Friday 29 June 2012

Pattington & Snark

Hadderley Pattington


Pattington is the author of over 80 crime novels featuring the character "Gruntford of the Yard". The former police officer turned novelist believed that all great works of literature could be improved with "a car chase and a good punch up". Sadly, he died before he'd completed his reworking of Virginia Woolf's "To The Lighthouse".

Thrupenny Snark


Thrupenny, the least contentious of the 8 Snark sisters, is best know for her series of novels about an upper-class family strangely similar to her own. She spent the majority of her time living at the family home in the countryside but owned a townhouse in Bloomsbury where she kept her pens.

The majority of these Monster London portraits are still available to buy (£150 each plus P&P). If interested please email me for details.


Toppling & Trunch

I'll be in Foyles tomorrow (Saturday, June 30th) drawing "creaturized" portraits of people as part of the Charing Cross Road festival. I'll be drawing between 1-5pm.

In the meantime here's another 2 characters

Humboldt Toppling


Toppling's novels are never an easy read. He felt that readers should be "challenged in the same way you'd challenge an intruder into the family home". He would write all his novels in longhand in green ink on yellow legal pads, cut them up with a bread knife and then throw them in a bathtub. He believed that what was still readable at the end of this process was "the unavoidable truth".


Ronnie Trunch


Ex-journalist Ronnie Trunch began his literary career as the official biographer of the infamous East End gangsters The Crayfish Twins. His biography of them, "Treading Water (On Your Head)", was a best seller and later made into a film starring (former pop duo) the Grimble Twins.

Thursday 28 June 2012

Hawker & Timperson

Two more from Monster London at Foyles.

Whipply Hawker


Literary critic and satirist Hawker made few friends but many admirers with her scathing remarks about some of London's finest authors. She once described Thrupenny Snark as a "goose-faced little squeak with the vocabulary of a horse" and Sedley Westerton as "a trumpet-eyed pongo scrabbling in the dirt for a handful of croutons".

Strindon Timperson



Esteemed science-fiction author, Timperson, is probably best known for his "Fentibules of Photon X" trilogy which was adapted for television in 1974. Produced by London Weekend Television it featured an incredible performance by Reg Varney as Xabod Gonch, the asexual robotic assassin. His trilogy consisted of 4 books which he felt set him apart from his peers "by at least one book".

Wednesday 27 June 2012

Fribbington-Snooks and Scroog

Yesterday I said I was going to post one a day - I lied! I'm posting two a day otherwise I'll still be posting pics after the exhibition has finished which seems a bit pointless.

Here's today subjects -

Lady Margaret Fribbington-Snooks


Lady Margaret wrote over 8,000 romantic novels during her lifetime, the majority of which were dictated to an army of stenographers who would follow her round in case inspiration struck. Some novels were up to 1000 pages long while others were as little as 25 words printed in an extremely large typeface, one word per page, on very thick paper. She was also a celebrity panelist on the classic 80s quiz show "Whose Shoe's Who?". It was discovered after her death that she'd also written a series of 40 hard boiled crime novels under the pseudonym Punchy Henderson and had even ghost written a repair manual for an Austin Princess.

Erasmus Scroog


Scroog is widely considered the greatest novelist of Victorian London (with horns). Despite his success he felt that many of his novels were heavily plagiarised by other writers. In particular "Bleak Horse" - a tale of equine depression, "A Tale of Two Chitties" - the international travels of a handful of credit notes, and "Great Expectorations" - his Bronchial masterpiece .

Tuesday 26 June 2012

Greeps & Bell

I'll be posting a character a day from my exhibition at Foyles in London. It opened yesterday so here's 2 to start it off.

Aloysius Greeps



Aloysius Greeps is probably Monster London's most famous diarist and chronicler. The diaries he kept during the 17th century are a fascinating glimpse into the everyday life of a horned, gout-riddled bon viveur. His planned Dictionary of Monster English was sadly never completed due to him being distracted by a bottle of port and a cream horn. The quote "A man who is tired of London has obviously never been to the Trocadero - it's mega!" is believed to have been added to his journal fraudulently after his death.

Twigrin Bell




Poet, songwriter and keen amateur ornithologist Twigrin could often be found wandering through London's green spaces reciting his sensitive pastoral verse to uninterested squirrels. A collection of his poems "Nature's Trembling Remnants" was number 18 in the "Hedge-based poetry" charts for one Thursday in 1974. He also contributed lyrics to ( "Croak Folk" pioneer) Frang Tootle's great lost album "Bunions, Onions and Death".


Wednesday 20 June 2012

My exhibition at Foyles starts Monday



My exhibition at Foyles, "Monster London" - previous blog post HERE, starts on Monday June 25th and runs until July 4th. Here's a couple of work in progress shots I've been posting on Instagram to whet your appetite. I'll be in the gallery on Monday drawing. Come and say "hello"! Also the tote bags I designed for Foyles (pic below) are now available in the store.

Saturday 16 June 2012

"Rishikesh George" with Felt Mistress



Here's the reason I've been drawing the Beatles in my sketchbook so much over the last few weeks. We were delighted to be asked to contribute to the Gallery Nucleus "All Together Now - Tribute to the Beatles" show. I'm a massive Beatles fan. Apart from the music, Klaus Voorman's cover to "Revolver" and Heinz Edelmann and the entire look of the "Yellow Submarine" are big influences on how I draw. We went through a lot of ideas before we eventually settled on making George Harrison (George is my favourite Beatle to draw). Below is a series of sketches I made and above is Louise's final sitar-playing George in all his 3D glory. As you can see Louise has worked wonders. Possibly her best piece yet? Just look at that sitar! George can be viewed in the felt and is available to buy at Gallery Nucleus from July 7th. Here's hoping someone commissions us to make the other three!

Tuesday 12 June 2012

Instagram round up

I post a sketch on Instagram almost every day. They vary from preliminary drawings to character sketches to drawings from life. Here's a selection from the last month (if you're interested I'm on Instagram as "Jontofski"). .

Thursday 7 June 2012

Comic Strip Tees

My "What if... The Hulk lived in Bonnie "Prince" Billy's beard?" strip is now available as a tee shirt on the excellent Comic Strip Tees site. It's available for the next 4 weeks.

Friday 1 June 2012

Spirou

I had the pleasure of working for Spirou recently - an illustration for their puzzle page. It was a pleasure to be in the pages of a magazine with such an incredible heritage. Fun job too.