Three Sisters promenade performance

On Friday we went to see Flo in a promenade performance of Chekov’s ‘Three Sisters’. When Flo explained to me that a promenade performance is one where the audience are put into the same space as the actors and the performance happens amongst the audience, I was a bit dubious about whether I would enjoy it. However I found it much more interesting and enjoyable than I had expected. The performance took place in the Hertford College Bop Cellar, an intimate space, which meant that the audience often had to move out of seats that the actors wanted to use. It was nonetheless very interesting to be able to walk around and watch the actors from whichever viewpoint you wanted to. So it won’t put me off promenade performances in the future.

Let me introduce you to Tilly

Tilly is my great friend Sharron’s daughter and she is stark staring bonkers. This photo was taken six months ago – the day before her second operation to remove a brain tumour. Fortunately, she is fit and healthy now, and back at university studying to be a nurse.

Even though, at the age of 20, she’s had to be more courageous than most of us would ever have to be , she nevertheless is going to pluck up her courage and do a parachute jump to raise money for the charity Brain Tumour UK

She says

I've decided that the best thing for me to do, would be to (finally) jump out of a plane on the 20th March! 10 000ft probably the scariest thing ever, but i cant wait!

So please sponsor me on behalf of Brain Tumour UK so they can carry on providing practical and emotional support to families, fund extensive research in to brain tumours, and raise awareness!!!

So please go to her JustGiving page to sponsor her.

And now with colour

Too much on, but spent a few minutes adding colour to this old pic.

Hugo after a much-needed hot bath

Xavier, the charity fund-raiser

If you do want to support The Woodland Trust go here.

Thirtieth birthday of Creative Review

This month is the birthday of the excellent UK design magazine Creative Review, and next month they’re including a special replica extract of the very first issue. I remember it was exciting to have our own UK design magazine because if I’m remembering correctly the only other design magazine that was available before that was the lovely but hugely expensive Graphis magazine.

Something that really tickled me about one of those early issues of Creative Review was the bound in insert to fill in for an annual subscription to the magazine. It was the usual thing that you get in magazines, but the CR designer thought he’d make it a tad more interesting by reversing it out. So all the text was white and all the bits that you normally fill in were… black

Sunday adventure

Just in case you were thinking of going for a walk and stopping to cook sausages half-way round, I promise you Ray Mears makes making a fire look far easier than the reality. But what a way to have fun for nothing more than the price of a packet of sausages.

Jus’ Robin ’n’ me

The snow blues

Xavier drawing

I should really be scanning his drawings—the imagination that goes into the portrayal of his imaginary world is wonderful. As Picasso said, ‘It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child’.

Southwold palette

As I walk across the woodland park to take Xavier to school I’ve recently been noticing the beautiful muted sage green of the grass against the almost maroon brown of the winter trees and the cool grey of the sky. Makes me appreciate that you can simply steal the most beautiful, subtle, sophisticated palettes from nature when you’re trying to come up with colour schemes whether it’s for fashion, interiors or graphic design.

Enough of posts about design

I thought it was about time to live up to the word ‘sketchblog’ at the top and post a sketch. However I am still banging on about design. Why do the people who manufacture dog baskets, dog beds and all dog paraphernalia think that dog-owners are completely indifferent to design and that we quite happily welcome fake-fur covered in pawprints into our homes? Is it as bad for cat-owners?

Cover to my last brochure

I took this photo for the cover of my last marketing brochure—over ten years ago. Even though I’m in the business of creating brochures for other people, it’s very difficult to spend the money on printing my own marketing materials. There always seems to be something—like child dentistry or music classes—which make far more important demands on my finances.

Having said that, any of you who are running small businesses should know that now you don’t have to make the big investment in film, plates and a run of at least 1000 copies to make it worthwhile. A brochure can be a pdf you put on your website (for other people to print off) complemented by short runs of digitally printed brochures—which can be cheaply updated. So not quite the cripplingly expensive option it used to be.