Hugh MacLeod Cartoons drawn on the back of business cards
Hugh MacLeod
I’m Hugh MacLeod. I’m a cartoonist. Occasionally I write books.
gapingvoid is interested in start-up culture, because changing business for the better is what we’re about; that’s what Social Object Factory is about. We live and breathe it; we help everyone from lone entrepreneurs, to mid-sizers, to Fortune 500’s do the same. Check out our work here.
We create art that helps companies kick ass, end of story.
If you want to talk business, then it’s probably best to please contact my business partner, gapingvoid CEO Jason Korman, here. We look forward to working with you. Thanks!
[UPDATE: Because I want people to see this video, I’ll be keeping it at the top of the gapingvoid homepage off n’ on. Please scroll down to see newer content etc.]
[I talk a lot about “Social Objects”. Click here if you don’t know what those are.]
Thanks to the spammers and the hucksters, e-mail marketing went out of vogue for a while, at least with the cool kids. But I think it’s making a comeback; I certainly couldn’t do what I do without it.
So yeah, five-star recommedation for MailChimp. They rock. Use them. And I REALLY hope you watch my interview. That is all.
It was a little twelve word copy competition. We thought we’d get 20 or 30 entries. But ended up with well over 200, a great result and a giant “thank you” to everyone for entering.
Once we compiled the comments and emails, judging began. Hugh put together his short list, Laura did hers, Jeff put in his five cents, even intern Darrick piped in.
And then, what started as a bit of fun, turned into a free-for-all. Kicking, screaming, name calling. Everyone had their favorite, and no one agreed.
Tumult aside, we’ve decided to change the rules. Since there were so many entries, it seemed fair that there will be more winners: Three to be exact. And, you guys get to decide the ranking. Just watch the vids above, leave your comments below and we’ll compile and announce later this month.
Regardless of who comes out on top, all finalists will get a framed, signed print of their choosing (conditions apply), and more importantly, the credits which will be seen by millions of people. The winners lives will be transformed and they will be showered with internet riches beyond their wildest dreams, etc., etc., etc.
To make voting easy, we had our crack team create animations with each of the finalists’ tag lines. Watch them and tell us your choice for the king of all exploding head tag lines!”.
A movie about an increasingly taboo subject in this vapidity-worshipping society of ours: Mastery.
“Jiro Dreams Of Sushi” is a documentary about the world’s greatest sushi chef, 85-year-old Jiro Ono. What’s striking about Jiro is not that he has reached such greatness, but how he reached it.
Instead of the usual celebrity chef schtick– TV shows, cookbooks, fancy restaurants franchises in all the world capitals (including the mandatory Las Vegas casino location), he kept it REALLY simple: a single, TINY, 10-seater restaurant in a subway station in Tokyo.
Why did he do it that way? Because he wasn’t interested in money, he was interested in the MASTERY of his chosen craft. The bigger he made his restaurant business, the less time he would have to spend on his TRUE calling, making sushi.
Which is why the restaurant only serves sushi. That’s it. No appetizers. No side dishes. No tempura or yaki soba. No non-sushi entrees. A tiny little underground hole in the wall with only a few stools and even fewer tables. That’s it. And yet people have been known to make reservations a year in advance.
He wasn’t in it for the money, he was in it because it allowed him to strive for perfection.
In a world that often rewards money and office politics over mastery, maybe more mediocre people get to drive fancy cars, live in big houses and wear a lot of bling, but something is lost in the process. And we are the poorer for it.
Jiro reminds us that it doesn’t have to be that way. You can achieve mastery, or at least aim for it, if you decide to.
But only you can decide that, of course. Only you can decide what kind of example you want to be for your children.
A beautiful mediation on “Mastery”. A beautiful meditation on “Small is beautiful”. A beautiful meditation on “Meaning Scales”. I loved every last minute of it. I would urge anyone who actually cares about what they do– the process, not just the result– to go see this movie: It’ll change your life. Rock on.
