Link: previous journals - Nov-Dec '05

Journal Page.

March2nd. Lino

Not much time to post - Sue's been away overnight on a conference leaving me in charge (she's due back in the next couple of hours and we are all still alive and unharmed, the house is still intact but in need of a tidy-up...) and work's been a bit busy. However, here's a couple more lino cuts - the upper one is a reworked version of an earlier scene (Jesus being tried by the Sanhedrin).

And here's a test print of the very first one that I did a couple of weeks back... My dad has a little hand-press thingy and all the stuff required for printing, so he's done a few of these for me, just to try them out. A few little amendments are required, I think, but overall I'm really pleased with how it's come out... Cheers dad!

February23rd. Grace

It's been a weird week - not much work on the desk, and yet the resultant lack of urgency has meant that I've not really got on with any of the other stuff that I've had to do either... I've just faffed about in a rather aimless and general sort of a way. Ah well, things ramp back up again next week, and I can return to moaning about my workload again...!

I have been working on these lino cuts, though...

Also this week: a mate of mine got flamed on a blog, quite unfairly IMHO. She was accused of being a whole load of things that she quite patently isn't. Of course, my instinct was to leap in to her defence and start firing counter-accusations back, but given that she wanted it just left to die down, I didn't. Here's the thing though - how to respond with grace... I remember reading on jordon cooper's blog one time about how grace sucks. We somehow have this idea that if you respond with grace then the payoff will be that your advesrsary is moved to be graceful in return, but it doesn't work like that. Often, your attempts will get thrown back in your face... So (as jordon concluded) grace sucks, but I guess that we are still called to exercise it anyway...

February21st. The Other woman in my life

I'm very excited. All next week Clare Grogan is presenting the 1-4pm show on 6music. I will be in heaven.

February16th. Soul man

There's a bit of a pattern developing here - a few nights away last weekend (at my brother's, at Sue's brother's and then at Jim and Beth's) and once again my back's gone. The thing is that I can't even blame sofa beds this time, as each night we were treated to a proper bed... Maybe it's Princess-and-the-pea syndrome - the luxury of our memory-foam matress has left me super-sensitive to anything less...

Meantime I have been listening to Kevin Rowland on 6Music ('listen again' on the bbc radio player is a wonderful thing...) He's filling in this week for Marc Riley and you'd have to say that he's not a natural radio presenter, but what's great about the show is firstly his choice of music (especially if you like proper soul music) and secondly his enthusiasm. He's almost embarrasingly sincere, he sings (loudly, and rather splendidly) over the end of the songs - surely a real radio presenter no-no - but his absolute belief in the power of music is infectious... I guess that's what made Dexy's such a great soul band... you gotta love the man - he's a national treasure. Treat yourself and go listen.

In a spare monent, whilst waiting for comments back on a couple of sets of roughs, I had some time free to start work on a little personal project that I've been thinking about for a while now - basically it's my stations of the cross images re-worked as lino cuts... My desk is now covered with little lino-chippings, but I love the smell that you get when you cut into the stuff - there's something very evocative about it. Maybe it's connected to memories of art college (the best bits of my degree course at Maidstone were the printmaking projects)... Anyhow, here's the first block, cut and ready for a test printing...

February5th. a brief update...

Firstly, apologies if you've emailed me lately and haven't got much of a response - I've been having some server problems and it seems that some messages have gone AWOL - if you've sent something important with no reply please give us a ring or just resend it and I'll get onto it straight away...

Secondly, sorry once again for the sparseness [sparcity?] of posts on here recently - it's all been a bit mad on the work front for the last couple of weeks, but now a sense of calm has returned, probably to be closely followed by a sense of panic about not having enough to keep me gainfully occupied...

Just to fill you in on stuff that's happened since my last post... I paid my tax bill. It's a weird feeling. Even after a dozen years of self-employment, I've still never got my head around the idea that not all of the money that comes in to the business is mine. Maybe it comes from having once enjoyed the glorious luxury of PAYE - ignorance is bliss and when your tax is gone before you've even seen it you don't miss it. At least I never did. And this year, my tax bill was - by my standards - pretty huge. This is a bittersweet thing - on the one hand, it's a bit gutting to see that much cash disappearing from my account, but on the other hand, it's only such a significant amount because last year was a very good one, work-wise.

