Kilkenny Film Club - The Leopard

The last of the films for this season was shown on the 18th of December in the Parade Tower. A magnificent grand finale. The Kilkenny Film Club has already organized the next season. It starts with The Night of the Hunter.

In terms of the illustration, I decided to tell the story of the film using a completely different visual code from that one of the film: humorist cartoon moderne against Visconti's meticulous descriptive style.
Hope you like it.

Barnstorm Posters for The Bus

I am delighted to have been involved in this fantastic project. We are almost ready to go to print.
The poster image was done as I usually develop my images: once I was happy with the composition, I inked the drawing (hunt 102 nibs again and Indian ink). Now I tried a different approach in the digital stage. I scanned it as a greyscale image, converted it to RGB and started painting directly with Photoshop. I used most of the natural brushes at low opacity and low flow. It resulted in a quite long time to cover areas but fantastic textures (I wanted to make the bus look a bit rusty...)

The brochure is also a nice piece that I hope to show you as soon as it comes back from the printer.

Talk soon.

Kilkenny Film Club - After the Wedding

This coming Wednesady, the Kilkenny Film Club is showing its third film. This time it's Susanne Bier's After the Wedding. Really looking forward to it.

Postcards from the Edge 2 Auction

The Postcards form the Edge Auction took place last Friday in the Kilkenny County Council Arts Office. The place looked amazing. It was completely wrapped in postcards. In excess of 8000 had been received and they were all in display for sale.
It was a fantastic night... and a great project too.

Rhyme Rag '07 - Design and Illustration Work Finished

The design for Rhyme Rag #3 (to be launched on November 28th) has been finished. This last week has been particularly intense: finishing all illustrations, getting the edits to the text and producing the final layout of the publication.

This is the final panel I've done. It is for the poem Distance by John Morrissey. Funny enough, this was one of the first poems I illustrated, but was never 100% happy with it. On Friday I decided to change it, produced the pencils on that same evening, and finished it on Saturday morning.



There was a small issue with the cover also. After I produced it, I had second thoughts. It seemed clear to me that the cover didn't reflect what was inside the publication. I thought the concept for it was still strong enough, so I produced a second version. When inserted in the layout it dind't work at all. So we've kept the first one.

This one is the alternative one



And this one is the final one.




Let me know what you think

Kilkenny Film Club - Into Great Silence

Another projection in the Parade Tower in the Kilkenny Castle and a great attendance.
Well done!

Rhyme Rag 2007 is here

The new edition of Rhyme Rag is here. It will be launched on the 28th November 2007 in Kilkenny. This is the third year of the project and the third year I've been involved in it. Every new edition is a new challenge. Always pushing to offer the poems the edge and the energy they need, always pushing to get more and more people interested.
I am really proud of beign part of it.
I am also very grateful to Mary Butler for counting on me every time, and for the enthusiasm and energy she puts in the Rhyme Rag every year.

Postcards from the edge 2

The Arts Office in the Kilkenny County Council is organizing the second edition of their Postcards form the Edge project.
This year they've received circa 8000 of them which will be auctioned in two weeks time. I've done seven of them. They form a customizable comic story... not a cheerful one I am afraid.

Artlinks Launch Campaign

Magazine Campaign for the launch of Artlinks (www.artlinks.ie) an artists community project developed by the Wicklow, Carlow, Waterford, Wexford and Kilkenny Arts Offices. I've been involved in the project since its conception while in márla. And now I am very happy to continue being able to collaborate in it.
It is a fantastic opportunity for the artists community to network, interact and know what's happening.

Kilkenny Film Club - L'Atalante

There is a new Film Club in Kilkenny and I am delighted to be involved in their design. As you might see from the blog, I love posters. And cinema posters are my favourite (especially Polish ones)
They are going to show 4 films for the remain of this year. This is the poster for the first one. An absolute honour to be able to illustrate one of the most beautiful pieces of cinematography: Jean Vigo's L'Atalante

Fresh Film Festival

The image of this year's Fresh Film Festival took us something like five tries. We were very happy with the final one which made the whole experience worth it.
As a curiosity, it's the first time I have to change a female character for a male one (the boy in the foreground was originally a girl)

Reproduced August 2007

Reproduced is a fantastic event organised by Mary Butler and Louise Allen in the Kilkenny Arts Festival. This year we decided to go for a brochure that folded out as a poster. The concept proposed centered in the energy of the event. That's why the brochure's cover was a white box ticking that becomes the explosion of the poster (one of the acts was a performance in which the artist blew herself up.)
We went for warm colours to show this explosive energy and distressed textures to emphasize the underground and radical nature of most of the acts.
Hope you like it

A Taste of Spain in Bassetts

This is a poster for a small campaign that had to be done in record time.
I particularly like it for a few reasons: it's one of my favourite restaurants (www.bassetts.ie) and it's about real Spanish cuisine...
They have a real cool identity so I wanted to create something that looked very Spanish without disturbing their trademark.
They suggested to use the Spanish flag and a bull (toro bravo.) Immediately I had the image of the Osborne bull in the Spanish roads... Still we tried to look for something else that could be maybe more energetic. At the end we went back to the bull... and am glad we did. I think it works quite well.

Rhyme Rag 2007

It's been almost a year since I've posted anything!
I hope this will change radically now.
This is one of the illustrations I am preparing for this year's Rhyme Rag. It's a fantastic poetry project in which I've been involved since it started.
Hope you like it.