Colganology

Wave Hello ... Say Goodbye ...

2011-09-10T15:55:00.003+01:00

This is my very last post on this blog.

It has been very good to me this past four years but it's starting to go all wonky and haywire and it's becoming too hard to maintain. I think the problem lies in the fact that it's gone through three migrations of Blogger and there's just too much data stored here.

So, say goodbye to this site.But say hello to this site!

Yup, a whole new blog, fresh start etc etc.

I will be carrying on with the 365 Doodles project right up until December 31st. And expect all the usual rubbish that I would have posted to this blog.

Think of it as a regeneration.

365 Doodles - Day 252

2011-09-10T10:31:00.000+01:00

Cloudy cider, coloured pens and odd requests by Twitter chums often result in doodles like these.

Blame Esme Tearle (@esme_etc) - she asked for them.

365 Doodles - Day 251

2011-09-09T11:54:00.001+01:00

More sketchpad stuff. Two different doodles of the same cartoon. Like the idea - haven't nailed the caption yet.

365 Doodles - Day 250

2011-09-08T14:05:00.002+01:00

Day 250! Feels like some kind of major milestone. But then, again, it means I still have another 115 doodles to post on this blog before the year is complete. Criminy.

Today's doodle was drawn in the Dog and Duck pub in Soho yesterday after four pints. That's my excuse. Plus the fact I had my mitts on a brand new fat Posca pen.

And on the subject of doodles ... the Doodleshare Project has moved on and the very excellent Moose Allain has added his unique touch to the piece:

It now moves onto the next artist. Am loving watching it develop and was delighted to be a part of it. Want to follow too? Click here occasionally.

The Angry Art Challenge - The results!

2011-09-08T12:51:00.003+01:00

A HUGE thank you to everyone who took part in the Angry Art Challenge I set a few days ago. The response was amazing! And from such a diverse crowd too, pro artists and dabblers alike. I was particularly chuffed by the number of entries from younger artists. They were so creative! Here's a short video of all of the pieces that came in before the deadline. A few more have floated in since.

I'm currently working on a book that, unfortunately, I can't explain in its entirety yet as I don't want some smartarse to take the idea and pip me to the post (that's happened before severa times - see older blogposts)! What I can say is that I wanted to prove a point; that given limited resources - basically stuff lying around the house - anyone can make art. You don't need expensive oil paints or yew easels. You don't need a university education. All you need is inspiration, determination and the confidence to 'have a go' and enjoy doing so. Judging from what you all sent me, you had great fun!

Thank you so much - I will be contacting you all shortly to get your addresses so that I can send you your paltry reward: an original doodle by me.

And if all goes to plan (and my excellent agent is successful), some of these will end up in the finished book.

This was fun. perhaps we should have another challenge soon ... ?

Curry and Prince Charles' willy

2011-09-07T23:53:00.000+01:00

An interesting and inspiring day in London today. After a splendid lunch time pint or three with my old mucker Huw Williams, I grabbed my chum Naomi Stolow and headed over to Shoreditch to have a look at the Heroes and Villains exhibition being staged at the VZ Gallery in Cheshire Street by the collective known as Hero of Switzerland. This did mean a pleasant walk around the side streets near Brick Lane and being treated to some fantastic street art. And an excellent curry at the Bengal Cuisine restaurant.

The exhibition was superb. Esme Tearle (below) and her partners in crime, Ben Randall and Dan Button have got together an eclectic mix of pieces by artists including Adam Graff, Arina Orlova, Ben Carr, Charlie Mellors, Chris Nunn, Dale Lewis, Fay Heffer, Guy Jarrett, Jess White, Kate Merry, Paul Bommer, Phil Calver, Rebecca Markless, Russell Taysom, Ryan Button, Sebastien Dehesdin and Simon Cheadle. Here you'll find all manner of heroes and villains including Churchill in a Batman outfit, Zippy driving a Dalek and even Prince Charles and Camilla as some very saucy DC superheroes.

Do go along and have a look if you're in the area. The exhibition is on until the 14th September.

RSVP on the Facebook event page or follow the guys on Twitter for updates @heroswitzerland.

365 Doodles - Day 249

2011-09-07T08:48:00.000+01:00

Nope. Not a clue.

It was in a sketchpad.

365 Doodles - Day 248

2011-09-06T14:52:00.000+01:00

Today's doodle is my submission to the Horses with Hands riding Bicycles art project run by the Heroes of Switzerland art collective. Here's the blog where you can see, yes, pictures of horses with hands riding bicycles. What larks!

It took me almost exactly seven minutes (I timed it) from start to finish and was drawn in one take using a Stabilo Point 88 pen (fine 0.4) and then badly and hastily coloured with Posca pens.

Tomorrow I'm visiting the Heroes' latest exhibition in London here. Looking forward to it hugely.

Ignorance may be bliss, my friends

2011-09-06T11:09:00.001+01:00

I was watching an episode of The Joy of Painting on TV last week - do you know the show? It seems to constantly pop up on one lifestyle channel or other and features Bob Ross showing you how to do an oil painting in half an hour. The shows are nearly always 15-20 years old and Ross himself died in 1995 but their popularity remains undimished. Part of the reason for this is Ross himself, a gentle, permanently smiling man with a voice like a soft drawer-closer gadget and an afro that Shaft would envy. Anyhow, I mention this because I was struck by something Ross said during one show; so much so that I wrote it down. It was this:‘

I got a letter from somebody here a while back, and they said, 'Bob, everything in your world seems to be happy.' That's for sure. That's why I paint. It's because I can create the kind of world that I want, and I can make this world as happy as I want it. Shoot, if you want bad stuff, watch the news.’

I'm researching a book at the moment that relates to art and decided to use it as a quote. But then the more I read it, the more a deeper truth started to emerge. I realised that, if I looked at my life, almost everything that makes me sad or angry or frustrated and impotent happens somewhere else. And it's nearly always something that I have absolutely no degree of control over either like war or crime or politics or showbiz. So, just as a thought experiment, I asked myself how I would feel if I only looked to my own immediate environs. No newspapers, no TV news, no reality shows or docusoaps.I suddenly found myself in a surprisingly happy place.

We've become informaniacs haven't we? That bastard box in the corner of the room has turned us into news junkies. I actually know more about what's happening to the US economy, the revolution in Libya and recent football transfers (even though I loathe football) than I do about events in the village I live in. For instance, there was a fete on Bank Holiday Monday but I didn't know; there was probably a leaflet through the door at some time but I presumably binned it while watching some programme about the effects of Facebook (which I don't do) on the Middle East (which I've never been to). It's a shame really because I went to the fate last year and it was fun if a little dull (see here). I blogged about it at the time and made the observation that it was weird walking around a supposed 'village fete' and yet I didn't know anyone there. A year later, I'm now asking myself whether I should form an exit strategy for current affairs and an entry strategy for local affairs.

I grew up in the 1960s and 70s, in an age before computers, 24 hour TV and mobile phones. I was in Cornwall, miles from 'the action'. We didn't even hear about events in the next town or village unless it appeared in the local paper a week later. And, I can say without any hesitation whatsoever, I had a brilliant childhood and teenage. No worries, no hassles, no bullying. And I'm convinced part of that is because everyone knew everyone else. There was a real community. That still exists in pockets all over the UK and I LOVE reading local newspaper headlines from places where bugger all ever happens locally. If you've never visited the Angry People in Local Newpapers blog, go and visit now. Now! You'll be glad you did.

So, starting today, I'm going Cold Turkey for a week. I won't read a national newspaper or watch the TV news. I will only watch TV shows that are inspiring, funny or completely factitious. I have turned off my RSS news feeds. I will not visit any newspaper sites. I will limit my involvement on Twitter to pesonal matters only and not get involved in any kind of debate that does't directly affect me where I live. I will read community leaflets pushed through the door and attend some local events. I will read and buy the local paper.

At the moment I'd rate my personal happiness and satisfaction as about 6/10. Will it rise or fall in a week?

It'll be interesting to see.

365 Doodles - Day 247

2011-09-05T23:47:00.001+01:00

Two bad joke ideas. And chicken breasts. Urp.

365 doodles - Day 246

2011-09-04T15:44:00.000+01:00

Another page of sketchpaddy doodliness.

365 Doodles - Day 245

2011-09-03T00:19:00.000+01:00

Today's doodle is my contribution to the Doodleshare project initiated and devised by Ben Cameron. Basically, a big sheet of paper travels between a whole bunch of contributors who all add a doodle. Here's mine (and Ben's to the left):

Here's Ben's blogpost that launched the project. And if you want to follow the progress of the sheet as it picks up more and more doodles, check in here every so often.

What larks!

The Angry Art Challenge!

2011-09-02T22:17:00.006+01:00

Okay people of Blogtown and Twitterville ... I have a challenge for you.

At the moment I'm working on a TOP SECRET project. It's a book. It relates to art and artists. But it is TOP SECRET. So don't try to winkle any more information out of me. My lips are sealed. With epoxy resin. Now, for this TOP SECRET book project, I need some illustrations. Most importantly, I need a range of illustrations. And they don't need to be created by professional artists. In fact, it will help my project immensely if I were to get a range of different people - some professional artists, some amateurs, some hobbyists and some who reckon they'll never be artists - to contribute. The ones I choose will end up in the book. If you fancy getting involved, here's the brief:

I need you to create a work of art called ANGER. This is me being angry a little while ago after the Twitter Joke Trial. Grrr. That'll help set the tone.

I want you to imagine that you've been asked to take part in an exhibition about the Seven Deadly Sins along with six other artists. You've all picked your subjects at random and you have ANGER. Okay so far? Right, here's the twist ...

You can only use any or all of the following reasonably common household objects:

· Paper or card of some kind.
· An ordinary pencil (it will probably be an HB grade but any will do).
· A ballpoint pen – it doesn’t matter what colour.
· Some Plasticine or similar modelling clay (or marzipan or putty).
· A potato.
· Cocktail sticks.
· A sharp knife of some kind.
· Scissors.
· Glue.
· Paper clips.
· Paint or ink of some kind – decorators house paint/emulsion is fine.
· A glossy magazine.
· A newspaper.

The only rules for this challenge are that (a) you come up with the concept yourself, and (b) you must complete the piece of work by Midnight on Wednesday 7th September.

ANGER! Grrrr.

I have deliberately limited your materials and your time for a good reason. Necessity really is the mother of invention and the less you have at your disposal, the more inventive you become. Think about those TV cookery shows where contestants are given a limited range of ingredients. If you’d said to them ‘Use anything you like and take as long as you like’, I can guarantee that they’d fall back on a tried and trusted recipe, one they know well with likely success. By restricting their choices, they are forced to become more creative.

So ... are you up for it? All you need to do is create your work of art and email me a photo or a scan by Midnight on Wednesday. There's no age limit - you can be six or 666. My email address is stevyncolgan@mac.com. I'll send an original doodle on a postcard to everyone that enters. And some of them will end up in the book.

Which is TOP SECRET, if I haven't mentioned that before.

Ready ...? Runaround now!