Despite the pain of handing that cheque across the post office counter though, I actually don't mind paying tax. I hate the myth - endorsed by politicians on all sides now - that we can pay less tax and still enjoy better public services. I was reading the other day about an American breast cancer patient whose treatment cost her the best part of two hundred thousand dollars. The writer of the piece was contrasting that with the very similar treatment that she received free on the NHS over here. Hurrah for tax, I say.

One of the other things that I've done since my last post is to make my annual journey down to Jimmy's for my annual Lipid clinic consulatation. The upshot of my visit was a fairly serious warning that if i don't cut down my food intake, exercise more [an hour to ninety minutes a day?!] and basically lose weight, then diabetes might be on the cards. And that's a very unpleasant and rather sobering thought. So i've cut right down on the eating. Now I just need to get the exercise bike back from Ed...

The building work is going well again. There are roof beams in place now, and you can stand in there and get a much clearer sense of what it might be like when it's all done. Can't wait...

Just to break up the text, here are some things that've been on the desk of late...

That last one is a frame from the 'Forty Something' strip that I've been drawing up for the Fox for a long time now. The episode that I've just finished work on will be the final one, as the fanzine is being retired this season. It's quite sad, actually - it feels like I'm saying a final goodbye to a close friend...

January 16th. This year...

Last nite was our monastic meal and it was good to catch up post-christmas. James suggested that we each shared some hopes and aims for the new year, which we will then look to remind and encourage each other about during the rest of the year. I'll let you in on ours... for a while now, Sue's been thinking , on and off, about educational psychology. There are some obstacles to that at present, mostly financial ones, as she's the major breadwinner and taking the necessary qualifications would involve a serious drop in salary. But this is the year for exploring the possibilities, and for her to think about her work in terms of a career, which hasn't really happened since the onset of parenthood! For my part I need to get a bit fitter for a start. I have a familial cholesterol problem which is kept under control with some medication and a low-fat diet (ahem), but I need to exercise much more than I do at the moment. So the exercise bike will have to be factored into my daily routine somehow...

Also, I've been banging on for ages about the need to get more balance into my life; a better balance between work and rest, between time spent at the desk and time spent with Sue and the kids...

I guess that the new year is a good time to pause and take stock - 2007 will be my twelfth year freelancing as an illustrator. I read somewhere that most illustrators give up and get a proper job within five years of starting up, so I'm doing well - I'm very fortunate to be able to make a living doing this, and that's something that I often lose sight of. I've always had a slightly curmudgeonly attitude to work - you're not actually supposed to enjoy it, right?! The grass is always greener and all that. But I should spend more time being thankful for where I am and what I do and the freedoms that it allows me... And then having said that, one of the other balances that I'd like to achieve in the year ahead is to work more space into my schedules for more personal, experimental, arty stuff. There's an interesting discussion going one over here on jonny baker's blog about the idea of art as gift. That's something that I'd like to explore this year. Tied in with all of this is a need to get more balance between time spent on my own, time spent with the family and time spent with others - I can end up living quite a solitary existence, especially during busy periods of work, and I need to be, as Sue delicately puts it, "less of an anti-social git". I'd like to get involved in the local community somehow, but it remains to be seen how...

Anyhow. Hold me to these almost-resolutions, feel free to challenge me about 'em during the year... Meanwhile - and just to prove that I have been quite busy recently - here's some stuff that I've been working on of late (including more 'Stations' stuff...)

January 15th. Happy New Year!

As predicted, postings have been a bit sparse again... the usual excuses apply - work's been busy etc etc...

Anyway. Christmas was good for us. Every year we talk about trying to ease back on the festive excesses, and each year we do a little better in that regard. Yuletide highlights included a visit to the Yorkshire Playhouse to see Flat Stanley, the endlessly enjoyable hours we wasted playing 'Loopin' Louie', celebrity spotting at the Armouries ("Norman Hunter!") and the very fine William Blake book that Sue bought me. I also got a Fawlty Towers dvd which is rather marvellous (and which the boys are very much enjoying too... they now take great delight in telling me that they "know-a nurthing" when I ask them anything... hilarious)

Obviously you (ie Ian B) will be wanting to know what we made of the Doctor Who Special... well it was good, but not as great as last year's extravaganza - a bit too self-contained really with just four characters and no real back-story or connection to any wider storylines or anything, plus we had to watch it in a room full of polite but reluctantly-silenced non-believers (the in-laws)... The 'This Life' 10-years-on update was a bit of a disappointment - some nice moments, but overall a bit underwritten and contrived... But Sue and I loved the 'Green Wing' finale - genius. Funny and outrageous and weirdly moving at the end...

