The February 2025 Cab Post
Miles of black lines, a punk flea market and the music video that changed my life
Recap’
Hello friends! I hope things are going well! It's a bit of a mess in Montreal right now and the sidewalk below my building JUST got cleared. It took a whole 16 days but I can now walk without fear of spraining an ankle.
In February, I inked a bunch of little black lines for various projects, including the one I've been talking about for months without ever showing anything. So as not to spoil anything, here are some beautiful Franco-Belgian rocks, inked over Jeik Dion’s wonderful pencils. Pure (rocky) fun!
To ease my winter blues, I made some impulse purchases at JetPen. A few weeks and insulting shipping costs later, I was in possession of my first parallel nib. Normally used for calligraphy, this fountain pen has a wide, flat tip that makes broad strokes in one direction and small, fine lines in the other. It's quite a unique experience, but I think we'll become friends once I change the crappy ink it came with.
I started scanning and cleaning doodles with the aim of making a new artbook this spring. A high resolution scan on which you can see the fiber of the paper and the texture of the materials is so beautiful, don’t you think? At this stage, I need to decide the level of grit and grime that I’ll leave on the scans and which ones I’ll retouch with halftones or grey tones. Honestly, if I didn't have so many freelance gigs right now, this is what I would do all day.
Announcement
After two attempts, I got a table at the Loser Jamboree, the Montreal alternative flea market. It's been so long since I've done a new event that I'm announcing it right away, even if the event is only April 6. I’ll keep you posted but I’m really, really looking forward to it…!
L’Ombre Rouge, the third novel in the series Enquête de Peur by Maude Alexandre, which cover I illustrated, comes out on March 12 in bookstores! Confession: I got a little scared reading the manuscript…
The friendly shop Artpop ordered an illustration of their facade from me and it is now available in their boutique on rue Mont-Royal as well as online at Studio Raton. This is the start of a collaboration and other Montreal storefronts will follow…
That's all for February, guys! I hope we get through the month of March like a snow plow goes through street trash cans.
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Cool stuff
Gorillaz celebrates the 25th anniversary of their first release, the EP of Tomorrow Comes Today. I was there Gandalf, when the Clint Eastwood music video aired on Musique Plus in 2000. I was 16, I drew all the time and these four and a half minutes of animation changed my life.
Making the video that made Gorillaz.
A must-read: You can’t post your way out of fascism
But perhaps the greatest of these sins is convincing ourselves that posting is a form of political activism, when it is at best a coping mechanism—an individualist solution to problems that can only be solved by collective action.
If you’re questioning your use of social media, apply the “CUE test” on the platforms you visit. “Community, utility and education.”
I played The Headliners with friends and we had a lot of fun! We play photographers who walk around New York, during an alien invasion. Lots of dismemberment, lots of screaming, and lots of selfies with 20 story tall monsters.
Gorillaz 25, a playlist that covers the band's 25 years of existence.
An album of remixes and chill arrangements on the Final Fantasy VII soundtrack by RiftiBeats.
Youth Lagoon's new album Rarely do I Dream is fantastic. It’s a delicate collage of old home VHS clips, soft piano, galloping synth and Trevor Power’s very distinctive voice.
Cool artist: Rachel Spelling paints small little things on paint samples
Wisdom of the moment: “The flow state is important because it’s our most powerful weapon against the intense tech-driven rationalisation of our lives.”
-Ted Gioia