Tag: toys

berries

3 Comments

xmas berries 010525

The last Christmassy thing I drew this festive season, right at the end. Not a lot to be festive about now is there. These little holly berries are another Jellycat thing, we have a few of those now. Sometimes, little things with smiles on them can cheer you up. The internet isn’t going to do that, social media isn’t. Social media. This phase of human history has been a bit of a social experiment, hasn’t it, and maybe it’s time to evolve again. I stopped posting to Facebook a long time ago, except when making Let’s Draw Davis events (which I haven’t organized since October, I have become a bit shy on that front). I stopped posting to Twitter (‘X’ is a stupid stupid name) due to the increasingly awful richest man in the world owner; a shame, as it used to be quite good. I’m still using Instagram despite the terrible shift in the owner, mostly because on the whole it’s been a good place, but I’m stopping using Threads because rather than being a ‘nice’ version of Twitter, for me it’s become an exhausting app full of posts I really don’t want to see but are which are designed to just draw you in and exhaust and frustrate you, and not even from people I follow. Threads might be my least favourite of all, I’ve decided. Look, if anyone follows me on there, all I do is complain/cheer about Tottenham, I don’t really post my sketching stuff there. I don’t interact with people, I follow accounts about sketching or football or history, and I don’t look for engagement either. Yet because the app defaults not to the ‘following’ list but the dreaded ‘For You’ list, I get pulled by gravity into looking at posts either complaining about the afore-unmentioned billionaire and whatever stupid crap the other one who shall not be named has said or done today, or it’s really mind-numbing engagement posts that for some reason the algorithm has decided I should see, such as “I don’t understand, why do the British have a different accent from me?” or “Can someone explain, why do the British eat baked beans, what are they?” or “Can someone explain, what is the difference between Britain and Ireland?” followed by frankly hundreds of stupid responses either actually explaining it or having a go at them for asking it. For a while most of the posts that showed up for me were along the lines of “Hey! I’m new to English Pre-Meer League, what team should I support?” as if they actually want a real answer. But of course they don’t. All of it, or at least 99% of this all, is just bait, we live in a world of endless click bait. And we all know who the master baiters are. Now even my phone is at it, I have been getting a lot of texts lately from spammers and scammers, I delete and report every one but it’s like Space Invaders, they keep coming. But Threads, sorry, it ain’t working out between us. I always preferred being petescully to ‘pwscully’ (that was always going to be my novelist name, but I couldn’t think of any good stories). So, I’m doing the latest New Twitter Replacement, Bluesky, which does seem nicer and easier to use without getting so much of the distracting noise (ironically, just like how Twitter worked for me, before every other post became an ad for whichever right-wing SuperPac paid whats-his-face the most money). I am ‘petescully‘ again at Bluesky, and sure half of my posts will be drawing related, half will be me moaning about Spurs, and the other half will be… until I’m bored of that. It’s almost exciting, like back when we were all doing MySpace and LiveJournal and something new would come along. To be honest, I’ve never been interested in big followings like some sketchers get, or being part of any global conversation, or even engaging in debates with people online who I do not know. I am one of those who just likes yelling at the void. I just like to draw, and look at the world and draw, and then ramble about whatever in this place, the good old sketchblog. This predates all the social medias that have caused so much of a headache, and a lot of people gave this sort of thing up for the instant expansion all that short-attention-span social media offered. I’m still here. I hope you like the berries.