[“Social Object Factory’sJeff Sass put together this video of Hugh drawing on his Samsung Galaxy Note (provided by Samsung) as part of Hugh’s participation in the Samsung #BeNoteworthy campaign. Cool!”]
Of course, when an ad man promises a golden age of anything, I’m going to be suspicious. Still, IT IS a pretty good article. OK, so it reads a bit like a sales brochure, but hey, a lot of my blog posts do as well. It has some good, tasty bites, regardless.
BUT IS IT TRUE, I hear you ask? Is the Golden Age really upon us?
As somebody who worked in the ad business at the very tail end of the pre-Internet, Mad Men era, I would say “Yes”. For all the reasons Matt mentions. Being a Mad Men-era person was actually a lot less fun and interesting than TV makes it out to be.
So the next question is, how is this new “Golden Age” actually going to happen? What will they actually have to DO, for this Golden Age to actually exist?
The answer, of course, isn’t about the “Media”, social or otherwise. It’s about the “Make”.
It’s about what you’re going to have to create at the granular level.
And what you’re going to have to create, of course, are Social Objects.
[PS: It’s also why it’s such a HUGE opportunity for PR firms like Edelman and Weber Shandwick to STEAL business away from Madison Avenue. But I’ve been saying that for years…]
“Because the world needs more Awesome, the world needs more Startups.”
Exactly.
What astounds me is how quickly we turned it around. A couple of days from getting the first phone call, in the can. BOOM! Just like that.
Compare that to the traditional ad agency model– it would’ve taken ten times as long and cost ten times as much. Not to mention, a lot of strategy meetings and endless Powerpoint slides.
We live in incredible times…
Congrats to the team on a splendid effort! Rock on.
Using cartoons to communicate about serious subjects is always an interesting challenge– and one that we deal with every day.
Where is the line that can’t be crossed? How do we communicate about something serious in a way that is memorable, whimsical, makes a point but isn’t frivolous?
We’ve proven 1000 times that cartoons are some of the most effective pieces of communication in existence — and we’ve been playing with animating my cartoons for some time, so when the folks at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Security contacted us, we thought, “Hey, why not do a little animation about ‘enterprise security…?”
Let’s face it, enterprise security is pretty dry stuff. Their customers are governments and giant corporations… perfect for a whimsical little animation about finding risk — kinda Pac Man-ish, it makes the point: You need help identifying all the risks to your data centers. With the nemonic binoculars (representing HP’s Enterprise Security Platform), one is able to see the big picture threats, and the threat levels they represent.
I love the little HP geek with the pocket protector. I dunno, it just works, somehow. Also check out the logo for our new venture at the very end.
When I attended Ted Global last summer in Edinburgh, one of the people I ejoyed meeting the most was this English-Pakistani guy called Maajid. He did a really good TED talk on how to fight religious extremism, based on his own experience as a reformed member of radical Islamist groups, himself (How radical? Radical enough to have spent time in Egyptian prison for it…).
Fast forward to the present, the other day he emails me out of the blue. Terrific! He wanted to commission a Valentine’s Day gift for his sweetheart. Nice!
So I went with something fun and colorful to brighten up a dark, English February, taking my inspiration, on his suggestion, from Pakistani bus art, which is crazy-amazing stuff.
He’s a lovely, gracious guy, Maajid, and was a pleasure to work with. Go check out the extremism-fighting organisation, Quilliam that he’s head of– interesting stuff.
Daily Email Promo from Gapingvoid on Vimeo.Hola, Jason here (CEO of gapingvoid etc etc)… For all you gapingvoid newbies, you may not know that we publish a daily email every Tuesday – Saturday. It always contains one of Hugh’s cartoons with a little narrative and sometimes an exclusive deal on gapingvoid goodies.
We’ve been playing around with animation and the one above is a little eight-second promo that we want to use to call attention to the daily email. Although it works great as is, we’d like to add some copy to it, and so, Fearless Readers, we are going to have a little competition for the best copy as judged by us.
Here is how we are going to do it:
Simply suggest the copy to go with it, in twelve words or less.
