Tag: illustration friday

the ancient empty street’s too dead for dreaming

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things have changed

I finally sat down and started a new series, much in the vein of the ‘you see, davis’ set, but this one being situated in the town where i was born (and hence called as such). actually burnt oak isn’t really a town, it’s a suburb, a part of london still lost in the middlesex postcode, long after middlesex has been wiped off the map (i suspect this is what ahmedinedjad really meant by that phrase). This is also my entry for illustration friday this week, the theme being ‘opinion’. I am glad that my opinions change over the years, that even though i am very opinionated I can still change my point of view. Or maybe my mind is just drifting along and ultimately doesn’t care about any opinion either way. Maybe we will never find out. For example, I hate arsenal, but actually felt sorry for them this week. Oh who am I kidding. Anyway i think it was muhammed ali who said, the person who thinks the same at 50 as they did at 20 has wasted 30 years of their life. Or something like that. I’ll find out when i’m 50 i guess, when i’ll probably think that was all bollocks.

a right couple of spanners

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Illustration Friday this week: “repair”. Decided in the end not to do a watercolour wash, but to use another colour micron pen, and then a warm grey faber-castell brush pen, and leave it at that. Something different for me. Yeah the lines are kinda goin’ places, but it’s an election year, so.

repairs

This economic meltdown is causing absolute chaos, and shows that just allowing the free market to do what it will is clearly not good enough. Tell you what though, a couple of months ago the pound was worth $2.05, today it was $1.57, pretty good for me, now I can actually afford to buy things in the UK and pay some of my student loans.

Tottenham Hotspur, oh bloody hell, can this be fixed? Bottom, winless, hopeless, useless; we were not broken under Jol, but we fixed it, now we’re broken, and this will take bloody Joe the Plumber or someone to fix.

Speaking of whom, how has Joe the Plumber become the main star of the election? Incredible the way rabid media air-fillers filled air with investigating this guy who just happened to ask Obama a question, and was then used shamelessly by McCain and Palin (who loves people called Joe, god knows who Joe Six-pack is supposed to be, I can’t work out if it’s someone who works out or someone who drinks too much beer). And there are the media scrutinising this guy like he’s the one running for office, camping outside his house, interviewing him (he’s better at it than Palin); and it’s so funny, he won’t tell them who he’s voting for, which is great (but it’s kinda obvious). Hey did I just use ‘kinda’ twice? Been listening to too many crappy political speeches. Joe the Plumber; if he’d been called Zainab the Plumber, would he have been used by the Republicans? (Do they realise Joe the Plumber’s middle name is ‘Saddam’?) Well, they couldn’t use Bob the Builder (his catchphrase sounds a bit too much like an Obama slogan: “can he fix it? yes he can!”), and too many in the GOP base had a problem accepting Postman Pat because he was palling around with a cat who can’t decide if he’s black or white, and as for Fireman Sam, the ‘hero next door’, well he’s not even married; he could be gay! Who can the Republican ticket use next in this election? Chorlton from Chorlton and the Wheelies? Mr Spoon from Button Moon? Bagpuss? Time’s running out guys.

E-B-G-D-A-E

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strings

This is my illustration friday for this week, theme “strings“. Pretty obvious.

I absolutely hate stringing the guitar. It’s my least favourite thing. It takes me hours, and it is torturous. I am constantly afraid of one snapping and cutting my lip, or ripping a hole in the fabric of the universe or something. It’s almost like my fear of bunsen burners, but more stupid. I’ve considered just giving up the guitar for good while restringing in the past, it’s been that bad. The guy in the shop when I bought these offered to string my guitar for me, but it would mean bringing it in, I just don’t have time. He did also try to sell me some really swanky looking guitar strings called Elixir, but I decided against them because they sounded too much like a packet of condoms.

choc and awe

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milky way
A quick one; a cup of tea and a chocolate bar. My illustration friday entry for the theme of “sugary“.

The chocolate bar is a Milky Way, but don’t let that deceive you, British friends – American Milky Ways are nothing like our Milky Ways. They are in fact almost exactly like our Mars Bars. They also go very well with tea. The Milky Way/Mars Bar thing is one of many instances where our two cultures look different and call itself different things but are in fact the same. I can’t be bothered to name any others.

I got that mug at the Getty in LA. And you know what? I didn’t actually drink this cup of tea from that mug, I drank it from a different one, with my name on it. I just thought the colours and pattern would be better next to the milky way. I used to have a funny way of eating Mars Bars: I’d eat the sides first, then I would nibble off the top, and then the rest. A friend at college once gave me a king-size Mars Bar for ny birthday with a big note on it saying “eat it properly”.

nice one, centurion, like it

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packed

Illustration Friday this week, well, “packed” – considering we still aren’t completely unpacked it was appropriate. Two weeks in the new place and it’s still hard to remove some objects from their very temporary homes. We only moved a hundred yards, for heaven’s sake, I can see my old apartment from my new one (it’s a bit like seeing Russia from Sarah Palin’s house). The books are all on the shelf (permanent positions undecided), CDs, records, glasses, knives and forks; it’s the stuff marked “misc” (or “pete misc”, to be precise) that is having a hard time settling.