And so it's back to work. The building work is progressing, but slowly, and I have just finished the 'Stations of the Cross' images for the Church Leadership website. Here's a taster...

...when they're all available online I'll post a link (though to get them all I think that you will have to subscribe to the site) Hopefully I'll have time to post up some more images over the next few days too. Anyhow, gotta go - it's oour first monastic mealtime of 2007 tonite...

ps ...apologies if you've emailed me lately and I've not got back to you - my ISP is doing some weird maintainence stuff at the mo and I can only access my emails via the web. If the wind's in the right direction. And there's an 'R' in the month... normal service may well be resumed at some point, but until then, please bear with me...!

December 24th. Happy Christmas!

Apologies if you didn't get a card from us - I left it a bit too late (as usual) and so not all of them got posted in time. Sorry. Here's a downloadable one that you can print off - it's got a magi on it, so you can cross out the word 'Christmas' and crayon 'epihany' over the top and it'll still be relevant in a couple of weeks' time... Have a good one!

December 15th. Golden Lights

I really like where we live. At the end of our road, it dips quite suddenly, taking you down into the Brackenwoods, and beyond that into the Gledhow valley. Everything seems to widen and open up at that end of the street - if you take the time you can gaze right over to where the valley climbs back up into Chapel A and the church tower pokes up amongst the trees. If you wander down past our house, you can look to your left and see right out across the city (Leeds sits in a valley on the river Aire) and up onto the open hills on the other side.

There's an open patch of common ground at the end of our garden, and when we bought this house, Jenny (the previous owner) told me that on a clear night you can look out of the back bedroom window and see the lights of Huddersfield. We have always laughed about that, but there are no leaves on the trees to obstruct the view now; there's something magical about staring right out across the city and beyond... Where I grew up in Leicester, I could hear the faint rumble of traffic on the M1 from my bedroom and there's something comforting for me in that feeling of being close to where stuff is going on. (Within a week of us moving up here to Leeds there was a disturbance outside the house we were renting with a police helicopter and two squad cars and a suspect vehicle pulled over, and I loved it!) I like that feeling that we're in the midst of things...

Meanwhile, at the other end of the road there's the boys' school and a playground, and shops - a good little post office/corner shop and a fantastic pharmacy where they seemingly know all their customers by name and have time for everyone. (There's a tanning salon too, but I've never seen anyone going in or coming out of that...)

December 14th. Bad Day at the Office...

I had a bad day yesterday.

Work's been going a bit slow, and I'm determined not to start working evenings (I got into a bit of a rut doing that a while ago and it's not good for family life) so I had to pull out of a long-planned trip to the turkish baths. I really could've done with going too.

Anyhow, I stayed put and did one of these 'stations of the cross' pics instead. And at the end of the day when I sat back to look at it, it was absolute bobbins... Here it is in all it's not-very-good-ness.

It actually started off ok, but as I was working on it, I gradually tweaked the composition and shifted stuff around, and in the end it just doesn't work. And the colours are all wrong. Sometimes work's like this - you can get so caught up with the details [especially on the computer where you can zoom in and in and in...] you quite literally lose sight of the bigger picture. I've quoted my old tutor from Loughborough before on here, and it's still true - you have to produce a lot of crap before you do something good.

So today I'm re-doing it, this time with a totally re-vamped composition, and the colours are better too i think. Here's what I've done on it so far...

December 11th. Party Fears Two

I survived! Actually the festive footballers party turned out to be a remarkably civilized evening - no arguments, no alcohol-fuelled somnambulism [a couple of years back at the christmas do someone apparently fell asleep face down in his curry] Three games of ten pin bowling saw our team emerge triumphant despite the opposition fielding a couple of non-drinkers. I only consumed a couple of rather fizzy yellow lagers so my aim remained true-ish. I scored 130-124-126, and so I was quite happy with my contributions. And a curry at the Sheesh Mahal on the Kirkstall Road is always a pleasant experience. Got in about 1.30, knackered but content... A top night out!

