St. Thomas Primary

For 2 days I'd been working at St. Thomas Primary in Meadowhead, working alongside Year 2 and Year 3 pupils for their "Making History" Project. It was a very enthralling and engaging experience working with young enthusiastic children whom were very sweet and very bright.

The two mural pieces are interpretations of the children's input, where they would give me themes to draw or randomly find me in the day and suggest other things I should put into the murals. The looks on their faces at the end of each day was worth aching arms and back (my aching arms and back)

These pieces will be used in conjunction with a traveling caravan museum which the School will bring into the second phase of the "Making History" Project.

New Self Portrait

I thought it was about time to update my little self portrait I normally use for my avatars etc. Looking at my older one showed me how far I've come in terms of my drawing and how I go about choosing colours etc. It's always interesting to see whether you've progressed (or regressed) over time.

OLD

NEW

Stars in Stripes Launch Evening

A couple of nights ago was the launch of the first Stars in Stripes exhibition, and I can say it was a grand launch. I wouldn't want to go into the whole prepping and building of the show as it was a lot of hard graft but a rewarding experience when we saw scores of Sheffield folk making the trip to Rotherham to come see us and support us.

Through out the day there was plenty to do with cleaning and mounting the work and setting up the bar, but after a few bottled of ale, all that didn't seem to matter. I was really happy with the amount of work on show from all of the 12 artists and it really hit me to see how far we'd all come since creating the Stars in Stripes group. We've secured jobs from Sheffield City council and Fright Night as well decorating bars such as The Harley and The Wick at Both Ends, sometimes you forget about these things and how much work is involved.

A big thanks has to go Peter Martin who's had to put up with all of us artists, and he's become someone I consider as a good colleague at the end of it, I hope out of all of us he feels the most smug about how the show was pulled off. I wouldn't go so far to say it was a total Berlin vibe on the night but it really wasn't that far off, taking a step back and seeing skateboarders hurling themselves around the space doing tricks was a little far from the norm but created an independent vibe which I've never experienced before at an exhibition opening.

To see more pictures from the evening they'll be posted on the Stars in Stripes website here.

New Website Banner

Heres my new website display banner, which I'm quite smitten with. I've been meaning to update my website for a while and it seems I'm never too happy with my layouts and such but this time Ithink this will stick around for a while. Check it out at getaloadageo.co.uk

The Stars in Stripes Take Over Rotherham

Since the beginning of December 2010 I and the other illustrators of the Stars In Stripes have been busy drawing onto the windows a giant indoor space owned by the Open Minds Theatre group. Armed with paint rollers, emulsion and posca pens we've scrawled on all of the windows and gathered an extensive back catalogue of our live art work from the past 2 years ranging from Tramlines to the SOYO live art events.

We base ourselves as a Sheffield collective and we're very honoured to have been invited to Rotherham to show the city what we can do, our current Rotherham resident, Sarah Abbott has taken the lead and put her signature floral style to good use, linking all the work together with her linear and bold patterns.

We're curating our first group show under the Stars In Stripes banner in the centre of Rotherham for 2 weeks only and we're going to kick start it with an opening evening on Thursday 27th January where we'll be drawing on t-shirts, putting DJs on to spin some tracks and selling cupcakes, cakes and raffle tickets. I'm sure if I mention that there will be beverages and hot drinks it might perk some attention too.

Some Recent Work

Heres a showcase of some work I've been commissioned for this month.

Dead Young Records - Allo Darlin'

The boys from Leeds at Dead Young Records asked me to quickly knock up a gig poster for Allo Darlin' an intricate indie pop band from the US. I'm pleased with this design as photoshop is becoming more of a presence in my work for neat little effects.

PLUG - Jump Around Valentines Tattoos

For the Valentines Night at Plug, they've asked me to design some temporary tattoos for their traffic light party. The premise is that people put these tattoos on themselves to indicate if they're available, taken or a bit curious.

Covert Sound System

As some of you may know I've been working on the Covert Soundsystem promotion material over the past year. Covert is an electronic music night held at Plug night club every Friday night here in Sheffield, as the popularity has grown so has the artwork, the owners wanted the artwork to evolve and become collectible. Heres the design for the front of the new February flyer run.

Berlin, Baby!

Just got back from a trip to Berlin, I'd managed to wrangle my way into the international fashion tradeshow, Bread and Butter to have a gander at the new autumn and winter collection of clothing from brands such as Supreme Being, Lacoste, Fred Perry, Penfield, Your Eyes Lie, you name them they were all there. I went along to Germany with my buddies, urban culture blogger Thomas Pham and modern day couture artiste, Ceri who also enjoyed a trip of sight seeing and boutique hunting.

I was well impressed with amount of free goodies on offer from the Threadless stall, namely some nice badges and their own brand of notebook! I sadly missed out on meeting the artist Simone Legno who works on the Italian Tokidoki range as he was also present at the trade show but with so many stalls to see and so many people to talk to, the 2 days we were at the show just became a big blur, a tiring one at that.

Getting out of the country does something good for the soul and feeds into the imagination, whilst away I was doodling a lot and preparing myself for some big work I will be conducting for a new venue in Sheffield and some London offices in Kings Cross. These projects I will elaborate later in some future blog posts. Heres a little sketch to show you what will be coming up.