Crossley Carpets 1978/79 Watercolour

This group of three images were commissioned for a Crossley Carpets campaign via an advertising agency and my agent Ian Fleming and Associates.

This is how it appeared in various Sunday Supplement magazines like the Sunday Times in 1978. The idea was sketched out but it was left up to me to invent something convincing since the reference material was a very basic engraved portrait. I took a photograph of the Indian guy in a shop on the North End Road near to where I lived in West Kensington. The image is a total fantasy and has no historical accuracy at all. The wonderful world of advertising! The Indian guy in my local shop looked totally bewildered and unimpressed when I showed him the result. Perhaps I had committed some religious sacrilege.

Crossley Carpets 1978/79 Watercolour

This portrait of George IV for Crossley Carpets is based on one of his most well known portraits, the one painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence in 1820. I reversed the image and changed the position of the eyes. Also I’m starting to use the airbrush here. The building is ‘the Holme’ in Regents park from an engraving by Thomas Hosmer Shepherd produced in the early 19th century. For some reason the Dome was removed during renovations in 1911.

Crossley Carpets 1978/79 Watercolour

The third and last portrait for the Crossley Carpet campaign. I’m not sure which Beethoven portrait I based this on. The instructions were to make him look softer and not so ‘pissed off’- which is how he looks in just about every portrait done of him. I think I made the room up. It’s not as convincing as the other two in the series. Nice hair though.

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Clown 1978 watercolour

I produced this image of a clown for the advertisement above in1979 and Tom Stimson at Ian Flemings did the surrounding spot illustrations. The printer then added a slight grey screen over my illustration. The purpose of this was to demonstrate-in a totally dishonest way- the superiority of the Heliochrom TV screen. Advertising Standards were pretty lax in 1978.

Polaroid London 1978

The Polaroid photo above shows my desk in 1978 while creating the clown image. It shows the photograph that I based the clown on, I don’t remember who it is or where I got the image from. The idea was to make the clown friendly and not sinister, which clowns tend to be in an ambiguous way. It’s quite an evocative photograph and seems more like something from Victorian times.

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Poster for Animal House 1978

I produced only the portraits for this project. I forget the name of the other artist who did the ‘fun’ stuff with the beer and bra. The whole poster was assembled on overlays. The project came through Ian Fleming and Associates via an agency on Wardour Street.

In 1979 I travelled to Los Angeles supposedly on a holiday. I had a book/guide called America on $10 per day. The book recommended searching for accommodation at the UCLA campus, the Fraternity houses provided cheap rooms for travellers during the summer break. I found my Animal House which was manned by two polite mild mannered chess playing students, all the other guys had gone home for the summer.