Cool old People

My love of drawing old people continues….I love the distortions that happen as we age, how clothes hang differently and the body changes. I like how old people have their own very particular take on fashion and clothing. Sometimes its a throwback to an earlier era but I think often its arises from the restrictions placed on them by what’s available. They tend to wear more clothes than younger people and this also makes for a different aesthetic. Maybe I won’t appreciate it all so much when I reach the vintage stage of life myself…

New Year 1012

Wanted to post these up last week. Wanted to do more of them. Wanted to do them all nicely in colour. But wanting and finding the time and energy are not always compatible. Still….they’re here now! I was fascinated and just a little appalled, but not surprised by the antics of New Year revellers in the UK on New Years Eve. The thing is if you don’t live in the UK you might be mistaken for thinking that this happens only on News Years eve, so that would be okay. But it pretty much happens all over the country, in small towns and cities, every weekend. It don’t know what it says about the state of the UK at the moment. It’s certainly a pressure valve, with out which, the frustration of living there would likely bubble up somewhere else. It does however make great subject matter for my art. I love the resemblance that some of the prostate drinkers have to dead bodies…i guess that’s why they call it dead drunk. You can see the originals here….

Udo di Fabio

This is Udo di Fabio. Udo is a grey haired man with glasses. He loves to play golf and buckaroo and Udo’s favourite food is beans on toast and boiled winkles. Udo’s mum was a basketball player and his father a train driver. He likes dressing up in suits and his favourite colour tie is blue. Udo wears black suits and sometimes navy. He’s Argentinian but he doesn’t like sausages. His best friend is John. John also likes blue ties but his hair is brown.

Paris

My favourite pastime while traveling…and no better place to do it than the metro and cafes of Paris…I would have liked to have had the time to get a few street shots in….maybe next time….Looking at these has just made me realise again how closed and introspective most people look in large cities, especially on the subway or metro…or maybe its just the ones I pick on?

How pictures tell stories

How simply can a picture tell a story? A girl, a boy, happy smiling faces and a rainbow seventies, disco ball. This one is courtesy of my seven year old daughter. Life starts to get more complicated and difficult when you turn seven years old, but love is still very simple. I was going to tell you about my new link to slowear, but when I found this sitting on my desk, it somehow felt more worthy of a mention.

Steve Jobs

I was genuinely saddened by the passing of Steve Jobs. Being a fervent, resolute, card-carrying Mac user from the first day I started working, I asked myself what it was about the mac that could make me feel emotional about the death of its creator? And how it was that a computer could inspire me to work better or be more creative? After all, its just a computer like any other? But like photos or places I’ve visited, a computer holds memories and parts of my life (even more so now that we pour so much of ourselves into them) and in that sense a mac always felt more personal than any other personal computer. Back in the days when I first started using a mac, it felt more like a vocation, back then, owning or working on a mac was like being part of a special gang of people, with Steve Jobs as the leader. I always felt that working on a mac, I was somehow obliged to do better, honour bound to live up to the inventiveness and creativity of the tool I was working with. Also, in the beginning, before the internet was really underway, I and the other mac users I worked with, definitely felt like we were part of a global community of other (mac) users. And I can’t remember how many fights I’ve had over the years with different IT departments to persuade them to use macs and how fearful they seemed to be of them. Even now your typical tech support guy seems to have an innate fear of working with Mac’s, which I never understood as they are simplicity themselves to use? Well, if there is an afterlife, after life, I’m sure Steve Jobs is already up there, trying to figure out a way to to make it function more simply or look more beautiful.

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” [Stanford commencement speech, June 2005] Steve Jobs 1955-2011

Mr Bombastic

 

All the best summer songs were being played at the Badi in Wiesendangen last weekend, as a rural swimming pool party nod to the quite cool Music festival going on in big neighbour, Winterthur.  The Badi is one of several outdoor Schwimmbad’s, (large outdoor swimming pools, complete with bar, cafe volleyball, bbq area and lots of grass to sit on) which lie outside of Winterthur. It was actually a little more upbeat then these two fellows look, I think they were lost in deep dreams of bombastic 90′s, slimmer days.

Sunbathers

Still living a vacuous life (at least on the weekend) of burning under the sun, cooling down, heating up, cooling down and drawing other people doing the same, all dressed in brightly coloured pieces of synthetic cloth and eating ice cream.

Bodensee bathers

I am glad to see that I am not the only one out there with a preference for drawing and recording the style of older folks. I know I said that I didn’t want this to be a fashion blog but this one is more about style and personalities, so I’m letting myself off. Have a look here at one of my new favourite sites Advanced Style, with some great advice on getting old and staying stylish. At 79 years old, Joyce believes, ” that to age is a privilege” and that the real secret to ageing stylishly, “ is being in love with life and realizing what you have.” I couldn’t agree more. The tenuous link to the sketches below, is that one is of an ‘older’ lady, also one who is not afraid of a little colour.

Frenchman?

Is it just me or do you ever wonder just who people are, when you see them sitting in airport lounges, railway stations, tube trains, cafes and beaches?…… Like where are they from? Where are they going too? Are they married? Are they gay, single, straight? Do they like their job? Do they like their life? Are they really so unhappy or is it just because they are sitting on a dirty hot train going to work (again)? Are they really as rich as they look? Poor as they look? …and why are they looking at me? Do they know I’m sketching them?