kits out for the lads

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Football, football, football. The end of the season is upon us, and what an end in England, with Man U and Chelsea going to the wire for the Premier League and the Champions League, an FA Cup which could go Welsh, and a poor nothing for poor Arsenal. My team, Spurs, we already finished our season with a League Cup, while in France, Paris St Germain could get relegated, at which I will laugh because I also support Marseille. The really exciting thing about this time of the footy calendar though is not all the trophies, relegations, sackings and transfers, but the release of all the new kits for the next year. It’s becoming standard now that clubs release a new home shirt every season, but even I am getting tired of the football kit merry-go-round, and the laughable marketing that surrounds it.

When I was a kid, I used to want to be a kit designer. The late eighties and ealy nineties saw some incredibly daring designs, some instant classics, some instant stomach-churners (Arsenal’s away kit of 1992 springs to mind). Umbro and Adidas were the two leaders of design, and it was an exciting time for innovation and experimentation with new away colours (Liverpool’s green, Arsenal’s blue, Manchester United’s grey/green/yellow/you-name-it). Then, somewhere along the way, it all tapered off, it all just got a bit boring. There are only so many different collar designs. Only so many ways you can do stripes. Only so many old kits from the 50s/60s/70s you can rehash and pretend to be faithful. And so the marketing has to be inventive. For a few years now they’ve been pretending that the material is far more technologically advanced than anything from the previous year, or anything modern humans can even produce without advanced alien technology. Last year it seemed as though every new kit was a ‘commemorative kit’ for something or other: Spurs had their special ‘125 years’ kit, Celtic did the ’40 years since they won the European Cup’ kit (I bought it, incidentally), Barcelona remembered 50 years at Camp Nou, Northern Ireland ‘s kit commemorated, and this is stretching it a bit, 25 years since they were at the Spain World Cup in 1982. To name but a few examples. This year they can’t even be bothered to do that.

Spurs just released their new shirts for 08-09. Since signing with Puma in 2006, Spurs have now had TEN new shirts, not including goalkeeper kits. Last year the only significant change to the kit was the collar became a v-neck. Well this year the only significant change to the home kit is that that v-neck now has a blue trim. That’s another forty quid please, thank you, and don’t forget to put your favourite player’s name on the back, quickly, because he’ll be leaving for a new club in the summer. It’s such an underwhelming design, and yet they release it (in the shops today) with such fanfare, as if this new blue v-neck collar will somehow usher in a new era of prosperity and silverware. We’re not even the worst ones. Borussia Dortmund, for example, brought out three home shirts this season: a regular one, a cup-final one (hier bitte), and a special christmas one (noch wieder?). Oh, and they just release a new one for next year (immer mehr? Scheiss!). To market all these design-a-minute shirts the clubs will try anything, but an interesting trend these days (employed largely by South American teams and lower-league English clubs) is to use female models, rather than players; typical examples here, here and here. You see, terribly exploitative, I cannot approve. There’s another few here. But we the fans still buy them, these unimaginatively designed expensive mobile adverts for bad football and whichever dodgy online chinese casino gives us a few bob to keep lazy want-away Bulgarians in hair bands. I think if football shirts are going to be little more than advertising boards then the fans should get them for free, or at least for very cheap. I’m going to write to Sepp Blatter. I will.

tummy time

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I’m still practising drawing Baby, and here is young Luke – at 14 weeks old – practising tummy time. He’s pretty good at it – see how well he hold his head up now! – and rolled over for the first time on Saturday. Well done little dude! He’s cooing and babbling a lot now, he has strange conversations with the ceiling fan. He is just so interested in all of the world around him.

tummy time

I’ve drawn the eyes a bit too big, and the head’s probably too long. I drew this in copic 0.05, with cotman watercolours, in the baby’s journal, drawn from a photo taken at the weekend. I normally draw Luke in pecil but have been trying to do pen, even though you cannot erase your mistakes when the eyes look too close together and stuff, and I quite like the effect in this one.

more attempts at drawing baby luke

Here are some more pen sketches of Luke from his journal showing his difficult to capture baby expressions. I’ll keep practising!

i think i know, but i don’t know why

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SEED

My illustration friday entry for this week, theme: SEED

and so, a load of pens, what’s that got to do with seed? Geoffrey of Monmouth and Baugh & cable; seed? I tell you it has, and you know the answer. It’s quite a lame connection, to be honest.

This was, incidentally (for pen fetishists) drawn in copic multiliner 0.05.

By the way, I like the difference between ‘A History’ and ‘The History’. I think you should always trust ‘A’ over ‘The’ (especially a Galfridian ‘The’).

(yes, Galfridian is one of my favourite words – actually, it is my favourite word – and I always look for an excuse to use it).

stop dreaming of the quiet life

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stop dreaming of the quiet life

What a great week for british football, what a bad week for the labour party, what a terrible week for London. Now let’s see how many election promises boris can break (banning bendy buses? you are, as they say, avinalarf, intya). My own week started off badly; After a sad rescue attempt, I finally abandoned the bike, being unable to move the back wheel at all. I felt very sad, like I was shooting my horse or something. None of my tools could fix it (yes, I have the odd tool). Then a bird pooed on my new trousers and favourite shirt. I’ve also been off drawing, just haven’t been able to do it, partly just bored with the same trees at lunchtime, partly head interior all fuzzy. Hey, it’s May; funny how that happened so quickly.

