Here are the rest of his mates!

Here's the final design for the back of the CD!

And the title as you see it is the actual title!

Honest!

Another apology

For crimes against typography. In the post below. There are some more horrors. And I can't be arsed to do anything about them; I know a hopeless cause when I see one ...

And this one's Morris ...

Two posts in two days - I must be getting bored!

This is just the first stage of an illustration to
'Folk Festival', and will appear on the reverse of the CD of which you have seen the front.

I ought to warn you that this morris dancer is just one of a team, and more will be arriving eventually. I'm not sure this is the CD to entice non-folkies to come to these events:

Folk Festival - everybody sing now - Folk Festival

Young man young man it's so cool to be nerdy

Young man young man get yourself a hurdy gurdy

Folk Festival a wop bopaloop Folk Festival

Young man young man you might lose all control

Young man young man take your own toilet roll

To the Folk Festival

(Donnelly 2006)

Select Bibliography:

Donnelly, K. YMCA/Folk Festival. Pub. Epson Stylus Color 760. 2006

Illustration Friday - Phoenix

This is actually an illustration to a poem by Les Barker. He claims that his house has just burnt down because he bought a homing phoenix!

Anyway, here's the little fella!

And a very merry post-Xmas period to you all ...

I'm pretty sure I had a good Christmas. The bits I can remember through an alcohol-induced haze (i.e. when I was in a fit state to drive) were pretty good. Just when it had got to the stage where I was fed up with waking up with a headache in the morning, I woke up to find I'd lost my voice! Then just felt so godawful that the only thing to do was go back to bed to hibernate for a couple of days, but now I'm recovered enough to be feeling lonely and bored, so I thought I'd share some of my Xmas presents with you:

The French maid's apron and feather duster are a present from my friend Kathie. She was getting her own back for the leopardskin patterned rubber gloves and dustpan and brush I gave her last year, and the do-it-yourself voodoo kit I gave her the year before that. Disappointingly enough, I gave her something relatively sensible this time.

The stockings came from another friend. I think she must have decided that, as someone of my advanced years and newly (ish) single, I must need some help! They may all be right ...

The roof is no longer leaking!

This isn't just because it isn't raining at the moment - though that always did make a difference - but because a bunch of roofy men have been stomping around on it for the last couple of days. They have been sawing and hammering and covering themselves in bitumen (makes a change from custard). It's a pain because I can't really go out and do anything while they're here, but nothing like as much of a pain as having a leaky roof.

I did used to wonder where the rain went, though. Some of it would come down into my studio to say 'hello', but certainly not all of it; I can only hope that it was soaked up by the thick layer of moss and small plants which used to grow on the roof, and that it hasn't collected somewhere else in one of those mysterious little spaces that old houses have, only to cause havoc somewhere else.

The cistern was leaking this morning, but that's much more easily dealt with.

I once mentioned to my next door neighbour that it felt like I lived in a house which was permanently under construction; he reckons that it's one of the pleasures of living in a cottage. Theirs is just the same!

Illustration Friday - HEEE-E-E-ELP!!!!

This is the utterance of the Matrioschka doll who has suddenly appeared in the middle of all this mayhem (but her name isn't Keith Donnelly).

This, believe it or not, is the B/W rough in response to a real live brief ... but I'll leave that to your imagination.

As well as the image, I'm in the process of designing some new typefaces - the one that appears on this is called 'Herbert' (in memoriam - see my post from September 14th), but it still needs a bit of tidying up (quite apart from all the distortion I've done in potatoshop).

I've got ideas for some others. Watch this space.

One year old today!!!

I've only just realised! This is the first anniversary of Puflet Palace!

And, wow, has my life changed in that year ...

Yet another collage based on my masking project - actually, I should really be going out, doing some Christmas shopping an' all that, and I will, really I will, but just for now...

I'm also working on a poster which I intend to show to some visitors from English Heritage who will be visiting the college on Monday - this will be a time for totally shameless self-promotion, extortion and heavy persuasion, I hope.

On a totally different tack, I heard an interesting radio discussion yesterday about how angels, spirits and other heavenly bodies in classical mythology, the Old Testament etc don't usually appear to mere mortals as THEMSELVES, but in the guise of ordinary people, animals etc. Now, I don't follow a creed as such, but I do think that there is a lot of psychological and spiritual truth in the teachings of many religions (or they wouldn't have lasted this long). But haven't you ever wondered about the way that sometimes, exactly the right person will come in to your life? Or a really chance happening or encounter, something quite minimal, acts as a pivotal point which changes your life?

