Battles, games and where's wally...

I've a real mixed bag of stuff to post up starting with some photos of the recent round of Secret Wars, the live drawing competition. It took place on the Friday of the weekend of the Offset conference/festival, in the very jammed and very raucous beer garden of the Bernard Shaw pub in Portobello. I was on the Offset team in the highly esteemed company of Chaz from the London Police and Serge Seidlitz, and then joined along the way by Bob, the other half of TLP, and Tara McPherson.

General Mayhem
Our wall o'art
Unwell Slothie

Despite the skills of this A-Team of doodling (and me), we lost out to our formidable rivals on the night, the Secret Wars team of Stephen McCarthy, Mick Minogue and Dan Leo. Darn.

This defeat does at least provide me a neat link to my next picture, my piece for the 'Toys of Christmas Past', a show at the Little Ghost Gallery which was recently set up in Kilkenny by the previously mentioned Mr. Minogue. The show opens on the evening of Friday 11th. My piece is called "The Social Network", and is an homage to the gloriously unsocial Christmas gift that was the Gameboy.

Who needs friends when you have Mario.

Here's the end result of a project that started over a year ago and is now out and about in the world. I had to illustrate the results of a survey of kids on their local library which was put together by the talented Ms Jennie McGinn for Kildare Library and Arts Services. It takes the form of a Where's Wally-ish cross section of a fantastical Dream Library which combined all the kid's suggestions, from study areas to underground raves.

This illustration was on one side of a newspaper style print out which had lots of info on it and was also illustrated and designed by me. Unfortunately I don't have this at hand as I recently dropped my back up hard drive. Clever. I'm saving up to have everything on it recovered (hopefully).

More soon.
BC

Sexy Mo

Just a quick post to say the piece I did for the tie-in Movember exhibition of moustache inspired art is up on ebay, along with all the other amazing arts. You can bid for them HERE. And you can see all the work in the South William bar on (logically) south william street.
My piece features a gaggle of buxom brunettes, knackered after an energetic orgy with a large moustache:


Have to take this opprtunity to sing the praises of Offset last weekend. Amazing to get the chance to see people like James Jean, Dave McKean and Tara McPherson speak about their work here in Dublin. Big thanks to those who came along to my talk on Sunday and a massive thanks to Richard, Peter and Bren at the Small Print for all their work organising such an extravaganza.

BC

PEEP-IGI-KUCHA-SECRET-SET

Busy, busy week of stuff happening. Peepshow, an exhibition of erotically themed art by a fine selection of illustrators and artists is currently running in Monstertruck gallery on Francis Street. Don't worry, my offering is only pornographic if you look very, very closely.

Tonight in Solas on Wexford street there's an exhibition of work from the past year by IGI members. My piece for the 2009 AIB calender is in the mix.

Tomorrow I'll be talking at the third Dublin Pecha Kucha night in the sugarclub on Leeson street. Strictly 20 slides and 20 seconds a slide. So if I'm boring it'll be over quickly. It's only a fiver in and there's some amazing people presenting (and me). Come down for an evening of edutainment.

Friday the incredible Offset officially kicks off in Liberty hall. Hope you have a ticket as it's extremely sold out. There are some of the best talents in the world speaking over the weekend. Great to see this happening in rainy Dublin. As part of the action on friday night, I'll be taking part in Secret Wars, a live drawing competion in the Bernard Shaw in Portobello.

Saturday night sees more potential drawing in the Twisted Pepper on Abbey Street.

Sunday morning I'll be speaking at Offset in the Off room around 11.30. Come along (if you have a ticket) and behold my exhausted frame. I'll be going through some of my work and influences and such.

A massive salute and kudos is owed to the good folks at the small print for their hard work in organising all these amazing events.

In non-me event news I highly recommend you make it along to Time/Line, an exhibition of the skateboard photography of the supremely talented Richard Gilligan. It runs TUESDAY 3RD-8TH NOVEMBER @ PLANE/SITE GALLERY (Laneway across the road from the baggot gap) LAD LANE DUBLIN.


And as for some actually illustrations, here's the cover of the Autumn programme for the fabulous Riverbank Arts Center in Newbridge which features illustrations by yours truly.


Movember the worldwide charity of sponsored moustache growing, is in full swing and as part of this year's action, Ireland's Tintin and Snowy, Conor Creighton and Steve Ryan have produced Eurotash, a book examining the world of the european hairy upper lip. Buy it here now! Here's some of the illustrations I have in it:


That's enough for now.

