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…

Quentin Blake

As you might have guessed by now I kind of like sketching. Near the top of that heap of admiration and likeness would be the work of caricaturists and satirists, in particular the work of Quentin Blake, Gerald Scarfe and the lesser known Fritz Wegner.

Wegner illustrated my favourirte kids book The Fattypuffs and The Thinifers by Andre Maurois, which  if you’ve not read it is the fantastic story of two brothers, one thin, one fat, who travel to an imaginary world separated into the fat, pleasant and generous Fattypuffs and the thin, energetic and mean spirited Thinifers.

Quentin Blake is probably most famous for his illustrations of Roald Dahl’s books, most notably Charlie and the Chocolate factory, The BFG and Matilda… and I can’t imagine anyone else being more perfectly suited to the task than Blake whose  anarchic and unruly illustrations perfectly capture the comical, semi-surreal world’s created by Dahl…. Gerald Scarfe is a political satirist and cartoonist who has also worked as a theatre designer. His work is biting and vicious and at the same time funny, poignant and irreverent. What’s more incredible is that these guy’s have all been at it for more than fifty years apiece and are all still working as we speak. So I guess you can expect some satirically inspired sketches here soon…..

Miniature works of Art

I’ve had what I thought was a collection of Soviet era stamps which I picked up a few years back when on a work/cultural trip to Estonia. Having dug a little more, it turns out they are not stamps but match box labels and that there’s a whole world out there of matchbox labels and matchbox label collectors. It would seem that in the old Soviet Union there was a lot of use for matches and that matchbox labels were used as a form of propaganda as well as a medium for promoting and nurturing a deep pool of national  artistic talent.

In his website a History of Graphic Design, Guitry Novin  describes how matchboxes and subsequently matchbox labels became… ”a most convenient, efficient and powerful medium for visual communications. Produced under a strict state-controlled production processes…they were aimed at exploiting and publicizing political initiatives, promoting public health and safety, and selling the communist ideal both at home and abroad, the artists used them as a vehicle to experiment with various imaginative ideas and artistic techniques, achieving truly stunning results.”

And although he is making reference mainly to the former Eastern block countries of Romania, Czechoslovakia and Hungary the similarities to the Estonian matchbox labels I picked up are obvious, both in their subject matter and style.

Personally, as a designer and artist I love the print-woodblock style of the stamps. The fact that they are printed on poor quality paper, which renders a flat  grainy texture to the often miss- registered images. I also like the way that in places the colours overlap, forming unintentional and additional shades. The labels date from the 1960’s and their subjects run in series, revolving around all aspects of Soviet Era-Estonian life and culture, from public buildings and statues, to flora and fauna. What is amazing is how the artists managed to take something as mundane as a public building or piece of agricultural machinery and turn it into a piece of art. Even given the restrictions of  scale and the very strict limitations on style and content, they managed to produce work both powerful and beautiful. Most of the labels are no bigger than 3cm x 2cm and really are miniature works of art.

View over London

It seems like a lonnnng time since I put one of these out. There are no reasons, only excuses which I won’t go into except to say its been a busy few months.

Last weekend we were in London for a few days. Like many people I know, I have a love hate relationship with London. There are so many things to like and dislike.

I will list some:
DISLIKES

• 
it’s busy and stressful
• 
it’s exhausting
• 
it’s impersonal and people are rude
• 
it can be dangerous and alienating
• it takes too much time to get anywhere or get anything

LIKES

• 
its energy
• 
its bookshops, clothes shops, cafes, pubs, cinemas, restaurants
• 
its hugely diverse and innumerable people
• its exhilarating urban landscapes
• the diversity in everything
• freedom and anonymity
• its both stimulating and exhausting at the same time

While I was there I managed finally to get hold of one of Miroslav Sasek’s brilliant books, This is London. I wish I had the time to do justice to the people and sights I saw as well as he did. Sasek did a brilliant job, he is sharp, witty and informative and his illustrations deceptively simple and yet saying so much. They capture beautifully the spirit of the big city and also the detail of its places and people. Some things have changed a lot in London in the fifty years since he made the book, even in the four years since we left. Like any big city, London is constantly in flux. 

One thing that does remain the same however is the magnetic energy that draws all kinds of people to London. Its vibrant diversity and the feeling of being part of something big. A place of opportunity, of gold, silver and big bright shiny lights.

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.

Its a wonderful Life

New Year has always been a time of mixed emotions for me and I guess everyone has their own way of celebrating it. When I was younger it definitely involved a long night and lots of alcohol and other substances. As I grew older and out of that, it became a struggle to decide where to go and what to do, which was more often than not an anti-climax. I’m also not one for New Years resolutions but whether I like it or not I always end up analyzing and evaluating the past year. My pet hate though is the self or otherwise imposed pressure to have a good time and feel super elated when the bell for midnight goes. So now its a good meal, a glass of something strong, the company of my nearest and dearest and a showing of one of the most uplifting and life affirming movies I know.

Frank Capra’s Its a Wonderful Life, staring James Stewart is the story of a man who has come to the end of the line and is ready to kill himself. His time on earth seems to him to be one of missed opportunites and personal failure, until his appointed guardian angel, (who is out to earn his wings) replays his life, to show him how much poorer others lives would have been had he not been around. So if your still struggling for something to do or your stuck in on your own, grab your self a copy and fill a large glass with something strong and heart-warming and put yourself on the right foot for 2012.

sketch book project

I just added a new link to a very cool website/blog which is part of the Brooklyn Art library called, the sketchbook project. You can sign up to this and receive a sketchbook which is yours to fill in and send back. It is then put on display with all then other entries.  Not all the work is of the highest standard or skillfully executed, but it doesn’t matter, what is fascinating is the incredible diversity of the work on offer and how it offers a brief insight into a huge variety of different peoples lives. What a great idea and what an interesting archive for the future it will make.

Crisis, what crisis?

Nick Clegg on David Cameron’s decision to put Britains interests first……

‘Cameron’s made us a pygmy in the world’

‘There’s nothing bulldog about Britain hovering somewhere in the mid Atlantic, not standing tall in Europe, not being taken seriously in Washington.’ warning that the UK, ‘ was retreating further to the margins’ of Europe.

The world is full of interesting people and things…

Here are some lovely new blogs for your perusal…..Well, not really new, but new to me!

Everydayaperture…I would like this blog even if the photos in it weren’t already fascinating and just because of the opening line in about which says; “When I have my camera with me, I notice the world is full of interesting people and things.  It makes me appreciate the world a little more instead of focusing on where I am supposed to be and when.” I guess we just have to stop and open our eyes sometimes.The second arestlesstransplant, is the photojournal of a guy who left his design job in New York, bought a VW van and set off on a visual journey of the U.S.A, with beautiful results…….and theburninghouse which asks simply, ‘what would you take with you if your house was burning down’ and which ends up being a collections of the things people find most precious in their lives. What would you take with you?