There’s not much to say about Vlad the Impaler’s great nephew apart from the fact that he is a major disappointment to the whole family. Everyone expected him to take over where his uncle left off but in this new world full of modern marvels he seems more interested in playing Fortnite than the casual impaling of thousands.
Another reason why he doesn’t want to get into the old family business is due to the case of chronic asthma which he‘s had since childhood. If he ever finds himself outside he pretty much needs a respirator pumping albuterol straight down his gullet.
If recent news stories are to be believed though he might be causing untold suffering just by going outside and breathing due to the fact that inhalers have an incredibly high carbon footprint.
So as to not be a continuing disappointment to his family he has used his vast bitcoin wealth to buy up all the companies who supply the more environmentally friendly dry powder inhalers so he can run them into the ground. His great uncle would perhaps be proud after all. And he can stop that spinning in his grave malarky…
A fool’s errand is a task or activity that has no hope of success. A fool is a person who acts unwisely or imprudently; a silly person or a jester or clown, especially one retained in a royal or noble household.
Isot Maddrell wasn’t entirely sure if it was just her or if everybody got treated like this. She was fresh out of school and had only had a few small jobs but it seemed to happen every time.
When she was working part time at the pizzeria her boss would send her to the fridge to look for things that didn’t exist, like the dough repair kit, then burst out laughing when she’d come back empty handed. When her dad managed to wangle her a junior role in a very well known Michelin starred restaurant the head chef there delighted in asking her to fetch the souffle pump. In all fairness Isot was a hard worker and was really just trying to be helpful but her bosses always left her feeling like she was the butt of the joke.
That was until the day she decided that working for other people was just another form of indentured servitude. She is now a famous international artist known for her many idiosnycratic works such as Glass Hammer (2011), Can of Steam (2012), Dough repair kit (2012), tin of tartan paint (2013), sound powered phone batteries (2016) and Brick bender (2015). ‘Who’s the fool now?’ Isot chuckles to herself as she spends yet another weekend in San Tropez…
Doesn’t everyone enjoy design book covers for their fictional book featuring none other than hard drinking human/goat hybrid biker Glen Fandango? Here’s the only excerpt I’ve actually written from ‘The Wild One’:
In the silence that blossomed you could have heard a pin drop. No one knew quite what to say. It wasn’t so much that they couldn’t comprehend the words more that they were agog at the person who was presenting them. Glen Fandango stood a shade over 7ft tall (including his horns) and was dressed in the leathers of a now defunct biker gang. He glanced round the puzzled faces and repeated his question ‘Can I get a beer please?’ The lady behind the bar was the first to gather her wits and she pivoted towards the beer tap with a glass in her hand without either taking her eyes off him or saying a word.
As he waited for the beer he casually surveyed the other people in the bar before adding ‘I’m also looking for a bit of information. Does anybody here know an Alice Gerhardt?’ With that pronouncement the temperature in the room dropped a further few degrees as it would seem he had struck a nerve. Perfect, that was just what he wanted. Glen smiled. Not that you’d know it though as his goat face was largely inscrutable to the average person. It would seem that he was in the right place after all.
Glen had not had an easy life but it’s not all been his fault. Ever since his ‘father’ rescued him from a government lab in North Korea and escaped across the border to the south with the infant in his arms people have been pointing and whispering. A small measure of fame followed his arrival in Seoul and within a few years they had been invited to the USA to start a new life.
As a young kid, whilst his father continued his work in genetics for the US Department of Defense, he was relentlessly teased until his tormentors learned the hard way that the horns on his head weren’t just for decoration. This, in turn, led to an early involvement with the police. It’s one of the few relationships he’s managed to successfully maintain over the years. By the time his father died he was an angry young man with a chip on his shoulder and the face of a goat. The next decade was an epic spiral of booze, bikes and bad decisions. It was only after hitting rock bottom that he managed to come to terms with himself and emerge, not entirely unscathed, on the other side. Nowadays he’s (more or less) working on the side of the angels and if you can find him and convince him your case is worthy he is, without doubt, the best manhunter on the planet…
And that’s what I’ve got. Along with my carefully designed biker patch for his now defunct biker gang and his likeness sprayed on the side of an abandoned van. You can make the rest up yourself…
As anyone who’s stuck with us long enough will know we always like to put a little write up with our pieces. Maybe it’s to give them a little more context, maybe it’s to give us a reason for doing the work in the first place. Who knows? It’s all quite confusing. Usually the write ups come fairly easily and after a small bit of editing it’s good to go.