Busy...not lazy

No post for two months. Bad Brian.

Rather than catching swine flu or falling down a well, I've just been busy. There's a lot of stuff that'll I'll have to post up here in the next couple of weeks, but I've got to start somewhere so...

LeCool is a free weekly internet magazine with lots of suggestions for how to spend the next seven days. There's an edition for Barcelona, Madrid, Lisboa, London, Istanbul, Moscow, Budapest and, for the last few months, Dublin has joined the ranks. Each week they have a different artist, photographer or the like create a cover. I was asked to do one and so I decided to do a riff on the summer sun being chased away by rain clouds, unaware that this would still be fitting when the cover was used a couple of weeks later. With three years in a row now, I think we can declare the Irish summer officially dead. RIP


Last year I did a flyer/poster for a season of shows by female artist at Monstertruck Gallery & Studios called 'Attack of the 50ft Women' (I know this is odd as I'm not a female artist). Anyway this year they're having a season of (mixed gender) painting shows and they've kept the classic horror movie theme. So I give you...'The Thing that couldn't Die'.


The most fun you can have in a field in Laois, the Electric Picnic,

is on this weekend and once again I'll be drawing/painting at it as part of the Graffiti/Art area. If you passing by say hello. I'll either be drawing on a pink boat or on a fake train carriage. I'm easy to spot at the moment, I'm still sporting a ridiculous moustache, hacked out of my beard last week in honour of an Eagles of Death Metal gig.

Finally as a stuff-I-like-and-so-should-you entry check out the absolutely stunning drawings of Leestroy here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/leestroy/


Also check out another favouite of mine McBess, and the rocking video he did for his band the Dead Pirates: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD1Rrfc0y-M&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fmcbess.com%2Fmusic.html&feature=player_embedded
It's like Felix the Cat rocking out. Yes.

I'm also on a pretty good run of seeing stuff in the cinema as I can easily recommend Moon, Mesrine: Killer Instinct and Inglourious Basterds. But to be fair before Moon was Terminator: Salvation (no IMDB link).

Lots more to post soon. Going to put some new stuff up on the website too. That's all for the mo.

Dreamy

A while back I was asked by Mr. Tom Wild to submit a couple of pieces to a book of illustrative work he was putting together for his degree project. The theme was vaguely dreams or dream-like stuff. Well it's finally all printed up and ready to be ordered by you and/or your design company!
Hardback will be around £60, paperback around £40
Have a look a here:
http://www.tomwild.co.uk/lucidity/photos.zip - (53mb) 12 HQ pics of the prototype book
and here:
http://www.tomwild.co.uk/lucidity/index.html - (13mb) Full online version of the book.
to confirm that you want it.

There's really some great work in there (as well as my doodles).
Hat's off to Tom for all the hard work putting it together.
BC

Monk or Drunk

Wow 2 posts in one day!!!

Did this a few weeks back but forgot to post it up, it's for a new ad campaign for Paulaner beer featuring illustrations from myself, Mr Colm MacAthlaoich and Sir Brenb. We each got a curious anecdote from the history of Paulaner to illustrate.

Mine was on the incident where Medieval Munich was severely thrashed by a mob rioting over rising beer prices. One of the few buildings to remain untouched was the Monastery where Paulaner was brewed, so beloved was the said brew.



I like beer too.
Here it is as part of the finished poster.

SCOOP: Mr Cat, the negative ghosts have escaped again!

Here's the piece I've just done for the upcoming charity exhibition/auction organised by the good folks at SCOOP. It's a simple pen and ink number, not a computer in sight. A girl and a cat-headed zookeeper chase after some escaped mini negative ghosts. As it's for charity I can insist that it's worth millions.


Here's some info on the auction and it's impressive line-up.

The SCOOP Art Auction is now pencilled in for the Sunday the 5th of July, in the Pygmalion Bar and Powerscourt SC on South William St and we are getting busy putting together the most diverse and talented collection of artists and artworks ever seen in our capital. We will launch the event with some free plonk on Tuesday the 30th of June in Pygmalion, and will have all pieces on show in the days running up to the auction.