In other words, we need 12 words to go with the video, to explain what the story is.
The winner will get a free framed cube grenade of her choosing, signed and inscribed by Hugh (a $200 value) and if you have a blog or site, we’ll link back to it AND give you a mention on the actual video, etc.
Normally, this is the kind of things we’d do ourselves, but what the heck, sometimes “open source” is more fun for everybody.
Pringle of Scotland [the famous sweater company] has commissioned artist David Shrigley to create a humorous short animated film about life behind-the-scenes at Pringle to celebrate the brands return to Milan Fashion Week.
I love this because:
1. Shrigley is one of my favorite cartoonists in the world, and I have VERY few of those. I actually know him personally [He’s really good friends with one of my best friends in the world, the film director Dave Mackenzie]. I met him at a gallery group show in Glasgow with Mackenzie back in 1994, plus on the set of Hallam Foe.
2. Famous Scottish brands tend to be VERY twee [growing up in Edinburgh, I know this to be very true], this idea is SO OUT THERE and SO NOT TWEE. Hell, it’s not even mainstream. But it IS interesting, especially when you think it’s basically just an animated sales brochure. As I’m fond of saying, evolution in marketing is an evolution of language. In terms of old, established woolen brands, Pringle is talking to the market in a way its never been talked to before…
3. Compared to most ads out there [And it is an ad, even they like to talk about “commissioning an artist” and calling it a “film” yada yada ], it’s insanely wonderful. And way longer than a traditional 30-second spot, and yet it still keeps your attention. And completely different. When was the last time you saw a major clothing brand express this much unvarnished humanity? Exactly.
4. Like most of Shrigley’s work, it’s got a wee bit of a dark edge to it. Pringle let him keep that. Pringle didn’t ask him to change his schtick in any way.
5. I want to send this to my pals at Dewar’s Whisky, just to say to any brand people there who may be feeling timid, “See? You can be TOTALLY OUT THERE and still relevant and interesting and cool. You don’t have to do the usual, expected, traditional, REALLY ANNOYING AND LAME twee Scottish thing [“Chivalrous golfers, Anybody?”]
A wee video I did for Paul Barron’s People Report Summer Camp and Digital Brand Camp 2011.
Nothing too fancy (although I do think Paul did a good job with the edit), some footage of me drawing my trademark business-card doodles and, in the background, some of my new paintings, including two I did for Rackspace.
The video riffs on the same theme I’ve been obsessing about for two decades, the subject of my second book, “Evil Plans” i.e. The Unification of Work And Love. What that means, what that implies, what ACTUALLY has to happen in order for it to manifest itself etc etc.
Yes, new paintings.
That’s all I’m willing to say about it for now… though feel free to drop me an email if you’re curious, Thanks.
[Official Blurb:] “Everyone has an Evil Plan, maybe it’s tucked away inside your mind or maybe you are developing one this very minute. But for the lucky few, we are executing it daily! Join us in this episode as we talk with the artist, innovator and evil genius Hugh MacLeod himself about the book “Evil Plans”.
[“Time To Make The Donuts”. Famous Dunkin’ Donuts campaign from 1984.]
I was talking to a very successful New Yorker friend of mine, a finance guy, about why he never went into the restaurant business, in spite of his family connections with it.
“Uuuugh, No thanks,” he said. “Look, with a restaurant, you have three basic scenarios.”
He went on:
1. Let’s say you open a restaurant and business never takes off. Congratulations! You’ve now lost all your money and have spent the last three years of your life watching your life’s work go down the drain.
2. Let’s say your restaurant is really successful. Congratulations! You’ve now got 7 days-a-week, 18 hours a day of high stress craziness, dealing with all those pushy customers, the neurotic waiters and the psycho kitchen staff.
3. Let’s say your business is just so-so. Neither a hit, nor a disaster. Congratulations! You’ve now got the worst of both worlds. All the stress and the hours, none of the money or glory. Woo-hoo!
Hmmm.… Listening to my friend, it kinda sounds like all the businesses of pretty much every self-employed person I know these days.