christmas under the tree

Leave a comment

xmas buddies

These little fellows are sat at the foot of our little Christmas tree this year, and I just had to draw them. This sketchbook is nearly over (yes, I still have to post my London sketches) but Christmas isn’t. Well, I get the feeling from a lot of Americans that it is, because it’s past December 25th, but that’s only Christmas Day. At Target today while buying discounted wrapping paper for next year I heard someone say to their kid, “no, Christmas is over now”. Today, for me as a Brit anyway, was Boxing Day, laziest day of the year. I keep the decorations up until January 6th, though as far as British tradition held when I was a kid, Christmas lasted for those exact two weeks of TV listings in the Radio Times; once it’s January 2nd, forget it, party’s over folks. But they (and the TV Times, and other papers with good listings, even really awful papers like the Mail would have good TV listings at Christmas time) would always list the days as “Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, Friday, etc, same with New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. So this day when people ask me what day Christmas Day is on, I say “Christmas Day”, because I figured we just didn’t use the actual name of the weekday for it, because the Radio Times didn’t. Still, I was glad to see Christmas Day fall upon a Wednesday this year, it feels somehow fair. Although on the Saturday before Christmas, I threw my back out and was largely unable to move too much for many days. I was in the kitchen making cranberry sauce, which I had never done before. I had the idea when I was deciding to make a special drink called a ‘White Christmas’, which I’d seen online, basically Prosecco with white cranberry juice (the one I used also had some peach), a sprig of rosemary and some cranberries. I had a lot of cranberries left over so I looked up recipes for cranberry sauce; there are hundreds, all different, some with loads of ingredients like rum and cinnamon sticks, some with hardly any. I chose one with perhaps a bit too much orange in it, and I squeezed the juice out of it myself. Once I’d made it, I put it in the fridge for a couple of days before tasting it, I was a bit afraid. It turned out ok, a bit tart and fruity, so we had some canned cranberry sauce as well, which was much milder. Anyway, after being down on the floor looking for various pots and pans in the cupboards, I somehow pulled my back, and this got worse over the next few days, even affecting my ankle and foot, meaning I spent most of Sunday and Monday lying flat in bed. In fact I drew this sketch when I woke up super early, unable to get back asleep, so I hobbled downstairs and drew these guys. Christmas Eve is traditionally the day for just our family, when we have my beloved Christmas turkey roast dinner. We go over to my wife’s family on Christmas Day itself and eat crab for dinner. At home though I get my parsnips (this year roasted with carrots and they were amazing) and different stuffings (both British Paxo and the American stovetop kind), turkey and crispy roast spuds, and of course I eschew brussels sprouts because I can’t stand them. This year though I made Yorkshire puddings for the first time ever, and they came out great. Achievement finally unlocked, why was I so afraid of messing that up. My wife made the turkey and it was fantastic. Though for all the bits I was cooking, I was bent over in the kitchen in agony and had to keep sitting down every few minutes, barely able to stand, but it all worked out deliciously. I was still pretty stiff on Christmas Day, but as the day wore on the back issue finally wore off, and by Boxing Day I was fine walking about Target. No mate, it’s still Christmas yet, not while there are mince pies left to be eaten, and I still have a lot I brought back from London. I’m in denial that 2025 has to start at all, if I’m honest. As I write it’s 3:30am and I’ve been unable to get back to sleep. Enjoy the festive season while it’s here folks, and to all a good night (or a good morning).