So far we proud to announce that we have such artists (in alphabetical order) as the world famous hip hop photographer B+ (Brian Cross), Bren B, Gaetan Billault, Fergal Brennan, Sarah Brownlee, Brock Butler, Bob Byrne, Paul Byrne (aka Poncho), Tom Byrne, Antonia Caffrey, Alan Clarke, Brian Coldrick, Brioni Connolly, Eugene Conway, Hugh Cooney, Darragh Crotty, Danleo, Nina Divito, Karen Donnellan, Jason Dunne, Killian Dunne, Emile, Maurice Fitzgerald, Natasha Gavrilovic, Giita Hammond, Paul Kunle Harris, Tommy Headon, Jane Hilliard, Sarah Hurl, Myra Jago, Dillon Joyce, Jane K, Mo Kelly, Jacqueline Leddy, Brian Lynch, Ramon Kassam, Lauren Kavanagh, Al Kennington (aka Synth Eastowood), Elizabeth LeJeune, Ingrid Lyons, Aine Macken, Jose Manuel, Maser, Conor McGrath, Lisa McKenna, Noel Mealy, John Mernagh (aka The Chemist), Emmett McGlincy, Morgan, Ailbe O'Connell, William O'Neill, Bernice Prendiville, Shona Pfeiffer, Ruth Power, Ribo, Sheila Rennick, Peter Scroope, Sarah Shiel, Slik Blik, Shane Sutton, Christopher Sweeney, David Sweeney, Dave Uda, Keith Walsh and Jenny Watkins already on board.

Head to www.myspace.com/scoopcharity for more info

The Macathlaoich sighted

The amazingly talented illustrator and artist, and all round good chap Colm Mac Athlaoich has just put up his shiny new website. It's full of sickeningly great work. Go be impressed now!

Town < Country

I'm luckily enough to live beside (and be part of) the "Across the Way' gallery and studios in the wilds of north Dublin. This Friday sees our collaboration with the powerhouse of art and skulduggery that is Monstertruck gallery and studios. Basically a selection of artist associated with Across the Way will be exhibiting in Monstertruck, opening at 6pm. At 8pm buses will come and, for a small fare, take the heaving crowd of art lovers out to Kinsealy and Across the Way where a selection of artists associated with Monstertruck will be exhibiting.

There's an amazing spread of artists taking part and art openings are always more fun when they involve schooltour-like bus trips. Click right here for all the info.

Here's the image for the flyer I did. It successfully references playing cards and battenburg cake. Score!


....and hey presto...

West Shoe Forward

This is a job I completed a while back but the campaign has just launched so there's no better time to post it up. It's one of a new series of posters for Asics shoes called Left and Right. Each poster represents two halves or opposites (so Art/Science, Up/Down etc), with one shoe of the pair planted in each half. I was working on East/West.

The poster went through several stages of development, as there was lots of discussion about what elements best represented each hemisphere. First up was this rough with the central image being a figure for each half; eastern girl and western boy. Underneath them were lots of circle icons of various cultural references.


I did one more streamlined version of the figures -


-before it was decided that the smaller icons alone would work best. They became a central floating compass thingie


Then they were finished up to this (where 'east/west' has become 'west/east' to sit better with the compass idea)

Which went through one last round of tinkering to become the finished poster-


I always find it odd just how different a finished job can be from an initial concept, especially when several people's input has shaped how it's developed.

You can catch the other posters in the series here.
BC

Shrunken Photos

I've posted loads of photos of the exhibition up on flickr here.

Exhibition Launch

Last Thursday evening saw the opening of 'Shrunken Head', my first solo show, at Monstertruck gallery and studios on Francis Street. A fine gaggle of art lovers braved the snow and cold to hang out with some sloths and shrunken heads. The show runs until Tuesday 17th. I'll be posting up a full series of photos of the work in the next day or two.

Shrunken Head

Next month sees my first proper solo exhibition. It opens on the evening of the 5th February in the fantastic Monstertruck Gallery and Studios on Dublin's Francis street. Entitled 'Shrunken Head', the bulk of the show will be a series of portraits of alter egos, pen names, second identities, fictional characters etc. Needless to say my old friend the Sloth will be making an appearance. I'm hoping a few 3D additions will come together in time as well...

Naughty Physics

Happy New Year. Been meaning to post this for ages. It's my piece from the Allied Irish Bank 2009 Calender. For this year's date displaying extravaganza they had a selection of Irish illustrators create something based on a place/location of hidden interest. I picked a hill hidden amongst the Comeraghs, near the Mahon Falls, somewhere in county Waterford. This hill reputedly has the curious ability to cause an idle car to roll uphill. UPHILL.
Anyway the pic explains this oddness with a cross-section of the hill revealing lots of faeries with a giant magnet. Naughty Physics.

The calender features a great selections of curiosities and creativity from other illustrators. Go into a bank and hassle them till they give you one or have you arrested.