Covid Colouring Book

In some deranged effort to exorcise all the coronavirus news that I’m constantly being bombarded with I thought perhaps the best way was to create a Covid Colouring Book with some of the many and varied things we’ve learned. Why? Well, because it seems we won’t have any paying work for the foreseeable and I’m not meant to leave the house so why not? It’s kept me amused for a number of hours thus far so it’s got that going for it at least. If you actually want to download them for colouring then drop us a line or do your best with some low-res download. 

Cheers

id-iom

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Glen Fandango – The Wild One

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… 

Cheers

id-iom

Skin & Bones

My book ‘Skin and Bones’ is now available on Amazon! (although only currently in digital format). It has been a labour of love that has been well over 2 years in the writing and another year trying to figure out what to do with it. So, if you ever wondered whether I can string a full sentence together now’s your chance to find out!

https://read.amazon.co.uk/kp/card?asin=B078YZX5VV&preview=inline&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_C4jxAb6807FPY

The zombie virus has already been released and chances are you’re already infected. It’s now just a matter of time. London is on the verge of a metamorphosis.

Skin and Bones is the story of a horrifying virus outbreak from two vastly different viewpoints. One is the person responsible for the horrifying global pandemic and one is an unnamed source who can do little more than respond to the primitive instinct for survival. There’s also a helpful cat named Mog and some zombie pigs…

If you buy it I’ll have a special place for you in my heart. If you like it I’ll love you even more. If it’s not down your alley but you’d like to help then please share this post and at least give me a fighting chance of hitting Hollywood.

S

Skin and Bones

Sooooo, I’ve written a zombie book called Skin & Bones. I’ve yet to do anything with it other than give it to a few friends to read so thought I’d remedy that by attempting some feeble marketing for it and giving it a shameless plug here. This text would ideally be the back of the book blurb. If you’re at all interested then drop me a line. Here’s what the text says:

This morning you woke up feeling a little unwell. You have no appetite, your head is aching, your throat is sore and you think you might have a slight fever. You don’t know it yet, but the zombie virus has already been working away inside you for a week or so and has been busy attacking your immune system. It’s reached the stage where it’s really about make it’s presence known.

Exactly when and where you were infected is unclear as it can take anything between 21 and 30 days from initial infection to the first proper symptoms. What is more certain is that you are now infectious yourself and have been for a while. Your family, friends and anyone else in close contact with you are all in mortal danger.

The next couple of days will determine if you are one of the lucky few who has some natural resistance and will, at least, survive the infection stage or not. In the highly probable event that you have no resistance then, at some time between 3 and 4 weeks after infection, you can expect the whites of your eyes to turn red, your vomit and diarrhoea will now be charged with infected blood and large blood blisters develop under your skin. You are now at the peak of infectiousness as the virus particles, eager to find their next victim, replicate swiftly inside your body.

What comes next is straight out of a movie. Your brain heats up and you become more aggressive as your mental faculties begin to deteriorate. At some point you’ll become unconscious and then the next time you open your eyes you will no longer be in control of yourself. You are now constantly hungry for human flesh and have the overriding urge to bite someone. Satisfying your cravings is now all your limited intellect can cope with. Congratulations, you are now a zombie.

Calling you a zombie would probably suffice in a pinch but isn’t quite correct however and the term ‘living dead’ would probably seem a better fit. But you won’t care. The virus has made permanent changes. From the second you were infected the grave is your only and eventual way out. At least by that point you’ll have no knowledge of what you’re doing. Just following some of the baser human instincts that have been modified and enhanced. Your end is nigh. Along with just about everybody else’s…

Cheers

id-iom

Skin & Bones tiny laser cut

Eagle eyed readers might recognise this little laser cut image as a tiny version of the image we did at UPfest last year. I was just seeing how small the laser cutter will reasonably do and how difficult that would be to paint. It turns out it is particularly tricky to paint at that scale.

Anyway, the image is related to a zombie book I’ve written called Skin & Bones that features some zombie pigs and in the spirit of attempting some feeble marketing for it I’m giving it a shameless plug here. If you’re at all interested in the book here’s a little taster of what to expect. Drop me a line if you’d like to give it a read:

This morning you woke up feeling a little unwell. You have no appetite, your head is aching, your throat is sore and you think you might have a slight fever. You don’t know it yet, but the zombie virus has already been working away inside you for a week or so and has been busy attacking your immune system. It’s reached the stage where it’s really about make it’s presence known.

Exactly when and where you were infected is unclear as it can take anything between 21 and 30 days from initial infection to the first proper symptoms. What is more certain is that you are now infectious yourself and have been for a while. Your family, friends and anyone else in close contact with you are all in mortal danger.

The next couple of days will determine if you are one of the lucky few who has some natural resistance and will, at least, survive the infection stage or not. In the highly probable event that you have no resistance then, at some time between 3 and 4 weeks after infection, you can expect the whites of your eyes to turn red, your vomit and diarrhoea will now be charged with infected blood and large blood blisters develop under your skin. You are now at the peak of infectiousness as the virus particles, eager to find their next victim, replicate swiftly inside your body.