little bit of star wars early in the morning

Leave a comment

lego AT-ST 101023

I was up very early, as I’ve been doing, and I needed to sketch something, again, as I’ve been doing. So I drew the Lego AT-ST, in that gray paper sketchbook I haven’t drawn in since those early pandemic days, using the fountain pen that I’ve just started using again for the first time in a few years. This October has been a bit annoying and I’ve generally been feeling a bit stressed, and that has actually led to me sketching more. Hooray for being busy and stressed out! Anyway. I love Star Wars, by the way. I really enjoyed the Ahsoka show – slow start, I was getting irritated by all the arm folding and long pauses in the dialogue, but it all picked up. A few unresolved threads in there I felt but it was great seeing Anakin especially in Clone Wars form. Thrawn was exactly as hoped. I loved that it was genuinely a sequel to the last season of Rebels, the animated show I really loved. (I was a huge fan of Clone Wars too, and enjoyed Bad Batch; that revisited final season of Clone Wars was maybe one of my favourite Star Wars things). The fight choreography in Ahsoka was a lot better, though it’s easier to animate two-handed lightsabre fighting than to act it. still the lightsabres looked a lot less like glowsticks than in some previous Disney + shows. Speaking of, I could have a lot to say, but life’s too short, and I am awake in the middle o the night after an unexpected 3:30am wake-up. Mandalorian – I liked the first season, though it left me a little cold (a bit too style over substance); the second season I enjoyed a lot more with some great characters showing up, and had the best ending; the third season, sheesh, what the hell was that episode with Jack Black, honestly awful. Book of Boba Fett – started ok, got progressively shitter, and ended so terribly, but the slow chase scene on those ridiculous colourful mopeds was a low point for Star Wars until that Jack Black episode in Mando 3. I loved Obi-Wan Kenobi, sure there were a few choices that went the wrong way but on the whole it was a well planned out show (there were no episodes where we took a break from all the characters and spent an hour on some other story about a boring guy getting a desk job – FFS, Disney Star Wars) and it was a series that I really enjoyed. But I’m a massive Revenge of the Sith fan. And then there is Andor, a show with some beautiful moments, but was Too. Bloody. Long. And Too. Bloody. Boring. Star Wars for people who don’t actually like Star Wars. If it had dropped all at once like Netflix, instead of very slow weekly episodes that didn’t have proper endings, and you could watch it all together, it might – might – have been more enjoyable. Too many characters, too slow scenes, very hard to care about anyone at all (with the notable exception of Andy Serkis’s character), especially not the title character who was so uninteresting I thought his name was ‘and/or’, it was a show that if it didn’t have ‘Star Wars’ on the title would probably be a lot better off, but people like me would not have watched it. Honestly I watched it all, but my family took to skipping episodes (especially those ‘middle of the story’ ones) and I didn’t even have to recap, because there was nothing to recap. All those episodes, I was wondering if there was an editor’s strike or something. Too many not very interesting British actors playing side characters acting in that very boring way you see on the worst kind of ITV drama, and do you really need to see how someone gets from one place to another every single time, sat on the bus with them, walking across that hill, dudes this is Star Wars and we have places to go. And then there is Cyril. I know that isn’t how they spelled it, but they have a guy called Cyril who loses his job, obsesses about a woman in uniform (who takes pills to pull all-nighters working on solving a case like in all the serious detective dramas), goes home to live with his mum, eats bowls of cereal in her kitchen while she badgers him about a job she can get him with his uncle or something, and he gets that job and sits at a desk in a cubicle in a big office, and obsesses about the woman in uniform he fancies and about ‘and/or’ he wants to get back at – who wrote this show, Morrisey? This isn’t Star Wars, it’s a low budget Channel 4 drama set in the north of England that occasionally says the word ‘space’ or ’emperor Palpatine’ when it is nudged and remembers to. And people on the internet love it, they’re all “it’s my favourite Star Wars!”, because they don’t want kids shows, they want serious and slow and dark and grown-up (and people called Cyril who eat cereal and work in a cubicle), and that’s fine, keep it, and if you like it good for you, it’s good to like things, I like a lot of things I’m sure you hate (like the Phantom Menace), but Andor is only Star Wars because it says it is. Anyway enough of all that, I’m going back to bed.

any old iron

Leave a comment

Lego Ironmonger 091822 sm

I’ve not drawn any Lego for a while. I still have a few Lego sets I’ve not build yet; finding the time (sorry, I mean finding the shelf-space) has been an issue, plus my increasingly bad eyesight means I can’t find those little bits of Lego I drop under the couch until one of my cats spits it out (they’ve never actually done that, funnily enough, though they have done the ‘push a massive Lego set off the shelf’ act). This was one I drew back in September, on the brown envelopes, this is the Lego ‘Iron Monger’. That was the main villain in the first Marvel Cinematic Universe film, Iron Man. The MCU has got pretty big since then, which I’ve been a big fan of. Like the Marvel comic universe itself it is basically a massive soap opera. I have loved the series, the most ambitious movie project of all time, culminating nicely in Endgame which I thought was a nice stopping point for the Avengers era. Then came the various Disney Plus series of Phase 4, coming just in time for the pandemic when cinemas would be closed and we were all at home streaming telly anyway. While I’ve enjoyed many of the series (Wandavision and Loki were especially fun) some of it all has tailed off a bit. The movies have been less re-watchable than the first three phases, though I enjoyed the most recent Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, everything else has been ok to hmm, yeah. Maybe it’s the lack of Robert Downey Junior. Nevertheless I am interested to see where it goes, since it is heading to Secret Wars (the original was one of the first Marvel comics I read back in the mid-80s, and I really loved the 2015 massive crossover special). But I just watched Quantumania, and while it was largely fun, it was a bit middling. I know a lot of people are very meh about the super-hero/comic-book movies anyway, but I loved Marvel comics and these ones did a really good job (unlike for example the recent DC films which have been fairly atrocious; don’t get me started on Dawn of Justice). I think it’s because while the first three MCU ‘phases’ were all new and “are they actually going to do that? Oh they really are”, they had a through-line and a clear focus, especially being tent-poled around the Avengers series, and as they started introducing new characters and ideas to the mix it was done organically and brought together in the most comic-book-crossover structured movie of all, Infinity War. I could watch those over and over and over, like Star Wars, or the Dark Crystal, or Father Ted. Now with films like Eternals, which felt like it went on for an eternally long time, it feels like the series is not sure where it’s really going. The Multiverse Saga, right, Kang the Conqueror, Secret Wars – but it’s not clear how they are going to get there, or if they will bring us all along with it. Still, I loved Iron Man, and I still love all the Lego. I haven’t made a Lego animation in a while (since the Dr Strange one I made a few years ago), but it’s really fun to draw.

