Fairytale of New York - Jones

Before leaving my old job, I have had a bit of spare time but not a whole load of motivation and so, knowing there's no chance of doing an entry over Christmas, I knocked up an early entry for December.

Here's the Christmas fairytale for you, Santa meets the Statue of Liberty. Lovely.

Would have loved to have done the statue as Rapunzel with huge green plaits but, in all honesty, I couldn't raise the enthusiasm to undertake the task!

December 2009 - UPDATE

Hi all,
I've realised I was too ambitious with my limitation. If it's ok with y'all I'd like to amend the limitation to just make it Christmassy/seasonal and ignore the celebrity thing. That can wait for another day!

Hope that's ok. Feel free to put a celebrity in if you've already got that far!

Thanks.
O

Unwritten Rules - Gallusness

Not so fast Mr. Jones…

A belated entry from up here.



I was a little bit pressed for time and so thought I would do a remix which stayed true to the original image which would be created was using similar but different elements.

Pretty simple.

Roll on even less time in December.

December 2009

Ok, looks like just being me and Reeko for November. And us, only just.

I've got a new job starting in January which will almost certainly impact my ability to continue IST. However, for December ( I think it's my turn? ), I am going festive on y'all.

The song will be: Fairytale of New York by The Pogues and Kirsty Whats'erface.

The limitation: Must feature a celebrity. And of course be Christmassy.

Unwritten Rules – Reeko

Yep. Ran out of time. Busy bee at the moment.

So, the idea was to flip all the bits of the original artwork. The mugger becomes the victim, death becomes life and the power station becomes a picturesque scene. Also I like how un-"punk" some of these subjects are. Kind of feels a bit like breaking unwritten rules...

Unwritten Rules

First thing that came to my mind regarding unwritten rules was the phenomenon of urinal etiquette. Where do you stand? There are clear boundaries, most men are aware of them. Here's a simple one. Check out the net for other scenarios - it can get complex!

Remixed using previous entries. Rockin.

November 2009

Doesn't time fly?! Here we go....

All 1:42 of "Unwritten Rules" by Rancid from their self titled 1993 debut.

Haven't we done Rancid? Should really put a list together of all the bands we've covered... Also, I guess that's the point of shuffle, it's random! Ok, and now for the limitation;

"Remix"

There are many different ways people remix, from cutting up one bit of a song and adding a beat to essentially recording a new version. Here's the source material, go to town!

Best of luck to us all!

squeakey clean

Not sure how many times I have listened to and sung along with the song in question. Suffice to say it is many! So I decided to do something with the song lyrics. Cleaning seemed obvious, although I did make some - futile - attempts to get away from it as a concept. Oh well. If you can't fight it, clean it, as they say. The rest is here for you to be the judge of. Oh, try and listen to the song if you haven't already, it's so great!

Until next month, peace

Mr Clean - Gallusness

I would firstly like to thank Mr Jones for helping to give my entry this month a little context (and I was going for a little continuity, honest).

My effort I guess you wouldn't really class as an illustration probably more a concept that I've worked up. Time was properly conspiring against me this month and so I thought how about Mr Clean being the man tasked with cleaning up some of the more infamous/controversial album sleeves that are out there. Arranged grid like as an homagé to another notorious album sleeve (U2's Acthung Baby) I went for a 3x3 grid as opposed to their 4x4.

Next month I'm well picking up pens/pencils as it seems to have been too long. Guess that'll all depend what the limitation is?

Oh and here is the flat artwork as well.

Mr Clean - Reeko

Superman is known in comicbook circles as a goody goody two shoes "Mr Clean".

Mr Clean - Jones

'Ello.

Mr Clean, as a CD cover - voila.



