Hey look, another update

I'm back, like I said I'd be back.

First things first, this blog post has a soundtrack. I doubt it'll take you an hour to read it, like, but go with the idea. This is my Tongue & Groove mixtape.



Look, the dog is singing and playing the piano. You can download it if you want, click on the, err, download button.

So Everything Ever was shown at the Spring Open show at the Egg, like I said last time. Here's a picture that James took of me looking awkward next to it. I don't know why it looks like I've got no eyes.

Very self conscious there, being forced to pose on the far side of a table from him. Another thing I mentioned last time was that my painting Venus Fly Traps has been included in the first edition of my friend Sian's zine Pushing Too Many Pencils. It's really great and if you click on those words it'll take you to her Facebook page, which you should like. I don't think I've ever posted it here anyway, so here it is.

It's actually a watercolour, which isn't something I've much experience of. Weeell, it's technically a watercolour. I actually drew the outline part of it in pen on paper like I usually do, then put the drawing beneath another piece of paper and painted over it. I deliberately kept it quite rough and used too much water because I like the saturated effect it gives. Anyway, once that was dry I scanned both in and composited them in Photoshop. So now you know. Here's what the zine looks like sat on my coffee table.

Pretty nice, right? That photo doesn't really do it justice but check out my coffee table eh. My grandad made that, it's my pride and joy. If you want a copy I've still got a few left. Drop me a line. Not on here, I never check the comments on this thing, but you can email me andyandyandy_vine@hotmail.com or tweet me if you're so inclined @DeadPheasant.

This City Is Ours is back with a new venue. They have moved to Wahlbar in Fallowfield, it's only just opened opposite Sainsburys and it's on the 16th of June. Phil told me he liked the flyer I did for the last one, the kaleidoscope cityscape thing (I'll get around to doing a how-to blog post about that at some point coz it's a nice technique and those things are amazing linkbait) so I came up with something similar. Here is the original photo I began with, it's by Kelly Ward and it was taken as part of a college project using a technique called tilt shift. Give it a google, it's well cool.

Well I started with that and made a right old mess of it, glitching it up and adding some words. Turns out they like this as well and want to run with the ruined pictures of the city as a bit of a theme so I'm going to steal more pictures off Kel and she's going to send them some photos to use in the visuals on the night hopefully. Lovely job.

I think that's about it. Some good stuff in the pipeline but I can't tell you about that here just yet for fear of looking like an idiot, so this will do for now.

Be safe x

Many many things

*Cough cough* bit dusty around here isn't it? Has it really been four months? Is anyone still here? Hello? Is this thing on?

Sorry blog. I know, I know, I'm always pretty bad at updating but I've got some totally legit excuses this time. I won't list them here but if you know me well enough to know what they are then I hope you;ll forgive me. And as much as I love reading dramablogz (I like staring at a car crash as much as the next man), that isn't, never has been and never will be what this blog is all about. Suffice it to say that a lot of changes have been made, life is very exciting and new and I have moved house from Stalybridge to Chorlton.

You'll be pleased to hear (read?) that despite my blog radio silence I have not been slacking on the creative front. Brace yrself.

First things first. Everything Ever has been accepted into the Spring Open show at  is the 18th of May, I will be there and I hope you will to. Bambi was also accepted, one of his pics is even being used for the flyer coz they proper badly love him there. My, erm, impression of a watercolour painting Venus Fly Traps is going to in a zine made by my friend Sian called Pushing Too Many Pencils along with a comic thing by Greg and a recipe thing by Helen so that's very nice, a little Moreton Lodge Clan reunion. It looks amazing, it's quite limited but I should be receiving 20 copies in the post at the beginnig of next week so if you'd like one let me know. I'm keeping one and one or two have already been bagsied so don't be tardy.

New stuff then. Lego from Akoustik Anarkhy emailed me the other week to let me know about Northern Quarter Stories, an aptly named website dedicated to collecting stories about the Northern Quarter. It's a great idea, Hayley from Skyliner has been interviewed for it already and says some nice things about pubs and mysterious public artwork which you should listen to. I designed a beermat and a badge for it. For technical reasons the badge isn't being made and, interestingly, the badge design is now being used for the coaster but that's fine by me because I preferred my badge design to my beermat. Here they are anyway.

This first one is the badge design which, as I say, has now been printed onto beermats. Hayley tells me they're in the Castle pub on Oldham St. I intend to go down there tomorrow and steal a couple (I hope they don't read this).

This is the design I did for the beermat which isn't being used but that's fine because the other one's better anyway.