An example for me would be, in the early 1990's, I needed to get a 'proper job' rather than being a freelancer (all to do with mortgages, buying out another person). One day I was waiting at a bus stop when it started to rain, so I went into the library which was close by, picked up the Times Educational Supplement (which wasn't a publication I would have ever thought of looking in for jobs), and found an advert for an art teacher at an independent school. I got the job - they were more interested in the fact that I was a professional artist than the lack of teaching qualification. 13 years in the teaching profession - 12 of those either as Head of Department or acting HOD (that's another story), and I'm about to be back in the freelance world.

But none of that would have happened if I'd got to the bus stop 30 seconds earlier, and not just missed a bus, or if it hadn't started to rain ...

Illustration Friday - Mask

Well - nothing on Illustration Friday for weeks, but at last ...

This collage is based on my thoughts around Venetian masks, and is part of a massive project I did a few years ago. On masks, worldwide masking practices, masks in religious ritual, levels of reality in masking practices ... and lots of artwork in both two and three dimensions.

I don't do as much mixed media work as I would like - all so wonderfully messy - but watch this space!

Some more serious historic illustration

Had a very productive day doing drawings and things related to Mitchell's Fold. Eyes were getting blurry
from the computer. Shoulders hurt. The roof was leaking again. I get a year older in the space of a week, next week.

So, to save myself from being totally suicidal, I produced this piece wot you can see to the left. I had to make the plum very large and quite roundish, otherwise, perched on the end of his thumb, it looked decidedly phallic. What worries me about today's kids is that they'd probably notice.

Anyway, you might have noticed that the little rhyme hasn't quite finished. You'll have to wait until the next instalment before you find out what happened. And it's not what usually happens.

Leaving you pondering this mystery ...

An apology ...

To anyone who has the faintest understanding of (typo) graphic design, for the post below about Mitchells Fold. Thing is, the preview function doesn't show you exactly what it's going to look like, and there are some real horrids in the layout. I've edited it three times to try and improve matters. That's how bad it was.

Mitchells Fold Stone Circle

This is where I went today, to get some photos cos for I'm thinking of redesigning the interpretation board up at Mitchells Fold for the next trick for my MA. Brilliant day, lovely location, and here are some of the things I encountered on the way.

This is a bit of the stone circle itself; in fact it's the largest stone. Most of them are little fellers like the other ones you can see. There's a wonderful legend attached to the place; apparently a fairy cow used to appear here at times of famine, and she would never run dry as long as nobody took more than one pail of milk. Then a wicked old witch, Mitchell, milked the cow into a sieve and drained her dry. The cow vanished, Mitchell was turned to stone, and the other stones crowded round her to make sure her spirit was trapped, and therefore couldn't go round draining people's beer glasses, MacDonalds milk shakes etc.

There is an alternative version, whereby the cow goes mad (does this remind you of anything?), and is slain as the Dun Cow by Guy of Warwick (himself a legendary figure). However, I don't think this version of the story is true - not like the first one - because the original cow was white. And a fairy. Apparently there's a relic of the Dun Cow, to show how ferocious its horns were. It's actually an elephant tusk.

On the way up to the circle I didn't meet any cows, but I did see some sheep.

Here are some of them. I quite like the way sheep turn their bottoms towards you and widdle. This one obviously couldn't decide whether to do the widdling activity, or to keep an eye on this strange person who was pointing a magic lantern box in their general direction. And ended up doing both.

In fact it was a very fruitful visit. I talked to several people about what they would like to see on the interpretation board, and what was important to them about sites like this. They had strong views and were very forthcoming. Which isn't surprising, considering the actual board, which is depicted below. One of them even gave me her email address in France!

This has a certain minimalist, conceptual appeal. Tate Modern would probably exhibit it.

It's just not very informative.

What would you like to see on there? Please leave comments below. All correspondence will be dealt with in the strictest confidence, apart from the fact that the world and his welly-boots would be able to see.

Spyware Doctor - go on, heal thyself!

Like most people on the planet, I get plenty of 'phishing' emails. Depending on how much time I've got, and what sort of mood I'm in, I either delete them, forward them to the fraud department of whatever bank they're purporting to come from or ... if I've got a couple of minutes to spare, I fill them in. With lots of different silly names, silly passwords and sequences like 1234567 under the account number.

I recall reading somewhere a while ago that some businessman was advocating this sort of practice, because if the fraudsters had to wade through thousands and thousands of garbage responses in the hope that some poor soul, somewhere, had actually given their details - phishing would soon not be worth their while.