...and here's the artwork for you. Fun with bubbles and type, glad I have been quiet at work this month...! ;)

October IST

I know, I know... first I don't do a post for September, now I'm picking songs. Well, you're about to like me even less. My shuffle says October IST will be Millencolin, Mr.Clean from the 1998 album Same Old Tunes. Not only that but the (diabolical) limitation, which is a pain in the back side by the way, is... it's gotta be in CD format. So 123x123mm, with a spine and a title. You can use whatever title you like, only the subject should be Mr.Clean. The reason for this is that Millencolin have a history of designing their own artwork for their records, and as a hats off to their efforts we will use that restriciton this month. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Peace, happy October!

Sorry

Sorry boys, I couldn't make it this month... I'll make it up to you next time round!

There She Goes My Beautiful World - Reeko

Death of worlds was were I was at with this one. How could I not throw in monsters and scantily clad women? What else happens at the apocalypse?!

On another note I really enjoyed the "no drawing" thing. Found it very liberating!

There She Goes My Beautiful World - Gallusness

A pretty straight forward solution from me this month. Looking at the lyrics there is real redemptive theme going on. Using this months limitation of no drawing it was a case of finding images to bring the song to life and trying to then get a sweet composition (bit trickier than I'd imagined in both respects). Some of the images are directly referenced in the lyrics and others just seemed to fit/felt right. I also wanted to use a more limited colour palette as I felt it would help bind the sourced elements together.

There She Goes My Beautiful World

Well, here's my cobbled hour's worth of retouching for ya. Been away so had very little time for clever ideas or perfect execution but it is what it is - does what it says on the can!

September 2009

Lady and gentlemens, the shuffle has been done and we have – There She Goes My Beautiful World by towering Antipodean gloom merchant Nick Cave & his Bad Seeds.

Nice…

And guess I should also set us a limitation, ok lets flip side last month. That means NO DRAWING! This month can we have four photoshop-collages produced entirely from found, sourced or 'borrowed' imagery.
Ta

Keep drawi… eh, keep cloning, blending, feathering etc.

Underwater Love - Jones

Hello guys and girl. No computers eh? What sort of plonker was I deciding on that rule?! Talk about shooting myself in the foot?

Actually, no, I enjoyed the chance to get back to basics and do some sketching. And having been ridiculously busy with lots of huge Photoshop files this last 2 weeks I've been able to use the 'saving and opening' times to construct my IST response.

There's no blue either. No colours in fact, all just a sketchathon. Hope you like. I think Ariel is enjoying it! ;)

---



---

Love, schmove...

What's so great about pencils, hmmm??! Why can't I just use my trusty Adobe programs? James, I blame you. See below:

Underwater Love – Gallusness

This month has been an interesting one. The enforced limitation only added to the fun. The title didn't grab me straight away and there was a fair bit of humming and hawing. Away from IST I've started a new full time design role which has been my priority and keeping me busy. My entry has taken a back seat until a few days ago. It's been sketched out over a couple of train commutes and then inked up properly when I was happy with the scale and composition.

Subject wise I wanted to depict an unconventional love, as I'm guessing the fact that is underwater in the first place is adds to that. My head took me to drawing a worm and a hook and I guess I was amused by it being wrong and right in a number of ways. I guess love can be a strange beast and that's what I was hoping to show in a slightly tongue in cheek way.

In terms of finish the limitation was good in that I didn't overly worry about getting it totally right and slick. It was much quicker to do and it's certainly a million miles away from what I'd have done with the use of a computer, so I guess in that sense the limitation worked.

I had intended to add some bubbles (in the shape of love hearts) to help give it more context, but just plain forgot so yeah oooops. An interesting month really, I'll await the other posts, have a mull over a limitation and of course get ready to have a shuffle – hmmm.

Underwater Love – Reeko

So, this has been a good challenge! I've enjoyed the limitations of "No computers". I've found it very liberating. No retouching, no stress, what my hand does with the brush pen is final. I even refrained from colour or contrast adjustments after scanning.

We are currently in the process of emigrating to Athens, Greece. I had big plans for this month but ended up packing the paints before I'd had time to do the artwork! So I turned to my tiny moleskine and switched my idea into a little series of images. When drawing in my sketchbook I often represent my ideas in a more abstract way. I then work up the idea, playing with composition and gathering reference to make the final artwork.

