New books in the shop - "Imagined Landscapes" and "Monster London"

I've added two new publications to my shop -

"Sketchbook Vol 2 - Imagined Landscapes" is a 32 page book featuring a selection of my fictional landscape drawings. It's an edition of 100, each copy signed and numbered.

And "Monster London" - a 36 page colour A6 book collecting all the work from my summer exhibition of the same name at Foyles, London.

Pettley, Graxxina & Crepuscule-Flenk

Here's the final 3. The show finishes on Wednesday July 4th. Catch it while you can!

Gronford Pettley

Pettley's no-nonsense cookery books and TV shows have been a huge success. "Get it Ate!", "Just Eat it and Shut Up" and "Scrape It Off! It Won't Kill You" have all been No 1 best sellers. His plans for the future include working with Jamie Oliver (as an ingredient). His new book, "50 Shades of Gravy", is due out this Autumn.

Graxxina

Self proclaimed "High Punk Priestess of Poetry" Graxxina opened for many of the classic monster Punk bands in London - "Frotch", "Gavin Froog and the Frongs" and "Pig Basket". She now presents "Oi! Old Stuff!", a radical new take on antique shows, with former Furry Mayhem bass player Groobo Tubbs, on digital TV channel UK Clutter.

Edwin Crepuscule-Flenk

Artist, poet, novelist and "nocturnal romantic". Edwin's band, The Decadent Prosimians, split acrimoniously after differences arising over styling mousse in 2005. Since the split Edwin has concentrated on his literary career and can often be found in his local graveyard communing with restless spirits and the old lady who walks her Yorkshire terrier past his favourite bench every morning. His poem "A fly died (in my hand (at midnight))" is to be adapted into a ballet in 2013.

All remaining originals are for sale at £150 each. Email me if you're interested. I'll be in Foyles taking the show down on Thursday so if you're in London you can collect the pieces from me then.

Drawing on Charing Cross Road

Yesterday I spent 4 hours outside Foyles on Charing Cross Road drawing free "Creaturized Portraits" for the Charing Cross Road Festival. Here's the majority of the people who sat for me. Towards the end I was too busy to take a photo of everyone (and one person wouldn't allow me to take a photo) so there's about 12 missing. Thanks to everyone who came along. One portrait every 6 minutes. I've ruined my brushpen!

Trimbling & Swink

Today's dose of "Monster London" -

Milly Trimbling

Milly shocked 1960s Britain with a series of controversial novels including "Saucy!", "Saucy is as Saucy Does" and "Whither Saucy?". Her novels were praised for their vibrant, realistic portrayal of life as lived by young Londoners and, because of their explicit nature, were often sold in lead-lined suitcases wrapped in blankets.


Fetley Swink

Fetley Swink is the "coiffured face of pop science". His books on astronomy, String Theory, Quantum Mechanics and male grooming have all been best sellers. It has been said of Swink "Newton may have been a genius but he didn't have his own signature range of shampoos".

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.

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".

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 .

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".