Secret 7" 2026

Secret 7" recently closed their 10th edition with another hugely successful record sleeve art auction for charity, raising more than £115,000 for Warchild UK. I'm always keen to submit work for the show and was lucky enough to get selected this year with my take on the single 'Purple' by Skin, which can now be revealed. The abstract head design was inspired by lyrics such as 'Purple washes over me, Seeping through my open seams' and I created the 3d artwork in Cinema 4d/Redshift with some Photoshop tinkering. I went to see the exhibition last month, marvelling at all the amazing art on display and taking some cheesy pointing snaps for good measure. Wonderful to be a part of again.

I submitted three other pieces this year which I've included here. Mostly made for the enjoyment of creatively interpreting the different songs but also to boost the chance of selection, of course! In order are entries for Glass Animals: Take A Slice, John Lennon: Out Of The Blue and The Last Dinner Party: Let's Do it Again! All created with Cinema 4d and/or Photoshop. I've also put together some alternate takes created along the way. You can see these and previous Secret 7" entries on the main site here.

Submissions

Over the course of the year I love to enter competitions with a creative brief. They come with a ready-made theme, the similar artistic freedom of a personal project and the potential bonus upside of some nice exposure if your submission does well. If they get nowhere then you've had fun making it and spread your creative wings a little at the same time. Here are a few of my recent submissions that fit firmly into that category.

I really enjoy tackling The Folio Society Book Illustration Awards literary briefs every year if I can. The subject matter is usually something I wouldn't typically get commissioned to do and the stories are always imaginative and worth exploring creatively. This year it was the classic Grimm Brothers dark fairy tale Rapunzel and I found the immortal 'Let Down Your Hair' passage irresistible. The previous year was Neil Gaiman's similarly dark and strange The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains and I depicted a climactic scene within the titular cave 'From Out Of The Shadows It Came'. Both of these stories coincidentally featured red-haired characters prominently and I seem to have gravitated towards that for some reason. I really enjoyed exploring more painterly atmospheric digital techniques with these. You can see other Folio Society submissions here and an entry for Sherlock that made it to the shortlist in 2018 here.

Another project with a great creative brief, and a good cause to boot, is Secret 7" . People are invited to submit a 7" cover artwork for a choice of a track from seven musical artists with the final selected 700 submissions sold to auction for charity. I didn't make the cut this time but I've been lucky enough to get selected for the show a few times in the past and love giving it a go at each opportunity. For 2025 I created covers for Scissor Sisters 'Return To Oz' and The Cure's 'Warsong'. For the former I focussed on a druggy depiction of Emerald City and the latter an out of left field response to vague lyrics and a sudden obsession with a tech-militaristic portrayal of a Portugeuse man o'war. I experimented with a 3d style for these, creating and lighting the models in Cinema 4d with digital comping and finishing in Photoshop. There's a couple of rougher alternative takes added here also. See all previous work for Secret 7" here.

Secret Swan

I was really happy to have my submission selected for this year's return of the Secret 7" exhibition and auction in aid of the charity Warchild. All artists involved were asked to choose from seven tracks to create a unique 7" vinyl single artwork and remained anonymous until close of the live auction. I chose Siouxsie and the Banshees' Lullaby to base my artwork on and found the evocative lyric 'The dream swan spins' as good an excuse as any to build that robot swan I've always wanted to! Using Cinema4D I designed and modelled the swan before taking it into Photoshop for some violet-hued cygnetpunk styling for the final piece. I've posted an unused alternate version here along with some of the untextured 3d model shots to see. Also included are a couple of photos of the final sleeve displayed in the exhibition at NOW Gallery in North Greenwich, courtesy of Clare Mallison and Al Heighton. You can see some of my previous Secret 7" submissions here.

Secret 7" 2018

I was really pleased to have one of my submissions chosen again for this year's Secret 7" exhibition and auction in aid of Mind charity. All the artists involved remain anonymous until sale day and I can now reveal I created this illustration for Jeff Buckley's 'Lover, You Should've Come Over' based on some of the song's lyrics 'She is the tear that hangs inside my soul forever'. The show was held at The Jetty in North Greenwich and the sale has now moved online here where mine is still available to buy until Sunday 8th July. I also submitted the illustration above for Jimi Hendrix's 'Castles Made Of Sand' that didn't make it into the show but could do with a little blog love. You can see this and related work on the site here.

3x3 Professional Show No 14

Happy to have been awarded a Merit at this year's 3x3 Pro Show in the Gallery section for my Secret 7" entry based on the single The Less I Know The Better by Tame Impala.

Secret 7"

It was a pleasure and privilege to be part of the Secret 7" exhibition this year at Sonos Studios, London in aid of Amnesty International UK. My 7" record sleeve design was on show throughout April alongside some fantastic entries and was sold in a buying frenzy for charity yesterday. So, now that the secret's out here's my Superman flavoured illustration for Tame Impala's The Less I Know The Better. I've also posted here  my other two submissions that didn't make the show for Max Richter's Dream 3 and John Lennon's Imagine. See the work on the site here.

Slippery Sledgehammer

Here are a couple of personal pieces I produced for the recent Secret 7" open submission to design 7" vinyl covers for a good cause. Didn't get selected for exhibition unfortunately but enjoyed the sweet heck out of the experiment. Out of the given tracks I chose Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer (top) and Underworld's Born Slippy (bottom). See more personal work on the site here.

Virginia Plain

Here's a recent personal piece that I submitted to this year's Secret 7" vinyl art/good cause exhibition. Didn't make it into the show unfortunately but enjoyed the hell out of making it. I chose to illustrate Roxy Music's Virginia Plain with a stripped-back collage style that mashes up references to Warhol superstar Baby Jane Wolzer, Studebaker cars and the cigarette brand of the title. You can see it on my site here with other personal work.