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Journal Page.
December 21st
Left the house in a rush this morning as I had my annual trip to see the lipid consultant at the hospital. Anyway, in the dash to get to the bus stop in time, I left my sketchbook at home. It's weird, but I feel very anxious without a sketchbook and pencil on me. Even though these days I probably write in them more than I draw in them. Years back, at Art College in Loughborough, I got slightly obsessed with drawing and recording people and places and things. I'd buy WH Smiths' autograph books and when I was really at the top of my game I was filling them at a rate of a book a week. I kind of wish I was still able to do that - sometimes I can go for weeks without doing any observational drawing at all [sitting here illustrating doesn't count] I notice such a difference in my work and my general level of inspiration when I've been doing a bit of sketching, even if it's just drawing people that I've spotted form the window of the bus on my way into Leeds. So I've been thinking about drawing, and remembering some of the stuff that we got taught on my foundation course - namely that drawing [from life] is 80% looking and 20% moving the pencil around on the paper, and that "you have to produce a lot of crap before you produce something worthwhile". Both very true in my experience.
On the desk today = ELT roughs for Paul @ Beehive...
December 20th
The kids' school's finished for christmas, but today was Sue's last day of term, so I took the day off and was left in charge for a big Lad's Day... and it's been great. Something I must try to do more often, I think... Anyway, we're pretty King-Kong-obsessed at the mo - see the lego action below...
The original 1933 Kong movie was on BBC2 yesterday afternoon - we watched it, and Eddie in particular loved it [much more than the 1976 one that was on channel 4 this afternoon. We agreed that that one was pretty rubbish, though we watched it to the end of course. Joe's verdict was that at least it was in colour. We couldn't find much else to admire in it though...]
Meantime, I've been meaning to post for a while about 'Framed' by Frank Cottrell Boyce. I read with Eddie every night - it's quite a special dad&son time, and we've read some pretty cool stuff together over the past few years. Sometimes he chooses books that I don't enjoy so much [eg 'Harry Potter', and to be honest, I'm finding 'The Magician's Nephew' a bit of a drag at the mo...] Sometimes however we hit on something that we both really love, and 'Framed' was one of those books - plenty of jokes and more serious stuff in there to ponder too as the plot unfolds... plus we had a great time hunting down the paintings that feature in the book on the National Gallery's website. Fantastic stuff, and we'd both recommend it very highly. Eddie's just finished reading Alan Snow's 'Here Be Monsters' too, and he really rates that...
December 13th
Things that I don't like drawing much [part one]...
1. violins [see also cellos, violas etc]
2. cats [I did a job in the summer that involved me drawing many cats. The roughs all came back with the perfectly reasonable request to make them "look less like dogs"]
3. schools [how do you make a building look like a school without writing the word 'school' on a big sign stuck on the side of it?]
4. cars
Things that I like drawing [part one]...
1. animals
2. people
3. guitars
4. little comics
On the desk today = Roughs for six ELT illustrations from Paul @ Beehive
December 12th
Got up late this morning, so everything was a bit of a rush. Getting dressed Sue stands in front of the open wardrobe thoughtfully assessing what will work with what and mentally picturing her outfit for the day. I make my choice by picking clothes up off the floor and sniffing them.
Anyway. I have this annual ritual - on the first of December I dig out all the Christmas music in our [ie my] cd collection and bung it onto iTunes to get me into the festive spirit. There's a couple of hour's-worth on there this year. [No Slade or Cliff, obviously] Perennial favourites include Eels' 'Everything's Gonna Be Cool This Christmas' ["Baby Jesus - Born to Rock!"] and the Cocteau twins doing 'Winter Wonderland' & 'Frosty the Snowman'. Though of course the best festive records ever are 'Fairytale of New York' and Low's 'Christmas' album.
 [Every home should have one. I'm listening to it quite a lot at the mo...]
On the desk today = a christmas card [though i've probably left it too late to get it printed for this year ...]
December 9th
One of the reasons that we moved here to Leeds [up from leafy Oxfordshire, back in the Spring of 2004] was to be closer to 'happening' stuff - theatre, music, cinema, art, culture. But to be honest, we haven't always made the most of the things going on around us here. So it was good to get out to a gig last nite - Stars, supported by My Latest Novel, at the Cockpit. It's a neat venue and Stars were good. 'Reunion' and 'Ageless Beauty' are fantastic tunes, and last night 'Your Ex-Lover is Dead' was the stand-out moment for me...
And My Latest Novel were really good. Some achingly lovely moments, plus some top Proclaimers-style shouty bits. I'm a sucker for any song with somone speaking in lilting scottish tones over the top [see also Belle and Sebastian, Ballboy etc] so when their opening tune ended with just such a short spoken bit, I was well and truly hooked. Really enjoyed just being out with John and Liz and Ed and Lisa too... top company.
This morning Sue and I went to see Joe [cast against type?] as the Angel Gabriel in his school nativity. He'd warned Sue that his "costume is really good, but I might look a bit like a girl". It was and he did. But it was pretty special, as these things tend to be when your own kids are involved...
On the desk today = roughs for a book cover for BRF [see the snippet below]...
December 5th
I spent 6 hours in church yesterday. I'm not saying this to make you feel spiritually inferior, [although if you did, that'd cheer me up a lot, obviously ;-) ] - it was the revive walk-through advent calendar @ St Matt's in Burley, and jolly good it was too. Nice food, good company, adults and kids, and an inspiring spread of worshipful stuff across the 24 stations that we had set up there.