See “Fred The Baker” in the video above? That’s pretty much all their lives, right now. And mine. “Time to make the donuts”. No wonder I find it the ad so funny.
Would my friends have it any other way? Of course not. But if you want to be successful, that’s the life you must choose, for better or worse. So it goes.
What can I say? It was a blast. Everybody seemed to have a great time. More than one person came up to me and said it was a lot more fun than any art opening they’d ever been to. You can see what people are saying on Twitter (for the time being, anyway) by following the #purplecow hashtag…
Thanks to Seth Godin for being such a gracious co-host, thanks to everybody who helped out, thanks to everybody who came along for it.
A special big thanks to Martha Burzynski, Carlo Balistrieri, and Cecilia Feret for volunteering their time to help us out at the door. That was so kind of you, seriously. Thanks to David Parmet and Sandi Bachom for the great photos and videos [posted above].
And a final thank-you to my business colleagues, Jason and Laura, who worked tirelessly for SO LONG behind the scenes to make sure the evening was nothing short of a massive success. You guys rock. Ok, I’m going to go off and sleep for a week…
[YouTube video homepage here…] [N.B. Yes, I’m planning on selling this one eventually. Please feel free to e-mail me if you’re interested, Thanks!] PHASE ONE OF THREE: THE UNDERCOAT. Sunday, August 30th. [“Marfa One”, which I started this weekend.. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
A blank canvas (see above) that I finished doing the white acrylic undercoat for, earlier today. Four-foot-by-four foot. Titled “Marfa One”, it’s will be the first of The Marfa Series.
Now to get cracking on the pencil…
[UPDATE: Monday, 31st August, 24 hours later:] PHASE TWO OF THREE: THE PENCIL. [Click on images to enlarge etc.] [Close-up. Pencil lines etc.] [Close-up. Taken from the side etc.]
Yesterday (Sunday) I cranked out the pencil. Took forever, but it was worth it. Besides some very small touch-ups at the end, I did it all in one session. No messing around.
I got myself in a mind-set that, although it’s large and on canvas, it didn’t intimidate me. I just treated that four-by-four-foot, two-dimensional surface like any other drawing, like any other page in my sketchbook. I didn’t treat it like “ART!!!!”. I just did my thing and got on with it; not a lot of fuss.
I think that’s how I’ll approach all my big pieces from now on… PHASE THREE OF THREE: THE INK. [Update: 24 hours later, Tuesday, September 1st, 2009.] [Click on image to enlarge etc.]
Made a good start yesterday on the inking. Hope to finish it by tonight etc.
This is always the hardest part of making a big drawing. The temptation to “rush it” gets more and more overwhelming, the closer you get to the finish line. But last-minute rushing can easily ruin it. Oh well, I’ve been here many times before, nothing I can’t handle etc. [Update: 24 hours later, Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009.] [Click on images to enlarge etc.]
Got up this morning at 4am and put the finishing touches on Marfa One.
It’s done…
[Jeffro, donning a Black Flagg t-shirt, singing at Harrys Tinaja, Alpine, Texas. Note the bottle of Stormhoek by his side etc.] So this is what’s been happening with Stormhoek wine on my end lately…
1. We currently have Stormhoek selling in six places in town (Alpine, Texas), including Harry’s Tinaja, Porter’s Supermarket and Twin Peaks Liquor Store. We’re hoping to double that number. We’re also starting to sell it in other neighboring towns like Marfa and Terlingua.
2. The “Dream Big” bumper stickers are a big hit. I’ve just ordered another thousand of them. Thinking of leaving them in hotel lobbies, for the tourists to take away en masse.
3. Re. Jeffro. Sure, I think a former-punk-rocker, ukelele-playing Texan is the PERFECT spokesman for a bottle of South African wine, don’t you? It screams “QUALITY & VALUE!” from across the room etc.
