Safe as Houses.
This month Goblin drew squares…
From Teenage Kicks, work commissioned by University of Manchester
In April, Ian Shirley from Ace records got in touch with me, asking if I’d like a commission. I haven’t advertised myself as being available for illustration projects in a little while. I’ve been lucky enough to be working on things quite consistently over the last few years. Sometimes though, someone will contact me with an opportunity too good to pass up and last month, this opportunity was a man called Bob Stanley. He had seen the above image and wanted to know if he could either license it, or commission new work for the cover of a compilation.
Californian cars and houses in the sketchbook
What ensued was a bit of a ghost chase. Ian and I emailing back and forth but not being able to see one another’s replies. I was excited, and wanted the commission. I love Ace’s output and have done for many years. I pursued him doggedly through every available avenue until he could see my ‘YES YES A THOUSAND TIMES YES!’
I am always cool, and never needy or panicked. Ever.
Pen and ink draft from the sketchbook
Ian and I finally found each other again in the ether of the internet, and everything was finally settled.
The image that caught Bob’s eye already belongs to the project Teenage Kicks. It can’t be repurposed. So I set out to make a piece of work that still captured the fear and anxiety that Bob saw in that original painting, whilst also being something in it’s own right.
The album is a compilation of 70s US anti-war songs. Bob wanted the house and the car to be more California of the era. I drew little ink houses in a sketchbook and tried and make the right shapes for American cars. I wanted the interior of the house in the new drawing to feel warm and safe while a storm began stir, or was already roaring outside. I have a folder of old printer paper and sketch scraps and covered a few sheets in watercolours, scribbling over the paint in coloured pencils.
Because Bob and I already had quite a good idea of his vision, I didn’t create the really rough pencils or thumbnails that I usually would. There are a lot of bungalows in California. Long houses that feel strange when filled with a whole person in worried repose. I am a maximalist if you let me be and I really went to town with the details in the sketches, but I have to remember that when this is CD sized the details won’t matter so much.
Bob chose the car from the left hand image and the single figure on the right. He didn’t want the hippies but a plucky, sixties ‘square’ like I had drawn in the Teenage Kicks series. I smiled when he said that.
Bob gave really detailed feedback, which I love. It can be hard to draw something that someone else sees in their mind’s eye. Especially if they’re heart is already quiet set on certain things that already exist. It is endlessly satisfying however to be able to craft them something they perhaps didn’t know they wanted. Could almost see, but not quite. Not yet.
The colours here are wrong and the house is too tall. I only had Opera Rose, a poor substitute for Red. I love drawing cats, but this might not be an appropriate time for one, the book might go. I think I might also make her fill the house a little more uncomfortably… These are the threads I pick at, unravelling the image as I reexamine it in the light of this post.
I sent this draft over to Bob yesterday. I’ll have to wait and see if he has similar thoughts or different bones to pick. The deadline isn’t tight but a freelancer always has one eye on the clock and the next version of this has to be the last.
It’s getting late, the Sun Ra I’m listening to is getting frantic, but hope you enjoyed this little peak into the Goblin Month of May.
Let me know what you’ve been drawing!