Tag: postcards

buttons

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nice with tea

nice with tea

Last week I was lucky enough to receive a package in the mail containing Cadbury’s chocolate buttons, sent from England by the fenland artist Anita Davies (check out her artblog). I had commented on one of her drawings (of a cake covered in chocolate buttons, it looked perfect to have with tea) that I had been moaning to myself that I can’t get Cadbury’s Buttons here in the US, and so she offered to send me some in exchange for a drawn postcard.

Cadbury’s Buttons for a drawing, well how could I refuse, and so I draw the picture below and popped it in the mail. It’s a picture of the Silo, which I’ve drawn on many a lunchtime (but a place which completely fails to sell Cadbury’s Buttons). It went from one flat land (Davis) to another (the Fens). I soon received my choccies (various different size Buttons, plus two ‘Freddo’s which were dunked in tea and eaten almost as soon as I saw them). Cheers Anita! Much appreciated.

So, folks, I draw for buttons.

but not for zips

but not for zips

Tell you what, I do love Cadbury’s Tiffin too…

extraneous details you can’t live without

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rusty old truck in the castro

SF trip, part 5: I got off the bus at the Castro, the city’s gay quarter, and pottered around bookstores and past sidewalk cafes, before placing stool on kerb and drawing, of all things, this rusty truck above. “You drew a car?” my wife exclaimed later when she saw it. It’s true, I do avoid drawing vehicles, but this one was so interesting, and I was inspired by other vehicular drawings I’d seen online. Time was pressing, so I had a (fairly unsatisfying) late lunch at the Bagdad Cafe before walking down 16th and finally back to the Mission. Last (and only) time I’d been was November, and I wanted to go back, if anything for a burrito, but mostly to sketch.

footy in mission dolores park

I sat myself on the slopes of Mission Dolores Park, listening to loud latino radio blasted across the fields where local lads played football (not a jumper for a goalpost in site, though), and art students nursed hangovers with beer, being all social and shit. The fog hung low over the city behind, obscuring many of the tall buildings downtown. A guy sat to my left tapped away furiously on his mac book while his dog asked passing strangers to play with him; further back, another group of people looked equally dangerous and uninterested; not far off, a bearded hippy wrote something negative about yoga. And I got my paint set out and sketched on the slope.

I wandered about on Valencia, looking in more bookstores and record boutiques, as well as the odd gallery, before a trip down Mission and into Central America, ending up at last at Needles and Pens to look through their vast array of indie zines (and purchase one or two). By this point I was ridiculously tired, and I had neglected to write down the train time back to Davis, so I forewent the burrito and hopped on the 14 bus.

I did draw the picture below, on a postcard, which I have subsequently mailed to a friend in the UK, who I think would have enjoyed going out sketching in San Francisco. I always do.

a postcard

at world’s end

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sketchbook project coversave the world

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.
feed the babyPart 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 colourfulwrite postcards 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 follow the footballa 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-go to bedrecorded 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.

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.