365 Doodles - Day 244

2011-09-02T09:46:00.003+01:00

More sketchpaddiness ... but with a theme today. When my grandkids were staying recently, they were always asking me to draw stuff. I responded by getting them to draw stuff for me - it's a great way to encourage them. Then I (foolishly) claimed that I could probably draw most types of animals from memory. The kids' response was to shout out the names of every animal they'd ever heard of in the expectation that I could doodle them. I just about managed to keep up and here's one of the pages that resulted:

I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised that they knew what a platypus and an echidna are.

Go kids!

365 Doodles - Day 243

2011-09-01T23:43:00.003+01:00

A couple more pages from a sketchpad. Goodness knows what a psychoanalyst woud make of it all ...

365 Doodles - Day 242

2011-08-31T16:11:00.005+01:00

Today's doodle is a character I created for a strip in a magazine for Brunel University many, many moons ago. The strip only ran for about five weeks and I sadly don't have copies of any of them (though I remember them well enough to re-draw them I guess). I do have these sketchpad pages though. And at least one gag has been preserved! Say hello to Dirty Trunker.

365 Doodles - Day 241 - Update!

2011-08-31T11:32:00.003+01:00

I don't know what mysterious or alchemical process he used but an old mucker of mine called Tony Evans has actually found the pet shop whose signage I did back in the late 1980s. Here it is, as it is now, in Windermere Road.

I say mysterious because even I couldn't remember what road it was on. The man must have sold his soul to the Devil. Or Tesco. (They're interchangeable these days.)

365 Doodles - Day 241

2011-08-30T23:01:00.001+01:00

Here's an old piece from around 1989. I got asked to paint a shop sign for a pet shop in Wembley (I lived there at the time) that specialised in aquaria. The limitations I faced were: (a) I had to use the existing board, (b) I had to paint over the name of the previous owner and cover an unsightly paint splash in the centre of the text, and (c) I had to include a whale (I have no idea why). What emerged was this very odd and unprofessional looking shop front.

Still, it's always nice to tackle a larger job. I love doing murals. I wish I got to do more.

365 Doodles - Day 240

2011-08-29T08:12:00.001+01:00

Some sketches for a possible commission piece. I like the idea of the jockey having been thrown over the horse's head and now hanging by the reins. Ha!

365 Doodles - Day 239

2011-08-28T15:13:00.005+01:00

Some better photos of the Junk Owls today.

Plus here's a cartoon I did a few years ago to commemorate a friend's cat. Not my usual kind of piece but I quite enjoyed it.

365 Doodles - Day 238

2011-08-27T21:55:00.002+01:00

A very strange self-portrait from 2007. Very strange.

No stunner at Stonor

2011-08-27T17:25:00.008+01:00

I went to Stonor Park at Henley-on-Thames this morning to the annual Chilterns Crafts show. I go most years and quite enjoy mooching around the marquees (especially the food hall) and chatting to other artists. It's usually a good indicator of current trends in the arts and crafts community. And it often sparks my creativity and gets the juices flowing.

This year was strangely disappointing though. There's usually some new innovation or unusual new twist on an older craft to get excited about ... but not this year. It ws the same old jewellery, metal sculpture, pottery and paintings. The show was top heavy with clothing stalls including leather goods that clearly were not the work of the swarthy gentlemen selling them. I started to get a sinking feeling when I saw one lady painting landscapes with household emulsion that were all about technique over content and who was selling them signed and framed for £20-30. No passion. No soul. No story. What hope is there for us artists when this mass-produced stuff is so affordable?

That said, there was some exceptional artwork on display. There was glassware by Cornwall's own Jo Downs. I love her stuff and own several pieces. Visit her site here. Eli Ofir's House Portraits showed some exemplary pencil work and an interesting selling point in his signature skewed perspectives. You can see his work here. Lovely stuff but I wouldn't ask him to draw my three bedroomed semi even if I could afford him. He's strictly a posh house owning client kind of a guy. Also way out of my price league were Bruce Aitken's amazingly beautiful wooden clocks. Definitely my favourite thing at the show. Here's the website. Just how gorgeous are they? I also loved the sensuous curvy wooden lamps of Christian Wallis (see here). I'd have one in the house tomorrow if I had the pennies.

The Chilterns Craft Show has traditionally always catered for an audience that either has money or big gardens. Not everyone has the room for a life-sized metal warthog or the spare cash to buy a handcrafted £2000 clock. But this year the show featured a lot more affordable items and while many were genuinely lovely, there was a lot of obviously mass-produced stuff. That, to me, is not what a craft fair is about. It lowers it to little more than a car boot sale or a weekend market. So I'm hoping for better stuff next year. And better weather! The sun was gloriously hot at times but only in the gaps between the torrential rain squalls.

Oh and one more tiny niggle ... if you're going to charge the public £6.50 per head at least give them the little guide booklet for free. It may only have been an extra 20p for a single folded sheet but I found it hugely irksome to shell out further. Next time, charge me and £6.70 and say that the booklet is free. I'll still feel that the entrance fee is overpriced but at least I won't feel so ripped off.

365 Doodles - Day 237

2011-08-26T22:07:00.004+01:00

Not so much a doodle today as a photo of a model I've been making. These are my Junk Owls. The sculpture is about 99% complete. I have a few more tweaks to make before I call it 'done'.

The two owls and their perch are made from assorted throwaway materials including household plumbing supplies, curtain rings, a light-pull, cassette tapes, combs, hair grips, biros, hand-soap dispensers, plastic balls and some off-cut pieces of coloured foam rubber. It's been a great fun way to dispose of lots of bits and pieces I've had lying around for a while. I'll post some better photos when it's completely complete but here's a clue as to how they were made:

Watch out for two similar pieces in due course; a dragon made of driftwood and a robot made from all of the technology I've bought and had go wrong on me this millennium! I call him Obsoletus Prime.

Here be witches, invisible bats and gourmet burgers

2011-08-26T10:00:00.022+01:00

So, as you know, it's been a fairly exhausting fortnight. I had five days in Cornwall rushing around visiting family, artists and galleries, then drove to Plymouth to collect my two grandkids (aged 4 and 6) who then came to stay with me for 12 days. Twelve long days. Nothing reminds you of your age more than small noisy humans seemingly powered by atomic engines. Awww ... they're lovely and I miss them already. I took them back home on Wednesday and then, because I was cadging a lift with my son-in-law, I got to spend about half a day in Exeter too. So I thought I'd share some photos and a commentary about my day.

Having said bye bye to daughter and kids, I caught the train from Plymouth to Exeter. It's a lovely route. It takes about an hour and half the journey is spent thundering through lush Devon farmland while the rest runs along the coast at Teignmouth, Dawlish, Newton Abbot and Totnes. I've posted a few photographs here - I apologise for the quality. They were taken through dirty glass while twisting my lumpen body through 90 degrees. Plus I had to deal with window glare and reflections. But you get the idea. It was so nice to just sit in the sun and look out at the sea.

It also became something of a wildlife safari as well as I spotted endless rabbits, a fox and a huge buzzard perched near the tracks on a hay bale. Oh, and emus. Seriously, I passed a field with around 10 emus therein. A field belonging to a zoo perhaps? Or were they being farmed? I've eaten ostrich which is very yummy. Maybe we're eating emus now? I will explore the issue.

A dull morning had metamorphosed into a beautiful, warm, sunny day so I decided to walk from Exeter St Davids train station into the city. I was told it was about a 20 minute walk. I hadn't been told that most of it was up a 20% hill. It was a good cardio-vascular plod and no mistake. But it afforded me an unusual photographic opportunity. As you get to the top of St David's Hill and turn into Hele Road, the pavement drops below the level of the graveyard of St David's church and the tombstones come right out to the kerb. Consequently, you get a unique freshly-emerging zombie's eye view of the environs.

From here it was a short walk into the city itself. And, as I did in Truro just a few weeks ago, I found myself wondering about this whole city status business. It's all to do with cathedrals and diocese I know but Exeter feels oddly un-city like. I once described the incongruous placing of Truro cathedral in the middle of a small market town as looking like someone had dropped a piano stool upside-down on Legoland. Things are a little better in Exeter as the cathedral is set in lovely surroundings away from the bustle of the High Street. It's also not a big building for a cathedral; I've seen larger churches and abbeys. And Exeter itself isn't a big place either. When I think 'city' I think of places like London, Birmingham, New York, Manchester, Liverpool, Washington DC, Mumbai, Paris ... not quaint little tea rooms and cobbled streets.

Anyway, putting that aside, and no matter how you label it, it's a pretty little city. There's a glorious mishmash of architecture wherever you look; black-beamed Tudor nestles against ugly utilitarian 1960s concrete, curious Scandinavian-inspired folly nuzzles against the local signature red soil daub of Norman churches. There are churches everywhere you look but very few pubs, which I guess raises the bar on Exeter's ratings as a classy place. There were two bookshops as well. Two! There were hardly any of the signs of urban decay you see in some towns and cities such as a proliferation of Pound Shops or cash-converting pawn shops. Even the buskers were classy; one was playing a harp and another chap with a voice like velvet sang old crooning classics and soloed expertly on the trumpet.

There was a Gregg's and several fast food joints but I can forgive Exeter of that because there were also some very passable little bistros and restaurants. I took tea in one, the Chandos Deli, and had what was probably the best cup of loose-leaf Earl Grey I've had all year. I also had a great view of the Roman wall that brokenly encircles the city. In fact, everywhere you look, there are reminders of Exeter's past preserved in situ such as the 15th century almshouses (part paid for by William Wynard's involvement in piracy) and the tiny church of St Pancras, nestling uncomfortably inside the Guildhall shopping precinct. The planners must have hated that place. But there was no way it was ever being knocked down as it's the oldest place of Christian worship in the city and dates from 1191. Other interesting places to visit include the 14th century guildhall - the oldest municipal building in the UK, the ancient St Catherine's almshouses, the remains of a Roman villa, and the extraordinary 'House that moved' on Stepcote Hill; a 14th century 21 ton timber building that was strapped up and slowly dragged to its current location to accommodate the building of a new road in 1961. I also had fun with Parliament Street which, at only 1220mm at it's widest pount - that's just over four feet wide for you oldies - is said to be the world's narrowest designated street. Beergut challenge! The city museum was shut for renovation, which was a shame.

A short walk up yet another hill above the town took me to the remains of Rougemont Castle, a Norman fortress and the site of the last ever witch execution in the UK. I had a wander around the perimeter of the castle walls which afforded a splendid view over the city, Rougemont Gardens and Northernhay Gardens.

If I have any disappointment with Exeter it is the lack of really interesting public art. There are statues to various important historical people like Redvers Buller, Richard Hooker and Queen Victoria. There are monuments to things like the Boer War and the Livery Dole Martyrs. But there is a conspicuous lack of anything modern, save an uninspired pointy mirrored thing on the High Street called the Exeter Riddle Sculpture by Michael Fairfax. Many people may love it. It did nothing for me and didn't seem in any way to be sympathetic to its surroundings.

