street of ink

June 29, 20082 Comments

Sleep-training the baby is not fun, especially if the baby stubbornly refuses to sleep. During that process, going in and checking on him every ten minutes (as per the book), I got the Copic pen out last night and drew lots of little lines, that eventually ended up looking a lot like Fleet Street in London (my favourite street); there’s the church of St. Dunstan in the West, there’s the Royal Courts of Justice, there are offices of newspapers past and present (well, not many present any more), there are the clocks I was watching closely.

dust in the air suspended

June 27, 2008June 27, 2008Leave a comment

The death of hope and despair,
This is the death of air.
(TS Eliot)

You may have heard about all the fires blazing in California right now. They’ve been burning for the past week, started by dry lightning strikes last weekend, not helped by the dryest year since who knows when. The result is that the Valley has been covered in a thick blanket of smoke for days now, and it’s pretty dangerous too. I’ve never seen anything like it – smog, really. The sunlight, as it filters through, has a distinctly orange tinge to it, the shadows are a dim twilight blue. It’s pretty horrible, and I hope it clears up soon, but the air likes to sit still in this hot Valley.

I braved it for a bit over a couple of lunchtimes, to draw the bike barn from a vantage point at bainer hall, uc davis. It’s a scene I’ve drawn a couple of times before – once last July, and then again with leafless trees on a clear January day. They are below. Today I marked the horrible smoky sky.

at world’s end

June 27, 2008June 27, 20083 Comments

After – how long is it, a month and a half maybe? – it looks as though I am finished with the ‘how to save the world’ sketchbook project is finished. Well, there are a few finishing touches to be done to the inside cover, perhaps, but all of the pieces are now complete. Here we are then, at parts 23 to 27.
Part 23 is ‘feed the baby’, which is a pretty good idea if baby wants to keep growing like he does. And he does. Most of these drawings were done at night either while waiting for baby to wake up for his bottle (in this case he was sleeping pretty well), or just after he’s had his bottle and gone back to sleep.

Part 24 is ‘write postcards’ – as you may have seen from a previous colourful drawing, i do like postcards, and have a great deal, in fact it is possible that by saving these little pieces of the world over the years i am in fact saving the world, you saw that one coming didn’t you. (ok no you didn’t but i bet you like to think you had).

Part 25 is fairly relevant to the current period as it is follow the football, or the footy, or as many of you on this side of the pond say, the saacurrr. This is a fair attempt at drawing a couple of footy magazine and a pile of football shirts while watching the semi-finals the Euro 2008.

Part 26 is easier said than done for an up-late-stayer comme moi. My foot appears to have edged into the picture. The crib obviously belongs to the baby. He was alseep in there while I drew, so I had to be quiet with those micron pigma pens. There is a cd player, playing pre-recorded noises of the bathroom fan, which helps the baby sleep; he’ll probably grow up all into avant-garde experimental sampling music now, oh dear.

And then finally, at the top, Part 27 which is of course ‘save the world’.

And so the overall theme was to draw things around the home (which is where the world begins for everybody) because by drawing them you are saving them in some format. And the writing is completely and utterly made up as I went along with pretty much no aforethought whatsoever. Pretty much like the world in general I think. And there you have it. I’ll have to send this off to Atlanta at some point soon.

come on, turn up the sun

May 15, 2008May 15, 20082 Comments

When it gets hot in Davis, it gets very very hot. It hit over a hundred degrees today, and we haven’t had rain since oh before you were born. I am not looking forward to July; that’s when the Central Valley simply redefines hot. It is not a fun place to be.

And so I went out in it to draw. There was a breeze, albeit a hot breeze. I had promised myself it would be a drawing day, and so lunchtime I went to the arboretum, found a shady spot, and drew the greenhouse. I’m sure I want to say somehing about the greenhouse effect, but I won’t, I’m too hot.

In other news: I was sad to hear that Celtic legend Tommy Burns had died aged only 51. Gordon Strachan’s tribute was sad too. This a day after their rivals Rangers lost in the UEFA Cup Final. Not a happy time for Scottish football.

blue, blue, electric blue

May 13, 200811 Comments

Illustration Friday: Electricity

The IF topic this week was more interesting than recently, I think, and I had all these ideas, yet none really turned on the lightbulb, you know? Then I realised that all things in nature resemble each other, and if you had to describe the shape of electricity, frozen electricity, hardened into a solid object, it wouldn’t look a million miles from a bare tree. A Van de Graaf tree. Or, for that, the patterns of a river delta seen from the air. Or the capillaries underneath the skin.

Or maybe I’m barking up the wrong pylon?

tummy time

May 7, 2008May 7, 20082 Comments

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.

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.

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

May 5, 20089 Comments

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

May 3, 2008May 3, 2008Leave a comment

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

May 1, 2008May 1, 2008Leave a comment

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.

tombé en panne

April 26, 2008April 27, 20084 Comments

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’.