel Clare Price, Angela Chick and myself were asked to venture onto the Google Street View locations of said neighbours and interpret their houses.

The magazine is available all over the place - either via these stockists or in your local WH Smith. To see all five of my drawings, they're up on my site here. To see them at their best, buy the magazine! (it's a good read, honest)

Goodbye 2010

Hello! Happy new year! After a small festive break away from bloggington, I'm hoping to get back in the swing of things and to take my humble wee website 2-tha-nxt-lvl (see, already started). If all goes according to plan I'll be posting more interesting things, more often, starting NOW. I also hope to get a little better at actually writing stuff too - as you might (may?) have noticed, I'm a bit clunky.

The photo montage above is the third instalment of the chronological 12 photos / 12 months thing I do every year (2008 is here / 2009 is here). A trilogy! Not bad going. As always, it's not strictly 12 pictures to a month, mainly because of a few camera issues that meant I had to shuffle stuff around. The photos aren't great either but they're not really supposed to be - just silly wee snapshots from my silly wee year.

2010 was great. Quite a quiet one, but that's ok. It wasn't bad work-wise, pretty good home-wise. No complaints. How about you? I hope you had a good one. I'm really excited about 2011 now though. It's all creaking into motion and, fingers crossed, it'll be THE BEST YEAR THERE'S EVER BEEN.

Hello 2010, you're looking well x