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This, the first of my Royalty series, a portrait of the mercurial artist known as Prince. Using the lyrics of his dacefloor classic b-side to Lets Go Crazy - Erotic City, Prince at the height of his Purple Rain era circa 1984. The song was hard to single out from such a vast opus, but the reference to bringing to life a whole dark erotic personality of a city, ”funking in2 the dawn” and ”creamy thighs“ swayed it. I set out to make an image that was truly erotic only using the lyrics, face and eye contact with the viewer. I looked at lace and lingere, decorative motifs and flourishing from baroque to art-nouveau and blended it with Shakespearian calligraphy. All the letters were constructed with pen and ink and correction pen then pohotocopied So far, only one edition on A2 stock printed in a tinted gold blend and purple and magenta blend has been printed along with three small Artist proof editions of seven, on coloured papers and soft colour hues with various purple blends

Produced around the same time as the Prince and Jimi Hendrix portraits in 2004 and constructed in a similar way drawing with pen and ink and printed in a horizontal black and purple blend on a flat, warm gold. This was using an excerpt from a found magazine article giving a brief but poignant history of the hip-hop trio Run DMC , complete with name dropping, trade mark gold chains and hats. One edition of 20 prints and a series of 1/1 colour experimental proofs on coloured papers and fluorescent inks have been produced so far.

The third in the series, Jimi Hendrix, is entirely hand drawn lettering using lyrics from Are You Experienced?, from his break-through album of the same title. I drew from the phsychedelic posters of the time such as Martin Sharp's Bob Dylan cover print of Oz magazine,“Blowing in the Mind” and the work of John Van Hamersveld, Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelly, among others. Here, Jimi is elevated to a sun-god status, a messiah of rock and roll, with little sun rises in his eyes and mouth refering to the line “we'll hold hands and then we'll watch the sun rise from the bottom of the sea...” that makes up his jaw and arched moustache and side burns. The overall impression i wanted to acheive was that of an apparition or hallucination in a cloud of purple smoke and golden sunlight passing through it. So far, one edition of 20 of the classic gold [lightly blended with green edges at the beginning of the run ] and purple has been printed with three printers proofs on black paper and thr

Produced in the summer of 2005 the visage of Ludwig Von Beethoven was originally constructed from a complete letter the composer wrote to try and clear up misunderstandings stemming from his deafness. Draughts still exist and may lead to a second portrait edition. This portrait was constructed just before taking one of those drawings to development when i had the idea of constructing him purely out of written music. Beethoven was not remembered for his letter writing skills but his ability to put down the music he could hear in his head. This is the same image that Andy Warhol used in his portrait of the maestro. I found samples of his written music and copied them for a couple of days and then produced this calligram as fast as i could to get the feel of hastily written score complete with ink splatters and golden stave lines. As I printed the score lines i smeared the underside of the screen with a mix of printing solvent gold and brown ink and later hand coloured the page.

BOB MARLEY

Joni Mitchell was the first portrait of a female i attempted, shortly after discovering the pointed pen nib used for copperplate and flourishing. Copperplate became the modern hand at the end of the 19th century and has since become a favorite for popular sign-writing and commercial graphics. A delicate and smooth flowing hand, it can be written quickly using one continuous line [unlike gothic script] and can be dressed down to a basic joined up writing or dressed up accentuating the loops and curves and because of the nature of the nib, when pressure is added, the line widens adding curve and sensuality to the words. These words, from A Case Of You on her hit album Blue, draws from the metaphor of her lover being like fine wine, “i could drink a case of you and i would still be on my feet”. However the song is not just a compliment, there is a sense of sadness, a splitting and ending of a relationship and the drinking in bars to numb the hurt that comes with it.