The things that stuck with me most - Ian's angel, the smell of Liz's myrrh handcream, Yoni's stable, and the fact that the distance that Joseph and Mary travelled to get to Bethlehem was roughly equivalent to the distance between where we are up here in Leeds and my hometown of Leicester...
As soon as I get my act together [and the photo's from Lisa!] the stations will start appearing here... sanctus blog
Good to meet anne from WYSOCS there too...
On the desk today = a significant cartoon strip for 'The Fox' fanzine...
November 30th
Some random stuff...
It was our joe's fifth birthday at the weekend. Over the past few months he's got well into football. Those of you who know me well will not believe this, but his new-found obsession with the beautiful game has very little to do with me. Honest. I think it's something that he's picked up from school. Anyway, when we asked him what he wanted for his birthday he said that he'd like a Leicester City kit. Those of you who know me well will not believe this, but that particular decision had very little to do with me. Honest. Anyhow, my brother was dutifully despatched down to the club shop at the walker's stadium to buy said item, and Joe is now the proud owner of his very own Leicester kit, with 'JOE 5" emblazoned across the back. Seeing him wearing it is actually quite emotional - memories of my first city kit [an old Admiral one circa 1978 with two bands around the socks and the weird-yet-fantastic epilette-thingies...] I can't help but feel that we've now condemned him to a life of sporting misery and disappointment, but at least he's not taken the easy option and gone for Man Utd...
I'm listening to a lot of Dexy's at the moment. Great stuff. And i finally took the plunge and signed up to the iTunes music store. i may well be bankrupt by the end of the year. Having bought my fill of Arctic Monkeys, I set about filling some of the blanks in my back-catalogue by purchasing the Mighy Wah!'s 'Story of the Blues [parts 1 and 2]' It's better than I remembered it, and there's a brilliant line in the spoken second part about love being subversive...
Work has gone a bit mental again. The plan was to have a very lite December, work-wise, catch up on some admin, do some work on personal projects that have been on the back-burner for a while, and give the family a bit more time. Somehow, that's looking very unlikely. Can't grumble about having work to do - rather this than to be scrabbling around for jobs and money [as I was for a few months last year...] but I wish that I could find a better work-life balance somehow. Ah well, back to the drawing board...
ps ...this weekend it's Revive's 'walk-through advent calendar' too [Sunday 5-8pm @ St Matt's in Burley, if you're in the area]
November 24th
More stuff to flog. One day, I'll get a 'shop' page on here, and anything that I'm trying to sell you can go in there. In the meantime though, this page'll have to do.
'40' is a cd-rom [pc-only - sorry mac-users!] of a visual thing that i put together for projection during a Revive service at the 2004 Greenbelt festival. It was inspired by a project that the artist Stanley Spencer began but never completed - to create a series of 40 paintings of Christ in the wilderness [one painting for each day of Lent]
I've been really pleased with the response to '40' - it's been used in prayer rooms and worship services in Canada and the States [and Wakefield] and was up on the mayBe website as a Lentern resource for a while too. You may have seen it there. Anyhow, you can get ahold of a copy by sending me a cheque for 5.50 [GBP] payable to 'Revive Baptist Church' [the address is on the 'links' page...]
And here's a sample pic to whet your appetite [there's another one on the gallery page too...]
November 23rd
Theology for beginners. Our youngest, Joe [5th birthday fast approaching] asks us 'Why did God make me naughty?' Cue our rather garbled attempt to shed some light on the issue, which included stuff about love, free will, robots, and saying sorry. [Not sure if we left him any the wiser, but he liked the bit about the robots...]
November 18th
Porpoise is a comic that i co-edit with our good mate Esther. It's a little labour of love. And today i went down to see Simon at Smallprint in Chapel Allerton and to pick up 500 copies of issue two. It looks great, thanks in no small part to Brent's cover design. If you want a copy [and why wouldn't you?] send me just one pound and fifty new pence, plus a stamp, and i'll bung one back to you by return of post [sellotape coins between bits of cardboard to ensure their safe arrival - the address is over on the links page!...]
November 15th
After the runaway success of yesterday's posting, here's my first stab at posting something up all by myself [web-guru mr. E put yesterday's missive in place]
Last year, when work was a bit slow, I started drawing up a series of little mini-comics about a melancholic tower-block-dwelling Cliff-Richard-loving record-shop-owning dalek called Steve. I got most of the way through the finished version of episode one [with issues two and three also planned and ready to go] when the BBC resurrected Dr Who - with those new souped-up daleks - and suddenly the comics didn't seem quite right anymore.
Anyway. Here's a page from the almost-finished first episode. Maybe it's something that i'll come back to one day...
November 14th
Here at last - and only a couple of years after I took possession of this vacant webspace -is my website. Hurrah!
Big thanks must go to Simon Emery [simon.emery@virgin.net] of Aqua Design for putting the whole caboodle together and for persevering in the face of my repeated tweakings and wilful ignorance of anything remotely techncal.
So, anyway, welcome.
To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what this journal page will be used for, or who will be reading it. Maybe just me. But it'll be nice to have an archive of stuff to look back on.
Whatever happens I'll post up roughs and bits of illustration that I'm working on, plus random thoughts about any stuff that's going on. And we'll see how it goes.
Cheers for now,
Si
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