humbug

1 Comment

Lego Christmas Carol

This here is my Lego “A Christmas Carol”, which I got as a Christmas present to my delight. In the run-up to Christmas this year we sat down each evening in the living room and read A Christmas Carol, which we’d never actually done before, aloud with hot chocolate and cookies and mince pies. I found it hard to read aloud with my mouth full of mince pie but I gave it a go, it’s what Dickens would have wanted. Dickens really stuck faithfully to the original Muppets version which was nice to see. While reading Scrooge’s voice I managed somehow to avoid doing a Michael Caine voice, and instead did something more along the lines of Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse’s Old Gits. We always watch the Muppets version on Christmas Eve, for us it’s the best one, and of course the Blackadder Christmas Carol. I like the Albert Finney one too. This Lego set then was a really nice surprise and I made it straight away to put on the shelf. I drew this (deciding not to add the colour) on January 6th, traditional last day of Christmas, after finally turning off the endless news of the bloody awful events at the Capitol. I still can’t really gather my thoughts on that as it feels like we don’t really know where this is going, but it’s so depressing. At times like this, getting the sketchbook out and furiously scribbling away feels like the best way to get through it. I have Lego to build though. I did start making a Christmas themed Lego animation but I was struggling to find the time to work on it (despite hardly ever leaving the house, it’s finding the ‘mental’ time) and now I’m putting the Christmas Lego sets away. But here is one final festive image for you, Han Solo on a tauntaun.

IMG_0412(1) sm

thanos the spoiler

1 Comment

Lego Brickheads Thanos

SPOILER ALERT!! I loved Avengers [SPOILER]! It was a great way to [SPOILER] [SPOILER] years of Marvel [SPOILER]. When [SPOILER] flew in and [SPOILER] [SPOILER] in like the first ten minutes I was like, WT[SPOILER]!  And what about [SPOILER] going all [SPOILER], eh, didn’t see that coming. I loved the [SPOILER] bit too. I can’t keep this up. At some point I will [SPOILER] [OK shut it now Pete] do an actual spoiler-filled post about Avengers, using the power of Lego to illustrate my points, and then maybe one about Star Wars, I’ve been meaning to Talk About That for a long time. Maybe I need to do a Playmobil-knight illustrated discussion of Game of Thrones. Did you watch that last episode, the penultimate one, the [SPOILER] one where [SPOILER] goes [SPOILER]? I think Danaerys Targaryan should have been told, it doesn’t matter, Manchester City beat Brighton anyway. Oh sorry, SPOILER for anyone who hasn’t seen the end of the 18-19 Premier League season yet. Anyway, here is a non-spoilery Lego Brickheadz figure of Thanos what I drew. I might go and see Endgame again tonight. I loved it the first time, quickest three hours I’ve ever spent in a cinema, and I loved it even more the second time.

on and on across the universe

1 Comment

Lego Obi-Wan Starfighter
More Lego sketches! These are the mid-prequel-era Jedi star-fighters of Obi-Wan Kenobi (above) and Anakin Skywalker (below). The Obi-Wang ship actually comes with a huge ‘hyperspace ring’ (because one-man fighters this small don’t have space for an internal hyperdrive). I like the simple, sleek design, like a paper airplane, or a teeny-tiny Star Destroyer. The droid, R4 (or ‘Arfour’ as in ‘Arthur Daily’) liked to deal in dodgy motors and go for a drink down the Winchester. One thing always bugged me though. In Attack of the Clones, when Obi-Wan flies one of these to Kamino, Mace Windu orders him to apprehend Jango Fett and bring him back to Coruscant for questioning by the Jedi. But look at that ship! How’s he meant to do that? It’s not like there’s tons of room. Is he going to sit on Obi-Wan’s lap? Think, McFly, think!
Lego Anakin Starfighter