Speaking of new homes: this is my 100th post on my new website (hence the title). That’s 700 posts in all if you include the old blog. Wow. At this rate, I should hit 1000 posts in around… April 2010.

never his mind on where he was

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Encore, my illustration friday entry this week: “Memories”, this time with colour. Not much colour, but some colour. I posted the black and white version yesterday. It’s an homage, or even an homage of an homage. I forget now.

misty watercoloured

Memory is a funny thing. Whole academic programs are set up around the very idea of memory, its uses, its effects on future actions, plus lots of other stuff I don’t quite know (or have forgotten). In the days before literacy, memory was of vital importance, to keep laws, to pass on traditions, plus lots of other things I can’t remember. Our incredible capacity for memory became less well exercised once things began to be written down – we trusted paper for permanence, rather than agreed ideas on what really happened or what the rules really were. We also began, everntaully, to equate language with what is written rather than what is spoken – a huge mistake if you ask me. But anyway back to memory. Do you remember, in the days before we all had cellphones, that you used to remember most of your friends’ phone numbers? You had to, in case you needed to call them. But now you just press their name in your nokia. Memory capacity unexercised. I don’t even remember my own cellphone number now. I don’t have to. So what’s the rest of my brain doing when it’s not being used remembering things like that? I forget.

As for what happened in our lives… it’s funny how quickly things whisper away from your thoughts. People, places, ideas; yet, if we have a small token from them, doesn’t matter how small or insignificant, we have a greater chance of retaining that memory. Photos are one thing, drawings are another. Each of these things above have some sort of meaning to me. I’d be happy to explain.

some have gone, and some remain

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Illustration Friday this week is “Memories”; this is my entry. 

memories

I took my inspiration for this composition from the phenomenal Andrea Joseph. Well, her and the homage to her by France Belleville. I’ve wanted for a while to do a detailed piece of “bits” for a while but hadn’t blocked out the mental space for it – wow, it takes some concentrated concentration! – and, actually it’s not finished. I’ll be adding colour later (I just need a rest!). I drew it so that it would be coloured.

Those are just some of my memories. Oh, except one, a partially hidden photo of my grandad (who i never knew) with my dad as a boy (you only see his hair). Once the picture is complete I’ll add notes. They span several countries. Two of the objects are actual ‘memory’.

every day i look at the world through my window

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routine

Illustration Friday this week is “routine”…this is my entry.

Now, before you say, “do what?”, I’m playing a game here I used to play when i did interactive theatre. This image, ok, it’s an image of Tel looking out of my window in Belgium, about eight or so years ago. Add the word ‘routine’ and you start to write the story in your head around it. 

This may have been the night after this night here. But it was probably after a different night. 

But that windowsill! Man, I spent so many days and nights sat on that, looking out of my thirteenth floor window, across the Square Hiernaux (I nicknamed it the Vicious Circle because of the quite crazy Belgian driving), to Ville Deux, to the Stade Mambourg (where England beat Germany in Euro 2000), and to the terrils, the large slag heaps that dot the landscape of the forsaken pays noir.

pissing down with rain on a boring wednesday

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This week’s Illustration Friday theme is ‘detach‘. Here then is my entry: a picture of Burnt Oak tube station.

burnt oak station

I think the reason is that, each time I go back home, I feel more and more detached from the place I grew up. How much further detached from it will I become; am I even really detached, or is it all just imaginary? This is Burnt Oak station. Second from last stop on the Northern Line. Not a particularly nice place to hang about of an evening, you might say (or daytime either). It’s on Watling Avenue (previously seen here). I’d come out of the station, look up the hill to see if my bus was coming, and if not, I’d walk home (only one bus stop away up Orange Hill). A favourite hang-out for dodgy kids with nothing to do.  

And it rains there. It doesn’t rain here.

and i watch them roll away again

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First illustration friday piece i’ve done in a while; theme of ‘sail‘. Now, do I get a Blue Peter badge?

Sail

I don’t normally draw boats, or ships (I do draw junk though, ha ha). Like I don’t usually draw cars. I have a problem with them. So I thought I’d give one a go (this one sits docked in San Francisco, at Fisherman’s Wharf). To get past the psychological barrier, I pretended that they were power cables, pylons, telegraph poles, all those street wires I love so much. I’m quite happy with how it came out, and maybe I’ll draw more. Maybe in the future. Perhaps.