Zeene IV: Dogs

So this evening I have decided to have a major catch up session and blog about all the things that I didn't have time to whilst still at University. Now that I have graduated I actually have time to sit down and post some pictures on here. My first post is about a zine that I contributed to a good few months ago: Zeene IV: Dogs. The guys at Zeene asked if anyone would like to draw some dogs for their next zine on twitter, and I replied that I would be up for the task. I believe they asked Kanye West as well, but he didn't want to draw any dogs unfortunately. I wonder how much the price of the zine would have gone up if he had actually drawn a dog for it... Anyway, the guys were really sweet and sent me the 3 back issues of Zeene, as well as a few of the issue which I had contributed to, in the post. Here are some pictures of it:

If you would like to buy the zine, or any of the back issues of Zeene you can visit the online shop here. They are only £1.50 each.

A question sheet, which I filled out a few weeks later was also featured on the Zeene blog, which you can find here. There are also question sheets filled out by the great Alex Zamora (Fever Zine) and the guys from Zineswap on there!

I myself prefer my New Zealand eggs for breakfast.

Some Queenage

Here is a pencil drawing I did of the Queen (it's not finished). I'm currently working on an image for the PDYE brief that Let's Recupurate has set for the students at WSA. I might give her some tattoos... what do you think?

THE REAL INVITE

Grant Killoran made this animated gif, and it should of been the official invite to the WSA degree show 2011 in my opinion! Haha!

Penguin Book Cover Competition 2011 (final book cover design)

After the making and photographing of the work I decided to go with these two photographs and use them for my front and back cover. The image on the front cover captures the moment where the yellow flowers are falling all over the town. I chose to only feature one single house as the story takes place in the same house, generation after generation. I wanted it to stand alone, as if in solitude.

There are things written in the book that make us question whether Márquez ever meant Macondo to be interpreted by the reader as a real place, hence the house being gone on the back cover but the yellow flowers still lying on the ground. I wanted to illustrate the uncertainty of the village being real. I ended up with this as my final design:

Penguin Book Cover Competition 2011 (photo studio work)

After my model houses had been built I needed to capture the moment when the yellow flowers (I used yellow petals) fall from the sky and down onto the village. Kat was kind enough to help me as she knows much more about studio lighting and photography than I do. Here are some of the photos we took whilst we were in the studio:

Penguin Book Cover Competition 2011 (process)

I entered the penguin book cover competition this year, but did not end up on the short list unfortunately. However, my fellow student Tom Rainford did, so a big round of applause for him! His design looks great and you can see it here.


We were asked to create an eye-catching and contemporary new book cover for 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' by Gabriel García Márquez.

l wanted to focus on a small section in the book that really moved me and put me in a special kind of mood:

“A short time later, when the carpenter was taking measurements for the coffin, through the window they saw a light rain of tiny yellow flowers falling. They fell on the town all through the night in a silent storm, and they covered the roofs and blocked the doors and smothered the animals who slept outdoors. So many flowers fell from the sky that in the morning the streets were carpeted with a compact cushion and they had to clear them away with shovels and rakes so that the funeral procession could pass by.”

I wanted to recreate this moment visually, so I decided to build model houses and make my own little town where these flowers could fall. Here are a few crappy pictures from the process: