Just for Karen

I warned you it was boring!

Illustration Friday - FRESH and BCF9

To me, the ultimate evocation of the word ‘fresh’ is the opening scene of the film ‘The Sound of Music’. The green hills, and the voice of Julie Andrews — like a cool mountain stream pouring over you. However my humble little effort — which is having to work its socks off for both Illustration Friday and Blind Contour Friday — will have to do.

Have a look at my son’s drawing I think it's great

More sharpie drawing

I aborted an upload to flickr but I quite like the serendipitous results, (wonderful to be able to use that word) what do you think?

Robin

Experimenting with the kids’ felt tips

Whoo Hoo - I can stop burning the midnight oil

I've been busy with lots of new design work, but it's nearly finished and ready to go to the printers. I can't wait to see the new designs printed, and I can't wait for a couple of early nights to catch up on my sleep.

My musical son!

Xavier will only sing one song, so for your listening pleasure click here

Illustration Friday - ESCAPE

No time for something new, too much work, but I thought this addition to an old illustration might strike home.

Hugo in Sea Cadets uniform

Another Sharpie pen drawing. I'm working my way to getting a drawing of my son Hugo that looks like him. This is better than the previous one, but still some way to go

TV portraits

Some quick portraits from the TV using Sharpie pens, which are quite liberating because they don't feel in the slightest bit 'precious'. I think the only one that seems to have caught the person at all is the one of Quentin Tarantino.

Another cheap Saul Bass-alike

Doing my wifely duty and providing my design services to Robin for some work-related joke.

So what do you think?

I drew this for the Every Day Matters Challenge – ‘Shoes’.



But then I thought I'd try adding some colour



I'm not sure which I prefer, what do you think?

Blind Contour first attempt

I had to wait half an hour for Costco to open, so after producing an execrable drawing of the other parked cars, in desperation for a less mechanical subject matter, I was reduced to drawing myself in the mirror.

Modigliani Hugo

My son Hugo doesn't look like this at all – hence the title.

Illustration Friday - DEPTH

Okay the link with 'depth' is very tenuous, but the pressure of being the last person to upload on Illustration Friday is getting to me! Most mornings Robin shares his DEEP bath and his breakfast cereal with Xavier. And every time he plays the same joke, the little orange fish appears on the cereal spoon from the DEPTHS of the bath water, and every time, Xavier cracks up laughing.

Linkety-links

Dontcha think it’s crass when someone asks to exchange links – not that anyone has asked me. It just seems to me that the etiquette is never to ask. If someone likes your blog enough – and if they feel like it – they’ll link. I’d been thinking about sorting out my own links and I was looking at a wonderful professional illustrator’s site. Amongst her zillion comments there were a couple of requests to exchange links. Well, as she had a side bar chock-a-block full of links to other illustrators in the same league as herself I really don’t think she should have been put in the position of ignoring the request or having to turn it down.

Anyway there’s a huge number of blogs I admire and visit regularly that I would like to add to my link list. However my template has such a large type size in the side bar, I really want to change the type to something teeny weeny and sans serif (a bit like the body text here) before I add them all. I’ve tried and tried and tried – and got nowhere, so if there’s a techie lurking out there I’d really appreciate any tips.

By the way if any of you have noticed my lovely little copyright symbol and that I'm starting to use proper dashes, you may like to know that you can can type wonderful things like this: ℑ∪⊥†Ξ′ƒ ρi⊆ϒ∨®∈ξ
by using this helpful little utility here.

Carved wooden candle-stick

Painted gold and blue, the pair of wooden candlesticks came free with marrying Robin – I'm uncharacteristically fond of them.

Cushion on lap

You may wonder why Robin has a cushion on his lap, but if you could see our two year old hurling himself at us, you'd understand.

EDM Light

I bought several reduced price notebooks today. They're all made of hand made paper with flecks of straw and deckle edges to the pages. They're really not ideal to draw in but they are such delicious objects I think I'll persist with them. This was drawn in pen and then colour was added in photoshop.

Illustration Friday - ROOTS

No time because of work pressure so you get to see my very rough preliminary drawings (drawn in the back of my car manual while waiting for a child). Come back later if you want to see the finished version.
Tell me what you think of my new masthead.

Edited to add this picture

I'm not sure that this works. The trunk represents myself and Robin, the branches, our children, the roots our parents, grandparents etc. The other trees, other families. I thought I'd use a simple idea to experiment with different techniques, but I don't think I'm that keen on the outcome. Never mind I'm using Illustration Friday to try different styles, so I can't expect success every time.

