Mystery Action/Blue Carpet Band poster

Inspired by posters for late-night monster movie double-bills, as well as live magic shows from the 1950s featuring definitely 100% real zombies, freaks and hypnotism, I pencilled this out in a hurry before dropping the colour in digitally. I didn't even bother with pen before I scanned it in. That's how rock n roll I am.

A couple of the images that got me thinking...

and a close-up of that unfortunate drummer. I'm sure he got out OK...

Leadfoot Lee Tea and the Moron-o-Phonics

The Lava Lounge is back and it's time for some more paper-cut illustration! One-man-band Leadfoot Tea is a car nut so this is a tribute to gasser's and grease monkeys, with a hint of wacky races too.

Scrawling out then cutting out the two cars, layering them up to create some shadows and re-photographing them gives the image a more 3 dimensional feel and makes more sense of the original cluttered composition. Pedal to the metal, I've got to burn some rubber!!!

Riot Grrrl zine logo

Here are my logo design for Leicester Riot Grrrl's new zine: Riot!

I used a flat brush and some food colouring(!) to rough it out, then added the flowers and (sort of) tidied it up in photoshop.

Here's what the colour version looked like...

Would you eat anything the colour of radioactive bogies? Urk!

Downtown Drifters album cover

New album by Jim Gannon & Nick from the drugstore cowboy's busking duo. Look out for it being hawked on the streets of Ireland very soon! Art by yours truly.

Betty Lou's got a new tattoo

I am happy to report that renowned style icon and top DJ Craig Steptoe has added to his collection of excellent tattoos with one of my scribblings.

 (apologies for the low resolution)

Craig got his tattoo artist to add the psychedelic colours and I think it works well. The original was from a Brutes/Hi Class Joes/Empress of Fur poster I did a few years back.

Thank you Craig for being the first brave fella to get sumthink wot I drawed etched onto your skin forever! It means a lot to me!

Pin-up Girls

The first three in a series of pin-up girls I'm working on; focusing on extraordinary ladies who did some rather interesting things. Now I love a good traditional pin-up girl pic, but I wanted my drawings to be a shift away from the typical image of a girl who's all surface and little substance.

Beryl Burton was the 12 hour cycling time trial world record holder, as well as general cycling champion. She held the record for years, beating the blokes as well as the women.

Beryl Swain was the first woman to race in the Isle of Man TT race, a hair-raising road race that takes place every year. The men that organised the race decided to ban women from entering for the next 16 years, saying it was 'too dangerous' for women to enter.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe was an amazing ahead-of-her-time electric guitarist, gospel blues singer and incredible performer, whose life of contradictions (playing church music and secular innuendo laden songs, marrying 3 times and having a number of lesbian lovers) points to a woman living life just the way she wanted to. There's a good article about her here.

The idea is to turn these girls into two-colour screen prints, as well as add to the set with more fantastic females. Watch this space.

Big Pig.

Painted on a tray rescued from the side of the road, which used to have a pig like this on it:

I replaced him with this happy fella: