Lo; post-it note book number five!

It’s the customary ‘I’ve filled up another post-it book!’ post!

Book number five spans from late 2018 to summer 2019 – about a year and a half. Across that time, I put 720 notes into my book, at a rate of at least one a day, as one gets put on the social medias every day too.

Every page from my fifth sketchbook full of illustrated post-it notes

It’s not just the dailies though – I use post-it notes to sketch out other things too. In this looping, blink-of-the-eye video, I’ve tried to highlight some of the notes that have already become other things.

These books are such a valuable trove of ideas for me, I’m sure more is going to come of them over time!

Clean-up in Sector Six

I created the above illustration for Barbican’s Sci-fi poster competition. Clean-up in Sector Six imagines a team of domesticated robots commissioned to travel into junk orbit and collect the space junk that is floating out there. Inside their rocket ship, they dismantle the trash they capture, and after sorting it for valuables, use the rest as fuel for their engine that powers the ship. They’re kind of like space wombles! Of course, because their job is cleaning, they can’t help cleaning up their ship perpetually as well.

Here we see a robot vacuuming the vacuum chamber

I do like to think about junk orbit from time to time. Some of the stuff floating around up there would have been the most expensive objects ever created in their time. Now they just hover around out there, trying not to cause any accidents. Kind of like how I feel on the internet.

Another Post-it sketchbook is filled

Since I started making an effort to publish a new Post-it note every day, these books have been filling up a lot faster! I filled up my latest sketchbook in February, and it covers the time from Summer 2015 to now. It’s like watching my life flash before my eyes!

US Presidential Election Diary 2016

US Presidential Election Diary 2016Where's The Beef?

The hardest part about drawing a new illustration on a Post-it note every single day is coming up with the idea. The horrors of the US presidential election campaign, though, provided plenty of low-hanging fruit. Join me as we look back across the past year-or-so in horror – it’s the scariest American invention since Halloween!

The Primaries

Bernie Bucket

16th November 2015:

Panic ensues in Rickmansland over whether Bernie is a Sanders or a Sanders. I remember back to my Year 9 English class, taught by a Mr. Sanders, who stipulated he was Sanders, and not like the KFC mascot. Unfortunately for me, sixteen years later I can’t remember which was which.

Trumpolini

8th December 2015:

If it wasn’t already obvious, the New-York-based reality television star has clarified that he will be campaigning for president on the platform of good old-fashioned fascism.

Imaginary

12 February 2016:

I wonder to myself, if this person is as powerful as he believes himself to be, then why does he have to prefix his twitter handle with the word ‘real’? Is it to differentiate himself from an imaginary Donald Trump? Who is actually a nice person? And not totally self-absorbed?

dump

24 February 2016:

It finally dawns on me: This is Biff from Back To The Future running for President of the United States! This man-child behaves like a cartoon high-school bully. Why doesn’t half of America seem to mind!?

Super Tuesday 2016

1st March 2016:

Super Tuesday is here, and the field is thinning out. Republicans are left choosing from a rotund vessel of chopped animal organs, a folding ironing board, and a pair of unwashed sports socks. Across the aisle, Democrats are forced to choose between an angry duck and a half-eaten sandwich. The two-party system works!

Down at 7/11

19th April 2016:

BBC News:

“It’s very close to my heart because I was down there, and I watched our police and our firemen down at 7/11, down at the World Trade Center right after it came down, and I saw the greatest people I’ve ever seen in action,” Mr Trump said.

"Again"

10th June 2016:

One way to make ‘again’ make sense

Grate

18th July 2016:

Wannabe-despot seeks running mate to aid in campaign to Make America Grate Again

The Campaign Proper

I'm With...

2nd August 2016:

The election in one drawing

WrongWrong

8th October 2016:

After the Billy Bush tape is unearthed, the humanoid with expired toothpaste for hair is forced to make an admission.

Locker-room Talk

10th October 2016:

I guess it wasn’t worth apologising for after all, it was just ‘Locker-room Talk’. I guess if you look at it this way…

Frump

12th October 2016:

The Republican candidate attempts to set things straight in the wake of the Billy Bush tape:
“Nobody has more respect for women than I do, nobody”

Debate Notepad

20th October 2016:

As my American voyager and I watch the final debate of the campaign, I wonder to myself what exactly Hillary is marking down behind her lectern?

Huge Vacuum

28th October 2016:

Mr Reality-TV has been attributing the creation of America’s enemies to the ‘huge vacuum’ that Obama and Clinton left behind in the middle east. ‘I wish someone would come and collect it’, the locals think to themselves.

Thank goodness it’s all over tomorrow. Let’s hope we wake up in a peaceful world on Wednesday!

Twelve Panel Story

CES is in full swing this week, and its many slightly-robotic household appliances cast my mind back to a series of Post-It notes I drew a while ago. Here’s a twelve-panel story about the rise and fall of my domestic robot (now with a splash of colour)!

12panels

I hope they find a better power source than bunny rabbits soon, my carpets are getting filthy!

New Portfolio Page: Rough Rhythms

Wax Prints at a market in Rwanda

Something that really captured my imagination while travelling around Africa last summer was the dutch/wax print fabrics that were popular in Rwanda. As is plainly obvious, I’m a total sucker for bright colours, but what I also loved was the sheer madness of the designs themselves.

Like the woman casually walking down the street with the weight of a small Vespa in potatoes balanced on her head, wearing a dress adorned with chevrons and plaice fish. Or this cheerful lady wearing a skirt emblazoned with itnernational currency symbols:

No Sterling

It really made me wonder how they settle on the random objects to turn into these wonderful patterns. I love a good pattern, and I love drawing strange things, so I’ve gathered up some of the irregular patterns I’ve been drawing into this new page on my portfolio.

brollies

oranges

I’ve put a set of ten up in the portfolio – look at them here! It’d be amazing to see a pattern I drew turned into fabric one day. I would be so honoured!

Rickmansworth: my modernist motherland

I live in Rickmansworth. It isn’t really fair to call it my motherland; I just couldn’t resist the alliteration! I might not have been born or brought up here, but I have been living here for a good few years now and am kinda attached to it. In fact, the townspeople seem to like having me here too, as every May, they get together and celebrate ‘Ricky Week’!

At Ricky Week a couple of years back, the church at the bottom of my street opened its tower to the public, so Lilly and I went up there as it offered a nice view over our village. While we were up there, I overheard an older fella muttering about how the village has been ruined by all the modern architecture.

Continue reading “Rickmansworth: my modernist motherland”

Vote for my horse on Threadless!

I have a T-Shirt design up for voting on Threadless! Yes, this is my first design that has actually made it to the voting stage, and now it needs all the help it can get.

It’s such a happy horse- why wouldn’t you want to see it on a T-Shirt? If it walked into a bar, the bartender wouldn’t ask ‘why the long face?’. It’s that happy!

I really wanted to submit this for a kid’s T-Shirt design, but I couldn’t see a way to do that independently. If you grown-ups like it though, great! Wouldn’t it make you smile if you saw someone walk past you with him on their chest?!

Please vote for it, especially if you like it! Get all your friends and all your enemies to vote too! Yeah!

Here he is, modelling his own T-Shirt. Yeahh! Vote!!

 
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