Much more interesting was the mechanical bird that sits above the entrance to the Phoenix Arts Centre at the end of Gandy Street. It was the first place in the city where I felt that there was some hint of Bohemia. The bird, by Paul Spooner, looks quite like the Iron Chicken in the 1970s Oliver Postgate series Clangers and, on the hour, stands up and spreads its stainless steel wings. I didn't catch the moment when it did but it's a fun piece. Just around the corner is a unicorn made from scrap materials by Simon Ruscoe. Then, a short walk takes you to Andrew Alleway's city mural in Musgrave Row depicting various events in the city's long history.

I had a nice lunch in the Phoenix. It was one of those tower-high gourmet burgers so despised by David Mitchell (see here) but it was very tasty once I'd figured out how to attack it without scaffolding. It came with 'chips' that were also very tasty but the four of them were essentially a quarter of a good sized potato each and very filling. I could hear my Weightwatchers counsellor screaming.

The Phoenix has a good programme of live music, drama and dance and various studios and out-buildings where music can be made and art classes taught. It's a very pleasant place to visit and a splendid resource for the city. It also hosts art exhibitions and the current show is called 'A collection of gaps' by local boy Darren Harvey-Regan. The exhibition notes state that Harvey-Regan aims to 'explore the interplay between image, object and meaning' and that his works 'investigate the representation and scientific classification of animals and their ability to expose human narratives'. I could kind of see what he was up to, using puns and visual gags to play on the labelling systems used to denote individual species classification. Therefore a red squirrel was really red - bright vermilion red - and Heidegger's Lizard became a photo of a small reptile crushed by a large rock; presumably a nod to the philosopher's theories about existentialism. There were also empty spot-lit spaces where non-existent bats roosted above their taxonmic labels; it reminded me of that old Zen joke that goes 'What's red and invisible? No tomatoes'. Arf. An interesting exhibition but it didn't float my boat I'm afraid. It all seemed a little too contrived and none of the pieces was especially pleasing. Judge for yourself:

All too soon, it was time to leave. I crammed a lot into four hours but still had so much more to see, such as the historic quay. I've been offered another trip down there soon. I like Exeter. I'd like to make it back there soon if I can.

Oh, and emu is now being farmed as a gourmet food item apparently. Who knew? Maybe the Phoenix will have it on the menu next time I visit?

365 Doodles - Day 236

2011-08-25T23:52:00.002+01:00

Some Pisky doodles.

365 Doodles - Day 235

2011-08-24T20:41:00.005+01:00

I'm typing this while sat on the floor of my daughter's flat in Devon and using a borrowed laptop that occasionally and unexpectedly shuts down every so often from overheating. So just a quickie blogpost. And, because I don't have access to any of my artwork archive, here's an image grabbed from my website instead.

In honour of Lord Elf Stephen Fry's birthday today, here's the cover I did last year for the bumper collected E, F and G QI Annuals book.

Happy birthday big fellah. Sorry about the ears. Again.

365 Doodles - Day 234

2011-08-23T23:13:00.006+01:00

Art can be a fascinating barometer of mood and temperament. For example, yesterday was a good day and I doodled this silly little self-portrait.

However, today was not so good. It started badly and never really got much better than 'a bit meh'. This is what emerged from the sketchpad:

Eek.

365 Doodles - Day 233

2011-08-22T17:00:00.001+01:00

Sketchpad silliness again. But we now know that many dinosaurs had feathers. And birds are brightly coloured. So why couldn't T Rex have looked like a big pink chicken?

365 Doodles - Day 232

2011-08-21T23:45:00.003+01:00

More sketchpaddy goodness today. Plus a photo update on the Junk Owls project.

It's going well I think. I now have a flowering plant made from old plumbing supplies and various bits and pieces. Painting continues and the owls should be finished and perching very soon.

365 Doodles - Day 231

2011-08-20T23:04:00.000+01:00

A page from the sketchpad today and more silliness.

And here's a picture drawn by my four year old grandson and coloured by me. Very impressed with the addition of a fifth leg for speed.

Cabinets of Curiosity

2011-08-20T15:20:00.007+01:00

I took the grandchildren over to Oxford today. They've both been pestering me to see some some dinosaurs but the Natural History Museum in London, in August, during the school holidays, is horrible. It gets so packed with people that there are queues for everything, even to get inside the door. So I went to calm, placid Oxford instead to visit the University Museum and the Pitt Rivers Collection instead.

The University Museum has had a bit of a revamp in recent years and now boasts a T Rex skeleton, a Velociraptor, an Iguanodon, a Triceratops skull and lots of other dinosaur bits and pieces; certainly enough to get several wows and whoops from the tinies. I have a bit of a Trilobite fetish myself and the museum has a good collection of some of the more bizarre species including 'The Toasting Fork'. There's also Alice's Dodo, the badly-made and overly chubby reconstruction that has blighted every representation of the Dodo ever since (in reality, they were much slimmer) it was stuffed. It was the specimen that inspired Lewis Carroll to include the character in his story.

I loved the way that the museum staff cunningly replaced the head of a Struthiomimus that needs some repair. Barely noticeable.

After a good look around (and there's lots for kids to do in there with activity areas and 'feely' pods where you can caress a cheetah, stroke a snake and fondle a fruitbat), we wandered through the connecting door into Britain's creepiest museum - the Pitt Rivers Collection.

The Pitt Rivers is a collection of archaeological and ethnographic objects from all parts of the world. It was founded in 1884 when General Pitt Rivers, an influential figure in the development of archaeology and evolutionary anthropology, gave his collection to the University. The General's founding gift contained more than 18,000 objects but there are now over half a million.

What makes the place creepy, however, is the dim lighting; the whole place is dark, like twilight - the staff will issue you with a wind-up torch if you ask - to preserve the exhibits. And on the floor there are rows upon rows of cabinets, each containing a collection of related objects. In one there are flutes and whistles, in another death masks, in yet another shrunken heads.There are mummies and rifles, Samurai costumes and penis sheaths, fertility talismans, throwing axes, canoes, fishing poles ... the list is as endless as it is eclectic. I love the place and the artefacts are a constant source of inspiration.

It's quite hard to take decent photos without a tripod (flash is not allowed). So I spent some time experimenting with ISO, shutter speeds etc. and eventually got some passable photos. I then colour-corrected them to take off the yellow cast they'd picked up. Here's what they all looked like before:

An interesting day and great fun for the kids. I heartily recommend it.

365 Doodles - Day 230 - Supplemental

2011-08-19T21:47:00.004+01:00

A last smattering of one panel gags before we return to the usual arty oddness tomorrow. Some of these have been published. Enjoy!

365 Doodles - Day 230

2011-08-19T08:01:00.001+01:00

After all of the kind and positive comments yesterday, I'll share a few more gags from the sketchbook. Again, bear in mind that they are first drafts. Enjoy!

My thanks to Chris Hale for suggesting the Trugg (Trug?) dealer gag.

365 Doodles - Day 229 - Supplemental

2011-08-18T23:59:00.001+01:00

Here are some of my older cartoons that people said were like The Far Side. I can't see it myself. What do you think?

Feck me I'm bad at drawing perspective ...

365 Doodles - Day 229

2011-08-18T17:44:00.004+01:00

I've always drawn single panel cartoons. Ideas pop into my head all the time and I doodle at least one, but usually more, quick sketches in one of my notebooks every day. That said, I've never really tried to sell many. It's a confidence thing.

My cartoons have been published in magazines as varied as Private Eye, Police Review, Fortean Times and the Catholic Herald (!) but I invariably lose my bottle when people say 'Ooh, they're a bit like The Far Side aren't they?' And they say it all the time. I am a massive Gary Larson fan and have a very similar sense of humour. But the comparison (inappropriate in my opinion anyway - the man is a genius) makes it sound like I'm trying to emulate him or copy him and that just makes me feel like a cheat. So I've been trying to develop a drawing style radically different from his in the hope that the comparisons stop.

However, I'm feeling brave today. So here are some that I've doodled this past week. You can tell I have the grandkids staying as I have opportunistically grabbed their colouring pencils and felt-tipped pens to add some colour!

I realise that the captions need work. These are roughs, remember. It may also be the case that some simply don't work. But once I've found my style, I have hundreds of such doodles littering my sketchpads and notebooks just waiting to be drawn properly and submitted.

As a final footnote, I am honoured to have been voted into the Professional Cartoonists' Organisation and their newsletter, Foghorn, will feature some of my cartoons this month. I'm looking forward to seeing them in print.

365 Doodles - Day 228

2011-08-17T23:36:00.001+01:00

Two from my sketchpad. The cartoon was drawn this afternoon.

365 Doodles - Day 227

2011-08-16T23:25:00.003+01:00

Leafing through an old sketchbook today I found these sketches from 1983 of places on the Scilly Isles. I must go there again. I used to go quite often but, for reasons too dull to recount, I haven't been for a while. I quite fancy painting some of them.

My Elvis tribute

2011-08-16T15:31:00.004+01:00

Elvis died today in 1977. Around 10 years after his death, I wrote a song for him. Then, 10 years after that I read this curious story in the paper:

'A US expert has discovered that the number of Presley copycats is spiralling out of control. Back in 1977, the year Elvis died of a heart attack at the age of 42, there were just 150 people impersonating him. This year (2000), that figure has risen to a staggering 85,000. If the number continues to rise at the same rate, by the year 2019 there will be three billion of them - a third of the entire world population. The shock statistic was exposed by Gordon Forbes, an American TV producer, who has just filmed a documentary about Elvis impersonators. His predictions astonished one of Britain's top Presley mimicks - "Chinese Elvis" Paul ‘the wonder of’ Hyu. Paul, 33, said: "If I'm going to have all this competition in the future, maybe I should branch out and do Alvin Stardust impressions instead? He's an untouched goldmine." Elvis look-alikes already stretch across the globe. They include a group of skydiving Presleys in Las Vegas called The Flying Elvi. And in Florida the first openly Jewish Elvis, called Melvis, performs such classics as Blue Suede Jews.'

The lyrics had to be completely re-written to accommodate this amazing concept! And then, in 2000, one of my favourite singers, Kirsty MacColl was killed - some would say unlawfully - and, in tribute, I changed the first line of my Elvis song. With a final version complete, I hastily recorded the song on a crappy old cassette recorder ... and here it is. If you can't figure out the lyrics, they're printed below. Read along because, yes, I did attach the wrong photo to the video. At least Star Wars was also something that happened in 1977.

1.
There’s a guy works down the chip shop swears he’s Elvis
And another one who works at B & Q
There’s an Elvis Aaron Presley at the Bingo every Wednesday
And the Fine Fayre bacon counter has one too
Every year the population rises
The number is growing exponentially
In theatres and pavilions, they number in the millions
There’ll be more of them than us next century

Chorus
We should rename the whole world ‘Planet Gracelands’
And call the solar system Tennessee
Because sooner or later we’ll all be impersonators
But if everyone is Elvis … Who’s gonna be the King?

