This name makes much more sense than what it’s really called. My son got this for Christmas (let’s face it, it was for me too). He calls the bigger AT-AT a ‘garbage truck’, which really is a better name, so this smaller two-legged version is the ‘Lego Garbage Truck’. Drawn tonight in my Star Wars moleskine while watching Reservoir Dogs.
This is my son’s new AT-AT. When he first saw one (its brief appearance in Return of the Jedi) he called it a ‘garbage truck’. It makes perfect sense – it sounds and moves just like one, and to a toddler the connection is obvious. The name has stuck and I’m glad, I always disliked the name AT-AT when I was a kid (but we still said that rather than ‘Imperial Walker’, which is what they’re called in the film, because ‘AT-AT’ is what it said on the box, and Hasbro boxes tell no lies). I remember getting mine for Christmas when I was a kid, it was like the best thing ever, but the little plastic guns kept snapping off. This is the ‘Galactic Heroes’ version, which I must say is really cool (and a lot sturdier). Sketched in blue Micron pen in my WH Smith sketchbook (first sketch in that book in a year and a half).
A few weeks ago we drove up to the snow, which is found in the Sierra Nevadas about an hour and a half east of Davis. when I say th snow, I’m not talking about a sprinkling of white, I’m talking about SNOW. It must have been nine feet deep! Much of it was only a day old, fresh and powdery. We stopped at a rest stop just outside Truckee. It was my two-year-old son’s first experience of snow, so that was a lot of fun. Trying to build a snowman wasn’t easy, so I built a snow sith lord instead.
These were drawn in a journal that I’m keeping for my son.
I hate the first page of a new sketchbook; never know what to draw, for some reason. So on opening my third watercolour moleskine I just drew what was right in front of me, on my desk. There’s a glass, almost completely empty (or very slightly full, depending on your worldview, ooh link that to bush’s take on the economy). There’s the Beatles crossing Abbey Road (trivia question for you – are they going towards or away from the studios?). There’s Magneto, master of magnetism, rendered (in cruel irony) in plastic. Scissors I bought six years ago in Aix. A couple of microns, plus a copic. The pc screen (watching “south park” online). A Spurs badge – I’ve had this since I was ten, bought at a game at the Lane in ’86 when we beat Man City – it’s known as the “lucky spurs badge”, and is a famous relic (my mate Tel will tell you, should you see him). I wish it would still work, we seem to be selling most of the team. There’s Greedo, having reeked revenge on Han Solo, but with Cyclops behind him about to shoot first (I just had an image of Cyclops shooting Greedo under the table and wow, it was not pretty). And a half-hidden Vader behind him in the shadows. And there’s a couple of post-it notes with stuff about milk supply and stuff on them.
Now that’s out of the way (and you’re thinking I’m a geek, well maybe I am, or just untidy), I can move on with the sketchbook. Back to trees and buildings. It’s a little cooler here in Davis now, and not as smoky.
More world saving tips. The top one is pretty obvious. Watch Star Wars. Fast forward through most of phantom menace though. Note: the chick flicks on the shelf are not mine. The bottom one has more ‘knees up mother brown’ to it perhaps, but still only means ‘have a banana’. As Master Yoda might say, Under the table you must go.
cobalt blue copic and olive green copic, 0.1. Nice to draw with on this moleskine cahier paper.
petescully 