However, I sometimes wonder if I'm laying myself open to attack, so I got SPYWARE DOCTOR. And what a pain in the fundament it is turning out to be. Won't let me get around suspect websites (like Birmingham University) or access old email attachments (the sort of thing I've had for years - thought I might move to another folder) and when I turn off the function that stops popups it threatens me with all sorts of dire warnings.

And sometimes it won't let me turn the computer off.

Yep, strictly for the paranoid, this one. And if you weren't paranoid when you first got it, you soon will be ...!

Yet another archaeological illustration

The original brief said to do a drawing of somebody in 14th century costume, perhaps for a book on medieval customs and life. So I've continued to play around with the design, as if for a book cover, and here is the result. The previous pic didn't look too bad on screen, but some horrid things happened to the colour when I printed it out.

I think this one looks a little less cluttered than the previous one.

Medieval Falconry

This is what I've been doing today ... arranging and rearranging things in Potatoshop. I haven't finished this illustration yet, and I may well bin it in favour of a different approach. At least it does have a falcon on it, though. I am trying to 'push the boundaries' of archaeological illustration beyond the very run-of-the-mill pictures you get of reconstructed castles, resplendent with figures that look like shop dummies. I'm still trying to convey the same information, though, which in this case is that this kind of falconry was very much the preserve of the wealthy, who viewed it as something of a party. As one of the few activities in which both men and women participated, it was often viewed as a metaphor for love.

I am trying to keep the decorative feel of an illuminated manuscript without actually producing a pastiche of one.

Anyway, it has been keeping me off the streets today!

Fish Forks - a serious matter

Puflet, as a small water bird who feeds mainly on sand eels, is very concerned about the kind of cutlery you need to use when dining in posh restaurants.

Here is a fish fork.

The rest of the cutlery will follow in due course, but, for now, it has been noted that fish forks are a pertinent subject for discussion in various places on the Web.

Puflet, as a small water bird with webbed feet, is generally very interested in happenings on the 'web'.

Rodent Jewellery

I started at Swindon College this week, my MA in Archaeological Illustration. I can't very well get any more hamsters to take with me, so Chris of the Raven Madness blog (see link on right), has very kindly given me a pair of gerbil earrings, with the recommendation that gerbils are more portable; that I'd get used to the wriggling, and that they'd enjoy it. This is what they look like, on.

If you want to see more of this gentleman's work, do take a look at his blog ...

Illustration Friday - CHANGE

This is actually to illustrate Wayland's Smithy, a megalithic chambered tomb which was interpreted by the Saxons as being the work of Wayland, one of their gods, who was indeed a smith. Legend has it that if you left a horse tethered outside overnight, along with some small change (had to get that in somehow), the horse would have been shod by the morning.

There is another, extremely lurid tale also connected with Wayland the smith, but I won't go into that now.

All my hamsters have died in the last six weeks or so, and Herbert's the last of them.

I didn't have many photos of Pickwick and Filkins, the Russian hamsters, largely because they were very fast and were likely to get into trouble in the brief period of time it took to set up and point the camera. Herbert was a little bit better; and here's one of her having a wash, appropriately enough, in the bathroom.

I found her dead in her cage this morning; she was 25 months old, which is respectable for a Syrian hamster, but I'm really going to miss them all. I'll be constantly reminded of Herbert in particular, because once I left her in the bathroom while I took what I thought would be a quick phone call. It took longer than I'd thought, and when I came back I noticed that she had chewed holes in the carpet in the corners of the room. She'd obviously got bored with one before moving on to the next. She was an expert in finding bad things to do in apparently innocent situations, but she did know her name, and one time when she managed to get under the floorboards she did actually come out when called. Eventually. That was why her name remained 'Herbert' even when it became it was apparent that she was female - which was not what the bloke in the shop had told me.

I hadn't realised that hamsters could have attitude, or, indeed, pull faces, until I got Herbert. She had a penchant for hanging upside down from the bars, or, later on, the mesh at the top of her cage. This is not a naturally tenable position for a hamster, and I always used to worry that she'd get hurt when she fell (normally after 3.5 seconds), but she never did, or when she used to climb to the top of her water bottle and jump off.

I'm still half expecting to hear the sound of the little chirrups Herbert used to make, or the high pitched indignant squeaks which made the munchkins sound like squeaky toys, and the scrabbling and wheels going...