2
The vet who spayed my hound dog grew the sideburns
My butcher does that thing with his hips
The guy who cuts my hair just wants to be my teddy bear
And curls his locks while curling up his lip
Everyone I know is turning Presley
The fancy dress shop guy’s a millionaire
But Elvis must turn in his grave, each time some lardy bloke called Dave
Crams himself into some sequined flares

3
Flattery means copying your idol
You try to feel what Elvis must have felt
But in catsuit and DA, I’m like a badly stuffed duvet
In a wig that looks like some dead mammal’s pelt
I don’t want to be the square peg in the round hole
I don’t desire to stand out from the flock
But there’s a fine line I’m guessin’ between hobby and obsession
And that’s a line I’m not prepared to cross.

As long as there are people like Elvis Presley, you'll never have to listen to drivel like this.

365 Doodles - Day 226

2011-08-15T22:25:00.002+01:00

Mmmmm ... forget the peppered steak. You can't beat Peppa Belly Pork.

I'm so sorry.

Artist of the Week: Ren Hathway

2011-08-15T14:49:00.003+01:00

Some fish sculpture by Isles of Scilly-based artist Ren Hathway.

I saw some of these in the flesh, as it were, in Sophi Beharrell's gallery in Falmouth last week. They are very life-like. But what makes them even more amazing is that they are made entirely from recycled materials. Old bottles and other plastic refuse is melted into moulds and then the skin is built up with things like wet wipes and other discarded materials. Each fish is then hand-painted in exquisite detail. They retail at around £400-£500 a piece.

Ren earned his artistic reputation primarily as a bird artist but now works in a variety of media. Do visit his site here.

365 Doodles - Day 225

2011-08-14T18:24:00.001+01:00

My take on the characters from The Wizard of Oz maybe?

50 not out

2011-08-14T08:52:00.002+01:00

This is me showing how happy I am at having turned 50 on the 11th.

And here's the cake my grandchildren (aged 6 and 5) created for me. Their brief was 'A chocolate cake shaped like a fort with crisps in the middle and cheese sandwiches.' With some licence, the 'sandwiches' became two chocolate fudge cakes and the cheese became a mascarpone filler. As for the crisps ... I think I got them 'in the middle'. It's an interpretation of the brief ...

365 Doodles - Day 224

2011-08-13T11:13:00.003+01:00

Three ideas for gags that I may draw properly and mail off to some magazines. I have lots more in my notebooks ...

A few more shots from Cornwall

2011-08-13T10:06:00.006+01:00

I've been going through the photos from my long weekend away. Here are a few more that I thought I'd share. Some are by me, some are by my brother Simon. We'll kick off in St Ives by the harbour beach and Wharf Road ...

... and then look at the rooftops. St Ives is tiny and many houses are built in narrow 'downalongs' where cars cannot reach them. It was quite interesting to watch someone having building supplies delivered by a crane reaching over two houses to drop them. In another location, scaffolding had to be built in the back garden to drop supplies down to the house from the road on the hill above simply because there was no road access at the front.

This is the view of St Michael's Mount from the hill up at Newmill and Gulval. There were a couple of houses up here within my price range ...

Another shot of Sophi Beharrell in her studio. This one gives a better idea of the wonderful view and light that she has to work with.

And here's me and Seb West wondering whether his work table is a work of art in itself. When I jokingly asked him that, he said that he has, in the past, auctioned them for charity so someone has has them hanging on the wall as abstract art. That made me smile.

And we end with my brother's dog Holly who, bizarrely, will sing to order. Here she is singing the long note in 'I will always love you' by Whitney Houston.Not really. But she does sing!

365 Doodles - Day 223

2011-08-12T07:21:00.003+01:00

A silly little doodle of Freddie Mercury and Jimi Hendrix if they hadn't lived fast and died young. It might be fun to work this up into a proper finished illustration. Then I could draw Jimi properly. His body is awful.

Artist of the Week: David Stansfield

2011-08-12T07:10:00.000+01:00

A few more pictures by David Stansfield whose work I was doting on in Truro. Great isn't it? They're really interesting up close and show a remarkable amount of detail. Wish I could have afforded one!

365 Doodles - Day 216 to Day 222: The Catchup!

2011-08-11T23:14:00.007+01:00

As you know, I've been away for a few days with only limited access to computers or the internet so I'm seven doodles behind. Therefore I hereby present you with seven doodles drawn while away.

Normal service resumes tomorrow with Day 223.

Art and more art - A long weekend in Cornwall

2011-08-11T08:56:00.000+01:00

I've had a wonderful long weekend in my home county of Cornwall. I needed a break and it just so happened that an invite to an old schoolfriend's 50th birthday party (I hit the dreaded 5th decade myself today) coincided with me needing to pick my grandchildren up from Devon to babysit while one of my daughters has a well-deserved holiday. I needed little excuse to combine the lot into a five day trip. Saying that - and being me - I decided to turn it into a working holiday by visiting the studios of a couple of artists I've doted on for years. I also planned to visit as many galleries as I could cram in. If there's one thing Cornwall does well, it's producing artists. So, here's how it went ...

Saturday - Having travelled down on the Friday, today was my first full day in the Duchy. I started by visiting Truro as I needed to buy a few supplies and I wanted to have a look at the Lemon Quay area that's been modernised and much improved in recent years. It was bustling with people and what seemed to be a local produce market.

I visited the Lemon Street Gallery, which had sketches by Lucien Freud, small works by Henry Moore and Elizabeth Frink and many others for sale. Ever so slightly out of my price range but lovely to see them much closer than you would in a larger gallery. I then popped into the Lander Gallery in Lemon Street, which has an eclectic mix of the traditional and the modern, all under the watchful eye of a giant floating Elvis made of wire and paper like a Chinese lantern.

If you visit the website you can see the whole of their current catalogue. I liked a great deal of it but was particularly struck by the work of David Stansfield whose stretched ships, London buses and Fab lollipops seemed to jump out of the reclaimed sea-smoothed wood he paints on.

It was nice to also see live art going on in the street with an 'Artist of the week' doing demonstrations while another was encouraging people, especially kids, to have a go. Wonderful.

After leaving Truro, I went on to a birthday party and housewarming for one of my oldest friends, Phil Gendall. Son of Cornish bard and songwriter Richard Gendall, Phil is a talented guitarist - we played in a band together throughout our teens - and an exceptional artist. Upon leaving university he co-founded Gendall Design, arguably the most successful and original graphic design studio in Cornwall. But tonight was all about reminiscing, drinking beer and enjoying a hog roast at his beautiful new home high on the hills above Praze. Oh, and an open mic spot on a makeshift stage. For an evening, we were wannabe rock stars all over again ...

Sunday - Cornwall is a quiet place on a Sunday. Even though tourists cram the lanes and streets with their caravans and 4x4s a lot of places simply won't open. And good for them I say. I spent a good deal of the day spending some time with my family. I was staying with my photographer brother Simon (those of you on Twitter will know him as @kalannstudio) in Camborne but I popped over to Hayle to enjoy the first roast dinner my mum has cooked for me in about 30 years And very nice it was too. We did our usual thing of catching up on all the news - difficult when I don't know anyone she knows and vice versa. I've lived away from Cornwall for 31 years now and Mum has moved house four times in that period. The conversations go something like: 'Oh, Violet's husband died you know.' 'Violet?' 'Yes, you know ... lives in the big house next to Oxter's.' 'What's Oxter's?' 'It's that shop, you know, sells old furniture. Vernon runs it.' 'Vernon who?' etc. Anyway, it was a very pleasant afternoon and evening and a very relaxing day.

Monday - I crammed a lot into today visiting Penzance, Porthleven, Helston and Falmouth. Penzance was first on the agenda as I was keen to catch an exhibition at the Penlee House Gallery and Museum. The gallery houses many original works by the Newlyn School of painters who operated from the 1880s until the turn of the century. They were, to my mind, the closest art colony the UK ever had to the French Impressionists. The Newlyn School was fascinated with the lives of everyday people and obsessed with capturing the quality of outdoor light. It's beautiful stuff and just as the Impressionists captured the highs and lows of Parisien life, so these artists captured the tragedy of fishermen lost at sea as well as the euphoria of a rich catch brought to shore. Among the artists usually on display are people like Stanhope Forbes, Henry Scott Tuke, Lamorna Birch and Norman Garstin. I love them all but my favourite has always been Walter Langley whose muted but highly detailed watercolours and oil paintings keep me staring at them for hours. Penlee House is currently running an exhibition concentrating on Langley's work and has given over 90% of the exhibition space to display the largest collection of his work assembled in decades. It was great!

From Penzance, we (my brother joined me for these daily explorations) headed towards the little harbour village of Porthleven via Marazion and the magnificent St Michael's Mount. As a child growing up in Penzance, I could see the mount and its fairytale castle from my bedroom window and from my school. Of course, back then I took it all for granted.

Soon we were in Porthleven for a meeting with one of my old art teachers, Jim Tinley. I owe much to him, Phil Howells and the late 'Andy' Andrews because they always believed in me despite the fact my work was nearly always 'off-syllabus'. He's now retired, very hairy and wonderfully eccentric, bolstering his teacher's pension by working in a pub and selling the occasional painting. He's a hugely talented oil painter - that's one of his on the wall in the photo below - and has a curious loft space reached by ladder in which he works, taking full advantage of the clear skies and exceptional light.

We spent a good couple of hours just catching up. Like most teachers, he remembers all of his students and recalled incidents involving me, the aformentioned Phil and our other good friend Huw Williams. We also compared notes on which teachers were having affairs with each other. He surprised me with a few but I did likewise. Happy days. It was a shame to leave but there were places yet to visit so, after a cheeky ice cream and a walk around the pretty little harbour to take some photos, it was on to Helston.

Helston was a less successful visit as everyone I hoped to catch was out (Or knew I was coming). However, it's always a nostalgia trip to visit the town as I lived there from the age of 12 until I was 18 and left home. My best years were spent in Helston. It was a bit sad to see that it all looked a little run down. A guess that's the price the town pays for being one of the few large towns in Cornwall with no real tourist attractions except Flora Day every May. We drove on to Falmouth.

When I was a kid, I used to cycle and later ride my moped over to Falmouth because it had the best bookshop in Cornwall. It always seemed to stock the newest and trendiest art books; I bought my copies of Roger Dean's Views and Patrick Woodroffe's Mythopoeikon there (In fact, you'd occasionally meet Woodroffe as he lived near Falmouth - I have a signed copy of one of his books as the result of a chance meeting). Other than that, Falmouth didn't offer me much as a kid. It was a working port and, as such, very rough and ready and business-like. However, in recent years, the harbour has been transformed into a marina and the town is now millionnaire playboy country with big yachts and expensive waterfront apartments a plenty. I was there to meet artist Sophi Beharrell . She owns and works inside a small quay-side studio once owned by one of the Newlyn School artists, Henry Scott Tuke. Her large, bold acrylic seascapes are glorious.

Sophi is one of two artists I was keen to interview for a book project I'm developing. She's someone who, despite having no art school background and being entirely self-taught, has carved out a successful career. In fact, for most of her working life she was a ship's chandler. Her studio doubles a shop for work by other local artists and is enviably positioned next to the harbour. A large picture window looking out over the docks provides her with an inspiring view and excellent light. On this day, it was fun to watch the crew of a small boat feeding a huge bull grey seal. Dolphins are common in the harbour too.