Next up was a last minute job so I had to do some recycling. Phil from This City Is Ours / From The Kites Of San Quentin emailed me about a charity gig he was asked to play and sort of ended up co-organising and promoting. They needed a flyer for it so I cannibalised a drawing I did of a human cannonball which I did for a band a few years ago but they didn't use. I always thought it was a bit of a shame because I really like it so it's good that it's getting a proper use. I might do something else with it at some point anyway.

As you can see, it's on the 9th of May (this Wednesday) at the Roadhouse, it's a great cause, a great lineup and a great price so see you there.

Another one for TCIO next. Last Monday they released their first album, I Live To Die And I Die To Live by Depakote as a pay-what-you-like download and fair play, it's excellent. As such I am proud to say I've designed the cover based on a photo they sent me and the image sent out with the promo emails  which is quite nice so I'll show you that as well while you're here.

So this is the cover. I was sent a photo that they wanted to use which is great and pretty much just added the text. The font that I used for the artist name is something I designed a while ago, again for some badges for a band that never got made so I'm glad that it finally got used. I had to edit the letter P slightly as the curved bit (I don't know if these things have proper names, I'm sure they do) was a bit small but with a bit of Photoshop trickery it ended up much nicer.

This is the image I came up with for the promos. I thought I'd share it as I think it works quite well and not many people would see it otherwise. Very simple, just a picture of Depakote inside the This City Is Ours text, but I've not tried anything like this before. Turns out it's dead easy.

So yeah, I told you I'd not been doing nothing! I've done a mixtape as well but I can't upload it yet as Soundcloud has taken issue with the fact that it recognised the first track. You'd think they'd be more flexible with mixtapes but never mind, rules are rules and I will just have to find a way around them. Ha ha. To close, some dates for your diary.

Tomorrow, Sunday the 6th of May, Sounds From The Other City festival takes place at various venues in Salford. TCIO are co-curating a stage, I am hoping there will still be some tickets left on the day so that I can go after I've been for a cheeky one in the Castle because the lineup is excellent and I know that lots of lovely people will be there.

Wednesday the 9th of May is the gig from the poster up there at the Roadhouse with Kites and friends.

Friday the 11th of May me, Kelly and Bambi are off on an adventure. We're going to Brighton for The Great Escape festival, or more specifically the Akoustik Anarkhy stage. Over the course of the weekend the Longcut, Plank and Driver Drive Faster amongst others will be playing and therer will be DJs until the wee small hours so it's funtimes guaranteed. We're even staying at a hostel just around the corner from the aA folks. On the Saturday we're heading to London to go to the David Shrigley show at the Hayward Gallery and seeing Greg, hooray. It's going to be the Best Weekend Ever.

Friday the 18th of May is the open evening for the Spring Open show at the Egg to coincide with Light Night which is a Liverpool-wide arts festival thing I believe. Should be good anyway, me and Bambi will be there along with a crowd of people I hope to drag along with me.

Busy busy busy. After all that there's only like a week and a half left of May. It's going to be amazing. It's going to be the Perfect May, like that song Perfect Day, but with an M instead of a D. The next update will not be far off, I promise you. I know I always promise you but this time I mean it. Let's never fight again, blog x

The Sketchbook Project

Right, I don't think I mentioned it at the time but I am taking part in this years Sketchbook Project. Basically, you get sent a sketchbook, you fill it, you send it off, and then it gets taken on tour around the world (including a yet-to-be-confirmed date in London) followed by being kept on permanent display at Brooklyn Art Library in New York. Pretty sweet. Bambi's done it as well, and his entry kind of illustrates the best thing about the project: the variety. His entry is very much fine art; it's a collections of paintings fitted into the book. Mine, erm, isn't. The category I chose was The Worst Story Ever Told, so that's exactly what I've done. I was aiming for a lo-fi, stream of consciousness style surrealist humour. When I showed it to Jo, she laughed in all the right places, so I guess I've done OK. Anyway, it goes kind of like this.

The Worst Story Ever Told

or;

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Fourth Wall

(A Documented Minor Breakdown)

There we go. Might do some prints of some of the pages, might get it printed as a zine or summat, I dunno. Let me know what you think of it though!

This City Is Ours vs Broken Bubble

Alright mate, here's the latest.

Phil This City Is Ours asked me to do a flyer for the next night. It's a Broken Bubble special, and if you click on their name right there, you'll be able to see their Bandcamp. You'll probably notice that they're WELL into kaleidoscopes, and who isn't, right? So I thought I'd do something like that, but with a cityscape (coz This City Is Ours, innit). I found this photo of Manchester courtesy of Hayley Flynn who writes the excellent Skyliner blog. If you thought you knew everything worth seeing in Manchester, you were wrong. She can prove it.

