The Fifth Edition of Fail We May, Sail We Must Is Here!
Cheeky little launch discount code included
The fifth edition of my most popular print ‘Fail We May, Sail We Must’ is now available from my online shop. The first, second, third and fourth editions all sold out very quickly, so make you move fast if you like this new version.
And to help you on your way I’m offering 15% off to you lovely Substack subscribers for the first 48 hours of this release with the code HIGHFIVE discount expires at 5pm GMT on the 9th of March.
There are 50 prints available, 30 hand finished with 23.5 carat gold and 20 with the regular four colours, all signed and numbered.
Every new version of this edition begins with mixing a new colour palette. This time Alasdair of Mansons Press, my long term print collaborator, pushed me towards a much softer pastel selection than we’ve used before. I’m very happy he did, this is my favourite version ever.
Mini Lecture on ‘Fail We May, Sail We Must’
If you’ve followed one of my print launches before you’ll know I usually like to give a lot of info about the process. I do that to show you how much love and care goes into making an edition like this. But this year I wanted to do something a little different.
Back when I first designed this piece in June of 2020 I spent a lot of time researching folklore, myth and art history to imbue my ‘atlas’ with as much narrative symbolism as possible.
So, for the launch of the fifth edition, I’ve channelled my inner John Berger and recorded a mini lecture that tells the story of how this print came into being and what all of the various figures within it are telling you. This should be an especially interesting watch if you already have one of the previous editions. Hopefully this gives you plenty of ammunition to impress a visitor when they ask you what the print is all about!
I felt very nervy doing a piece to camera video like this but it was good to push through and make it happen. I managed to stop myself from killing it before it had a chance to breathe with perfectionism. It felt good also to make a video with my proper camera and editing software again.
Reels really killed off my film making practice in a strange way. Taking the time to ‘do it properly’ felt pointless when days of work could be put into a film for it to just get canned by the algorithm.
But redoing my website recently made me really appreciate all my older ‘proper’ video. It just means more than something shot and edited on a phone. Its not cinema when I break out my Sony 7III, but I get to pretend it is. Its a kind of play cinema, which means I think and work much more creatively than I do when I’m recording on an iphone.
And in the spirit of developing this Substack as means to create away from the puppet strings of Instagram maybe more film making is in order for 2024.