In the distance, there was a large ship moored and, behind it, a big green screen and various movie props and people; the big news around here is that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are in town. They're staying on a superyacht in the marina while Brad films scenes for World War Z. My work in Falmouth done, it was back to my brother's for some excellent local fish and chips.

Tuesday - Today was all about St Ives. First thing on the agenda was a visit to the farm-based studio of artist Seb West. I've been a huge fan of his work for years having spotted it for sale in various galleries. He works in a variety of media but my favourite works are his painted lino cuts. Here he is in his studio and a couple of examples:

While chatting to him, I uncovered a curious network of connections - a real-life Six Degrees of Separation. You see, when I was at school I was taught by several teachers including Jim Tinley who you saw earlier. Jim also taught my classmate Phil whose party I went to on Saturday. Apart from running a successful business, Phil was also a lecturer at Falmouth College of Art and one of his students was ... Seb West. Small world eh? After a very pleasant hour or so with Seb, we headed down into St Ives itself. The 1000 space car park is high up on a hill above the town and affords a wonderful view on the walk down.

St Ives has always been a jewel in Cornwall's tourism crown and it's always busy. That said, I have never seen it as busy as it was today. The visitors crammed every street and every downalong with their sore lobster-red bodies and I doubt you could have slid a fag paper between the scarlet masses on the beaches.

I think we visited just about every gallery in the town ... and St Ives has a gallery every other shop. Worthy of mention are the Imagianation Gallery, which sells Seb West's prints and also has work by Jon Tremaine whose extraordinarily detailed pen drawings feature animals made from other animals and natural forms. I also enjoyed the Whistlefish Gallery, which specialises in cards and prints. In particular I loved the humour of Gerry Plumb whose paintings of chubby men surfing tickled me immensely. The Porthminster Gallery was very nice too, as were the Brooks Smith Gallery, the Waterside and Westcotts Galleries and the St Ives Society of Artists. And yes, the St Ives seagulls are as predatory and opportunist as ever ... as several tourists discovered to their cost.

Wednesday - Today was home day but, as I was setting off after lunch, I had time to visit the farm owned by my brother's partner's family. It's built high on a hill near Beacon in the heart of the now defunct Camborne tin mining area. It stands beside Carn Brea, the highest point in West Cornwall. The farm stables quite a lot of horses but also takes in waifs and stray animals and, because of this, has one mad sheep, an agoraphobic Nubian goat, lots of chickens, chinchillas, ferrets, cats and dogs and a trio of cows. Among them is quite possibly the largest cow I've ever seen.

Simon introduced me to the latest resident, a young Fresian horse that will grow up to be one of those scary bastards beloved of dark riders in The Lord of the Rings style adventures. He also gave a ride to two of his step-daughters in an old dog cart. Great fun. The dogs also had fun with us throwing balls for them. One Springer Spaniel called Hamlet achieves extraordinary heights when jumping to catch.

Most of these photos were taken by me but some were taken by my brother ... including this amazing shot he took a few weeks ago. He was watching the kids playing on the trampoline and trying to catch them mid-air when the farm's sole sheep wandered into shot ... and smiled! I swear to you, there's no Photoshop work here.

Could there have been a better way to end this blogpost?

A truly excellent long weekend. My artistic batteries are refreshed, revived and inspired. Expect some interesting new stuff very soon.

365 Doodles - Day 215 - Normal Service will be resumed shortly ...

2011-08-04T23:30:00.000+01:00

In about 10 hours time I'll be bombing down the M4 towards Cornwall. I'm visiting my folks back home and I'm deliberately not taking a laptop, just my phone. So I'll get my emails and tweets etc. but I won't be able to blog or post a doodle. I'll make up for it when I get back, I promise. And I'll post all of the art I create while in Cornwall as a retrospective '365 Doodles'.

See you all soon!

I'll bring you back a proper pasty.

Once more with video ...

2011-08-04T10:02:00.002+01:00

That staggering Equipe84 song - 29 Settembre - I found the video! Well worth watching.

Or not.

365 Doodles - Day 214

2011-08-03T22:43:00.005+01:00

As reported yesterday I'm finally using all of the junk and found objects, driftwood, broken technology and other rubbish that I've accumulated over the years to make art. Among the several pieces I'm making is a small parliament of Junk Owls. Here are two in their very earliest stages of construction.

They will be painted with full plumage in due course. And they'll be sitting in a tree made of plumbing and stationery supplies. Oh, and they'll be archetypal cartoon geeks with spectacles, bad teeth and pen pocket protectors. And name badges. Don't ask.

The worst record ever?

2011-08-03T01:17:00.003+01:00

I was first introduced to Italian proggers Equipe 84's execrable 29th of September by the late Kenny Everett who included it in one of his Bottom 30 shows. Imagine my joy in finding that both the English and original Italian versions are on YouTube!

Prepare your ears for a good hard seeing to. The song defies categorisation. And any conventions about what 'music' is.

365 Doodles - Day 213 - Supplemental

2011-08-02T18:42:00.002+01:00

I knew I wouldn't be able to leave it alone ... Just a few subtle tweaks but I'm 100% happier with it now.

365 Doodles - Day 213

2011-08-02T12:43:00.004+01:00

I'm making a number of 3D artworks at the moment, mostly from found or discarded materials. Over the years I've collected a big box of driftwood and all manner of found items made of plastic, metal and naturally occuring materials. So now I'm assembling them into sculpture. I'm a big fan of recycled art and have several friends who do it very successfuly for a living. I'd urge you to check out my chum Ptolemy Elrington' website or look at these features (here and here for example) on some of his recent works. Also check out Cornwall-based artist David Kemp here. Or Peter Rush here - I love his plastic cutlery insects. Clever chaps all. I'll post some pics of my efforts on a future '365 Doodles' once they get further along.

Meanwhile I found these sketches in an old sketchpad for a Daily Mail wielding, vest and pants wearing Angry Bunny. Or 'Not a Happy Bunny'. I might see if I can get him made as a plush. What fun!

Then, of course, there are his mates Timid Shrew, Lounge Lizard, Nutty Fruitbat etc ...

A small photographic cabinet of Cornish curiosities

2011-08-02T12:10:00.005+01:00

While rooting through a box of old photos at home yesterday I found some large plate camera negatives and, through the magic of owning a half-decent scanner, turned them into prints. Here they are:

Aren't they splendid? Sadly, I have no idea what years they relate to but they are a mixed bag. There's mention of a royal visit to Newquay but I have no idea who or when. The clothes would suggest Victoria and there is a Victoria Hotel pictured (incidentally, take a close look at the people in that shot - some extraordinary characters! Click on the photo and it will zoom). But the photos don't seem to relate to each other or even to be from the same time.

The common theme throughout is the Cornwall Constabulary, the police force my late father joined in the 1950s and which, in 1974, became part of the larger Devon and Cornwall Constabulary. Dad was researching and writing his first novel when he died in 1991 and I imagine that's where these came from. He was always picking up old postcards and photos in junk shops. Perhaps the period details were helping him to craft his story which, as it happens, was a murder-mystery set in Victorian Cornwall. Whatever the back story, wonderful aren't they?

365 Doodles - Day 212

2011-08-01T17:32:00.005+01:00

A painting completed in just 24 hours today. I call it Major Clanger's Last Stand.

The genesis of the idea lies in two places; firstly this notebook sketch from March (below) and secondly in a blog post I wrote back in 2008 (here) in which I pondered upon the infinite probabilities offered by an infinite universe and the fact that if real aliens did look like Clangers it would freak us out more than bug-eyed reptiloids ever would. I mean, just imagine it.

I resurrected the idea on Twitter and a discussion about The Clangers TV show. It prompted the question ... why was the oldest male known as 'Major' Clanger? What was he the Major of? Was there once a Clanger army? If so, what happened to it? And who were they formed to fight or defend against? A picture began to form in my head. All I needed was a canvas. But I didn't have one. Or did I ...?

I decided to cannibalise my one failed painting to date - the Mixed Marriage one. Remember this? Lord how I hated it. Nothing went right from start to finish.

No matter what I did to it, I just couldn't get the bugger to work. Even when I got the aliens 'right', there was so much paint on the Dad's suit, it stood out against the otherwise flat canvas. And the humans were awful. The groom was ghastly, his sister's head was too big, the kids were appallingly drawn, the whole painting leaned to the left ... you get the idea. So, yesterday evening, I attacked it with a large brush and some white emulsion. Curiously satisfying. I may return to the Mixed Marriage concept at a later date. But for now - bye bye.

So, with a blank if lumpy canvas, I pencilled in my Major Clanger and some cratera and mushroom clouds and began to paint. From the start, it felt like a very different painting to those I'd done before.

I'd decided to limit my palette on this one; only six colours were used - White, black, cadmium yellow, cadmium red, burnt sienna and ultramarine.

I was also approaching it in a more painterly fashion than usual with most of it painted with a half-inch flat-ended brush. I normally use tiny brushes. By nature, I'm an illustrator and my usual media are pens, inks and watercolours. Painting in oils and acrylics is quite different - something I've learned over the past 18 months of teaching myself. It's looser and more fluid. It's about distance; paintings aren't designed to be looked at up-close whereas book and magazine illustrations are. Consequently, you use larger brush strokes. It's very liberating. It's also much quicker. In no time at all, I had a painting.

I may still tweak it some more. I can't help feel that there needs to be a third spaceship over in the right hand part of the sky to balance the composition. The horizon needs raising too. And I might do some work on the gun, and ... Who was it said that 'a painting is never finished; it simply stops at interesting places'?* Or, what's the other one? 'Art is never finished, only abandoned'.**

Never were truer words spoken.

* Paul Gardener ** Leonardo da Vinci

365 Doodles - Day 211

2011-07-31T10:11:00.000+01:00

This is Dead Astaire, a painting I've completed in the past two days. My original inspiration was this sketch:

I did it during a live sketching session at the Alt Wycombe Festival earlier this year. Of all the sketches I did, I only kept a couple. This was one of them. I guess it was inspired by the people around me dressed, as they were, as zombies and goths and festooned with extraordinary outfits and amazing tattoos. Anyway, I transferred the drawing to the canvas and, this time, decided to do something a bit different and paint a coloured background. Lots of reds and yellows to make it look like the fires of Hell.

I needed to apply a couple of coats to get the depth of colour I wanted:

Then I began blocking in the figure using raw white and black:

Then I started to build in the shading:

I then realised that his lower jaw was completely skew-whiff (is that how you spell it?) and that his left foot looked like a baguette. So I painted those areas out with white matt emulsion (great covering power) and then repainted the fiery background. Then I repainted the jaw and foot. Hey Presto! The finished article.

365 Doodles - Day 210

2011-07-30T11:21:00.003+01:00

I finished my Humpty Dumpty Eggy Soldiers painting a couple of weeks ago (see here). Or, rather, I'd got to the point where I wasn't really happy with it but knew that any more tinkering would probably spoil it. So I put it away and it's been glaring at me from the wall every since. So yesterday, I picked it up, summoned my courage and attacked it.

