Jeff Kilpatrick - Sketches of Fishtown

I met Jeff Kilpatrick through my friend Concetta on our first trip to Philadelphia and we always hang out whenever we visit. Jeff is the kinda person you want to know when you're visiting a big city - a through-and-through local who always has a million stories to tell. He's also one of the nicest dudes you could ever meet and man, he cooks one hell of a meal.

Jeff is a working cartoonist, teacher and founder of the Philly Cartoonist Society. His artwork is awesome. He's got that real-deal, old-school thing going on. A real drawer. For the past couple of years he's been working on a series of drawings inspired by his neighbourhood called Sketches of Fishtown:
Apart from being fantastically touching little tributes to Fishtown in their own right, what really blows my mind is that Jeff has 95 of these under his belt. 95! The whole project is a funny, poignant and heartfelt document of a fascinating corner of the city. The first 50 or so are available in a book, click here for a little info from Jeff about picking up a copy or two. A second volume is in the works.

Work in progress

I've started work on a new wee project. A little magazine thing. Hopefully by mentioning it on here I'll have to stick with it until it's done. Hitting my online shop in March!

Propagate

A very quick little drawing for Illustration Friday. The topic is 'propagate'. I'm just about to start on a new wee project. Hyped.

What I Wore Today 2

Another little thing for the Flickr group What I Wore Today (in drawings).

Survival in the City

This blog post has moved to my new website. You can view it here: Survival In The City. Sorry for the inconvenience. It's a slow process moving 400-odd posts somewhere else. I imagine I'll mess up a wee bit along the way. Cheers.

Tree With Water

Tree With Water

ink & acrylic on card

2008

back to artwork page

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back to artwork list

Adrift

This is my submission for the Illustration Friday topic 'adrift'. It started out as a very graphic Adobe Illustrator piece similar to the eye thing I did a couple of weeks ago. Halfway through, I decided I wasn't feeling it and put together this little drawing instead.

While it's not a million miles from a lot of my other work, I tried to keep it simple and resisted the urge to go crazy with lines and patterns like I often do. Click for big.

What I Wore Today

There's a really cool Flickr pool called What I Wore Today (in drawings). The idea being that you draw a picture of yourself wearing the clothes you picked out (or threw on) today. I decided I'd have a wee go, mainly for something to draw while sitting at the computer.

I found out about the site through the work of 3 different illustrators that I subscribe to: Jen Collins, Lizzy Stewart and Carolyn Alexander. Each participate fairly regularly and always have a great take on it. If you're not familiar with their work, have a look at what they're up to, they've got crazy skills.

As far as my regular participation goes, I'm not sure my patience is up to an endless stream of 'today I wore a shirt' / 'today I wore a t-shirt' drawings, but we'll see. Girls are better at this kinda thing.

Painted Twigs

Another snap from How Children Learn at the Changing Room. I painted a bunch of twigs and combined them with RueFive's birdhouse-like sculptures. If you've never drawn patterns on bumpy sticks, let me tell you it's maddening.

Michel Gondry - Oui Oui

There's two things I can go to if I'm feeling a bit stuck and I need some inspiration. Two things that motivate me more than almost anything. One is No Direction Home, the Bob Dylan documentary by Martin Scorsese and the other is the Directors Label Michel Gondry collection.

Yeah, well, who doesn't like Michel Gondry? He's the best. He puts that kinda perfect mix of child and adult in everything he does. Just ideas - bang, bang, bang, idea, idea, idea, one after the other. His execution, too, is spot on, all kinda scrappy and handmade. It almost seems like his ideas come out so fast that he can't waste time making the edges perfect. That little I've Been Twelve Forever film just gets you going, it just makes you want to make stuff.

Anyway, on the DVD there's a couple of videos for Gondry's band, Oui Oui. Since seeing them, years ago, I've been trying to find the songs online with no luck. Couldn't find them anywhere. Well, not until the other day at least when I had another search about, as I do from time to time, thinking 'right, I'm gonna find these bloody things', and you know what? I did. I found them. Some blog had put them up. They're pretty good. Probably won't set your world on fire, but for anyone else who was after them just to have them, because they're pretty cool wee songs, then, there they are. Plop them on your iPod.

For a taster, here's the video for Les Cailloux:



Of course there's tons and tons of other Gondry / Oui Oui stuff on YouTube. That DVD is a killer though, compared to the other Directors, he really put in the work. Loads of cool little animations, models and sketches and stuff.