Anakin’s Delta 7B fighter is a similar but not identical design (Obi-Wan’s is technically a Delta-7 Aethersprite-class light interceptor). The R2 unit sits in front of the cockpit. That must be awkward as you can see, because he’s always looking sideways. He’s going to be very uncomfortable like that. This ship didn’t appear in the movies but turned up in some of the animated media. I wish Lego had designed a more pointed nose but I suppose they didn’t want to take kids’ eyes out.

Flashback to last year…I drew their later versions, the ones flown in the opening sequence of Revenge of the Sith (which were trashed on Grievous’s starship). First up is Obi-Wan’s red and white (or grey here in Lego), Eta-2 Actis-class interceptor. Yeah I never knew it was called that, I looked it up. Later in the movie, when he flew to Utapau, he had a cool looking blue and white one, but he had to ditch that one too after Order 66. I love this design though, kind of like a B-Wing cockpit and a tie-fighter mixed with a speeder. If I lived in the Star Wars universe, this would be my vehicle of choice, you can keep your Falcons and Slave Ones and X-Wings. Well maybe I’d have this for space and a Snowspeeder for when I’m on-planet.
ObiWan Jedi-fighter
And then there is Anakin’s one. He later flew a dark green and grey one, once he started turning to the Dark Side, abandoning his previous love of yellow vehicles. Later on, he only flew in black (or sometimes very very dark grey). You can see how this design could mould into the classic Vader TIE-fighter. I wonder what that would look like in yellow? I bet the Emperor told him he wasn’t allowed to paint it yellow, he’d ruin the Empire’s whole aesthetic.
Anakin Skywalker Jedi-fighter

 

farewell to the festive season…

1 Comment

Xmas Lego Dec 2017 sm

Since yesterday (January 6th) is the traditional ‘take-down-decorations’ day I wanted to make sure I posted it by then, as it is technically still in the Christmas period. Then I got flu. I evidently still have it too (I can’t taste anything!), well I suppose starving a fever is probably all for the best given how much I ate over Christmas. Not gonna lie, it was a lot of chocolate. And I haven’t even opened my Terry’s Chocolate Orange yet, I’m saving that for when I can taste things again. So this! This is a Christmassy Lego set that was a lovely addition to our festive get-up this year. I want to add a little bit of festive Lego each year. The train set and village station sets look cool. So, this was my last sketch of 2017. Don’t worry, I still have more in the backlog to post (Hawaii!). I didn’t get out to do any urban sketching on New Year’s Eve (I also had a cold, different from this current flu; come on winter, give me a break!). Speaking of colds, can we stop saying “bless you” after someone sneezes? I stopped a while ago. It feels odd, it’s a knee-jerk reaction and you feel rude for not acknowledging someone having sneezed by randomly blessing them like you are some sort of authority on the matter, but it is odd. Ok the real reason is that I have seasonal allergies, and from the period of about March to May I will sneeze a lot, uncontrollably, again and again and again. If we ever have the Spring Olympics I could represent Great Britain in the consecutive sneezing event. When someone gets to the third “bless-you” you really want them to stop, your magical blessing is clearly having no effect. Beyond that, it’s like, if you must, can you do it at the end like a package of blessings? And what exactly are you blessing me for? I remember being at a baseball game and I had a sneezing fit. People all around were blessing me, and frankly it was embarrassing. After sneeze five they were all laughing like someone sneezing in April is really hilarious (to be fair, it was probably more entertaining than the baseball). And again, and again, and again. I couldn’t get out to the garlic fries stand quickly enough. Yeah being laughed at by a crowd of strangers just for having allergies is so enjoyable. The blessings don’t work guys, just stop it okay!

