Friday 12 December 2014

Crafty Fox Peckham

I'll be at Crafty Fox this Sunday in Peckham selling my wares and being generally very festive.  More details here.  I'll have a bunch of prints - some exclusives - and many cheaper than in my web shop.

The first person to smuggle me in a can of stella can have a boozy Robin card for free too (saving you a whole two pounds!).  


'What a beautiful way to die - as a falling star' screenprint for Gallery 1988

I've got a new screenprint in the Gallery 1988 group show Crazy for Cult 8 in LA.  'What a beautiful way to die - as a falling star' is a three colour print inspired by the John Carpenter movie 'Dark Star' which coincidentally is being screened at the BFI in the next few weeks as part of the 'Sci Fi: Days of Fear and Wonder' season.  I've been luck enough to see 2001 and Alien there already and Dark Star is equally as good.  Well maybe not quite but I've loved it since I was a teenager (which is more than can be said about the other two; way too slow for the 15 year old me...) so Pinback et al have a special place in my heart.  

So if you're in LA go to the exhibition.  And if you're in London go see Dark Star on the big screen and marvel at the joyous special effects and beards.


Thursday 11 December 2014

'Daughter of the Sun' limited edition print

My new screenprint for the London Illustration Fair is available to buy now from my shop. The piece is loosely inspired by elements of Folklore, Paganism, femininity, astrology and the Sharon Tandy song of the same name (which you should all listen to immediately if not sooner because it's a fucking beast).


Postal dates for Christmas are getting tight now too so if you're in the US don't hang around as tomorrow is the final day to ship for prints to arrive before Christmas. 

I'm selling prints and original artwork at Crafty Fox this Sunday as well; pop by and say hello!






Thursday 4 December 2014

The London Illustration Fair 2014

Puck Collective will be exhibiting at the London Illustration Fair this weekend.  I have a new screen print 'Daughter of the Sun' alongside brand new artwork and prints by members of Puck.  The exhibition runs from Friday until Sunday and also features Jean Jullien, Mr Bingo and Supermundane to name a few.  More info here.

Puck Collective have also updated their website which is well worth a look.


Wednesday 3 December 2014

'Dance, Dance, Dance' original for Rape Crisis

Rape Crisis Tyneside and Northumberland asked me to contribute some original artwork for an online auction of postcards to raise money for their cause and this is the piece I sent them.  All the work is online here and you can bid for each piece by following the guidelines on the website.

'Dance Dance Dance' was drawn in Indian ink and watercolours.

Friday 28 November 2014

Robin Christmas cards

My boozy robin linocut Christmas cards from last year are back again this time as more affordable screenprinted cards.  Buy them here.



Friday 21 November 2014

'The Ace of Spades' screen print

The 'Ace of Spades' is a limited edition screen-print based on an illustration I did earlier this year. My original source of inspiration was the Motorhead song of the same name but I ended up veering into darker more Satanic realms. It was inked in a couple of long and intense sessions soundtracked by the likes of Om, Sleep, Sunn O))) and Black Sabbath which probably explains a little as to how it turned out.

 Each print is a hand-pulled two coloured screen-print - silver and black - on heavy weight paper measuring 50cm x 70cm. The print run is just 18 and each one is numbered with a signature. Each print will vary ever-so-slightly as I work from a fairly lo-fi printing set up but this adds to the charm of each piece.

 The photos don't really do it justice; the silver looks fucking amazing!

 https://www.etsy.com/…/211965040/ace-of-spades-limited-edit…





Wednesday 12 November 2014

'Beautiful Girls' screenprint

Beautiful Girls is a limited edition screen-print based on an illustration I was commissioned to create inspired by a poetry collection of the same name by Melissa Lee-Houghton for Inpress books.  It's available to buy here

'... and from where they are sat they can see
the whole world, the whole night,
the whole sky rippling out from behind their heads:
stars, dynamite light, dripping with explosions...'

