It's sort of Christmas now

It's sort of Christmas now. I went to a carol concert on Wednesday, so I'm almost feeling festive. Anyway, the concert was part of the launch of a book called the Gift of Words, a poetry anthology for the Sick Kids Foundation, which I did an illustration for. Anyway, it's very good, so I suggest everyone goes and buys one, which you can do by clicking on these words.

That's enough writing for one morning.. I have work to do!

It's not Christmas yet

Ah, no more group work. I've returned to the cupboard under the stairs with a fresh cup of tea, a bottle of ink, and a Pink Martini album- but that's not the only news. Actually it more or less is. Aside from that, the grand exhibition is still up in Mavi's, you can see it in all it's tiny, slightly out-of-focus glory right here.
That's alongside the work of the fine Oli Ninnis and Bec Crane. You can see Oli's work here, but I don't think Bec has a website. In other news, those beard books should be making their grand return to the Analogue bookshop on the grassmarket, and some more of my stuff is going up in the illustration studio for all the world to see. I haven't scanned any of it yet, but here's a little snippet of the written part:

My cousin once said to me "James,
I have had no success with the dames,
by the length of my beard
it is much as I feared,
Too much time playing video games."

I'll leave it up to your imagination to guess at the accompanying image. See you all.

Exhibition!

Another update, at long last, but get this- this one actually some NEWS! Yeah, you think I just spend all this time between notes drinking tea, eating bacon sandwiches and endlessly reading design blogs? Well... yeah. But also, I've been doing other things.
Most notably, I've been working. So get this- I have an exhibition(ish) this week! Mavi's sandwich bar, so not quite the Tate, but there'll be a few of my prints up there, and we'll all have a GRAND OPENING LUNCH. I'll be exhibiting alongside the very fine Oliver J. Ninnis, so yeah, it'll be good.
The other thing, I'm making a book. Well, actually I've made the book, but like post-revolutionary Russia, I'm getting into mass-production. Well, not quite mass-production, but there'll be about 20 copies, hand bound, so get 'em while they're hot!
Other than that... not much to report. I think I'll have a bacon sandwich.

No rest for the wicked

So, back to school now! Rather than rambling on, I thought I might just throw up some work I've done in these last few weeks (no, you may not see anything I did over the summer). Enjoy this.

The Doctor is In.

Dr. Sketchy's Anti-art school hits the Fringe! 8th August. Time, venue, and apparently everything else is yet to be confirmed. But here's (a very rough scan of) the poster!

So, it's still summer. Nothing on the agenda. I've just got back from a wee adventure in Europe, travelling from Limoges to Barcelona, featuring a lift with a crazy Turkish lumberjack and being kidnapped by a nun. So, a lot of time spent in public parks, with a sketchbook, and a lot of pigeons and a lot of fat people.

Summer!

Well, it looks like it's summertime now. Gibson street was yesterday, so that's all that done, and now I have nothing to do over the summer except relax and forget all the stress of college and exhibiting, so much so that all this "nothingness" is stressing me out! I hope everyone who came along yesterday had a good time. I am now busy moving house, going on holidays, and drawing pictures of birds (don't ask why), which, when I get my hands on a scanner, you will be able to see.
Hope everyone has a good summer :)

How much do YOU know about beards?

A few things to write about today... first of all, the exhibition in the Wee Red Lounge has finished, and went very well! My next exhibition is on Sunday 21st June, at the Gibson Street Gala, in Glasgow, which isn't a very long way away if you live in Edinburgh but if you're reading this from Zanzibar you should probably book your flights now.

Walking around the city I realised how many people have beards, and what a variety of beards there are; the "Seducing les femmes" beards, the "I play in a band" beards, the "I'm your Dad", and even the "I've been stuck on a tropical island for the last 14 years" beards. Have you ever given this much thought to beards? No you haven't. But I bet you wish you knew more.

So I've made a very little book on this exact subject, which is available from Analogue books at the top of the Grassmarket, and can be bought for the very reasonable price of £1.50 (I've only just figured out that Ctrl+B makes bold, I'm going to use and abuse it until the novelty wears off),

So next time you see a Class 3 beard, you'll know exactly what to do

The Circus is coming to town

Well, I decided this page was looking a little bit bare, so thought I'd jazz it up a bit. This is some work I did a while ago, on a slightly more lighthearted note (or macabre, depending on how you look at it) themed around the relationship between two characters, in this case a lion and lion tamer. Each image illustrates a quote, which is written underneath:

"He's the kind of man who has no enemies, but is hated by all his friends" Wilde

"I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can never believe you"

Niechtzetzesc (that German philosopher, who's name I can completely incapable of pronouncing)

"Laughter is by no means a bad way to start a friendship, and by far the best way to end one" Wilde, again.

Words and Pictures

Like the feeling of getting used to a new car with a steering wheel made of cheese, I am slowly but surely getting used to umm... brogging? It would be good to put some little pictures up to illustrate these things ("cars made of cheese!?" I hear you bellow, like a fat, angry mechanic coming to terms with his inability to deal with dairy-based vehicles), but these analogies will only be clearer with a crudely sketched-on post-it note.

In other, actually relevant news, I did some pictures today. The complete set is being exhibited in the Wee Red Lounge in ECA from the 8th to the 12th of June, but I thought I'd put one or two up here for a little sneak peek (and don't pretend you're not peeking, you cheeky blog-reader). It's based around a short story I wrote, which I might post up here when I've convinced myself that it's interesting enough for anyone to read, accompanied by the little circus animal things that I've been working on lately.

Oh, and for the legal stuff:

All images © James Albon, unless otherwise noted.

Hello!

Well, it looks as if I've finally given into the pressure of my own ego and fallen into the trap of thinking that the internet is full of people bored enough to want to read about my life. Actually, the situation's not quite that bad, but I thought it would be a good opportunity to put up some of my work and ramble at my computer, rather than boring my real-life friends with the things that occur to me.
So anyway. I suppose, or would like to suppose, that this online journal (I refuse to use the word "blog", it sounds like a Victorian euphemism for something horrible...) will be full of wonderful pictures that you can look at and love, or look at and hate, or look at and form no particular opinion on. Or maybe just don't look at them.