Wall

Another snap from How Children Learn. This collab wall (again with RueFive) was across the room from the fireplace structure posted previously. I'm working on editing together a few video clips I took from the show into a little walkthrough so stay tuned for that.

Oh yeah, remember you can subscribe to my site (if you like).

5 things I dig this Thursday

Here is some stuff that I've been liking recently. It's all been discovered at times when I should have been working, interacting with other people, exercising, answering the phone, tidying up, running errands or sleeping:

1. Matthew Lyons
I found out about Matthew Lyons on the art and design blog Kitsune Noir. Who doesn't love a bit of 50s / retro-future / James Bond / Jetsons style stuff? Yeah, that's right, nobody. Matthew Lyons' work combines precision and expression in a way that'll make you jealous. I've been using the above image as my current desktop background.

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2. Lego Cl!ck
Lego are doing really good things these days. They've really got it together. I also saw this awesome (and quite inspiring) little stop-motion film posted on Kitsune Noir a while back (I probably should have just included KN in the top 5) and just re-watched it this morning. Plastic fantastic!

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3. Buildings by Ligia
While browsing around, I was quite taken by a few of Ligia's Little Red Riding Hood illustrations. You get a really nice sense of cold, clear winter air in them. The buildings in the town are brilliantly handled too.

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4. Chilli Heatwave Doritos
To anyone I've not seen in a while, please be warned: I'm now a fat man. I'm a big fat man with a big fat arse and orangey powder all over my fingers. They sell these silly crisps in ENORMOUS BLOODY BAGS!

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5. Maturation by Achewood
If you're not down with Achewood, you ain't worth spit in my book. This page from last month is a perfect summation of what it's like being a paranoid man growing older.

Focused

This is my entry for the new Illustration Friday topic 'focused'. It's a bit of a departure style-wise for me, being an all-singing-all-digital graphic piece, but I'm pretty happy with it. I've been toying around with Adobe Illustrator quite a bit recently and it's much less frustrating than I remember. I really love being able to change things quickly that would take a bunch of redrawing were it done by hand. That and having ctrl-z.

This 'focused' topic was a tricky one, which is something I've found with almost every Illustration Friday I attempt. I love the site and there are a huge number of brilliant submissions every week but I sometimes feel that the topics could be stronger. When you get things like like 'crunchy', 'skinny' or 'island', it's hard not to be very literal. Lots of the entries feel the need to add a little accompanying text saying something like 'the man is focused on kicking the ball', which is fine, and the drawings are usually nice, but, y'know, things can get a little tenuous.

Not that I'm claiming to be the wittiest motherhubbard on the block, far from it, I'd just love something slightly more specific (more focused - ha ha) once in a while. The more rules and restrictions the better in my opinion, they force you to be more inventive and, when reviewing other submissions, it's really interesting to see how other people have tackled the same problems.

It might not be the best example because it's a specific title, but I was mulling over 'The Silence of The Lambs' as a potential illustration subject. Something like that, when given to a wide range of people like the I.F. crowd, would be great. You'd see it interpreted it in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways, from straightforward jokes and wordplay (about quiet sheep) to more thoughtful submissions based on the themes and visuals of the source. Maybe even upping the ante and allowing two word suggestions would be enough. Who knows?

Anyway, I guess the broad single-word topics present a challenge all of their own, which is a good thing. It also encourages a lot of people to draw and get their work seen, which is also a good thing. Have a look around the Illustration Friday site and see what you think. Besides the weekly challenge, there are some awesome interviews and things up there that are definitely worth a look.

Adidas Campus Vulc

I recently got a pair of these from the new Adidas Skateboarding range. I'm not planning on skating in them for a while (my shoes work their way down a ladder until they become a 'skate' pair) but for chopping about, they're pretty fly. This is a doodle from my sketchbook that I've coloured in Photoshop. The laces are a little wonky but nevermind, it was just a quick wee thing.

Drawing shoes always takes me right back to high school art class. Every week, without fail, we'd forget to bring along some still life objects from home and therefore would need to rummage around our bag for something decent to draw. On failing to find anything, we'd reach under the table and clunk our trainers up on the desk. Our group churned out more stinky Airwalks, Vans and DCs than you could ever imagine.