4. People from outside the State always ask me why I like Texas so much. Well, there are many reasons, but the one I cite the most is, “Here in Texas, you don’t have to be a billionaire, but if you have a cool, little business that adds something positive to the community, YOU ARE GIVEN RESPECT”. I’m a small businessman, after all, so this quality would be important to me. Sure, you can find this quality elsewhere, but I’ve never seen it MORE TRUE than it is in Texas.
5. I’m excited by the prospect of reaching critical mas here in West Texas, then spreading the good word throughout the rest of the State. As I’ve said earlier, I’m just focusing on Texas for the time being. That’s plenty of business for me…
6. With my book coming out in three days and my print business doing well, I actually don’t really have to be doing this for career reasons; I’m just doing it because I want to. Stormhoek and I have been through a lot these last four years, it’s already doing great in Europe, I think I owe it to both myself and to the brand to get it going over on this side of the pond. Besides, I’m a sucker for “Futile Marketing”. Rock on.
[“Gin And The Cognitive Surplus”. The REAL reason why Madison Avenue is in crisis, the reason nobody in the industry ever talks about. Watch Clay Shirky’s video above, or read his blog post on the same subject.]
Some years ago, me and some fellow advertising creatives gathered at Dave Carlson’s apartment in Chicago, to watch a TV show, drink some alcohol and generally socialize. I can’t remember what TV show we were watching; I do remember that the show was two hours long and had LOTS of commercials.
So like the “industry-insiders” that we were, while the commercials were broadcasting we’d do running commentary on them. “Oh, that’s shit.” “Nice boobs.” “Wow, I like that car!” “Man, who wrote THAT godawful tagline…?“
Two hours later, the show ended. Everybody came to the same conclusion. Two hours of commercial bombardment later, only TWO of the commercials we thought were even remotely good, from a creative and/or professional standpoint. The rest– dozens of them– were complete, useless, noisy dreck.
This 95%-5% Dreck/Quality ratio is about right. An advertising creative wins the occasional award now and then, but 95% of the time, she’s producing dreck. Work three years in an ad agency if you don’t believe me.
The internet, which now dictates the terms of media to TV, a lot more than vice versa, doesn’t handle dreck very well. On the internet, dreck is really easy to ignore, dreck is really easy to kill. So people do ignore it. Sadly, Madison Avenue is not culturally equipped to handle this kind of Dreck Intolerance. Their business model won’t allow it. And like the newspapers, their Pension Fund shareholders won’t allow them to change their business model, no matter what’s happening out there in Reality-ville.
Yes, it’s a bit of a problem…
Hugh’s dedication to his work is inspiring to me. When he sets his mind to something there is simply no stopping him. Take Stormhoek if it kills him he’s gonna get the word out in Alpine.
My evil plan is have Stormhoek the most talked about wine in the history of Brewster County. You have my word on that, People.
[#futilemarketing]
[YouTube video page is here.]
I started on DesertManahttan last September. I finally finished it earlier this evening, around midnight.
Yeah, it took a a long time to finish. Well, I was a busy fellow, after all, doing lots of other stuff.
I could have worked on it forever, however like the old art school adage goes, paintings are never finished; they are ended. It was time.
Thanks to everybody who followed me along on this project, encouraging me all the way. It’s been quite a journey. Rock on. [Sign up to gapingvoid’s “Crazy, Deranged Fools” Newsletter…]
Here Loren Feldman interviews Andrew Suber, one of the first friends I made when I moved to Alpine, Texas.
Andrew is one of the smartest people in town. He pretty much raised and educated himself as kid down in Terlingua [His father wasn’t around much, so I am told]. Somehow by sheer force of will, he managed to get an undergraduate degree from UT Austin and a law degree from William & Mary.
He could have easily moved to the big city and gotten himself a high paying lawyer job. For whatever reason, he decided to stay in Alpine and live the life of an aesthete.
His main claim to fame is hosting the local Trivia Night every second Tuesday, down at The Railroad Blues. He takes it scary seriously, which is a good thing for the rest of us.
He had nice things to say about Stormhoek, when it first came to town. We like him for that. Rock on.
Is Andrew a “Crazy, Deranged Fool”? Of course he is! How could he possibly not be?
