Hey Sholay

Sheffield based band, Hey Sholay have been making waves in the local scene as well as winning a poll with the NME to win a gig slot at this years EXIT fest in Serbia. I'm a big fan of their music with their galloping drum beats and distorted guitars and catchy melodies. Listening to their music paints a picture in my head of how I'd approach their artwork, even though two members of the band look after the artwork which is very fine art touching on illustrative angles.

Here I wanted to play with my use of water colour textures and a bit of linear pencil drawing, I had a lot of fun working in this, just purely because it's been ages since I've worked on any personal work.

Tramlines Hantu Collective Merch 2011

Heres the the design I've submitted for this years Tramlines Festival merchandise, and I'm pretty happy with it. I wanted to capture the fun and explosive vibe that's in the city for that one summer weekend a year. I love Tramlines as it transforms the city and theres always good bands to watch.

I'm happy with this collaboration between Hantu Collective and Frooly, both Sheffield based creative businesses and hopefully we'll be able to work on next years festival merch... providing they go down well this year. Hint hint.

You can order them through here -------->

Janelle Monae Portrait

After a while I'd noticed I haven't worked on many of my own personal pieces, the recent months have had me tied down to more commercial work. Sometimes it's good to vent creatively and I normally have hundreds of ideas or images in my head that I want to put down onto paper or in this case, screen.

I'm a big fan of Janelle Monae, especially her performance and public persona and the conceptual image she's put across in her music and videos. I've always wanted to adapt her portrait into one of my stylised pieces so I had a bash.

I tweeted her and she even responded to my first draft, saying she liked it, which made my day. I'll be sure to watch her perform at Glastonbury this year which I cannot wait for.

First draft:

Final Piece

I wanted to work another version of her smiling and laughing so I could have little robots dancing in her hair, maybe if I have the time I'll work on this version too...

Rolo Tomassi Hantu Collective Jumper

I've designed a new jumper print for the band Rolo Tomassi as some limited edition merchandise for the Hantu Collective. The brief was pretty simple, I was told that they like owls, so putting this together was easy to draw. I'm a big fan of the concentric circles because the owl here.

Wu-Tang vs. Jimi Hendrix Competition

On very short notice I entered a competition hosted by none other than The Wu-Tang Clan to design the new album cover for a mix done by Tom Caruana who's done a series of awesome hip hop mashups and mixes, most notably my personal favourite, Wu-Tang vs. The Beatles . The design brief is for the upcoming Wu-Tang vs. Jimi Hendrix. Instantly I knew I'd have to approach this project with my own take and style, and with a little help from some friends they directed me into using the iconic portrait of Jimi Hendrix . I also thought Purple Haze would have to play a part within the design too.

Eventually I managed to add more emphasis to the psychadelic patterns and purple smoke aswell as refine the faces of the original 9 member of the Wu. I thought putting RZA in the centre was a master stroke, as he is the main member of the clan. The font is one that Jimi Hendrix is known to have used on his previous albums and gig posters.

BUT sadly as of 24th May I found out that the design didn't make the cut, but if you're nosey enough you can see the design that did win the competition if you click here. Hopefully more opportunities like this will crop up in the future. Fingers crossed.

Sarah Mac Album Artwork

I'm still finding it hard to find a spare moment just so I can update my blog and keep things up to scratch. The past month I've been mainly working with local musicians in and around Sheffield. In particular, I've been a fan of Sarah Mac's blend of genre stroke pop song writing and instrumentals, she's even cooler and down to earth when you meet her in person so her music more or less fits well with her being.

I was asked by Liam at Mixed in Sheffield who's been mixing the album for Sarah, to produce some artwork for her new EP titled, Everyone Knows. Jumped at the chance, I instantly had an idea in my head, some might say slightly predictable and admitted the design concept was predictable on my part but I thought in context to what I know of Sarah Mac, it suits well.

GZA and My T-shirt

So heres photo evidence of GZA wearing the t-shirt I designed for him! (earler post, below) I'll admit I'm still feeling pretty smug about that but hopefully I'll be able to design t-shirts for the other remaining members of the Wu-Tang Clan in the coming years.

But for now you can read a more detailed post about the GZA t-shirt project on the Hantu Collective website.