This is a fun Lego set. I used it for a brief stop-motion animation which I played at our holiday party at work, I think people enjoyed it. I am still making those, I have a lot of ideas but little time to play with them. I may be overdoing the Lego in fact, but it’s so much fun. Goodbye, festive season. Until next year.

nice one centurion, like it, like it

4 Comments

roman soldier (playmobil)
And so, a couple more Rome posts before moving on to Venice. There is an endless supply of Rome puns and Life of Brian references to draw from yet. Above is a little Playmobil Roman soldier I picked up near the Forum, goes nicely with all our Playmobil knights and pirates. So one of the things we did in Rome was the Gladiator School, which as I’ve mentioned before, was not worth it. It’s listed in  lot of magazines and guides and tourist videos about Rome as a fun activity with the family, but I must say I wasn’t impressed. It’s quite expensive to take part, and I took part with my son so it was twice the cost. On top of that, it’s outside the center of Rome so you have to take a taxi there. Our taxi driver from the Forum fleeced us with a 30 Euro ride (his meter was not running, tellingly). The taxi back on the other hand was 17 Euro, but we had to wait 45 minutes for it to arrive. Now when we got there the place is pretty small, it’s a space for a group that does Roman re-enactments, and they go full on with the costumes and put on shows and things I guess. There were lots of photos of the Roman guy who runs it with various celebrities who had gone there in the past, Arnold Schwarzenegger and so on. The Gladiator School is for kids really but it was like, well it must be good, famous people come here. I was wearing my Sampdoria shirt and the same guy spoke to me, saying that Sampdoria are just a bunch of drug users and miming someone taking an injection. Hmm, okay, I said. We ended up being in a fairly large group of around twenty or so adults and children, and then we were given a history lesson with a whole bunch of Roman helmets and weaponry, which was interesting enough, except it was in a very hot room on a very hot day and went on for an hour. The guy taught us a lot of history, and some got to wear very heavy helmets, but all of the kids were getting quite anxious to get out and learn swordplay. When we finally did get to move into the practical space, the instructor gave us costumes – red tunics for the adults and white robes for the kids. Massive white robes that didn’t fit kids at all, and tiny red tunics that we adults all barely squeezed into. Hmmm. Some of us laughed about it, but at this stage one family had had enough, I’m not sure exactly why but I heard that the instructor had made some comment to their son, a tall lad, which had upset him, so the instructor spent the next 10-15 minutes off talking to the secretary while we waited around wondering what to do next. Finally the instructor reappeared and introduced a small obstacle course which we had to run around five times, while he went off again, distracted. Then he showed us a wooden structure which gladiators had to learn how to put together quickly which was supposedly used in battle, and so everyone took turns, while everyone else watched, because there is only one. We spent a lot of time watching. In the meantime the instructor would wander off, or just chat to the mothers seated on the benches (“Americans and British today,” he said to one, “No Australians thankfully, the Australian women are very rowdy because they are all descended from violent criminals.” He actually said that. Hmmm. When finally we got to learn swordplay, which was with the wooden practice swords, we all lined up and he told us to copy certain moves, then he would go around to each of us and maybe show us how to do that one move, or in the case of my son, just say one dismissive sentence and move on without showing him anything (his only words were, “Too much Jackie Chan,” whatever that is supposed to mean). It seemed like there were far too many in the group for anything more, though he didn’t seem particularly bothered. The sword practice was about ten minutes at most, and then we got to sit and watch while two kids or two parents at a time were able to fight each other. Kids couldn’t fight parents however, which disappointed my son who wanted to battle me. It was only simple gentle battling, and again the instructor barely took any notice, preferring to go and chat to other people instead, or ask that the mothers get up and fight because he “wanted to see two women fight”. And that was it. He gave us all certificates, and then thanked us as a group for funding their Roman re-enactment society, and then he went into a tirade that they get no funding from the Roman city government, who prefer to fund things “for gay people and foreign migrants”, mincing about as he did so. Eh? Stunned confusion from everyone. “Hi, can we have our money back?” I said, knowing that was not a battle worth our time fighting. As we waited for our cab home, a 45 minute wait, I peeked in to see the group after us, which was smaller, and who had a different, more enthusiastic instructor. They seemed to be having a great time. We and the rest of our group however all felt a bit underwhelmed. However. We got back and had a gelato, and still loved Rome, and in the end, you get to see this picture of me squeezed into a very, very tight tunic, fighting a duel. I guess it was worth it for that…

IMG_4529