This little story is about a sailor being rescued by mermaids who, for some reason, need to enter from the surface of the water!

Ok, roll on the next month and the next limitation!

(Trying not to look at all the flaws I could fix so easily in Photoshop! Trying not to look at the...etc etc)

New Title - August

Haha, just shuffled and the title is:

Underwater Love, by Smoke City (from the Thicker Than Water soundtrack amongst other things).

Here we go!

Charlie – Reeko

"So much more than Charlie's waking me

To my core and Charlie's shaking me "

Oh... Charlie!

Charlie - Owen

Hmm, I've noticed a slide in the quality of my recent entries. The trend seems to be to leave it too late (in fairness, things have been hectic!) and throw together a hurriedly produced effort.

Well, Charlie was no different I'm afraid. Maybe you'll like it. Maybe. Unlikely though!

My first thoughts were to do with (a) Charlie Brown, (b) phonetic alphabet and (c) cocaine! I discounted the cocaine and worked out how to combine the first two with the least effort involved (sorry, gotta be honest).

So I made a picture of Charlie Brown, complete with zig-zag jumper, out of lots of letter 'c's. And here it is. Man, I'm ashamed.

'Speak up man'

July's theme was a slow starter but I really enjoyed it once the idea formed. I took my cue from the NATO phonetic alphabet, and after looking through some of the photo archives of the Big Picture, I knew what I wanted to do. The idea is you use the words to make sure someone at the other end of the line can understand what you're saying. It felt like this was a starting point and the project could go a number of ways so there's two versions here, see what you think.

Charlie - Gallusness

Ok so I'm posting this a day early. It's been a good month up here in the world of Gallusness. More info to follow about why that is at some point. July's entry is done and dusted so I thought I'd get it up and out there. It's worth also saying July has been such a good month that even May's - Tell Me A Lie entry got revisited. There is now an updated illustration that's been added to that previous post, it's now in a place I'm happy with.

But over to this months entry. Charlie as a title was an absolute gift, I knew instantly what I was going to do. Since setting up www.gallusness.com just over a year ago I had a number of personal projects that I had on the go that I wanted to finish and add. One of these was a t-shirt design involving Charlie Chaplin. It'd become something of a personal quest to finish this design but it has always been the one that got away. It's been mostly done for ages now and probably would have remained that way (despite it being a 2009 new year resoultion to finish it). My motivation and reason behind the t-shirt is the story of how Charlie Chaplin entered a Charlie Chaplin look-a-like contest in Monte Carlo and came third… I LOVE that fact, it's genius! And I love the fact that he was up for entering in the first place.

This fact has always amused me and I fancied celebrating (and wearing) a tribute so I set about designing an appropriate image. As this was going to be for a t-shirt I kept the real Charlie C as a photograph. But then illustrated the other entrants in a pretty apt colour scheme and fashion that would give a better printed result.

Although I effectively had a head start on this entry I went back and re-visited it as a whole to tidy it up and get it to exactly where I wanted. One of the newer additions was working up how to best achieve the podium finish. The Monte Carlo text that appears was hand crafted before being traced over in vector work.

I've included a visual of how I imagine the final t-shirt looking below.

Yip Charlie as a title was about as close to perfect as you could get for me, top of my head think only the Stereophonics 'Looks Like Chaplin' could have topped it.

Overall I'm really happy with this one. It's so nice to see it finished and fully realised, just have to get around to arranging a print run now. Reeko, I salute your I-Tunes and it's shuffle-ability (well for now).

Untitled - delayed

Eeeek!

Nevermind that it's the 6th, better late than never. I actually did this at the very beginning of the month but have been caught up in lots of freelance work and forgot to post it. Sorry kids!

July 2009

Round and round she goes, where she stops no one knows!

...and the song for July is;

"Charlie" by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers from "Stadium Arcadium – Jupiter"

Another record I didn't even know I owned. Heads down and best of British!