So anyway, it started like this:

And then I got my grubby mits on it and it ended up like this:

I'll probably do a how-to post soon but I'm not in the mood now. Come along though, it's at Centro a week on Saturday and it's free. Be good to see you there!


OH and while I remember, I've got this new mixtape thing. Give it a spin if you've got a spare hour, or even if you haven't you can download it and play it in the background can't you.

2011 eh? That was alright. First things first, some housekeeping. I did this for the December This City Is Ours but they had to cancel, so it'll probably get edited for the next one coz they said they really liked it.

Then I did this one for their New Years Eve party, which I missed.

And I did this for Dead Pheasant, because I had too much time on my hands.

I've got a new mixtape to put up soon as well, but that's really more of a beginning of 2012 thing than an end of 2011. I'll do a round up post soon enough as well, because it's the law.

x

How to make a kite

Last time I mentioned (albeit briefly) that I was making some kites for the launch of From The Kites Of San Quentin's debut EP Mitochondria (which is out now as a pay-what-you-like download from their very own This City Is Ours Records). I sold one on the night and Kites are yet to decide which one they want but I still have two left as well, so if you want one drop me an email at andyandyandy_vine@hotmail.com. To say I was expecting not to sell any I consider that quite a result! Credit where it's due, I mostly used the directions on the website on the other end of this link, but some of their instructions were a bit ambiguous. So without further ado, here is the definitive guide to making your very own Dead Pheasant Kites kites.

You will need a plain shower curtain from Ikea, a packet of bamboo skewers, a ball of string, some sellotape, some parcel tape, some hazard tape, a permanent marker pen, a pencil, a pair of scissors, some all purpose or wood glue, a craft knife, a ruler and a cutting mat. And a cup of tea, naturally.

Excuse the slightly crappy photos here, the flash from my phone reflected off the steel ruler and my phone FREAKED OUT. What they are trying to illustrate is that you will need one skewer at 14.5cm, three skewers at 29cm and four at 4.4cm.

Glue the skewers together like so, with the shorter skewers either side of the longer ones for strength. Rip up a bit of a packet of blue tack so you don't get shouted at for getting glue all over the window sill.

The next bit is quite fiddly so the easiest way to go about it is by making a template first. This should be half the size of your kite's sail, in this case the vertical edge is 43.5 cm, the width is 29cm and the distance from the bottom to the point is 29 cm as well. That wasn't especially well explained, I'd draw a diagram but there's one right here which is great.

Lay it down on the shower curtain, which is of course folded in half along the vertical line, and draw around it. Might as well trim the shower curtain down as well, it's pretty unmanagable otherwise.

Once you've done that, cut it out with the craft knife and ruler. Looking good.

You'll probably need another cup of tea at this point.

Draw whatever you want on both sides of the kite now with permanent marker.

Go all the way around the edge of the kite with sellotape and fold it over to strengthen the edges.

Lay the horizontal spar onto the kites first and attach to the corners of the kite with parcel tape. Lay the vertical spar on top (short end at the top, obviously) and attach in the same way. Then glue the two spars together where they overlap.

Cut a length of string 175cm. Tie a loop knot in one end. Poke a couple of holes in the parcel taped corner either side of the spar and thread the knotted end of the string through. Then feed the other end of the string through the loop and pull it tight.

Do the same for the other end of the horizontal spar and tie it off. I used a slip knot for this end. This is now the bridle line.

This is probably the fiddliest part. To make the flying line you need a length of string 15cm long. Tie a small loop knot in one end. Then find the middle of the bridle line and tie the flying line with a prusik knot. If you want. It was so fiddly that I did this for the first couple and then sacked it off for a normal granny knot so you know, do what you want. As long as it's in the middle I don't think it matters that much. Then tie some hazard tape to the bottom of the vertical spar for a tail and about 20ft of string to the loop knot on the flying line. You're a winner. Here are the finished articles, all numbered one to four on the back.

One of four, mixing desk. This one now belongs to one of the guys from Capac, who were supporting on the night.

Two of four, pedal board.

Three of four, Ableton.

Four of four, Moog.

It was an excellent night anyway. I believe there's some video footage knocking about, if I see any online I'll link to it here because the projections they had going on were incredible. Phil mentioned to me that they had some plans for the Sounds From The Other City festival next summer as well so keep your ear to the ground. Go and download the EP and if you want one of these things, let me know.

OH, almost forgot. The Vaporous Light album is out now on Akoustik Anarkhy. Go and get it, it's great.

Be safe x