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…

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….

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.

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.

Autumn

What does autumn mean to you?

Woodsmoke, coffee, bonfires, apples, walnuts and roasting chestnuts. The smell of decaying leaves and unknown fungi, the rustling sound in the trees that was not there a week ago, dark earth, complex, textured colours, gold, green, red and yellow, cold dry air, a warm sun and a lack of birds.

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

Evolution of a blog

evolution of a blog

….so three months in and how am I doing? Well, when I started out I kind of half hoped I would be competing with the Satorialist for views by now, I’m not quite there yet! I have a steady, if small flow of visitors, about a thousand or so a month, which is not great but not quite disastrous either. I’m calculating in my experienced blogger mind this depends mainly on a couple of things. One; Content (both verbal and visual). And two; Exposure. With the content I’m reasonably happy, but I can definitely see where I can refine and improve it. (I’m open to suggestions!?). With regards to exposure, I’m not the facebook, twitter, et al kind of person, so I really have to rely on tag, web searches and exposing myself on other peoples blogs. Of course it would be nice to have a thousand clicks a day but I’ll be just as happy when I get the content and focus of the blog optimised. The rest I hope will follow in time. Till then……I shall endeavour to make it as pleasant as possible….

Marcelo Viquez

Marcelo Viquez  has been on my links since I started this blog and I really love his work, especially, like me, he doesn’t seem to be able to paint to well either. It doesn’t stop him from creating great art though. If you haven’t had a the chance to take a look yet I would urge you to do so. I honestly don’t know much about him except that he was born in Montevideo in Uruguay in 1971, which makes him a couple of years younger than me.

His paintings are exactly the type of ‘Art’ which I find my self questioning ‘is it art or not?’. Then think what the heck it works, it’s fresh, it makes me smile and it presents the world in a new light. I love his use of colour, his playfulness together with pathos and the fact he uses his dog as a muse and of course that through the clever use of imagery and symbolism he has been able to create art from sketching.

Artem Krepkiy

 

I absolutely love the work of  Artem Krepkiy who I found recently on the Behance network. He is a Ukranain, artist and illustrator based in Kiev, who seemsto be generating some interest at the moment. I am very impressed by anyone who can heighten pencil work to the level of art where there’s no hiding behind colour. His work is full of textural emotion, created with soft and scratchy lead work and contrasting dark and light tones of distorted otherworldly figures taken from the metro or streets of Kiev. His work is challenging me strongly to break open a box of soft lead, Faber Castells and let rip.