What comes next is straight out of a movie. Your brain heats up and you become more aggressive as your mental faculties begin to deteriorate. At some point you’ll become unconscious and then the next time you open your eyes you will no longer be in control of yourself. You are now constantly hungry for human flesh and have the overriding urge to bite someone. Satisfying your cravings is now all your limited intellect can cope with. Congratulations, you are now a zombie.

Calling you a zombie would probably suffice in a pinch but isn’t quite correct however and the term ‘living dead’ would probably seem a better fit. But you won’t care. The virus has made permanent changes. From the second you were infected the grave is your only and eventual way out. At least by that point you’ll have no knowledge of what you’re doing. Just following some of the baser human instincts that have been modified and enhanced. Your end is nigh. Along with just about everybody else’s…

Cheers

id-iom

 

No not me, never not

No not me, never not

So the UpFest crew has gone and produced another amazing book celebrating eight years of The Urban Paint festival and the hundreds of  related artworks that have been produced by artists from far and wide. To celebrate the launch they will be selling 100 unique hand painted book presses (50 in Bristol & 50 in London) which will house the new book. All book presses will be blind wrapped and randomly sold making each copy a proper surprise! Oooh exciting!!

Anyway we were asked to paint up one of these fellas and this is what we’ve come up with. ‘No not me, never not’ is a common phrase for us to use as one of our general day-to-day rules is to deny our involvement in any given situation. It’s generally safer that way. So we thought we’d share this pearl of advice with it’s new owner. But rather than plaster one of our ugly mugs on something that may well be staring at someone from their bookshelf for eternity we thought it best to combine our rule of thumb with a more photogenic subject. Apparently that’s called marketing and it’s proved to be effective. So let’s hope it’s new owner will heed our advice of never admitting to anything (unless you have to). Here ends the lesson.

 

Cheers

id-iom

 

Skin and Bones – We got a gun!

In my continuing efforts to drum up some interest in the zombie book I’ve written I’ve done another small artwork based on it. Here we can see that they’ve finally got a gun. Now, I’m not entirely sure of the real world use of a gun in most zombie situations as it surely just attracts more of them to your location – which is the last thing you want – but it’s definitely a good backup. In this instance they are taking some revenge and trying to find their friend. Don’t worry too much as they are mostly doing it from the confines of an armoured Range Rover. Here’s a little taster:

“Eventually the car finds it’s way to the cricket pitch and they drive a slow circuit around the outside of the ground. I want to jump up and signal their attention but something tells me to be wary. They pull up beside the bonfire just as one of the school kid zombies from earlier emerges onto the south edge of the field. The driver guns the engine and the Range Rover pulls forward on a collision course with the zombie. I can hear the sickening crunch of bone even from my position some distance away.”

Cheers

id-iom

King of the Swingers

So this is the second piece we did for a friend’s child and with this one we thought we’d go for something he may hopefully appreciate when he gets a little older as he’s currently under 1 and it’s difficult to know exactly what people that small really like when it comes to art appreciation. We were told he likes monkeys (who doesn’t?) and as soon as I was told that the lyrics from the Jungle Book’s ‘I wanna be like you’ popped in to my head and that was enough for me. As the other half of id-iom had gone for the light, colourful and fluffy side of the coin, i decided to take it the other way and make it a little dark and menacing just for good measure.

When i started the picture of the monkey it seemed a little flat and lifeless so i decided to cut out the swinging monkey and apply some cardboard to the back of it so that it gave a little shadow. After this all that there was left to do was try and frame it so it looked a little more gift-like (all framers out there no need to worry your jobs are safe).

Cheers

id-iom

As i Move

As I Move

The title of this piece comes from the opening line of a book called ‘Tik Tok‘ by John Sladek which is a play on the name Issac Asimov. I read this book many years ago now but the story still occasionally pops in to my mind from time to time. After getting to a certain point in this picture i was completely stuck and racking my brain on what to do next when, of course, Tik Tok pops in to my head once again and well, slap my thigh and call me Roger, the form I was drawing reminded me slightly of an android. From there on in things just started to fall in to place. A tricky job made easy!

Cheers

id-iom

Title: As I Move
Materials: Spray paint, glitter, paint pen, acrylic and charcoal
Size: A4

The sketchier side

There I was rooting around in all the art stuff that we have collected over the years when I come across a device that I just didn’t have a clue what it was or what it even could be. After a little interweb research I came to the conclusion that it was a ruling pen. Now i’m really not sure where we picked this up but i have to say i kind of like it as it does give a really good straight line.

Sadly that’s not what i used it for though, instead i just started writing my name and making a mess, that’s when my housemate came along and started doing exactly the same. Anyway there i was a few days later leafing through my sketch book when i see this page and thought i’d draw a little face amongst all the mess.

Cheers

id-iom

Title: The sketchier side

Materials: Ink, paint pen, pencil and charcoal

Size: A4

Please email if interested