I'm now happy with Humpty's outfit. I'm still not entirely happy with the horse but it's the first one I've ever painted so I'm willing to let it go. I'm calling this one done.

Things that went well? Learning about colour mixing made the brick wall work (and was carried over into the Trick or Treat! painting I did afterwards. Changing the peasants to soldiers made it a funnier gag. Was very pleased with the eggshell tones and the 3D effect of the broken egg top. I also liked the bread!

Things that didn't go well? The buggering horse, of course. Also, the soldier on the right is pretty poor. His hat is too big and, considering where his feet are, he should be in front of Humpty, not behind. Let's just say he's leaning back shall we?

Overall? I'd give myself 7/10 on this one (where 10 is how I saw the picture in my head).

365 Doodles - Day 209

2011-07-29T08:05:00.000+01:00

Some of the monster doodles that led to yesterday's Trick or Treat! painting.

Step inside Love ...

2011-07-28T16:46:00.004+01:00

Want to see where I paint and draw all of these pictures and write my books? Oh okay. But, if you did, you could go and visit the website of online arty magazine Creative Boom because they profile my studio today.

Do visit their site and have a poke around. It's a really interesting magazine. I've been dipping in for a month or so.

Meanwhile, here are three of the shots that didn't make the cut.

So ... what's your creative space like?

365 Doodles - Day 208

2011-07-28T13:40:00.005+01:00

So here it is, the finished Trick or Treat! painting:

And, as usual, I thought I'd provide another step-by-step guide. It all started - as things so often do - with a small sketch in the corner of a page in a sketchpad:

So, to begin with, I sketched the picture directly onto a canvas with a hard pencil (that won't show through the paint) and played with the composition until I was happy with it. I then used a half-inch flat brush to do a quick under-painting in Venetian Red.

My usual first job is to 'get rid of the white'. In this instance I wanted a brick wall effect and that meant making each brick a slightly different colour. One thing I've learned this past year is mixing colours (this is a really good book on the subject). And a golden rule is that if you make a variety of mixed shades and tones from the same three or four colours, they'll look right side by side even if they're all very different. All of the bricks and the mortar colours were made using black, burnt sienna, white and yellow ochre. The bricks were painted first, then the mortar. Then each brick was shaded using watered-down Winsor and Newton nut brown ink.

I then blocked in the monsters, the doorway, grass, path and Trick or Treaters. However, I then realised that the main monster looked more angry than scared so I had to do some repainting. If he didn't look scared, the whole joke of the piece would be lost.

Having sorted that out, I put a wash of orange ink over the monster to bring all of the colours together. Then I began to work on the window monster who also had to look scared.

A major bugger-up meant that I ended up lowering the hem of the devil's cape! I painted in the details of the remaining figures and added highlights with Posca pens. Then I called it done.

Things that went wrong with this one (apart from the devil's feet)? The only thing that really bugs me is that the light should be streaming from the monster's doorway to create those shadows behind the kids. But, on the whole, I'm quite pleased with this one.

I'm so proud of my heritage ...

2011-07-28T09:37:00.003+01:00

... but there's nothing Cornish people like more than a good laugh. I loved this spoof by Colin Leggo of the the BBC 'Scottish' advert for T in the Park.

Wonderful! Oh and if you didn't see the Scottish original, here it is:

(Thanks to Bryan Panks who found 'Cornish' and told me about it).

365 Doodles - Day 208

2011-07-27T23:43:00.003+01:00

I'm not a designer but, because I'm a bit arty, a lot of my friends and relatives assume that I can turn my hand to anything. I SO can't. That said, I have designed a few logos for people and here are three.

I know they ain't great but, as I said, I'm no designer.

100/100 for good cause

2011-07-27T10:10:00.006+01:00

Yesterday evening I went to the Biscuit Factory in Shoreditch, East London, for a private view event to launch The 100 Project.

The 100 Project is a charitable initiative that aims to nurture creative talent by putting 100 young people from the east end of London through a term at The Prince's Drawing School. The project has artists of today kindly donating work for auction to fund the artists of tomorrow. A few of them were there, demonstrating their skills with some life drawing of a faerie queen. With a bird.

Fifty two artists donated work this year and one piece will be auctioned every week for a year with a starting bid of £100 on each. They include some very big hitters including Pete Fowler, Jon Burgerman, David Shrigley, Alison Carmichael, Milton Glaser and Damien Hirst. Also among them was my good friend Mr Bingo. He's not pictured here due to camera shyness.

It's a very worthy cause and I was happy to support it. It was also nice to mingle among other people for whom art is the most important thing in their lives. It invigorated me; or maybe that was simply the fact that I was old enough to be everyone's dad and I was feeding off their energy like some osmotic enthusiasm vampire? Whatever the answer, I am all fired up again.

Now ... should I also let my beard grow to verdant Victorian magnificence? It does seem to be de rigeuer among this set. And it did the Impressionists no harm. Where's my smock and beret ...

365 Doodles - Day 207

2011-07-26T23:53:00.001+01:00

As you know, I've been teaching myself to paint. It's tough to lose the black outlines when you've concentrated your efforts of the past 30 years to illustration work. Anyway, this was my first attempt to paint from around 1994. As you'll see, I failed. I eventually couldn't hack it and out came the pen for the floating boneless people.

365 Doodles - Day 206

2011-07-25T23:56:00.001+01:00

They don't get more up-to-date than this. Drawn this evening and finished in the last ten minutes, here's a pic I've done for my political blogger and actor friend Alex Andreou.

It's a sheep in wolf's clothing that's in sheep's clothing. Don't ask me ... that was the brief! I just draw the pictures ...

My top five best worst movie Monsters

2011-07-25T12:32:00.005+01:00

I'm painting a monster at the moment. And, as is my wont when painting, I play a lot of terrible B Movies in the background to keep the mood appropriately silly. My knowledge of shite movies is fairly encyclopaedic although sites like Badmovies.org and Rotten Tomatoes are regularly visited to learn more.

Today I thought I'd highlight five of my favourite bad monsters, mostly made of chicken wire and sponge rubber and on a budget of nothing. They are a joy to behold.

5: The Green Slime (1968)

A colour film that has the dual delights of very poor camerawork and the funkiest theme song ever (hear it and see some clips here). This was an American/Japanese crossover film made in Tokyo and was described by reviewer Howard Thomson like this: 'The dialogue is wooden, so is most of the acting by a cast including Robert Horton, Richard Jaeckel and Luciana Paluzzi. And a dull and obvious romantic triangle continually squashes the terror potential at the ripest moments.' But hey, that theme song! 'Greeen sliiiiiiiiiiiime!'

4: The Giant Claw (1957)

In one of the most muddled attempts at a science-based monster movie ever, we find Geoff Morrow - later to appear in the brilliant This Island Earth - as an electrician fighting a monstrous anti-matter bird from outer space. The scene where it treats a train the same way a robin would treat a worm is, well, a treat. You can watch the whole movie for free here! I strongly suggest that you do.

3: Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961)

The first of two films in my top 5 directed by the genius that is Roger Corman. Certainly the cheapest monster in my selection, he seems made of cardboard, packing tape, two ping pong balls and gloves with knitting needles attached Freddie Krueger style. It's hilariously bad. Watch the climax of the film (the best monster bits) here or, if you don't mind a five minute ad intro, you can see the whole damned mess here for free.

2: It Conquered the World (1956)

Roger Corman film Number Two. Lee Van Cleef and Peter Graves tackle a mindbending super butternut squash from Venus. Watch the final five minutes here. Look closely and you can actually see the point where Lee Van Cleef thinks to himself, 'Did I really need the money so badly?'

1: Robot Monster (1953)

What money-savvy visionary came up with the idea to mount a diver's helmet on a gorilla suit and add some wires? Voila! Instant alien overlord! Ro-Man Extension XJ9 - known simply and bizarrely as 'Roman' for most of the film - is overseeing the elimination of the final 8 survivors of humanity. With the aid of a machine that blows bubbles and advice from an identical roman called 'The Great Guidance', he slowly kills off the hu-mans until finally defeated. Then, we find out it was all a dream. Or was it? Yes, probably. Made in just four days on a budget of $16,000 Robot Monster is a joy from start to finish. Watch the trailer here.

So, that's my top five. But I must give an honourabe mention to the infamous 'carpet monster' from the 1964 film The Creeping Terror.

In this oddest of films, the monster is a Chinese New Year Dragon type affair quite obviously operated by several burly chaps. In fact, their shoes emerge from under the creature's belly at several points in the film. But the greatest oddity is that the director Vic Savage decided to have a narrator speak over most of the film instead of allowing us to hear the actors' voices. Savage was a psychotic and manipulative conman who'd escaped from prison and persuaded people to fund his appalling film. It's such a bizarre feature that there is soon to be a documentary-film released called Creep! that tells the whole astonishing story (trailer here). I hope it's as worthy a tribute to bad film makers as Tim Burton's wonderful Ed Wood was.

So ... what are your worst movie monsters?

365 Doodles - Day 205

2011-07-24T19:36:00.002+01:00

Zombie!

365 Doodles - Day 204

2011-07-23T23:09:00.004+01:00

After the events in Oslo and the news that Amy Winehouse has been found dead aged just 27, I find myself unable to post anything jolly. With famine raging in Africa and the whole phone hacking scandal getting larger and more Watergate-ish every day, the world seems unremittingly cruel and sad.

So here's a doodle from a happier, less-complicated and innocent time. It is, in fact, the oldest drawing by me that still exists (that I know of). Drawn when I was six way back in 1967.

It occurs to me that when I drew this there was no internet, no mobile phones, no 24 Hour News Channels, only three TV channels and local papers only reported events that happened the week before. Very little of the outside world affected my life. Life was an adventure; I was thrilled by the novelty of each new discovery and I looked to the future with a sense of wonder. Everything was going to be brilliant.

It still can be of course. Let's all wish for happier days to come.

Doing something small but positive

2011-07-22T11:55:00.003+01:00

I'm auctioning this original painting for the East Africa Famine Fund. Please let people know. Or have a bid yourself. I've started low.

Thank you. Here's the ebay link again. I know times are tough but watching your kids die of starvation is tougher. I can't sit by and do nothing.

A valid point? Or a step too far?

2011-07-22T09:58:00.005+01:00

This is Peter Brookes' cartoon from today's issue of The Times:

I'm not a political blogger but I am a cartoonist and I know what Brookes was trying to say here; that while we're all focused on the News International scandal we're missing the truly horrible famine disaster in Africa. However, the cartoon was published in a News International paper and, I'm afraid, in the current climate, it just smacks of a cynical attempt to deflect attention away from themselves.

It's absolutely right that we should be looking at world events as a whole and paying the greater attention to those that are most important. On Twitter this morning, some people drew parallels between Brookes' cartoon and Kevin Carter's iconic vulture and starving boy photo. Carter was both lauded and treated with disdain for his shot and, to some degree, it cost him his life. But this is different. If the cartoon had appeared in a publication not owned by Murdoch, it would have been valid. As it is, being told to look away by News International just comes across as tasteless and crass. I guess it's the price we pay for the lack of sub-editors these days.