It's a three colour hand-pulled screenprint limited to a run of 15 printed on heavy-weight A3 (42x29.7cm) white paper.





Friday 7 November 2014

Rian Johnson illustration

Little White Lies asked me to do an illustration of Rian Johnson to accompany a quote by him for their new book 'What I Love About Movies'.  His quote focused on the transformative experience of sitting in a cinema so I placed him in 'Brick' and had the audience made up of key characters from his movies.

The books available to buy here and features a whole load of amazing illustrators.  I'm hoping they put out another edition and I get to draw Alejandro Jodorowsky!


Wednesday 5 November 2014

Horror at the Horniman

I hosted a Puck Collective drawing club at the Horniman Museum on Sunday called 'Horror at the Horniman'.  Obviously.  We met, drew a bunch of weird stuff, did a show-and-tell at the nearest pub and finished the afternoon better people.  It was fun.  Thanks to everyone that turned up.  More soon.











Thursday 23 October 2014

'Rosemary's Baby' process blog

As some of you will know I had the privelege of creating a Rosemary's Baby print for Film 4, Somerset House and Print Club for their Summer Screenings exhibition.  The film is one of my favorites so it was a dream commission.  And involved a fair bit of preperation which I'm going to share with you.

To start with I sketched some super rough ideas of what I might like to try and do for the poster. Oddly there's a mini me reminding myself to work small...  Actually the working small for drafts idea has remained with me; most of the illustrations I do now begin with minutare (A5) versions.  That way I can get a better sense of my design without investing too much time in to them only to find they don't work very well.

























More rough sketches.  I don't remember drawing the bottle with the horns.  It's an embarassing idea even as a 10 second rough.  I tend to look at what posters are around already for the film at this point and also lp and dvd artwork.  In this instance I also looked at some of the original book artwork, the best of which focuses on the Dakota building with little evil gargoyles hanging off of it.  The main reason for doing this research is to try and avoid anything that's been done before.

























Next up I watch the film and make little notes of key scenes, visual references, colour and design themes, as well as significant quotes all with timings to refer back to.  When it comes to reworking film posters I have a bit of an issue with the lazy Google approach to visual referencing.  I'd much rather try and find my own significant visual references within a film.  So here you have the Dakota building at the beginning, some furnishings from inside the building, Mia looking wonky as a result of my poor sketching and a terrifying Ruth Gordon through the spy hole.  Kind of wish I'd developed this idea a little more; she looks great!

























More key references from the film.  This page appears to run for the middle half an hour of the film with the eerie witches necklace, the horrific Satan nightmare sequence/sex scene and some more Mia references.

























There's another page of film references then I start to develop some of the rough ideas a little more. It's fair to say I'd settled on green as my key colour by this stage (the print was restricted to two colours).  Both of these drafts were technically quite challenging and decided to drop the Dakota building with various key objects in it as it seemed to veer into something quite architectural that I don't think I would have been able to make work very easily.

























I developed the hooded Satanists behind the pram draft a little more with the scrabble letters spelling out 'ALL OF THEM WITCHES' but it was a little tricky from a perspective point of view and I wasn't keen on Rosemary not being in it either.

























I then developed a few of my initial ideas and drafts into slightly more presentable versions for the art directors to feedback on.  This was an early version of Rosemary in front of the building - for me the two key elements of the movie - even though it was an early draft I wasn't happy with my drawing of Mia.  I like some of the textures and crude colouring style but overall it feels a little too generic and doesn't really say anything about the film.

























Next is another Rosemary and the Dakota building variation where there's more significance placed on Rosemary's pregnant state and a sense of the foreboding building ominously towering over her.

























This next draft was one of my favourites and got the best response from my friends. It was a nod to the terrible cheesy Athena posters of the eighties with a man's protective arm reaching around a pregnant stomach but obviously it's not quite the same with the devils scaly arm caressing the pregnant stomach of Rosemary.  To me it's a really strong image and it tells you everything you need to know about the film.  Possibly too much if anything...

























