Idling...

Yesterday I decided to take a day off.
Now cos I can't totally leave work alone, I went first thing and put the finishing touches to a 'Pin the Tail on The Discosaur' ready for use in the zoo's Dino Party Room this weekend..it's proper daft (more on this when I have some snaps), and it didn't really feel like work.

The rest of my day revolved around buying and trying out watercolour pencils (finished work good/ location sketching bad) whilst drinking coffee, then falling asleep under a tree, then doing some walking and sketching

Due to recent storms there are still a lot of branches lying about.  By far the most interesting at a glance  is a huge branch from a willow tree, which twists and curls like smoke - I've been meaning to draw it for ages.  Not sure this is a spectator sport, but what the hey - I thoroughly enjoyed myself doing these!

My local park has some lovely trees in it, so I plan to do some more sketching there, although the next chance I get I may have to do some work overcoming my greatest artistic bete noire - the horse.

A Little Bit Bunny

A while back now I joined an ace blog called "A Little Bit Bunny": it's pretty simple ... each month a different animal is picked and the illustrators involved submit a picture to do with that animal. I have been meaning to add something to the site forever.... I think I got round to it before the road to hell was fully paved!  Here's one of 'em - for the other you'll need to Bunny it up!

More dinosaurs!

These (and the recent maracca shaking Steg) are from a raft of pics I did for Bristol Zoo's kids party room..an extra fun zoo job as it allowed the pictures to be as bold and silly as I liked (no-one could complain that the partying dinosaurs aren't 'accurate'!!).  Suggested names to the usual place.  Please note that i have already dibbsed 'Discostuosaurus'.

Talking of the middle ages..

Sorry folks, if you'd read the last post that was almost a link...

I am dead excited.
I have feathers (...it is handy working in a zoo).
I have oak apples (procured from the one oak tree i could find in my local park...much undignified jumping to reach high branches...it wasn't pretty).

Now what in blue blazes do I want with those?

  

Well dear reader, inspired by trips to Durham, talk of the Lindisfarne Gospels, and my trip to see Leo (Da Vinci, not Sayer), I have decided to go old school; making my own 'iron gall' ink, and then making my own quill pens (properly this time!!) to draw with.

I now need a few extra ingredients for the ink, such as iron sulphate (I'll let you know if I get arrested asking for this at the chemist), gum arabic (which I must be able to distill from a packet of Wrigleys), and tincture of myrrh.  I will be calling for a lot of assistance I think on my mum and dad, who are medical herbalists, but also know a thing or two about making plant dyes etc, and found me the recipe for the ink...check the Herbarium - it is a mine of information for anyone with even a passing interest in herbal medicine and the use of plants.

Not only do I get to nerd out over pens and ruin at least one of the kitchen pans, but it's made me come over all botanical too.  The only time I'd really seen oak apples was in autumn...hard brown dusty things with an exit hole or two in the side.  These ones I are kinda squashy.  And then I found some that had no case and were all fuzzy...were they the same thing?

Now I know that oak apples are formed as the result if an insect making its home on the tree and then the 'apple' is formed around it, but I don't know if the apple is formed by the insect or the tree.  And what kind of insect  lives inside?  Hard to say at the mo, but there were lots of eggs...although when I cut this one open I did have one little grubby thing waving back at me.  And it's fairly clear that the apple and the fuzz are one and the same....

I will let you know how my research goes, whether I win any prizes for it, and what the bill for clearing any subsequent infestations of my house comes to...

That it should come to this...

Here's me at my kids' school fete, sticking my head through one of my own creations (..and how many people can say that?).
I am dazed from standing in the sun for 3 hours manning a badge making stall, and am slightly worried I am going to be on the receiving end of another volley of wet sponges.  Welcome to middle age Mr Church!

All joking aside, a very good day was had! Oh and keep looking over your shoulders sponge throwers...

Redressing the balance

It occurs to me that being as I work as a children's illustrator, this blog is often maybe a tad:
a) monochrome
b) not of children's illustration
c) too wordy

Here is a picture of a dinosaur playing maraccas.

Life drawing at The Tobacco Factory

As any fool knows, if you are to draw cartoon lions with any degree of competence, it is essential that you first develop a decent understanding of the human form..namely by going to lifedrawing sessions.

Now for the record I had got a bit bored of lifedrawing.  Poses seemed to be the same wherever I went (Hand on hip...check.  Hands on head...check.  Sat on floor with head on knee....and so on) and they didn't seem to relate to things people actually do (eg interact with the world around them).  So I was a tad sceptical when I first went to the Tobacco Factory to do their class...but hats off - it's ace!!