We could take the view that any publicity for the disaster is good publicity. It's hard to argue with that. But I can't help feel that News International might be able to do a lot more good if they made the famine in Africa a front page story across all of their titles, rather than just allude to it in a cartoon. Then, Murdoch or not, I would applaud them.

365 Doodles - Day 203

2011-07-22T07:56:00.000+01:00

And the final of the five cricket position prints: Cover, Deep Cover and Slip.

Hope you enjoyed them.

365 Doodles - Day 202 - Painty Bonus!

2011-07-21T13:31:00.010+01:00

I finished a new painting today. It's an unusual one in that it's two paintings in one. I've called it But is it Art?

As so many paintings do, this one grew out of a doodle in one of my many notebooks and sketchpads (what in flying feck is going on with his legs?). As for the canvas, that started life as a terrible kitten painting I bought for a quid in a charity shop. I couldn't resist. Plus, it was quite a good quality canvas for £1. It would be wonderful if someone X-Rays it in centuries to come and says, 'What the Hell is that underneath? It's horrible!' Of course, they might also say that about the painting on top too ...

First of all I gave it a coat of white acrylic gesso and then covered the canvas in a mix of white and cerulean blue. Then I pencilled the figures in.

Meanwhile, I used a pile of paint dimps (the same things I used when making Cobblepot the Snowman - see here) to create a small abstract painting. That was an interesting process in itself as I was keen to place the various pieces of dried paint into an aesthetically pleasing design.

I then finished painting the two art critics using acrylics and Posca pens. I got to meet the wonderful Camila Batmanghelidjh last year and the female figure was definitely inspired by her fashion sense. The male figure has echoes of Mark Heap's Brian character from Spaced. I loved that series.

Finally, I cut a white card frame for the abstract painting and stuck it to the canvas. Voila.

Fun to do and it only took two days.

365 Doodles - Day 202 - Moon Day Bonus!

2011-07-21T12:33:00.004+01:00

The last ever Space Shuttle came safely home a short while ago, exactly 42 years to the day since Armstrong and Aldrin (and let's not forget poor old Michael Collins) became the first people to stand on another world. In honour of the event, here are some space cartoons I've done over the years. Enjoy.

365 Doodles - Day 202

2011-07-21T07:54:00.000+01:00

Print four in the set of five cricket position prints: Third Man, Striker, Fine Leg.

365 Doodles - Day 201

2011-07-20T07:53:00.000+01:00

Third print of five in the cricket positions series: Gully, Point, Bowlers.

365 Doodles - Day 200

2011-07-19T07:50:00.001+01:00

The second of the five cricket position paintings: Silly Point and Long On.

Day 200! Just 165 to go ...

365 Doodles - Day 199

2011-07-18T09:41:00.004+01:00

This week I'm going to put up a series of pictures I painted back in the early 1990s. The idea was to create a print that lampoons the curious names of cricket positions. I threw it around a number of art galleries and publishers but no bugger wanted it. Well, there's a surprise. Here's how the print might have looked:

There are five groups of players so I'll post one per day during this week. Here's the first group - Long leg, short leg and square leg.

I still have the five original paintings and may auction them soon.

365 Doodles - Day 198

2011-07-17T09:22:00.003+01:00

A couple of alien assassins from a comic strip I drew back in the late 1980s. 'Pozilu' was the name of my alien mafia.

Okay, I admit it. I thought Moonboots were cool back then.

365 Doodles - Day 197

2011-07-16T09:05:00.001+01:00

An alien zookeeper. Circa 1988.

365 Doodles - Day 196

2011-07-15T13:35:00.002+01:00

A simple bit of photo-manipulation I did for a friend in 2003 to accompany a feature he wrote about the comedy genius Eric Morecambe.

365 Doodles - Day 195 - Humpty Day 5

2011-07-14T16:36:00.003+01:00

And, barring a few tiny tweaks, he's done. Some significant changes to his clothes today but still undeniably Humpty Dumpty.

In a shocking example of piss poor-taste I'm calling this painting Eggy Soldiers.

365 Doodles - Day 194 - Humpty Day 4

2011-07-13T17:35:00.002+01:00

I didn't quite finish him today but I got a lot done. Should finish tomorrow.

365 Doodles - Day 193

2011-07-12T23:33:00.003+01:00

No work on the Humpty painting as I've been in London today for meetings about various TOP SECRET projects. Oh, and drinking with mates. So, until tomorrow and more Humpty goodness, here's a curious little project I got involved in 10 years ago.

I was asked by a jeweller to design a brooch, earrings, bracelet and ring set. The brief was to have them mirroring forms in nature. We got as far as making a couple of prototypes: the brooch and ring, which I now own in platinum with inset black sapphires. It would be fun to do some more one day.

365 Doodles - Day 192 - Humpty Day 3

2011-07-11T17:30:00.001+01:00

Some work on the soldiers and the horse today.

365 Doodles - Day 191 - Humpty Day 2

2011-07-10T22:53:00.004+01:00

I took a brave step today. I changed the painting significantly (Better to do this earlier rather than later). I decided it would be funnier if the two chaps were in soldiers' uniforms. So out came the white Posca pen and ...

I also figured that the tall soldier hats would help to bring the composition together better by breaking the line at the top of the wall. Once I'd done this, I got a red and a black Posca and blocked in the new areas ...

Then I set to work on the wall, painting in all of the bricks and mortar. It took ages.

'Humpty Dumpty fell off a wall and nearly wound up dead
And people came from miles around to dip soldiers in his head'.

I'm now going to call this one Eggy Soldiers.

I'm so so sorry. More tomorrow.

More! More! Finnemore!

2011-07-10T00:14:00.003+01:00

John Finnemore's magnificent rant on BBC Radio 4's The Now Show from yesterday 9th.

John is the co-writer of those magnificent 'soapbox' rants that have helped define David Mitchell's comic persona. And I agree with every word he says, especially the final minute.

Bravo.

Breach of twetiquette?

2011-07-09T19:27:00.004+01:00

I am a regular user of Twitter. I like its simplicity and lack of intrusion. I like the fact that don't have to provide any personal details if I so wish, not even my real name or a photograph. And I like the fact that it isn't covered in advertisements and doesn't hound me to join causes or lob sheep at people. I use Twitter most days in preference to mobile phone texting or email because it's quick, concise and, perhaps most importantly, free. It has a conversational interface that sits very well with the way I like to interract with people.

I currently have around 2000 followers and am genuinely flattered, if bemused, that so many people would have even a vague interest in what I have to say. And when I joined Twitter I was told that it is Twitter etiquette to follow those that follow you (and that will get you more followers too). So, until yesterday I was following around 2000 people. However, following all those who follow you may be fine when you have under 150 followers (that's Dunbar's Number - the number of people we can have a meaningful relationship with at any one time), but anything over that starts to make the system almost unusable. I've now had to set my phone to only alert me to Tweets that mention my name and Direct Messages (DMs) because my 2000 strong Twitter stream is so busy with 2000 people's tweets that I can't follow it. And that means that I miss a lot of the stuff being posted by my friends and colleagues. As the result, Twitter has lost some of its usefulness to me.

And so, yesterday, I did something brave. I unfollowed 1200 people. I know, I know. What a bastard. But hear me out ...

I didn't do it all in one hit. My first trawl took out all of the bots and business and marketing followers. My second trawl took out anyone who hadn't used Twitter for a couple of months or more. My third trawl took out any celebrities that never bother to interract with Tweeters. Then in my final trawl - and this was the difficult one - I removed people who never talk to me on Twitter. It was difficult because they have taken the time to follow me (and I quite understand if they feel upset and now want to unfollow me) and I feel like a bit of a sod but if I hadn't taken this action I may as well revert to texting because I wasn't getting the benefit of what Twitter is.

This is, I'm sure, the reason why Oprah has 6,588,750 followers but only follows 33 people herself. It's not arrogance or nastiness. It's her ensuring that she doesn't miss tweets by people she likes or admires. Meanwhile, while Justin Beiber may follow 116,090 people, he has over 11 million followers. There isn't a chance in Hell that he can be having any kind of practical communication with all of those he follows. Half the tweets he gets are people begging him to follow them. Even if he did, then what? He couldn't possibly have any kind of personal communication with 11 million people. And that's assuming it's him on Twitter and not a small army of people tweeting for him (which I suspect he has).

I am still following a substantial 800 people but they are all people who chat with me. Twitter should be a two-way channel of communication. If I have unfollowed you, please don't take it personally as some already have. I am happy to re-follow anyone who wants to use Twitter for its proper purpose: conversation. Don't leave pissy messages ... nothing is more guaranteed to ensure permanent unfollowing. Just say hello! I'll follow you.

If you want a chat, I'm happy to chat (and follow) back.

365 Doodles - Day 190

2011-07-09T13:08:00.006+01:00

I sold this pen and ink picture this week:

It's one of a whole pile of older paintings and illustrations that I'm selling off to de-clutter and raise some pocket money (see the current listings here).Anyway, while packaging the Humpty picture for posting, I got the idea that it might work as a painting. So off I went, brush in hand. Here's how far I got today: the underpainting and first blocking out. More tomorrow.

Let's go fly a kite

2011-07-09T09:28:00.004+01:00

The Red Kite (Milvus milvus) is one of the UK's largest birds of prey and certainly one of the most attractive being a glorious deep orange-red colour with splashes of white, cream, brown and black. It is impressive in flight and has a wingspan that can reach six feet in adulthood. In most places, the Red Kite is a rarity and they have 'near threatened' conservation status overall. But not around here. Where I live, Red Kites are as common as pigeons.

It just so happens that I live between High Wycombe and Amersham on the Chiltern Hills; one of the areas where the Kites have been reintroduced. They became extinct in the UK in the 1870s but were reintroduced in 1989 and supported by an intensive breeding programme. There are now hundreds of breeding pairs. You can't look up in the sky and not see a Red Kite in these parts. It's a good place for them around here as their diet consist mostly of small mammals and carrion. We have lots of fields and broadleaf woodlands full of mice, rats, rabbits, pheasant, pigeons etc. We also have some major roads nearby such as the A404, the M25, the M4 and the M40. Consequently there's plenty of roadkill.Kites are smart opportunists. In recent years, most of my friends have told me stories of these huge birds diving into their back gardens to grab food from barbecues or to steal their dog's bones. So I thought it might be interesting to try to lure a few down in my own garden. As it happened I'd been deboning a couple of pigs heads I'd got from a smallholder chum (the cheek is the very best bit of a pig) and had lots of trimmings and fat left over. So I threw it out on the lawn and watched.

In no time at all I had something like 20-25 Kites circling above the house. They jostled each other and made practice swoops but none would come down until I'd shut my back door. Once I did, a cheeky magpie hopped over to the meat and had a tentative peck. That was the cue for a feeding frenzy. Kite after Kite came plunging down at lightning speed, grabbing the meat in their powerful claws. The whole pile was gone in seconds. I managed to snap a few shots - my apologies for the washed-out look but they were taken through double-glazing on a dull day - but you can still get a sense of how amazing these birds are. You get the scale when you compare them in size to the wheelbarrow.