This is the back of my building at work, lunchtime today, from a bench. I will draw in colour again, I promise.

london please! don’t vote for johnson

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A famous Johnson once compared being tired of London to being tired of life.

For those Americans who may not have heard, it’s the London Mayoral Election, May 1st – though April 1st might have been more appropriate, because there is a good chance a complete bloody fool will get elected. Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, aka ‘Boris’, aka that posh bloke with the mad blond hair who’s always on the telly making more gaffes than Beazer Homes, wants to leave his cosy safe Henley seat for City Hall, where he promises to improve public transport, and get rid of bendy buses (which despite making all those headlines in the anti-Ken Evening Standard, actually make London buses far more accessible than the old routemasters, and carry more people than regular double-deckers; they’ve also worked fine for years in many other big European cities). Boris Eton/Henley/Oxford Johnson, who I doubt has ever taken a bus except for a publicity shoot, in charge of public transport?

My fellow Londoners (though I am now absent), I implore you, do not give the mayoral job to Boris Upper Class Twit of the Year Johnson. If you want a cartoon buffoon with few social skills and a history of slagging off other cities for not being as upper class and Henley as him, if you want a right-wing mayor who has no interest in London, if you want Zippy out of Rainbow with Worzel Gummidge’s hair whose campaign rests on bloody bendy buses, vote for him by all means, but I think London deserves better. Whether you like Ken or not he has done a great job as our first mayor, from increasing the number of buses to the improvement of public spaces (Trafalgar Square is actually a place worth visiting now); having a clown like Johnson in office will make a mockery of what is still a very new post. Even if you don’t vote for Ken, please, for London’s sake, don’t vote for Johnson.

After all, when Johnson tires of London, he can just swan off back to Henley. 

don't vote for johnson

tombé en panne

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G & 4th, davis

Today was very hot in Davis; not good for allergies, not good if you hate bugs, not good for redheads like pete. After spending the morning playing guitar to the baby I decided to get out on the bike to draw. My bike, however, did not think so. After twenty minutes, on the bike path, it just died; the back wheel refused to spin. I wrestled with it in the heat for an hour, getting filthy, before taking it to a bike shop, where they apparently fixed it by turning a nut with a wrench. Ok, thanks, yes I tried that with my bare hands, that might have been the problem. I cleaned up, and finally got to draw something, choosing a particularly nondescript corner, in fairly nondescript sepia, because I was in a mood.

I then got on my bike to go home. And after ten minutes, the chain went, and then five minutes later the back wheel stopped again, stopped like a french worker in striking season (that’s about this time of year, usually). I had to abandon it, I had no phone with me, there were no payphones, and so I walked home defeated in the heavy heat.

I think the phrase is ‘Bugger’.

no colours any more

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no colours any more

The silo, yet again, at lunchtime, encore une fois, in sepia, for a change, today. Hey. it’s at a slightly different angle. I sat on my little stool beneath a tree (it was a lovely sunny day). The last time I drew it though (a month ago, in sepia) the tower was bare, now it is full of leaves and a luscious summery green (um, as you can see in this very brown picture).

Brown…when I was a kid, I used to think Bran Flakes were actually called Brown Flakes, because they were brown, and we were from London, that’s how you say it. Bran Flakes.  Similarly, whenever Americans would talk of what we know as cling-film, Saram-Wrap, I thought it was called Surround-Wrap (again, makes sense, ‘cos it saraands it), because my accent said so. Quite a surprise when I found out. Maybe my way makes more sense. 

illustration friday: primitive

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I still have all the postcards i’ve ever been sent. I still love sending postcards myself, from all the places I visit.

primitive

These days, fewer people bother. One friend told me he doesn’t send them any more, since there’s email and texting and facebook, but that misses the point of the postcard.  Another friend, on the other hand, he sends me postcards from various places he visits in the UK on his acting tours, and I love it. You don’t collect those emails in a dusty old shoebox that you come across many years later (one of the postcards in the picture was sent by my oldest friend, tel, from a holiday in devon when he was about 13 or 14, when it was the furthest he’d ever been; now he lives in korea). You can’t stick those facebook wall entries to your fridge. Writing and sending postcards does take a little effort, but it’s an enjoyable effort, and brings a little more sunshine into the world than seeing “inbox: 1”.

Here’s my illustration friday entry for this week, theme: primitive. Here’s to the more primitive forms of communication. Answers on a postcard. 

sitting in his nowhere land

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nice place

The last, or the 24th if you prefer, of the You See Davis word/image unrelations. It has been fun. I will do more, similar things of equal unimportance. There may be slight differences. Rounded edges, perhaps.

This could be anywhere.

But it’s the large metallic window-sparse building called the ‘Death Star’ locally. I don’t know why; it’s not round, it has no superlaser, as far as I’m aware it has the ability to process a lot of paperwork but not yet functional to destroy planets, and I think its exhaust pipes are a little better protected. Maybe the locals know something I don’t? Tractor beams? There are a lot of farmers here…

the day breaks, your mind aches

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aix-en-provence

I’m in California, but this is Aix-en-Provence. I spent a year there from 2001 to 2002; I met my wife there, and she met me there too. I drew this last night, Micron Pen 01, and intended to add a wash, possibly in a warm sepia; I still might, but quite like it as it is.

Aix is art country. I did draw a lot while I was there, and paint, but I wish I could go back and draw and paint more, in the way I do nowadays. The light is amazing there – like in California, but possibly better. You have toi watch out for dog-poo though, and dog-people.  Et les nains de jardin au parc jourdan, bien sur.