Thought I'd post a few pages from the ol' sketchbook for a change...

Bonjourno.... few things to waffle on about so I shall try and keep it brief... First off, here are some long-overdue photos of the murals I made for DC Storm's lovely new offices.

Having also done some great fun work (mainly sign-writing) at various festivals over the summer, I've just returned from a lovely spell working from my newly mobile studio in rural Devon. Had a very productive, and also very relaxing time down there, and even got to see some America's Cup sailing action from the sound at Plymouth. Man, those boats are fast! I also went to a great event run by Encounters Arts in Totnes called Artists' Lab - a workshop of sorts where a very varied and interesting cross-section of practitioners met for a day to share and develop ideas and experiment in a very free, fluid and open manner - hugely beneficial and a real pleasure to take part in.

In between all of that I've been busily redeveloping my website, and have just launched a completely new and fully updated site. I'm dead chuffed with it, so do please have a wee look: www.edtucker.biz.

I also want to mention a really cracking exhibition I went to see at the University of Brighton Gallery before I went away, thanks to a tip from the ever-intrepid Fred Pipes on the Brighton Illustrators Group website. It was a fantastic and extensive show of maps and murals (and also some sketchbooks and drawings and so on) by MacDonald Gill (1884-1947), whose work I became familiar with at the Magnificent Maps exhibition (written about in a previous post). He had a highly distinctive style, a great eye for detail and a really nice, cheeky sense of humour which you don't often see in much work form this period. The man had many talents and was highly prolific, producing a lot of maps for London's tube and bus networks and many other institutions, as well as posters, murals, book jackets, architecture and even gravestones for servicemen! Gosh!

Ahhh, May - what a fine time of year. Especially here in Brighton, as the May Festival gets going and the whole town springs into action. A real highlight of the festival has been Jardin Flambeau, a massive event/installation by these clever French dudes. They completely took over St.Anne's Well Gardens, probably our finest park, and completely filled it with all manner of enchanting pockets of firey wonder. Far from the ... spectacular many were expecting, it was the cumulative effect of hundreds of small-scale pockets of fire, in all manner of shapes, positions and configurations that instead generated a wonderfully calm, relaxed and mesmerising atmosphere. Countless flowerpots of fire rose hypnotically up into the canopies of trees, vest-enclosed candles hung ghost-like from the branches, and gazebos dotted around the park housed curious pockets of eery live music. Very refreshing too was the lack of health and safety - exposed fire everywhere and thousands of people (and on Saturday night!)

Caught some ace live music so far too, namely the great Max Romeo alongside Lee Perry and Adrian Sherwood, Shapeshifter, a lovely recital of Boccherini, Locatelli, Telemann and Bach, and even managed to catch the man like Snoop Dogg at his 'secret' gig at the Dome! Hilarious.

Bit slow to mention this but once again I'm back in one of the best Open Houses around for the festival - the lovely Claremont on Second Avenue in Hove. One more weekend left (it's not open on Sunday but is on Monday), so if you're in the area go and check it out to see a whole heap of cracking artwork.

I've finally finished the biggest project I've worked on yet - very satisfying to get it all wrapped up after many months! Working with interior designer Nicola Gobat, I produced artwork for seven large and four small sections of walls, along with 5 large glass manifestation sections, for the sumptuous new offices of DC Storm here in Brighton. Painting directly onto the walls (which made a highly refreshing change!), I portrayed various scenes of Brighton and the surrounding area in a continuous panorama going around the entire office. A huge job and quite a challenge but a real joy to do. Gotta sort out photos of it all - I'll be sure to post once I do....

Couple of other new bits up there too - the first of a series of album covers for Dubmission Records, my entry for the recent AOI/Serco River Thames illustration competition and some artwork for my latest mix, which you can listen to here:

http://www.mixcloud.com/kokerboom/africa-maximum-vol1/

Is it too late to say Happy New Year? Consider it done either way. A crackingly-well kicked off new year, somewhat universally it seems - there's a lovely buzz of positivity, optimism, action and creavitity around at the moment - I hope you're feeling that too!

Anyway, had a great couple of weeks off over christmas so don't have much work to show, but here's a picture of the bandstand that's by my house you may want to have a look at. Also got some other work that I'm waiting for permission to show, and some more mix artwork that I ought to upload the actual mix for first really! Music-wise, been loving Antispin, Cornell Campbell (blown away by his The Gorgon Dubwise album!), Squid Inc, Corrosion of Conformity, Concept, another rather tasty Phase One Records compilation and especially Hedflux. HEDFLUX! He's got a new EP out and it's just amazing. Love it.