It was an extraordinary sight. But I never tire of seeing these magnificent creatures. I'm lucky to have so many of them so close to me. I'll set up another photoshoot soon with a better vantage point.

(All photos by me.)

365 Doodles - Day 189

2011-07-08T23:31:00.004+01:00

An older one today; a dragon painted for a nephew's bedroom wall around about 1998. It's not the first dragon I've done. Back in 1976, as a teenager I painted a dragon on my bedroom wall. This was the design:

Frustratingly, I know there are photos of the finished mural but I'm damned if I can find them. Ah well.

A Badtime Story

2011-07-08T00:21:00.005+01:00

Once upon a time, in a land not so far away from here, but with very different ideas of morality and appropriate behaviour, there was a greedy old man they called The Digger. The Digger was so greedy that he wanted to own the whole Sky! But part of the Sky was under the control of a King called David who lived across the sea. So The Digger sent his son and a flame-haired witch to see if he could persuade the King to let him have it all.

King David was a jolly, pasty faced chap, a bit wet and flabby and terribly naive. He was very rich and privileged and he had no idea how his subjects lived and cared even less. Or, at least, that's the way he appeared because he made the rich barons richer and took money away from the poor and from those who were most needed to care for the sick and elderly. He even made the children pay to learn things! He wasn't a bad man really but he was rubbish at being the boss of his land. All the silly King wanted to do was go to lots of posh parties and meet famous people. The Digger's son soon became King David's friend. And the flame-haired witch said lovely things about him. Soon King David thought they were brilliant!

But some of the King's advisors didn't like the greedy man's son and the flame-haired witch and told the King that he should take a care when dealing with them. They knew that although they seemed to be very nice, they actually wrote nasty things about people in a scurrilous pamphlet that was read by people all over the land. Well, by those who could afford to learn to read that is. But King David waved them away saying, 'Pish and tish! (for those were their names) They are lovely people and very trustworthy. They must be because they told me they are. I will hear nothing bad about my lovely trustworthy friends.' And away he skipped singing lah-di-da and with his fingers in his dainty ears.

But Oh! Dear readers! If only he'd listened to his advisors! Little did silly King David know it but there was a wicked trickster in his castle! The trickster looked like a nice man with his sensible hair and sensible glasses but he was a clever and wicked man. He knew how to bend words and spin stories and twist truths. And he was a friend of the greedy son and the flame-haired witch! In fact, he and the flame-haired witch had both once been in charge of the scurrilous pamphlet that broke promises and told stories and even sometimes told wicked lies about people! And now the trickster was best friends with the silly king ... who knew what secrets he might have been told?

Time passed and silly King David continued his unpopular reign. All around him his kingdom was collapsing but he hardly noticed. He was too buy having fun with his big society friends. And, in time, his ego became so bloated from people telling him he was ace that he began to think that it might be nice to let the greedy old Digger have his bit of Sky. After all, what possible harm could it do to let a little old man own it all?

But then, one day, a Guardian discovered that some spies had been secretly listening to people talking and then sharing what they'd heard in the scurrilous pamphlet! Oh yes, they had sneakily pushed their noses into places where they should never have been. The spies had done terrible, terrible things and when the people found out, they were livid! They were furious! They called the snoopers terrible names and they grabbed their pitchforks and torches and marched to the hut where the scurrilous pamphlet was made. They chased everyone out and the hut collapsed and was burned to the ground. How the people cheered as everyone who worked there, the honest cooks and the picture makers, the hard-working cleaners, the printers and the wordsmiths were all thrown into the street with no jobs and no money, even though they weren't the ones who'd done any snooping. Nor had they written any of the nasty words. But the mob didn't care/ as far as they were concerendd, if you were in the hut, you were guilty.

The people went home, satisfied that their work was done. And up in the castle, the trickster, the flame-haired witch and the greedy son all drank champagne from diamond bra cups and laughed and laughed until they sicked up their caviar and swan terrine. And why were they laughing so hard? Because the silly people had got angry with the wrong people and now the real baddies had got away scot free! They knew they would never be caught. The local constable wouldn't stop them because they'd given him lots of pies. The King was too divorced from reality to see what they were up to. Even the Frumious Miliband was too dim-witted to do anything other than whinge a bit. They laughed long and loud into the night.

And so they all lived happily and unbelievably richly ever after. The greedy old Digger bought the Sky and made sure no one else could use it but him. King David carried on being a much derided leader but he didn't give a beaver's tits because he was rich. The flame-haired witch and the greedy son went across the sea to the Land of the Free to fuck up their freedoms too. And the trickster wriggled away and was never seen again.

The people stopped caring too. They no longer had to work because King David gave all the shops to Baron Tesco who filled them with two-for-one factory bred chickens, cheap booze and lasagne sandwiches. Oh, and a brand new scurrilous pamphlet with a different name. And the people said 'Hallelujah!' but couldn't spell it.

The (Bitter) End

365 Doodles - Day 188

2011-07-07T23:53:00.002+01:00

A piece I did for the birth of a friend's daughter.

I do commissions!

365 Doodles - Day 187

2011-07-06T23:22:00.004+01:00

For the past two QI Annuals, I did four pages of 'Talking heads' where I matched soundbites from the show to production photos. The idea was to produce something visually funny and, through a series of discussions with the show runners, I arrived at something like a Punch and Judy type format. It's been very popular. But I thought I'd show you the original concept sketch, the first prototype and the final image of an exchange between Dara O'Briain and Graham Norton.

365 Doodles - Day 186

2011-07-05T23:32:00.002+01:00

Sean Lock the French Goatherd. He really was.

From the QI 'G' Annual 2010.

365 Doodles - Day 185

2011-07-04T11:51:00.003+01:00

The third and final 'Gravity' picture is Sir Isaac Newton of falling apple fame.

The story that Newton’s great idea was inspired by watching an apple fall may be true … but his most likely starting point was the earlier work of French astronomer Ismaël Bullialdus who had suggested the inverse-square law some 40 years before. Incidentally, Newton’s apple came from a tree in the garden at Woolsthorpe Manor, Lincolnshire, called a Flower of Kent, a variety developed around 1629. The tree fell over in 1820 but continues to grow. Grafted clones of the tree have been planted outside the world’s most prominent physics labs to remind scientists that inspiration can come from the simplest sources.

Is gravity some kind of energy? Is it a wave? Is it a particle? No one is yet sure although many physicists believe in the existence of an elementary particle called a Graviton. If we could isolate gravitons, it is possible that we could one day invent a way to shield against them and create anti-gravity.

Always popular with science fiction authors, anti-gravity has nonetheless been explored by serious scientists. Towards the end of World War II, German physicists supposedly played around with an anti-gravity generator called the ‘Nazi Bell’. It is alleged that the US Army adapted the Nazi technology during the 1950s to create a triangular anti-gravity based aircraft called the TR-3B (which you saw Einstein driving a couple of days ago on this very blog). The plane used mercury plasma - pressurised at 250,000 atmospheres at a temperature of 150 degrees Kelvin – which was accelerated to 50,000 rpm inside a ring-shaped chamber. This was then exposed to high radio-frequency fields. Some people claim that the resulting magnetic vortex field disrupted or neutralised the effects of gravity on mass by 89% ... but, of course, the vehicle has never been demonstrated in public.

Gravity is a paradox. On the one hand it so powerful that it keeps galaxies together. A Black Hole has such incrediblly strong gravity that absolutely everything, even light, is pulled towards it. Gravity can drag aircraft from the skies and keeps everything on this planet resolutely earth-bound. And yet, its force is so weak that I am defeating it right now by lifting this cup of tea and having a slurp.

365 Doodles - Day 184

2011-07-03T10:45:00.004+01:00

Another gravity-themed illustration that wasn't used in the QI 'G' Annual. It's Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) performing his famous 'My balls are dropping' experiment on the leaning tower of Pisa.

Well, I say 'famous'; there's no evidence that the experiment ever happened in quite that manner. Whatever the truth is, his careful measurements of falling bodies proved that all objects, regardless of size or weight, accelerate at the same rate as they fall. He also worked out that it was wind resistance and atmospheric pressure that slowed the fall of lighter objects. Extraordinarily, a leaf will achieve the same velocity as a cannonball in a perfect vacuum. In fact, the science show Mythbusters proved it a couple of years ago with a hammer and a feather:

Great eh? Another picture tomorrow.

A Wiseman among the not so wise

2011-07-03T08:05:00.005+01:00

Yesterday I was saddened to read that Professor Richard Wiseman's latest book Paranormality cannot land a suitable publishing deal in the USA. Wiseman has therefore decided to self-publish it as a Kindle edition. The book, which takes a sceptical look at so-called paranormal activity such as ghosts, astrology, mind-reading etc., has been a bestseller in the UK and in many other countries.

Before I go any further, I should point out that Wiseman - the most quoted psychologist working in Europe today - is a popular author and speaker with a string of entertaining and educational bestsellers to his name. It may be that he can get a book deal in the USA but not one worthy of his sales and status. However, the fact remains that he has no such deal. US publishers don't want it. I guess it's because, in these austere times, no one wants to read a book that debunks such things as spiritualism, fortune-telling and astrology - especially when there's an industry built on them that generally suggests healthy and happy futures for most of their clients (Have you ever heard of someone having a serious illness or death accurately predicted by a spirit, palmist or star-reader? Nope, me neither.).

According to the NY Times, more than 80% of Americans believe that they have had a paranormal experience, so it may be that the publishers simply don't see a market for the book. If so, that's very short-sighted. And unfair. How can people make sensible and considered choices about what to believe unless they can weigh up all of the available evidence? It seems that the publishing industry believes that no one wants to hear an alternative explanation of what might have happened to them.

Or, I suspect, it's the accountants - who now seem to run the publishing industry - who are not willing to take the risk that US readers are intelligent enough to make their own decisions. Whatever the reasons, here is a smart, intelligent book that the majority of people in the USA won't get to read.

I'd like to see a campaign led by American sceptics to get the book published in book form. Get enough people behind the idea and even the accountants will take note. Otherwise, America is glissading down a slippery slope towards bookstores full of populist drivel and books only being produced for the lowest and largest common denominators.

Meanwhile I'll rub my lucky rabbit's foot and hope that this isn't so ...

365 Doodles - Day 183

2011-07-02T23:49:00.002+01:00

One of several illustrations I did for the QI 'G' Annual on the subject of 'Gravity' that were never used. I'll post another tomorrow. The good news is that they won't be wasted as I'm recycling them into something new and rather special ...

365 Doodles - Day 182 - Pirate Special Day 5

2011-07-01T19:08:00.004+01:00

So, here we are ... the finished pirate painting that I'm calling Arrr-Pod. I have no idea where that came from nor why he has a Blue Peter badge on. I may add a couple of tiny tweaks to it but it's effectively complete.

As it's after midday, this painting marks the halfway point of my 365 days of artwork. Just another 182 (and a half) days to go.