Untitled - Gallusness

This months title for me represented an opportunity to do an illustration I'd been wanting to do for an absolute age now. I also felt that the song title allows me to not to have to give a fully detailed explanation this month. Lady and gentlemen, Untitled by Gallusness.

See you next month.

Untitled – Reeko

So, here's how the train of thought went.

Untitled. So he doesn't have a title. Who doesn't have a title? Do I have a title? Yes, I'm a "Mr". You have to be outside society to have no title. Who is outside society... A homeless person perhaps...

I tried to convey some of the bleakness of the song in the image. Oh, and the reflections in the pavement were a real experiment and I'm still not sure they quite work. Ah well, onwards and upwards!

Have a great month.

Untitled - Jones

Hi all. Thanks Christie for such an open ended brief! I should give a brief explanation...

Actually sod it, work it out for yourselves!! If you want to, that is...

New month - New song

James tells me it's my turn to shuffle, here goes:

Untitled, by Interpol (from Turn on the Bright Lights)

Knock yourselves out, this one is a free pass ;-)

Tell Me A Lie - Gallusness

Ok as promised here is my attempt from the wee sma hours of a Monday/Tuesday morning. Think it's better to regard this as a work in progress still. Feel it's going in the right direction but it needs finished properly. But in not wanting to hold up IST anymore thought best let you guys (and now gal) see what I've been up to.

My submission has come out of two thoughts. The first one was from one of the most classic film scenes of all time. By this I mean the Christopher Walken/Dennis Hopper interrogation in True Romance. The inspiration that came from there is basically Christopher Walkens claim that he is trained in the seventeen (I think) ways in which somebody can lie. In the film we all know what follows… Well I hope anyway!?

So that idea led me to trying to show one of he most obvious forms of telling a lie – reading somebody's eyes. With this decided I then thought if you were going to tell a lie lets go for a biggie. My illustration has taken the form of a possibly make or break time in someones life. There's a passionate arguement happening and the following has been thrown out there

"Look me in the eyes then and tell me a lie. Tell me you love me."

The illustration is meant to try and represent that moment just before a lie might happen. I've hopefully tried to capture an uncertainty and it's open to interpretation if you think a lie or not will follow.

I would just like to point out that despite a less cheery illustration this month life up here is grand. Just where my head went to this month. Also I fancied going back to a purely vector based entry this time (probably with the excepion of the background in my final attempt I'd wager!)

UPDATE



As was promised I've managed to grab a few wee snatches of spare time to revisit my Tell Me A Lie entry. This is at the stage now I'd originally hoped to have gotten for the end of May deadline. The main additions are the textured background and some gentle shading. Certain areas were simplified a little as well. Much happier with this one now.

Tell Me A Lie – Reeko

As soon as I think about the Fratelli's, I automatically conjure up the first video I saw (probably for that do-de-do song) that featured a lavishing of 19th century imagery and as many "burlesque" dancers as they could round up on a wet Wednesday in Shoreditch.

Going down that route I imagined a Moulin Rouge style scene with one... gentleman caller... arriving swiftly after the next, the first sneaking out the back as she says "Why, Sir? What kept you? I have been waiting for you alone all evening..."

Bellow is the process, the main jump being a twist in angle half way through as I thought the image was just a bit static. Also, changing the arm into a silhouette really helps draw the eye rather than using colour as I had originally planned to.

Tell Me A Lie - Christie

An unexpected visitor to the Illustrated Song Titles, I hope that's ok. I am really excited about contributing, thanks for having me! The standard of work is really high, so I'm going to have to keep my game good. This first entry was inspired by the strange notion that pulling petals off a daisy will somehow enlighten us about the love of another... There is always a tiny amount of hope that it might somehow, born of sheer willpower, be true.

Peace, Christie

Tell Me A Lie - Jones

I went on a small, relatively uneventful (though slightly interesting in a vague kinda way) journey with my thought process for this one. As always I started by looking at the lyrics and listening to the song on youtube. I loved the fairground theme and thought about doing a pic of a woman with a moustache, in a circus/freakshow way. But it seemed a little bit too straight forward and maybe a bit dull.

