Tag: illustration friday

the night tel drank the kwak

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foggy

My entry for Illustration Friday (I haven’t done one in a while), theme: Foggy. Yes, I had all these ideas of San Francisco or Prague or Strasbourg, of buildings half-immersed in grey, but I’ve been drawing so many buildings in grey lately that I wanted a change, and came across an old pic from an interesting evening in Belgium in late 1999.

This is my oldest friend, visiting me when I lived in Charleroi. We went, as always, to my local, La Cuve a Biere (an excellent and warm little place), and I got one of my favourite beers, Kwak (it comes in that funny shaped glass and is pretty strong, and tastes incredible). Tel did too. He liked it so much he downed it and ordered another. The Belgians on our table were surprised (and possibly nervous), for these sort of beers you have to enjoy, not chug down – for a beer like Kwak can be a bitch.

The room went foggy, the walls started spinning, the speaker above us started changing shape – at least that’s what Tel told me at the time. He suddenly got up, went into the bathroom, and pretty much didn’t come out for almost an hour. From what I heard, it was not pretty. When he emerged, we wisely decided not to get another, and walked home in the snow, not even stopping for a kebab. He has not so much as sipped a Kwak since. I can’t say I blame him.

This is faber-castell warm grey pen, with pilot varsity ink as the wash, on bristol paper. Yes, I’m trying something new for a change. I might illustrate other chapters of my life in strip form, if I get around to it.

the boy and his grandad

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Baby Luke just took his first trip back to London (where it rained every day, unlike in California), where he met the rest of his family, who naturally all absolutely adored him.
luke and his grandad

Here he is with his very proud grandad, who was celebrating his 60th birthday.

This is my illustration friday entry for this week (theme: baby), drawn in Luke’s journal. I might finish it with colours but kind of liked the simple version here.

on the last bus out of town

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get on the bus

Appropriately as I am red-bus and red-brick city bound, an old routemaster which has travelled wide and ended up in Davis. (Hence my illustration friday for this week, theme “wide”). I sketched & painted this (and it was a proper sketch, not a drawing, as i was sat waiting for my own bus) in just over 15 minutes before another bus and some people got in the way. I had better get used to that where I’m going. this is a little bit of London in California. I can relate to that.

If Mayor Boris Standard-endorsed Johnson really does get rid of bendy-buses (at a cost of millions which could go into, say, crossrail) perhaps they too will end up in Davis.

Illustration Friday…

“Knock Knock”

“Who’s there?”

“Wide”

“Wide who?”

“Wide don’t you open the door and find out?”

(kids! don’t open the door to strangers! especially if they tell bad knock-knock jokes!)

 

blue, blue, electric blue

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Illustration Friday: Electricity
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?
 

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).

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. 

illustration friday: ‘save’ (or ‘i’ve got a pocket full of pretty green’)

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illustration friday: SAVE

I am so glad i scanned this before adding the wash. Yes, i added a bad greeny-blue wash to it, and it looks bad bad baby, bad as in not good mate. So while you might think that the theme for illustration friday ‘SAVE’ refers to the money supposedly saved here, it actually refers to the fact i saved this before going on to deface the original with sea-green. So there.

Don’t go giving me evils!

Originally posted at 20six.co.uk/petescully