This is the final draft we decided to go with which again features Rosemary and the Dakota building but with Rosemary off centre.  I added little Devilish details like a Pentagram in the brick work and the railings although these were ditched in the final version.  By this point it'd been established that my choice of green wasn't what the art directors wanted so we went for a more neutral light blue.  I personally would've preferred to keep it green as that's a key colour theme throughout the film but I can understand why the decision was made to go blue.

At this point I did wonder if a gold or bronze ink might work well and even added an elaborate border which was meant to imitate the grand furnishings of the Dakota building.  It frames the piece quite nicely but it's a little busy.  


With the direction of the poster agreed upon it was time to illustrate the poster.  I worked in dipping pen and indian ink over a blown up version of the rough draft on a light box.  I didn't have one specific visual reference for Mia, I was working from a few and also some visual references of pregnant women.  The elongated hands and fingers were a little nod to Mucha as well.  I scanned and cleaned up the linework and added some halftone ink wash patterns for a little more shading. 


Using the half tone ink washes I added the blue sky and some colour to the building. 

I was happy with the design at this point - the detail in the Dakota building took the best part of a day on it's own - but overall it still lacked a little something.  I decided to add a pattern to Rosemary's dress which I referenced from a yellow floral dress she wears in the film.  I drew out some simple flowers and leaves in pen and ink and then reworked them into a more cohesive pattern placing them over my drawing of Rosemary in a way that doesn't distract too much from the detail of the piece. 

And here's the final piece which was brilliant printed by the Print Club Tuck Shop guys.  

Apologies for the length of this blog but I thought someone might be interested in knowing how I go about making an illustration like this.  It's fair to say it's a lot of work and challenging but I can happily say it's one of my favourite pieces from the last year or so and I particularly like the flower pattern; it's very evocative of the time the film was made.  The illustration is perhaps less 'horror' than I would've gone for - but with something like this there's always some compromise involved - and besides who wants something horrific  on their wall? Well other than me that is... 

I've mentioned it before but the seal of approval from Mia Farrow pretty much made my year.  The print is available to buy from Print Club and I have a few APs for sale too.  Email me directly at matpringleillustration@gmail.com if you want to buy one. 




Thursday 9 October 2014

Horror at the Horniman

Puck Collective present Horror at the Horniman; a drawing event at the Horniman Museum in South London on Sunday 2nd November.  All are welcome!  For more information email me at mat@puckcollective.co.uk 


Thursday 25 September 2014

Harry Dean Stanton portrait

Harry Dean Stanton is another in my occasional series of portraits of people what I really like.

“It’s all going to go away. You’re going to go. I’m going to go. Everybody’s going to go. The sun is burning out. The earth is going to go, it’s all transient. Everything is transient so ultimately it’s not important. It’s all fleeting, passing and that’s not a negative concept, it’s just what ‘is’. It’s liberating, just everything happens, it’s all one connected whole – happening and there is no answer to it.”

Now stop watching all those shitty comic movie reboots and go watch Repo Man or Paris, Texas instead.




Wednesday 24 September 2014

Little Red Riding Hood print set

I've got a new limited edition illustrated screen print set in my shop inspired by Little red Riding Hood.  I did them originally for Gallery 1988's Fairy Tales exhibition but there was some confusion over dates and I missed the show.  Click here for more info.






Friday 5 September 2014

'Labyrinth of the Faun' print

'The Labyrinth of the Faun' is a linocut print I made for Gallery 1988's 'Crazy for Cult II' exhibition last year inspired by Guillermo del Toro's fantastic film 'Pan's Labyrinth'. It was a real pleasure to make this print as it manages to encompass so much of what inspires me; horror, folklore, cinema, nature, the occult, flora and fauna.

It's available now in my shop.