David Shrigley and a tattoo

Hello again all you lovely people who read my blog. It’s very nice to see you. I do hope you’re feeling well.

This weekend I went to Sussex where my wife and I are originally from. It was generally a pretty relaxed weekend, but we did get up to some quite interesting stuff. Which brings me to the topic of this post!

I have 2 new tattoos! And so does Jenny! You see, Jenny’s sister is friends with a awesome girl called Tori and she is an amazing artist who has recently realised that she is destined to be a tattooist. Currently she is offering anyone willing to be tattooed upon free tattoos (although you pay for the ink and such). This offer is hard to refuse and it got us thinking of all the different ideas for tattoos that we’d love but didn’t think we could ever afford.

I had a lot of ideas and Jenny, being more focussed and just smarter had two great ideas and left it at that. Check out her blog to see what she had done (they are amazing so I would if I were you).  One of the tattoos I got was Jenny’s idea, and it was one we both got:

Simple but awesome

It’s based on the fact that the resonant frequency of love is 528hz, an idea explorered by a very interesting researcher called Dr. Len Horowitz. Find out more here if you like. Anyway, basically Jenny’s tattoo is in my handwriting and my tattoo is in her’s. We both loved that idea (for which credit goes to Tori) and it’s made the tattoos even cooler than they would’ve been.

I also got a tattoo of a drawing by David Shrigley. David is the artist that first inspired me to draw and lord knows what I’d be doing with myself had I never come across his book at the Tate Modern totally at random. He has many books filled with hilarious drawings and I recommend any one of them without hesitation. A good introduction to him is his wonderful animation ‘Who I Am and What I Want‘. Here is the tattoo I chose (it’s just above my right knee):

Ouch...

It was an extremely painful area to be tattooed and you can see how sore it looks in the photos. But it’s looking much better now and I love it. =D

And so that was the most eventful part of my weekend and quite eventful it was I think you’ll agree…

Stay tuned for other interestingness in the coming days (perhaps)!

Good Day,

Joe

Cat Drawings Poll

It’s been a long time coming but now finally the day has arrived! I have finished tidying up some of the cat drawings and so today is the first of a few polls to see what you think and see which ones I should perhaps sell. This is the first time I’ve ever done a poll on here so hopefully it’ll work out ok. =)

So here are the first two drawings. These aren’t for cat lovers really, they’re just themed around cats. They both have the same title, and that is why I need you to vote, as really I’d prefer only one to survive. I have my favourite, which one is yours?

Or alternatively:

So below there’s a poll (in theory) so you can tell me what you think. Please vote and get lots of other people you know to come here and vote too.

Thanks for reading, hope life is treating you all well.

Good Day,

Joe

Handm@de Winchester

Hello everyone,

Yesterday we had a lovely time at the Winchester Handm@de craft fair which was really brilliant. Great organisation, great branding, great promotion, great people and great stuff. So all in all it was rather good. =)

Check out the stall (Jenny’s side looks way better – I need to work on mine a bit)

Jenny's side

My side

My main surprise is that I sold loads of circuitry sculptures. I took them along just thinking that they’d add it bit of colour and variety to my side of our stall (if you’ve been following you’ll know that I share a stall with my beautiful wife Jenny at Junky Chicken). Turns out they were super popular! I sold the tiny electric guitar for £15 within minutes of the fair opening which was a good start. Obviously though that means I need to try and make another one of those somehow! Anyway, basically I then went on to sell 3 more sculptures for anything from £8 to £12. So that’s very cool.

So with my new confidence in my little sculptures I’m going to post the remaining few on Folksy tonight or tomorrow.  Here’s some pictures as a little preview as a gift for you coming and reading my blog.

"Springsteen"

"Electric Bill"

So there you are. Tomorrow I’ll blog about some of the wonderful things I bought while I was there from some of you lovely crafters.

Good day to you all,

Joe

Storypeople by Brian Andreas

I recently came across this artists cards and books in the most amazing shop in St.Ives. They are so strangely beautiful and funny I think everyone should see them. You can sign up on the website for free Story Of The Day e-mails. They are just strange short poems about all kinds.

Click here for a random one.

Click here for their first free pdf version of one of their books, which includes poetry and artwork.

I hope you all enjoy them!

Good Day.

Everyday by Noah K

Jenny found this online the other day and it is absolutely amazing. I’m sure it’s old news to some as it seems to be 2 years old or so, but it was new to me!

Take a look here.

It is just beautiful, amazing and sort of shows how time just flashes by. I haven’t seen anything so cool for a good while so hopefully people reading here will have the same experience.

The news pieces that are on the website with the video talk about how he can count his girlfriends, the places he lived – all the stuff that just kind of gets lost usually. I want to do it myself even though it wouldn’t be too original – it’d just be cool to see my own life in the same way a few years down the line.

Anyway, that’s it for now.

Thanks for reading,

Happy Vibes,

Joe

Starting a blog…

So I’ve decided that I perhaps ought to start writing a blog. I imagine that in terms of my illustration, I’ll detail any progress that I make here. Other than that, if there are any new developments or ideas this is where they will appear. I’ll also probably put up thoughts, theories and opinions here.

So keep checking back, it should hopefully be worth it.

I look forward to seeing you!

Thanks,

Joe