Pollockshields pipe smoker man

At a café in Pollockshields, this man, approached very slowly. He was old and moved stiffly. He stood outside the café looking in. The woman in the café acknowledge him and he gave a subtle nod and sat himself in a chair outside.

He was puffing away at his pipe continually and contentedly. The woman in the café brought out his drink. This is clearly a daily unspoken ritual.

He had hands like tree branches and skin like bark. A dog (a Scottie) on the next table started barking at traffic. The pipe smoker man slowly reached in a bag and pulled out a packet of dog treats. He struggled to open the foil wrap and the woman in the café, who was by now sat chatting with him for company, reached over and took the treats and opened them. She handed them back, wiped her hands on her apron and came back inside. Not a word, was spoken in this transaction.

The pipe smoker man leaned over the table and the Scottie licked its lips and gingerly took the treat from the mans stubby twig fingers.

The Dead Queen of Bohemia

The Dead Queen of Bohemia by Jenni Fagan (The Panopticon, The Sunlight Pilgrims) is out today. I am very excited to say I illustrated the front cover and internal images.

Looks pretty damn cool – Irvine Welsh

The book is an extraordinary collection of poems.

The original brief was to illustrate the cover. Taking inspiration from the book itself, I ended up with a collection of illustrations to fit individual poems.

I think this is one book I will judge by its cover. It looks fabulous.

Ohhh, beautiful cover!! – Hank D

The poems are extremely visceral and I didn’t want to detract or overly influence the reader’s own imagination when reading them. I decided to just draw objects from them, rather than scenes. There are Wonder Woman Converse trainers, Doc Marten boots, a duck with sharp teeth and a dancing skeleton. They are in pencil – for complete honest simplicity. I love the way the publisher has allowed them to look like doodles scribbled into the book.

Nathan Thomas Jones’ illustrations really help to make this come alive. – Ed Crossan, Birlinn Books

I’m not a twitterer, but feeling the love via Jenni Fagan’s twits here:
https://twitter.com/jenni_fagan/status/667302860548272130

The Dead Queen of Bohemia is out today (14 April 2016) and is available in all good bookshops, as well as online at the publishers website:

Birlinn/Polygon

http://www.birlinn.co.uk/Dead-Queen-of-Bohemia-The.html

Blackwell’s

http://bookshop.blackwell.co.uk/jsp/id/The_Dead_Queen_of_Bohemia/9781846973390

Foyle’s

http://www.foyles.co.uk/witem/fiction-poetry/the-dead-queen-of-bohemia-new,jenni-fagan-9781846973390

Waterstone’s

https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-dead-queen-of-bohemia/jenni-fagan/9781846973390

and

Amazon

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dead-Queen-Bohemia-Collected-Poems/dp/1846973392/ref=sr_1_fkmr2_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1460632355&sr=8-1-fkmr2&keywords=the+dead+queen+of+bohemian

Also

You can see some photographs of people reading the book here.

Seated Woman, Melbourne

This sketch is from a huge set of drawings and paintings from the magnificent Avalon Mansion (now destroyed), Albert Park Melbourne. This was one of the first poses from a massive day of drawing and painting (and wine drinking and listening to great music).

Map of the Thames (and riverside taverns)

The River Tems semi-navigable Mappe rapidly displaying (most of) the taverns along said river

Hand drawn map of the Thames – that’s the full title anyway. I left off the shit pubs basically. There aren’t many thankfully.

The mighty River Thames. The name is ancient, Sanskrit meaning dark river. I’ll come back to that.

This map was a gift and I didn’t have time to scan it, hence the curly cornered photo.

The map is to scale (more or less). This is represented by the London brick, which is one nautical mile.

London psychogeographical references in the map are too numerous to mention – how many do you know? Notable ones are the Northern Line which turns into a dragon as it approaches Mordern. The River Mole erupts from the ground at it’s source. The compass is marked Never Eat Shredded Wheat, which is how I learned North, East, South, West as a child.

One thing that really struck me when making this map, is how big Richmond Park is. I’ve marked Hyde Park on the map, which isn’t really a feature of it at all, just to show the size difference. Richmond Park is MASSIVE. It’s approximately the equivalent area to Wandsworth, Battersea, Elephant & Castle, Borough and up to Millbank and up to London Bridge.

Universe Map

Once upon a time, London was the greatest city on the planet, and what a planet that was.

In the middle of that London, circumscribed by the London Orbital was, and still is, Camberwell Green. This is the centre of the known universe. This is my map to show you how to get here.
camberwell-greencamberwell-green-orbital