I feel like I did this ages ago. There have been so many drawings this month, so much scanning still to get on with. I’m sure I’m not the only Portland-Symposium-participant that feels that. Anyway…this is my son’s toy tractor, a metal green Tonka. Living in the agricultural world of Davis, tractors are inevitable.

Tractor Boys… that’s what they call Ipswich Town supporters, isn’t it. I have family in Norwich, so I should be all anti-Ipswich Town, but I have always quite liked them. They were great back in the days of Bobby Robson, John Wark, and, er, the other guys who were in Escape to Victory. I remember I was in Watford once when they were playing Ipswich, and all these Watford fans were giving Ipswich supporters some stick around town, calling them Tractor Boys and saying oo-arrr, and I wanted to say, Watford? Seriously?

Apologies to American readers, you won’t get any of that. I suppose it’s like people from Nebraska calling people from Oklahoma ‘farm-boys’. Or maybe it’s not. I grew up in London; everyone’s a tractor boy from my point of view. Even me, now.  

This little brown sketchbook is in fact finished now. You can see the whole collection of brown sketches, minus a few I didn’t bother scanning, on my flickr site.