Tuesday 9 November 2010

Bristol Jam funtimes

And now for something vaguely creative!
This last week has been the Bristol Jam festival, the only UK festival of improvised performance. I'm occasionally in contact with one of the people behind it, Mr. Hopkinson, (He's called David, but when you've mainly spoken to someone via Twitter it is sometimes difficult to think of them as anything other than their username...) and am also friends with Reggie Watts, one of the performers who was at the festival.

A few weeks before the start of the festival, Mr Hopkinson got in touch with me about a project he was doing to try and get together 1000 drawings of Reggie, as a gift for him. 1000 Watts. Get it?
Well, I figured I'd give it a go... apparently most of them were quite sketchy, but given that Reggie frequently refers to me and introduces me as 'a designer', I felt like I should make a bit more of an effort.

I've been experimenting with this style quite a lot recently, it's a lovely way of creating portraits, although I'm aware that it's fairly overdone... I think many people (including me) have been heavily inspired by Sheperd Fairey's famous 'Yes We Can' posters...

But I enjoy doing it, and figured I'd give it a go for this.


I went to the festival itself for a couple of days and it was delightful, I stayed up far past my bedtime, met lots of lovely people, visited some great places and generally had an amazing time.

As well as Reggie, I also had the pleasure of meeting Ben Dowden, who, amongst other things, makes amazing films. Here's one he made of Reggie, a while back. It's pretty great, you should take a look.


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