Tom Bunning took some lovely photos

These are much better than the photos I took! Thanks Tom.

Last Week at Heavy Pencil

Thanks to John Slade and Andy Potts for making it such a great evening last week and bringing such a lovely crowd with them!  I had an excellent time. They worked with the colours used for their flyer which gave it all a really nice coherent style but even better they played music exclusively from film sound tracks which gave the evening a strong theme and made for an atmospheric set of pictures and sound.

Andy has also blogged about it here and John here, where he lists which songs were playing for each of the drawings.

Al Murphy

Al seems like a chirpy fellow.  Here are some cheery pictures and a petrol station in Berlin he made into a happy place rather than an environment ruining station.  www.al-murphy.com

Yeah February!

Bruno 9li

Ooh, such lovely work, what a shame he’s in Brazil (for us of course, for him i imagine it’s just perfect). After a surplus of owls, antlers and chimera perhaps the underwater world is the next big thing… Thanks Bruno.

Heavy East Pictures

Andrew Raw organised a Heavy Pencil Christmas special in East London with his own band The Marmosets playing, Luke Best and Nick White drawing as well as other multiple guests.  It was a great night and I was particularly impressed by the very well executed oversized pencils decorating the drawing area!

John Slade

Heavy Pencil and Little Pencil went into mini-hibernation in January but we’re back for February! John Slade is joining us with his friend and drawing companion Andy Potts (no relation to Paul).

They’re coming for Heavy Pencil on Feb 4th and John will be leading the Little Pencil workshop on the 5th.

I particularly like his collage work.

And this is a nice sketch from his blog

Heavy Pencil EAST

Andrew Rae has organsied this east end off-shoot of Heavy Pencil.  It should be lovely and lots of good people involved, like Luke Best, Nick White and The Marmosets.

Jiggery Pokery

Hot ladies with pencils – a lovely way to start any weekend. Click for more.

Hand Wash Studios Interview

Yann Brien aka Hand Wash Studios was one of the four illustrators to come down for last week’s Heavy Pencil in the theatre, he’s in the photo below with Rose Stallard.  And here is his interview.  What a nice fellow.

What are you working on today?
I’m just about to finish the little calendars I’m preparing for the
pop-up show on the 18th of december at the East Gallery. I am also working on a  series of new geometrical prints which should be ready at the beginning of  next year.

What are your main sources of inspiration?
Weird people and geometry.

What did you draw as a child?
Spacemen, mostly.

Do you work to music?
Generally not, as I have a very poor attention span.

Can you play an instrument?
I could play a few chords on a guitar a long time ago. I was in a couple of very obscure bands but we never played live. The last one was named Cyclostar and we had issues due to the fact we all played so badly. We rehearsed one song for 6 months and disbanded out of desperation. Mind you, I was in another band before named In  The Bus and we managed to record a track which ended on a 7″. This seminal  song called “Radioactive Coffee” never made it to the charts and the name  probably explains why…

Who are your favourite artists this week?
Art: Ray Johnson, Bruno Munari and John Baldessari.
Music: Moondog, Daniel Johnston, Sonic Youth, Eric Dolphy.

How important is music to your work?
The lyrics are an invaluable source of inspiration, but I tend to keep  both separate.

Is studying at the right place really important for illustrators/
designers?
Not in my view, although certain places provide you with better  connections than others.

What’s the best thing you learned at university?
Screenprinting, most definitely.