Gig poster printing with SAVWO

I've been back to Hot Bed Press recently, this time I'm doing a course which is specifically aimed at making screen printed gig posters. Our tutor John Powell-Jones AKA Savage Wolf or SAVWO is a freelance illustrator and screen printer. As soon as I saw his work (see his Flickr here and MySpace here) I knew that I wanted to do the course, as his work which features zombies, werewolves and all other kinds of beasties, is right up my street. This time I decided to create some posters for the 'semi-fictional' band The Spooked Hearts which basically consists of me and my husband and a whole lot of noise-making that never really goes anywhere.

The idea for the poster actually originated from one of my husband's doodles which I found lying around. I think it amuses him greatly when I find these drawings and proclaim them to be genius. Maybe it is an exaggeration but there is something about the way he sketches without thinking that always seems to result in a truly surreal outcome. When I found his little drawing of a dancing harlequin boy with crosses for eyes and a giant tear falling down his face I knew I could develop it into a poster for our band. Below are the results: first the original poster design, then the resulting prints in two colour ways. We also printed onto t-shirts and John showed us how to easily set up a similar arrangement at home so that we could print there.

Beautiful Losers

Finally got my own copy of Beautiful Losers; a truly inspiring documentary about a group of skaters/diy-artists/punks/outsiders and their unique creations and philosophies on life. It features a number of artists who are often classed as key to the primarily 90s 'Mission School' scene which centered in an area of San Francisco including the legendary and deceased Margaret Kilgallen, her widow Barry McGee and Chris Johanson. The film really captures the collaborative nature of the work which was produced and shown in makeshift galleries in squats and warehouses. Whilst being a really positive and uplifting film it also has a bittersweet edge particularly due to the death of Kilgallen who was so obviously central to the movement.

Margaret Kilgallen

Barry McGee

Chris Johanson

Aaron Rose is also featured as the founder of the notorious New York based 'Alleged' gallery that hosted some very wild and extraordinary events. What I hadn't realised was that Rose is also an artist himself and has more recently produced some intricately hand painted suitcases (below) that really capture the folk art roots that have so clearly influenced the Beautiful Losers.

Whitworth Art Gallery 'Tactile/Tangible' workshop

A couple of weeks ago me and my fellow colleagues were invited to take part in an afternoon workshop at the Whitworth Art Gallery which is literally a few minutes walk from the college where I work. As teachers we don't often get let out of the cage (or classroom) very often so we were literally salivating at the thought of getting to produce something big, fun and collaborative. The brief was fairly loose and was based on the themes tangible and tactile (these two gorgeous books below were available to provide ideas). The materials we were provided with ranged from scraps of paper and fabric to stickle bricks and coloured tape, however everything was in bold primary colours which worked really well against the grey of the upstairs gallery at the Whitworth within which we worked. The results are as below. It was certainly fun, in fact I'm not sure who enjoyed it most, us or Andrew who kindly volunteered to be our living mannequin.

Nicholas Saunders

It really is a small world. Whilst at Hot Bed Press I noticed some work lying around by one of my favourite screen printers Nicholas Saunders. I first noticed his work when it was used in a couple of Howies catalogues such as the Three Bays edition (below) and looked him up on the internet to find he was a bit of a screen printer extraordinaire (Nicholas Saunders website here). Anyway it turns out that he's a local lad and in fact went to the same high school as me. He now resides in London and in 2007 was voted as one of the top ten hot UK illustrators by the Independent.

It seems the hype certainly paid off as he was recently commissioned by Warner Brothers to produce art work for the new Harry Potter film (see below). Inspiring stuff!

Read more at Creative Review here.