Awaking from hibernation, we tuned in the radio and learnt that the world, despite Mayan Calendar 2012 promises, was still pumping out Auto-tuned, vocoderized, oversexed and orange tanned Xpop filth… disappointing.

We went back to bed for another day or two and then, when we realised that we’d forgotten to pack a can-opener, emerged from the bunker, squinty eyed and shivery… winter is a drag is it not?

Anyhow, we’ve done some star jumps, smoked our last ever ciggies (for-real this time) and got our systems all tingly and expectant for a bright new year! We have some cool things on the horizon, so yeah – its time to buck up!

Let’s get a few things posted to round-up 2011 though – (we are still occasionally posting about projects we completed ages ago, there are a ton, but these items here are from quite recent events).

First up is a poster we collaborated on with good friend Matt Dixon. The Black Angels were playing the Scala back in September and we finally got through to them and got a poster deal (after at least 2 other attempts in previous years – bands on the road can understandably be pretty tough to reach and pin down). There’s a great 60′s, anti Nam, Civil Rights Movement type buzz and energy to the band’s hard-fuzz psychedlic output and after the pitiful display of nike/xbox looters in London last summer, we thought it would be a grand idea (if a little edgy) to do a piece about real revolution. Kinda.

Black Angels gigposter - London, Scala - Screenprint, 3colours, 45cm x 32cm, edition of just 30

We wanted to make use of Matt’s excellent photo seperation skills (taking a multi-toned image and reducing it to just a few stencils for screening – 3 in this case) and the image Matt found was perfect for a Z poster composition (where the reader reads from left to right, then has their eye drawn back to the left by the image and reads again). Followers of The Petting Zoo stuff could well be forgiven for failing to see anything resembling our usual stuff – This anxious Illuminati character peering from the media billboard was perhaps the only significant clue to our involvement

Detail : Spooky Petting Zoo character

…certainly a step well aside from our usual cuteness theme – don’t worry, more cuddly critters on the way, we just need to get gritty and snarl once in a while.

Another project that occurred at the close of ’11 was Monk Jam part deux – A crazy deadline based assignment where 20 artists were given the same theme to produce a piece of work about in just 72hours before the show was to be hung! The theme on this occasion was pretty cool : “The Good, The Badass & The Ugly”

Petting Zoo’s piece was a screenprint of a supposed psycho-analytical report about a character “P.Z.” and the multiple personalities housed in their noggin…

Here is a very, very bad camera phone pic of the piece (but at the same time appropriately screwy and shot at about 4am during a caffeine maelstrom).

Schizotypal Halllucinator's Iconographic Translation, Artprint - Monk Jam 2, Teatray In The Sky, Southsea - Screenprint, 1colour, 64cm x 45cm, edition of just 5.

Filled out in red biro by “Nurse Simms”, the (Oscitant Hypnagogic) Schizotypal Hallucinator’s Iconographic Translation (OH SHIT for short) recorded the patient’s different personalities’ responses to the large black circle and highlighted where each voice was calling from on the diagram of the brain (bottom right). The 3 “voices” were recorded pretty much as follows…

Voice 1 “Gerry” : It’s a giant cookie, yum. No wait! it’s a Stevie Wonder LP
Voice 2 “Badass” : Its my customised naughty Twister spot – press your boobies here. [session postponed]
Voice 3 “Uncle Sally” : Its nothing, a big messy circle! give me my damn shot and leave me the hell alone!

Yeah – it was weird but fun… and some unlucky punter won this in a raffle – we actually love it though in honesty.

Lastly is another blip of oddma which we ummed and arred about whether to post – but blow it, it’s just a bit of fun! click here for an interview we were asked to give on this wonderfully crazy french guy’s website. Cheers Benoit!

Happy new year you lot.

HEAVY PETT!NG - Less cute, more adult themed work by Petting Zoo Prints & Collectables

December Artfair Poster - Kings Street Tavern, Portsmouth - Screenprint, 2colours, 45cm x 31cm, editions of 14 with promotional text and 30 without

Petting Zoo will be there of course, some of our gigposters will be on offer as will this barn owl and shrew print (just £12 on the day!).

We would happily trade a portfolio of screenprints for a Rollop box camera by the way, do drop by if you have one knocking about.

This first edition is very limited – plans are underway for a second in the new year.