Dream Big. Alpine, Texas. Exactly.
[Video courtesy of Loren Feldman.]
P.S. A “galley” is a rough edition of the book, that the publisher gives out to the media a couple of months before the publishing date, in order to spread the word. For example, a lot of the big magazines and papers like to get their galleys at least four months in advance etc.
Like I said in my previous post, last week I signed off on the first “Bluetrain” prints. Loren Feldman was in Alpine at the time and filmed it. He writes about it and posts the video here. Thanks again to Loren for the kind words.
Since then, I am happy to report, all the prints have been produced. Now it’s just a question of getting them down from the printer’s shop in New York City down here in Alpine, Texas for me to sign. Then shipping them off to the people who ordered one.
We’re also getting the PayPal thing set up as we speak. It’s all going according to plan.
I am completely exhausted and jet-lagged from my trip to Brazil. I had a whale of a time. This weekend I plan to do little else other than sleep and vegetate, then get back on the ball, early Monday morning.
Thanks Again for all the support y’all have given me over the last couple of months. This new phase in my life has been intense and exciting. I have no idea where it’s going. I just know it’s currently running on all eight cylinders. Hope I can keep up the momentum. rock on.
[YouTube video…] [“DesertManahattan”. 4 x 8″. Ink, Acrylic and Pencil on Canvas etc…]
Progress on “DesertManhattan” has been slow these last few weeks– I’ve been busy with other projects, mostly the prints.
That being said, I’ve still able to occasionally sneak into the studio and work on it some more– usually late at night, when I’ve been having trouble sleeping.
It’s looking good. If I can get it done by March, I’ll be happy. Rock on.
[Update: Video of me signing the first artist’s proof.] [“Bluetrain”- the new gapingvoid print. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
[Update: Bluetrain is already sold out. Thanks, Everybody!]
The print is an edition of eighty-five. So far seventy-five are accounted for, including the few I’m keeping for myself. Sales were pretty brisk right up until everything closed down for Christmas. I’m still a bit stunned about how well this wee adventure has gone, frankly. So now I have ten left for sale.Full details are here.
For the last ten, the price is $250 each, which far less than I think we’ll be selling the next edition for. Hope that’s OK with y’all.
Again, THANK YOU ALL for supporting this random act of insanity on my part. Rock on. [UPDATE:]By the time I had finished writing this very short post, the number left was down to eight prints. 15 minutes later, that number was down to seven. Wow. [UPDATE:] One hour later– only five left. w00t. [UPDATE:] Fifteen minutes later– only four left. Eek! [UPDATE:] Five minutes later– only three left. Ummm… [UPDATE:] Next Morning– SOLD OUT!!!! THANK YOU!!!!!!!!
[Update: Video of me signing the first artist’s proof.]
[“Bluetrain”- the new gapingvoid print. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
[UPDATE: 30th December. “Bluetrain” is now sold out. Thanks, Everybody!]
On December 4th, I announced I was going into the fine art print business, pretty much full-time, if all goes well.
Like I said earlier, the first edition will be coming out in mid-January.
I also said that the first twenty people who sent me an e-mail could buy the print at $175– once the print is made, the price will be around the $250-$300 mark.
To be honest, at the time I thought twenty wasn’t a very conservative number– I was thinking if ten or twelve took me up on the offer by Christmas, that would be pretty amazing.
As soon as I posted the offer up on the blog, I went out for dinner. By the time I came back two hours later, 24 people had already taken me up on it. Within 24 hours, the number was closer to 40.
Not bad for a limited edition of only 85, don’t you think? We’re talking about people buying something “Sight Unseen”- something that RARELY happens in the art business.
As for the kind people who e-mailed early, but not early enough to make it on the “First Twenty” list, I thought it would be unfair on the “First Twenty” to give them the same discount. But at the same time, it would be a shame not to do something to reward them for being early adaptors. Hmmmm… You can see my dilemma. So in the end, I told them they could have one for $200– it’s still a pretty good discount. They seemed happy enough with that, so all well and good.