Work-wise, things feel a bit odd at the mo, as I'm working on a series of 14 'stations of the cross' illustrations for CPAS [they'll be offering them as a download to subscribers to their Church Leadership resource thingy sometime in the new year] It's kind of weird to be doing Easter stuff during Advent! Think that it's going well though... here's a snippet from one of the almost-finished pieces...

Meantime, I suppose that i ought to get with the spirit of the season and cash in on the rampant commercialism of Christmas - I have some things to sell! These include about a hundred copies of 'Stumpy Stomps Off' [only 5.50 GBP inc postage], and a whole load of last year's 'Illustrator's Support Group' Christmas cards, which you can have for free [I'll only charge you for the postage - send us 3 first class stamps] To get hold of either of these very desirable things, just email me you requirements and your address, and i'll post 'em off to you in time for Christmas - you can send me the cash when they arrive [how trusting am I?]

Also you can buy this book that I illustrated from Amazon and all this stuff for the discerning football supporter in your life.

Right then, that's the adverts over... back to work...

December 8th. Party Fears

Apologies again for my sparse postings of late... it's that time of year when everything gets busy with jobs that need finishing before we lose that week of work to the festivities of Christmas and New Year...

I've been feeling a bit down the past few days, and listening to Death Cab For Cutie a lot has aided and abetted my general mood of melancholia. 'Plans' is a superb album though, whatever your mood... Right now I'm steeling myself for a night out which will probably include bowling, drinking and generally trying hard not to collapse drunkenly and face-down in my curry - it's the Thursday-Night-Football Christmas Party (which I've successfully managed to avoid the past two years...!). I'll let you know how I get on if and when I've recovered...!

Last Saturday night Sue and I were out with some of the same footballing blokes [plus wives] for our annual self-employed person's office christmas do, and very nice it was too; although getting back in at ten to one in the morning has had some knock-on effects - we've both been knackered all week... I guess that we've long since reached the age where staying out late is advisable...

The walk-through advent thing last Sunday went well, I think. I'll post up some of Liz's pics next week if I get the chance... As usual, setting-up was rather fraught, and the beginning of the evening was a bit of a mess to be honest, but once it settled down, it worked well - a real mix of stations reflecting the variety of folk who contributed. And over seventy people through the hall during the evening too [some of our other events have been a lot worse-attended]

Meanwhile, on the desk recently...

November 27th. Advent

So last weekend was Joe's sixth birthday. He got a yellow Leicester away kit which has already been through the was twice, and a whole load of other cool stuff. He had a party on Sunday here at our house - the weather was great so we got out for a kickabout [4-2 to Joe's team] and it all went pretty well. He's very proud of his new status as a six-year-old. And in his kit he suddenly looks really quite grown up. Once again I'm left a little un-nerved by how quickly time seems to be flying by...

Now that the birthday celebrations are over, we can turn our gaze towards christmas... if you're in the area and have nothing better to do on sunday, this should be good...

[The font we've used on these flyers is called 'Shortcut' and it's designed by a guy called Eduardo Recife. You can download Shortcut and quite a few other really great typefaces from his website...]

It's about this time of year when I dig out the christmas music and stick it into iTunes to get me into the festive mood. No Slade or Jonah Lewie or Wizard, thankfully, but Low's christmas album is on there of course, and this cd, which has some brilliant stuff on it, plus some Spearmint and the Cocteau Twins covering Frosty the Snowman and Winter Wonderland... marvellous.

This year, I'd been planning to post some downloadable flatpak models as freebies on the site here - one for each day of advent... I think I may have mentioned it before - Ian b has been road-testing some of the designs, along with other good mates, and I've finished six or seven so far. But sadly, I'm just too busy to get the rest done, so the idea will just have to wait until Advent '07 now. Shame, but you have to take the work when it's offered, especially when you have a family and some builders to support...

However, if you want to see what you're missing, you can get a couple of the models by clicking here and here for an angel. And here and here for a prototype camel... happy modelling...!