My next thought was based on Eddie Izzard's observations about toasters and showers sharing similar turn-y knobs that LIE. Was there an idea in that somewhere? Possibly, who knows? I didn't really commit enough time investigating it I'm afraid.

Time passed. The end of the month approached. Then I remembered I hadn't done a thing. Cue panic.

Having recently found myself truely inspired by the illustrative type of such artists/agencies as Alex Trochut, Seb Lester and Vasava, I wanted to harness that inspiration and take the opportunity to try and create a typographic illustration.

Tell Me A Lie?

"Honey, tell me 'honestly', does my bum look big in this?"

Here's the final piece. In all honesty, I'm a little disappointed with the finish, it certainly doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as the artists name checked before, but there are some cool elements to it and overall it's not too bad considering the time I was able to spend on it!



Here's a scan of my initial sketch/layout, which I was actually pretty pleased with.

May 2009

The songs have been shuffled and this months task is:

Tell Me A Lie by The Fratelli's

Mine will be finished by the end of the week… Yeah, got into the spirit of this title already. Pencils, pens, paintbrushes at the ready. I'm off to check the lyrics.

Like A Stone – Gallusness

Hey chaps. Ok so a wee bit late but here is April's entry. Interestingly enough I chose to use some lyrics like Mr. Reeko. And interestingly enough they weren't a million miles away from the lines he chose. What I decided to do was to compose an image based on something to do with the following section:

'In your house, I long to be, room by room, patiently, i'll wait for you there, like a stone, i'll wait for you there, alone.'

'And on my death bed, i will prey, to the gods and the angels, like a pagan, to anyone who will take me to heaven, to a place, I would recall, I was there so long ago.'

Mega cheery stuff from me this month. Whilst doing this entry I've found myself doing some experimenting with the colouring and finishing. Some changes worked and some haven't, it's all about the development.

Oh and while doing the colouring up realised there is a touch of the Amy Winehouse about the lady. This was unintentional and its been bugging me ever since I noticed it.

Right, off to find us a new title and comment on your respective pieces. Dam you guys for being so good.

Like A Stone - Jones

Here's my nice early posting for Like A Stone. Found a nice bit of free time early on to nail the idea, and a bit towards the end to do some finishing off with the colours etc. Bonus. I've noticed though, that the ones I've managed to spend a bit more time on have generally been ones where I've chosen the songs! Strange?

All quite graphic-y I know, and not really conventionally illustrative, rather a little bit conceptual. Hope you don't mind.

The downward lines are used in different ways to spell the words "like a stone", with the arrows showing the gravitational pull as they fall, like a stone, towards the bottom. Simple as that I'm afraid!

Like A Stone – Reeko

Arcylic on board, A1.

"In your house I long to be
Room by room patiently
I'll wait for you there
Like a stone
I'll wait for you there
Alone "

Traffic In The Sky - Owen

"pant pant, puff, puff..."

Here I am, sorry I'm a bit late!

My effort is a bit like what I'd envisaged, but a lot less detailed and not quite as good! This is based on my first sketch. I later ditched the sketch and wanted to just concentrate on the red and white light trails in the sky but couldn't get it to work very well with limited time, so went back to the sketch.

I like the fact I experimented with a slightly different style, and I like the rough pencil work (to a point, anyway) showing through. If I had a couple of days just to dedicate to it I'm confident I'd have managed something more 'finished' looking!

Traffic 'Cone' In The Sky - Gallusness

Now if I just keep talking no one can possibly notice what I've done there/here…

Right so this month I decided to get a bit cheeky with my entry. The image depicts the Duke of Wellington statue which is regarded as one of the original statues to get continually 'coned'. It stands outside the front of the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow city centre. Because of the sheer number of times the statue gets 'coned' and due to it's location the cone when a top Wellington's head is now no longer removed by the council.