Michelle Cioccoloni who organises it actually seems to think about what she gets the models to do and why - she brings in ref pictures to give people inspiration;  the models often lean on things, pull ropes etc to show muscle tension and balance, and wear clothes or are draped in fabric so you can see how material hangs/folds.

I've included a couple of pictures from Monday's session...I have chosen the ones least likely to make your granny blush!

In a devil of a pickle (or maybe a jam..)

This weekend was ace on a number of fronts. Friday night me, my lovely other half Mel and our good friend Lou Archell put up a bunch of our stuff for exhibition at The Bed Workshop in Bedminster as part of the SouthBank Arts Trail  (it's a bit of a link frenzy this isn't it...sorry, it's going to get worse).
I'd like to particularly thank Mel, as she got me to do this when there was a large cloud of 'not sure I can be bothered' looming on the horizon.  In the end I put up pretty much every passable King Lear sketch I had and was well chuffed with the results.

Now I don't have many pictures of the exhibition without these guys in front, but that's okay as they were the main reason the weekend was ace.

At 3 oclock on Sunday, slightly befuddled from attending a wedding the previous day (another good weekend factor!) I and about a hundred other people crammed into the shop to see 'The Blatant Creation of Art' featuring The Bristol Ukulele Club doing 'Four Posters and a Pickle'.

Now this was a rock opera about the devil's efforts to scupper the burgeoning romance between a jam maker and a pickle maker (and also nipping the pickle makers nascent carpentry career in the bud by means of hellfire).

Why?  Well it's loosely linked to the fact that the Bed Workshop used to be a pickle factory..and who knows there may be some other historical basis for it...but for now I don't care!

Hands down the best thing I've seen in ages... funny, well acted, funny, well sung/played, completely unexpected and funny....I'm pretty sure it was all done for the love too.  And for one who's trying to get a handle on rhyming and storytelling, it was properly inspirational....

...my kids have been giving it 'P to the I to the C to the K to the L-E-S to the J-A-M' ever since.

There was someone videoing the whole thing so I'm hoping they'll put it up on their blog or somewhere.  Here's the link just in case.. http://blatantbs3.blogspot.co.uk/

I bloody love Bristol sometimes.

Sam goes medieval!

Three things have happened recently which lead me to today's slice of pen nerdery!

Thing the 1st - I went to see the Leonardo Da Vinci exhibition at Bristol Museum, and it rocked my tiny world.  How did he get those amazingly subtle marks with a dip pen?  Got me wondering about old drawing techniques....

2nd - I went up to Durham, and spoke to Dr Keith Bartlett, who is very knowledgable about such things, not least because he is an expert on the Lindisfarne Gospels.  I subsequently read up a bit on the Lindisfarne Gospels...awesome is an overused word but if it applies...

3rd - I found what I think is a buzzard feather on my way to work.  I also own a penknife, so with a little help from my son's Horrible Histories book I had a go at making a quill pen.  

Me and the kids quickly set to a bit of scribbling.  Please note the sunlit photo and the brightly coloured vase of flowers...I am getting better at this blog lark.

Now let's get a few things straight..this was something of a bodge...if I remember my chat with Dr Bartlett right,  I should have left the feather to mature for about a year, rather than 2 days.  I also should really be using the 1st or second wingtip feather from the right hand...or maybe left hand.. wing of a goose (being as I'm right handed).  You will see that as it was the pen was more than a tad awkward to hold.

Then I had a go at the Leonardo bit...how did he achieve those amazingly subtle lines?  The answer is that, well...he was quite good.  But also drawing with a quill is a massively different proposition to using a metal dip pen.  See the scribbles below, which were all done with the same quill - you get a much softer line, and can go from very thin to very thick in one stroke without gouging a hole in the paper.

It's a joy to draw with...and all adds to my nagging and well documented feeling of having been born in the wrong century.  Now where's my calligraphy book?

Durham!

Last year I was lucky enough to be asked to do a kid's guide book for the World Heritage Site of the lovely city of Durham.  I kinda fell in love with the place...hopefully the pics below give an idea why...

 Even luckier, they keep asking me back!  The most recent trip was a couple of weekends back, when I was asked to muck in with the WHS Visitor Centre team for a weekend of family workshops.   I worked with the kids (and parents and staff!) making illuminated letters, mythical beasts and most popular of all ....BADGES!

I bought a badgemaking machine, which turned out to be a very shrewd investment ... people could do their own designs, get me to draw something for them or do their initials in swanky medieval calligraphy (all with optional gold detailing as I had gold leaf too...).  As you can imagine that was me pretty much taken care of for the weekend!  Look at the photo above...not even P Diddy can boast of gold dandruff.

