Hey, what’s up? I haven’t sent a newsletter out in a while. In fact, I haven’t posted much of anything online in a while. Anyone else the same?
The drafts folder is full of half-written posts about deep ecology, ai, zines, non-linear storytelling, and on and on. I think I set a bit of a precedent with making the newsletters loooooooooong. And that takes time! And life got in the way! But I’m sure they’ll see the light one day.
But for now, what have I been up to with work this last 6 months or so?
OFF THEY RUN
I have a new book in the can! It’s done! finished! finito!
It’s called OFF THEY RUN and it comes out this summer. It was written by the brilliant Katie Cotton, who was my editor when I wrote The Cave (nearly 10 years ago?!) so it was really cool to get the band back together for this one.
It’s fun and it’s interactive in a simple, analogue way. Also, it’s got a tiger in it and I usually find drawing tigers REALLY HARD, but this one I really like, so I’m pleased with that.
More info to come!
When Tree
I’m currently working on a new When… Became A… book. This time, we’re exploring the life cycle of trees - specifically, an apple tree.
The text is written, and the sketches are done, so now I’m working on the artwork.
A reviewer described these books as neo-non-fiction, which is cool to me. What does it mean? I think it signifies a shift in how we’re celebrating the diverse perspectives of nature through its own eyes, rather than the human-centric perspective. Let’s dig into that one day!
Anyway, I’ve got trees on the brain. Turns out they’re EVERYWHERE. It’s nice to be doing the artwork going into the Spring because it’s almost happening in real-time whilst I’m working on it.
When Tree Became A Tree comes out Spring 2025.
Oak Gall Ink
Late last year, I experimented making ink from oak galls. It’s a slow, alchemical process that was really fun. You collect the galls (look em up, kind of gross) and grind them up and soak them to release the tannins. Then you add ferrous sulphate and gum arabic. It felt fun to make and now I have 10 thousand gallons of ink.
PUFF
I started working on this AI project back in 2020, a few years before you tripped over the word AI everywhere you went. Not to say I was super smart or anything, but I was just curious about this new technology and I was also locked in my house. Back then, I was working with GANs and personal datasets to make some janky images. One of the images I managed to produce was a little pink monster that was called PUFF.
I plan to write a newsletter post about some of the predictions I made in 2020 about AI and art….. because they are very pure and funny in hindsight.
After text-to-image models came out and everyone realised that the AI companies had scraped THE ENTIRE INTERNET to feed their data sets, I kind of stepped back. I’d also learned what I thought I wanted from the project.
But then the technology has kind of evolved again in subtler directions, and now it’s interesting to me again. So I’m back on! For now, at least. If you want to follow the updates you can here.
2024
So there’s some of the stuff I’ve been up to. There are some other projects too, but this has already gone on way long enough!
I hope you all are doing okay. Thanks for reading as ever,
Rob
so cool you are making another When… Became A… book! love nature, love eating and drawing apples, and love your work! Can't get any better =D
also the inky thing it's so cool (I'm a fan of your paper experiments) and the quote under the pic was funny
Oak galls are super weird! So cool that you made your own ink. 🙌