Fiji 1962

My father has just sent me a copy of this picture (of the two of us with a Fijian police officer) that he found in the attic. There aren't many childhood photos of me so it's a great source of wonderment to see this four year old child and think that this was once me.

The extraordinary thing about the Fiji Police in those days was that they had three different types of uniforms for the three main ethnic types - Fijian, European and Indian and I think that each group was proud of their differently styled uniform. Can you imagine the outrage in the UK if a uniformed service was to have different uniforms for different ethnic groups?

Recycle your old pictures

I had the usual designer's dilemma of how to pick one image to represent me at the top of my blog. Do I go minimalist or decorative? Do I choose this typeface or that? Do I choose this colour scheme or that? Anyway I've resolved it by deciding to have regular seasonal (or even - if I'm up to it - monthly) changes to my masthead.

So now we kick off with my autumn masthead. The typeface is Trajan and the illustration has been taken from a water-colour illustration I did for a book of the natural history around my art college buildings.

No to spam

I really enjoy receiving comments, so it is with great reluctance that I've had to put word verification onto my blog, but I'm not prepared to have my blog littered with spam advertisements in the comments.

I've added comments to other blogs that have this feature and it doesn't seem to be too onerous so please do still keep coming and adding your comments.

EDM Architecture

I took Tom to the orthodontist this morning and did this drawing whilst waiting for his appointment. In my day you were grateful if you didn't have severely buck teeth, because you generally had to put up with whatever teeth you were born with. However these days it seems that the slightest crookedness or imperfection merits years on end of dental work together with a lifetime of wearing a retainer so that all that effort doesn't go to waste.

Mind you in my day dentists only got paid for doing fillings. So, as a dutiful daughter who went to the dentist regularly I now have a mouth full of what I'm sure were unnecessary lead fillings, whereas my reprobate brother (who brushed his teeth so rarely they looked as if they were made of green suede and who never bothered with dental appointments) the last time I looked, had a set of strong white filling free gnashers.

Illustration Friday - DREAMS

I love dreams. It's like being the leading character in your own movie - and a few of mine have been spectacular. I don't have the time for the story that goes with this but I promise I'll add to this post later.

Later on...
I've had terrifying nightmares that have haunted me, I've had joyful dreams - that have made me smile on recollection, and I've experienced flying, breathing under water and all sorts of amazing things that will never happen in real life. The dream that this poster refers to was unusual in that the first half was thought-provoking and terrifying and the latter part of the dream was so absurd and funny that I woke myself up laughing.

The story goes that I was going to be executed by strangulation, for a crime I hadn't committed. At the time I was only 24 years old. I felt terrible fear - firstly that it would be painful, but mainly because I was terrified that this was it - my life finished and maybe nothing afterwards. What if God and some kind of existence after death was only something we humans had made up to comfort ourselves. I realised at the point of death that the one thing I felt huge regret at missing in my short life was the experience of having a child. I desperately wanted an afterlife so that there might be a second chance.

The execution took place. It was swift and relatively painless and then there was a period - I don't know how long - of black nothingness. I then opened my eyes to find myself in a shabby paint bespattered corridor of my old art college watching a young blonde woman folding sheets and stacking them in an airing cupboard. With overwhelming relief and gratitude I said ' Oh my God, so there is something afterwards'. She turned round and said kindly but briskly 'Yes, and He'll be along in a minute to show you where you're staying'

God arrived a a couple of minutes later, apologising for not being there when I'd arrived. Physically He wasn't what I'd expected. He was a slight, prematurely balding Chinese man in his late thirties, casually dressed in sweatshirt, trainers and jeans. He was very kind and explained that Heaven was a bit crowded at the moment and I must excuse the rudimentary nature of the accommodation and that initially I would have to put up with a dormitory. I was beaming from ear to ear because I was so delighted to be there. God then took me to my dormitory which was housed in a room that was exactly like my high ceilinged art college studio but with single beds pushed up against all the walls.

He then asked me if I could tell which was my bed. I looked around and there was one bed which was piled up with a huge number of familiar objects. Handbags, shoes, coats and so on. As I looked closer at them I realised that they were all things that I had managed to lose in my life before I'd died. I asked Him if that was my bed, to which He smiled and nodded. When I asked what these things were doing here, God set me off giggling when He said that these items had not been lost, but had been taken from me (and also from other people) as we all needed a few practical items in Heaven - a handbag or two, some clothes and so on. At this point my happiness, hysteria and giggling fit took over and my laughing woke me up.

Anyway - the lessons I learnt - the one thing in life I really wanted was to have children and if I lose a possession it really doesn't matter, it's probably waiting for me on that single bed in that dormitory in Heaven.