As you can see, in addition to drawing I also got to indulge my twin passions for looking gormless and wearing tudor hats..below you will see me just about managing to make said hat levitate..

Also, much to my amazement people starting asking me to sign their guidebooks....finally my moment in the sun!!  I would like to say a massive thankyou to all at Durham World Heritage Site Visitor Centre (staff and visitors) for a cracking weekend, and for making me feel so welcome...again!

A slight return..

Nearly forgot..on Tuesday last week I got asked back to Ashton Gate by my son's teacher to do a picture of Zeus for a display in the classroom (Greek Myths and Legends being their term project).   All in all a fun way to spend a lunchbreak!  Thanks son for filling me in on what Zeus looks like, could have been messy otherwise...

Sam's first writing effort gets mixed response from its characters..

Yep, after much hinting that it was coming out soon, the story wot I wrote (and illustrated)  for Driver Dan's Story Train did indeed air today (it's about 6 mins in).  Haven't got the kids' verdict yet as they were in bed by the time it I-playered, but I think I got away with it.  It's a daft story about a lion that rocks up uninvited for lunch and then won't eat anything he's given.

There is of course also some dancing...

And cos it's StoryTrain, more dancing at the end of story party!

Yay for the Driver, and thanks to all at StoryTrain for giving my story a whirl!  

Brillustration and Ashton Gate do book week

Dammit I've been itching to tell you about this for ages, but time has been against me (so many cartoon lemurs to draw!) and photos have been like hens teeth (massive thankyou to everyone that had the presence of mind to take a camera and let me use your photos!) .  A couple of weeks back I organised for a bunch of my Brillustration chums and me to descend on Ashton Gate Primary School in Bristol to help them celebrate book week.  

I've posted about it at length on the Brillustration site (and will do again as more pics come in) so I won't  go on about it too much here, but suffice to say there was a bit of this...

 ...a bit of this (I'm nothing if not a paper nerd...I also have thumbs to be proud of)..

a fair bit of this..

And a lot of this!

 It was mad week, but an incredibly enjoyable one.  The good folks at Ashton Gate are probably getting bored of me telling them how great they are, but I'll say it again...you're ace!  Of course I should also gently remind the kids not to get too good with the drawing...some of us have a living to make you know.....

Opening Night

On Friday night I went to the opening night of King Lear at the Tobacco Factory Theatre which was ace.  It was great seeing all my favourite bits from rehearsals played out in front of a packed house, and also seeing some of the subtle nuances I may have missed whilst trying to get people's noses right...

I also got a copy of the program pressed into my mits, which was great because it was the first time I'd seen the artwork I did for the centrespread, well, in the centrespread.  Artwork always looks better when it's shiny!  Luckily I think most of the cast like it (leastways no-one has seemed mortally offended by any bad likenesses.

And that dear friends is it for my Lear mission, at least with regards to sketching it, which is a little sad, as it's probably been one of the happiest drawing experiences I've ever had...and I'd like to say a massive thankyou to all the cast and crew for being so nice to me and letting me sit in in the first place.

Where next?  Well, I hope to sketch some of the rehearsals for their next production, Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, which start in a couple of weeks, although I've got a fair few cartoon animals to draw over the coming months.  I also hope to figure out a decent way to exhibit some of my King Lear work..whether that'll just be the sketches or some extra work inspired by them I'm not sure...I'll keep you posted!  One thing is for sure though is that I am now well and truly hooked on this kind of sketching, so I'll be lloking to do more one way or another..

Dress rehearsals!

Saw the cast in their costumes for the first time on Monday.  They looked amazing, but it did make me chuckle to start off with - having seen everyone rehearsing in the civvies for most of the month it felt a little like seeing all your workmates in fancy dress (hold that image if you work in an office).

The last couple of days have been 'tech rehearsals', so there's been (mercifully for me) a bit of hanging round whilst lights, sound, angle of approach for a quick dispatching, etc are got right.  But there's still a lot of movement on stage, so I just get down what I can before they move on.   I would also like to say in my defence that it was dark where I was sat...

This one below I'm particularly pleased with - I've been trying and failing to draw Jack Whitam (Edmund) for ages, and this is the only time I think I've come even close.  There are a few other members of cast and crew who, through no fault of theirs, I can't draw for toffee.  You may know who you are, in which case sorry, and I will try to remedy the situation asap!

Today's scenes were all of the 'blimey it's all going off' variety.  Whilst they've stopped a long way short of having to issue a 'first two rows will get wet' warning, and it's all tastefully done,  I'd recommend perhaps just having a light salad as your meal before the play.  Needless to say it makes for cracking  theatre, but poor old Gloucester!