The second thing I did was to let the First Twenty vote on which image they wanted to see printed up. I gave them a choice of three designs, the image above, “Bluetrain”, won the majority vote, so that’s the one we’re going with.
About the piece in question: It’s called “Bluetrain”, because yes, it’s largely colored blue, and also because it’s a re-working of the head cartoon in my business manifesto, The Hughtrain, which of course, was in turn named after one of my favorite books, The Cluetrain. “Blue Trane” is also the name of one of my favorite jazz albums. So it all fits together, somehow.
It’ll be a fairly standard poster size, approx 18x24”. They’ll all be personally signed and numbered in pencil, by myself. We’re also using a specialist fine art printmaker in New York City for the job, not a general commercial printer.
I decided to use color simply because I didn’t want to just blow up the original, black & white, bizcard-sized cartoon to poster-sized. I wanted to make it look totally new and different, yet totally the same and familiar. As for the “Pop” sensibilty, well, I am a cartoonist, so go figure…
Since that first big splash of interest from the First Twenty, we’ve had a steady stream of people signing up. There’s only about 20 left unsold in this edition, so if you’re still interested in having one of them, please send me an email as soon as you can [Thanks!]: gapingvoid@gmail.com
I hope y’all are as excited by this new venture of mine as I am. As always, thanks for your support, none of this would be possible without you. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
[UPDATE:] ONLY THREE PRINTS LEFT! Price IS $250 for the last ten.
[40-second video, no audio.] [“DesertManhattan”. India ink, pencil and acrylic on canvas. 4x8 ft. Click on image to enlarge etc.] [Close-up view. Click on image to enlarge etc.]
The final ink layer is about half done, which by my reckoning makes the whole thing about 75% completed. Quite pleased with it, so far. Quite excited to have it finally finished, one of these days…
The last 25% of a large drawing is always the hardest. You’re so anxious to get it over and done with, the temptation to take “shortcuts” gets harder and harder to resist. Starting a big painting is easy. Finishing one is a nightmare.
[Click on images to enlarge. Click to watch the video here.]
I started adding the acrylic last week. If you click on the top picture, you’ll see I’ve just start applying the India Ink, towards the top. That was yesterday. If you click on the link above, I made a little 2-minute phonecam video explaining everything in greater detail.
This thing is going to take forever to finish. I’m not worried, there’s no rush etc.
[UPDATE: You can watch the video here– See Chapter One.] [UPDATE: You can see photos from the event here.] [More photos here.] [Click on images to enlarge etc.]
Last week I was in Austin. One of the reasons I was there was to help design some slides for Ian Murdock’s keynote, “Innovate. Collaborate. Integrate”, which he gave today.
Above are the slides. They start off as a giant, black, haystack-shaped software monolith, then evolved outwards into “Open Source”, and finally, to the Sun logo. The sixth cartoon is just a humorous drawing projected behind the other panel members who were sharing the stage with Ian.
I’m told the screen was fifty feet wide, so I’m guesing they would’ve looked rather spiffy. These were all drawn in pencil on 3.5-inch card [Business-card size, obviously]. The actual drawings didn’t take that long to execute; though getting them to work cohesively and conceptually took a long time, a lot of collaboration was involved.
It was a cool gig; I hope to do more like it. Thanks to the very groovy Sarah Dornsife for making it happen. Rock on.
Just before Christmas, the groovy cats at Border TV made a half-hour documentary of my frequent partner-in-crime, Savile Row tailor, Thomas Mahon.[The full Google video page is here.]
Cumbria for me seems a long way away from Alpine, Texas at the moment. Nonetheless, seeing Thomas in his element [Take it from me– they did a really splendid job of capturing his schtick] made me feel so proud to be part of the adventure. I highly urge you to give it a watch. Look for me making a cameo appearance during the dinner party in the second half. Rock on.
[Bonus:] I kid you not: One of the best Ladies’ tailors IN THE WORLD is currently in NYNY till March 18th. Hurrah!
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