It's become something of an icon it's own right and many see it as a cheeky pop at everyday folk showing up the modern art located mere feet away. It's quite a statue to cone as well, sitting at nearly twenty foot high and on top of a big concrete pedestal. If the statue does happen to lose it's cone it usually only takes a student night to pass by for it to be sporting it again.

March was a funny month in that I knew what I was going to do for a while. Then life/work went a bit crazy mental busy (hence my post of last week saying guys I'm struggling). Then yesterday I got landed with a day off and some time to cobble my entry together. Most unexpected but welcomed none the less. Style wise I wish I could back to half way through this entry and change the finish. But ah well it's done now.

Bring on April.

April 2009 - New Song

Hiya. I'm hoping I might scrape together something for March this week, apologies for the delay.

In the mean time, the new song for April is:

Like A Stone by Audioslave.

If you have time that is...!

O

Traffic In The Sky – Reeko

This month, well firstly I thought I wasn't going to post at all! Then I finished stuff earlier than I thought and discovered to my delight that I had a whole day to play with.

I decided to paint this one in acrylic on board... mainly because I just wanted to. I've been looking at a lot of painted work lately and fancied having my first bash at it for... ooh, could be 5 years?!

The idea comes from this line in the song, "Shadows of the planes...". What you may not be able to see is that the figure has a toy plane in his hands.

Have a great month!

March 2009

Ok, we've been wanting a good one. Not sure if this is it, but it's what we've got. The sound of a thousand Oz Experience bus rides...

"Traffic In The Sky" by Jack Johnson from the aptly titled "On and On".

From a Q&A with Jack;

Q: What was the first song you learned on the guitar?
A: I learned two at the same time: "One" by Metallica and "Father and Son" by Cat Stevens.

Bimeos. See what you created?!

And Here I Stand – Reeko

From the mighty wikipedia;

"Hanging people from early gallows sometimes involved fitting the noose (a.k.a the tater) around the person's neck while he or she was on a ladder or in a horse-drawn cart underneath. Removing the ladder or driving the cart away left the person dangling by the neck to slowly strangle."

I would like to make it clear, in light of recent drawing related racial issues in the media, that this drawing is in no way related to the lyrics of the song, just the title. The idea is to explore the feeling of the last stand, on the cart, waiting for the whip to signal the drop.

In fact, I didn't bother reading the lyrics until now as I had such a clear idea of what I wanted to do after reading the title. Wish I had now as I feel a little uneasy about posting.

Oh well. Nuthin' but love. I really like way I've done the horse!

And Here I Stand - Gallusness

Ok my bad. So I-Tunes didn't give up a gem of a title this month. Here's hoping for better luck in March.

So yeah I decided to take the title literally. Very literally! I think it harks back to days of drawing/designing trainers when I was younger. Along with super duper fancy hot rod cars and football strips while we're on that thought pattern…

But anyways, this is where I was standing. I had my tigers on, it was all good.

To preempt some possible feedback, I'm thinking I am kind of finding my style in terms of my IST responses. Hand drawn, dumped into photoshop where it's coloured and delivered with a flat-ish finish. That's kind of what I'm going for. Ta

And Here I Stand - Jones

Hello. I've struggled this month. Really couldn't get to grips with the race war/anger/rage of the lyrics and feel of this song, and encountered a busy period at work (and an 'annual' review where, although in the best part very positive, I was certainly 'encouraged' to spend less time doing my own illustration/web browsing when there's work to do!!).

Anyway, as you know, I support Plymouth Argyle. And as you may be aware, we suck. A poor run of recent results left manager Paul Sturrock perilously close to the sack but the board love him too much and bottled sacking him. I personally think it should have happened a couple of weeks ago but now fear it is too late and we are in serious risk of relegation anyway. We might as well keep him because he's as good as anyone in the league below so if we do go down, he might be the man to get us back up.

Well he's come out and made it clear that he's not going to quit, and so here he stands.

Aaagh.