Today has been more problematic. We’ve both given a go to coming up with something suitable and so far we’ve got one which revolves around the use of a poor double entendre – purple acai (tea)/purple Aki and one which involves a failed love triangle called ‘He promised her a lavender wedding’. The only thing they have in common is that they both feature a lady called Margaret who owns a publishing company. Take from that what you will…
We got a few of our ‘God save the Queen’ designs printed up on kid’s t-shirts with Shoreditch Shorties (I think there are a few left if you’re interested in a little gift for the little terror in your life) and since we don’t have a child of the correct dimensions we gifted it to the lovely Ida. And doesn’t she just look pleased at her new gift.
As an aside the design itself is meant to reflect that a dwindling global bee population can only be bad news for puny humans as the bees pollinate an awful lot of the crops and flowers that we depend on for food. Without them we are somewhat doomed so it’s probably best if we take a bit better care of our little insect cousins and make sure they can continue doing their job. And, as a big bonus, they also know how to make honey. Without that we’d be left with wasp gravy and you wouldn’t want that on your morning toast.
An artist is never quite content. I had an idea to do something pattern based and relatively minimal as an attempt at something a little different. This is what I ended up with and whilst I like it I now want to put something over it so the crosses become the background. Which is what I’d usually do. But I wanted to try something different. It would appear I’m stuck in some sort of artist’s loop and don’t know how to get out.
This piece, as it currently stands, is available and on slate but how long it will stay like this is anyone’s guess. If you like it then drop us a line quick smart or it will probably morph into something else entirely…
What do you do when you have the urge to write your name in really big letters. As typography isn’t really our strong suit I decided that I would reel in my imagination and go for something a little more understated.
Of course, because I had decided to go for something understated I thought I had to go big in another way. It took me a little bit of time but I got there in the end, Colour. Colour has always been used in cultivating status, so I thought I might as well get in on it as well. After a little research, I decided upon the colour purple and you might be wondering why? According to surveys in Europe and North America, purple is the colour most often associated with rarity, royalty, magic, mystery, and piety and when combined with pink, it is associated with eroticism, femininity, and seduction. Purple is also associated with the deadly sins, due to the fact that it is a colour that attracts attention, so, therefore, has come to represent vanity. I think we can all agree, that’s a pretty special colour!
Last time we saw this design it was on paper and featured only the smaller wallpaper logo. Since then I’ve decided a more permanent and slightly larger commemorative artwork was appropriate so decided to do another version of the design on slate. For those new to class our local pub has closed recently. It lives now only in our memories. In better news however it’s hopefully due to reopen with new management after a bit of refurbishment. It’s unknown what they’ll be doing decor-wise so I thought it best to capture a little of it’s old character in case it disappears altogether.
Some of the old wallpaper was of indiscernible age but had a favourable design so I thought I’d generate a little commemorative artwork from that for no other reason than it seemed like a good idea at the time. What we’re left with is ‘time to drink’ featuring a modified wallpaper design featuring a little cocktail set and a skull and crossbones. And there you have it.
The year is 1981. The place is the newly opened Lion’s Den club in Miami’s South Beach. Our time-travelling warrior poet Azrael Goldbeard is taking some well earned time off in the early 80’s as he fancied a bit of some sun and some disco dancing. Although lesser known than it’s New York counterpart, Studio 54, the Lion’s Den is very much along the same lines. Debauchery is the name of the game and Goldbeard is very much enjoying his time here. He’s currently thinking about nipping back to 77 and see what all the fuss was about. It’ll be a while until he’s back in grim and grimy 2019…
In the middle of the Irish Sea is the beautiful Isle of Man. Now, legend has it that the island is protected by an ancient sea god called Mannanan Mac Lir (‘son of the sea’). He’s pretty baddass as he’s got a boat named Scuabtuinne (‘wave sweeper’) which works without sails, a sea-borne chariot drawn by his horse Enbarr (‘water foam’), a sword called Fragarach (‘the answerer’) and it is said that with the sword at their throat no one could move or tell a lie, thus the name Answerer. The sword was also said to place the wind at the user’s command and could cut through any armour or wall and that it inflicted piercing wounds from which no man could recover. He also had a cloak of invisibility (‘feth fiada’) which he could throw over the entire island as an all encompassing mist to hide the island from enemies. Like I said he pretty much had it all going on. Oh, and he had a flaming helmet to top it all off.
If all that isn’t enough in itself to create a design based on Mannanan then the fact that I’m from the Isle of Man myself should probably clinch it. It was originally going to be a wall design but I think it may need adapting somewhat for that to be the case. Perhaps a sticker? The latin text is the manx motto which roughly translated reads ‘however you throw me I shall stand’. So there you go.
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