Crocodile Pop artprint - Screenprint, 4colours, 45cm x 32cm, first edition of just 10!

tastier than a can of Campbells soup

Gig Posters Volume 2 : Available in good book shops worldwide.

Order this directly from the author (gigposters.com ‘s Clay Hayes) and you get a free print by a pretty darn cool transAtlantic outfit called Landland (I think they may have got that name from a Bill Hicks joke)

…seriously cool – thanks a ton Clay!

we’ll get you a layout shot and edit into this post later – our Melvins chiahuahua poster even made it to the back cover – wicked!

Here’s a print we did to commemorate their trip to Germany with a melancholy, or perhaps musing wolf whose howls we hoped might marry the band’s distant dreamy choral sound. Some of you may recognise him as Silver from the Red Riding Boots series we designed for the ‘Hungry Like A Wolf’ Guerrila Art Market show some time back here in Brighton.

Wilderness Of Manitoba gigposter - Hamburg, ReeperBahn Festival - 2colours, 45cm x 32cm, Edition of just 33

There are only a handful of these left, a bargain at just £15 each!

email us (easypz@gmail.com)

We had a really fun time catching up with a lot of friends at the 6th Flatstock Europe (a very well established and colourful gigposter fair which is held at the festival each year) and we met plenty more fun, inspiring or just plain bonkers gigposter artists from all over Europe and the other side of the Atlantic… The Petting Zoo team split and lost one another countless times and there were more than a couple of hungover mornings – but what a giggle! Fingers crossed, we will have our first stall at Flatstock Europe 7 next year… should be an adventure!

We saw numerous excellent bands – there’s one very special outfit that we made contact with and intend doing some posters for, more on that soon! – but this post is dedicated to the excellent Dry The River! …goosepimples and hair upstanding, these guys played a set that frankly surprised us with its intensity – I reckon that even in this unstable time for the music biz, its a cert that these fellas are on the rise to something special. Do check them out live if you can.

Dry The River gigposter - Hamburg, Reeperbahn Festival - Screenprint, 45cm x 32cm, Edition of just 33

We still have a few of these for sale – £15

email us (easypz@gmail.com)

It didn’t take long for the design decisions to be made however! The only thing we figured we’d do was avoid doing a pair of spectacles or anything too Park Life “know what I mean?”

Being a lover of Fender guitars and noting that Mr. Coxon had his own signature model of Telecaster, it was quickly decided that this would be a good way to go. Then a day passed and tea was drunk, biscuits were dunked etc and then click! A mission through the flatfiles to dig out a print for a customer lead to a brainwave… having opened the wrong drawer, a poster that is awaiting to be framed and hung in one of our homes came into view and was immediately admired again for the umpteenth time before the search for the sold print resumed. It didn’t take long however, for mental cogs to whirr prompting that wrong drawer to be reopened, a quick succession of nods to take place and the layout for the Coxon piece to be decided on. The lack of head (and so lack of spectacles) clinched it…

Original guache illustration by Eric Hansen

The original above that we based our homage on was by the very talented (and crucially pivotal in the music poster scene) Aesthetic Apparatus of Minneapolis.

It’s pretty sweet as are they – check out their print process video below!

…by the way, to spare us the screaming of print frustration, a friend stepped in to yell in pain on our behalf – we need to send props and gratuitous grunts? of gratitude to Mr Matt Dixon who screened our posters for us – fanks mush!

So yeah – we proceeded down that path, shifting the composition upward just a little to focus a little more on the Tele’ and also to get a little bit of stripe in there – Mr Coxon and we share a love of the hooped tee you see. There are a few variations of colourways which we’ll post soon, but this original proved to be the most popular sales-wise at the Screenadelica stall (which was fun for us to hang out and work at by the way – a hundred thanks Mr. ‘Horse’ …we still got some of each colourway left which we’re selling for twenty knicker which was the original official Bestival price. Its a big, handprinted sheet of indie-bopping love – give us a buzz if you want one fired off in a tube to your door (easypz@gmail.com)

Graham Coxon gigposter - Isle Of Wight, Bestival - Screenprint, 3colours, 64cm x 45cm, Edition of 100

Gift Toucan artprint - Screenprint, 4colours, 24cm x 18cm, Open Edition

Just thought we’d document this little offcut print because to our surprise, it sold out really really fast! thanks to everybody who picked one up! We’ll try and correct the colour problems we had with Mani and maybe do another similar edition.