Illustration Friday - 'Match'

Here is a picture which features not only a fountain with matching birds on the side, but also matching fish floating around somewhere in the ether. So you should be feeling really 'well-matched'.

Terrible jokes aside, I've just submitted the draft for my dissertation to my tutor. I'm within the permitted word count by three words (or else they start deducting marks!), so I'm severely hoping he doesn't want me to add to it. If he looks very carefully, he'll see that I'm a really sad individual who does this sort of thing on a Saturday night when everyone else is out enjoying themselves.

I'm off to do some drorin tomorrow, though, and that's what I REALLY DO!

Illustration Friday - Play

This is an illustration entitled 'March past of the kitchen utensils', and shows a scene from Aristophanes' play 'The Wasps'.

Vaughan Williams has also written a piece based on 'The Wasps', and one of the movements has the same title as my painting (though I have to admit he did it first!)

For anyone unfamiliar with the play, I really really recommend it - it's surreal and totally mad!

The characters at the bottom of my piece are the wasps themselves. They aren't insects, just jury members ...

I've dun a narchaeological illustration!

This is a drawing of a secular badge which would date from the late 14th century if it weren't a 21st century copy. The image is around 7cm high, being a 2 x enlargement from the actual object. I was curious to see how it would reproduce, though it would have been more useful to have reduced it down. The practice is to draw them twice up for reproduction at ss. I'm concerned that some of the detail might fill in ...

This is who I met when I went to Warwick Castle to seek my fortune

This is a character I met when I went to Warwick Castle on Saturday. I would have posted it before, but it took a long time to walk from Warwick with my worldly belongings tied up in a spotted handkerchief on a stick, slung over my shoulder. Anyway, you see the perplexed looking kids in the background? He was watching one of them make a call on a mobile phone, and was asking them what the strange instrument was, and whether it was magic that meant they could use it to talk to people a long way away ...

So after a couple of minutes of this, I asked him if I could use my magic lantern box, which was powered by imps and fairies, and that if I pressed this magic button it would form his likeness! 'My LIKENESS!' He was intrigued now. I reassured him that it wouldn't steal his soul, and that if it did I'd give it back immediately. After looking a bit doubtful, he said he'd trust me. I subsequently showed him the picture on my camera, and he said that it looked a bit small. I reassured him that it was because he had been magically transmuted by the imps and fairies, and that this was nothing to worry about. I left him shaking his head at all the magical things he keeps seeing around him.

He was actually right, though, as he was much bigger than the picture of him.


Then I went up the tower and ramparts. Then I remembered that I don't like Heights. Or Enclosed Spaces. Or either of the Above in the Dark. Or Uneven Spiral Staircases. And it's also a one way system to cope with the number of visitors they have there, so you can't get halfway up a staircase, change your mind and come back down again. I did manage to take this rather tipsy photo from one of the ramparts, but other than that I just escaped as soon as possible, leaving much of this august edifice unexplored.

And then, safely back on terra firma (good old terra!) I sat down to do some drawing, and then ... the heavens they did open, and aqueous torrents streamed earthwards, and landed on me. Lightning flashed, the thunder crashed. Somewhere a wolf howled. (Or was it those Italian tourists who looked like football fans?) Unearthly charges rampaged in the firmament. I duly escaped back to the Warwick Folk Festival from whence I had come, by this time so wet that I really didn't care any more, and left my own personal rain puddles everywhere I stood.

So - Warwick Castle - you can't beat the place for a really DIFFERENT sort of day out ...

My life is galloping past before I even have time to grab it by the tail!

Yes well. At the moment, I am finishing off a PG Cert in Heritage Management, with a dissertation on the use of site-specific myths at heritage sites. Fascinating subject, fascinating myths, and yesterday I visited Mythstories at the Morgan Library in Wem, Shropshire - to talk to the people who had largely pioneered this in Shropshire. It was a 2+ hours interview. I realised at some unearthly hour this morning that it actually takes longer to transcribe an interview than it does to record it in the first place. My fingers are accordingly 8mm shorter and my typing speed has now increased to 80 wpm (though this goes down to 30 wpm once you've taken off all the mistakes.)

And today I've been writing about medieval horses and their equipment ( harnesses, stirrups etc - FOOL!!!!) - and medieval society structure as background to a project for the MA in Archaeological Illustration which I will be starting in September. Considering I haven't actually started the course, there seems to be a lot of work ...

Anyway, here are some preliminary sketches for the finished illustration which is part of the project:





















My drawing's absolute c**p at the moment, probably because I spend more time typing than sketching - but don't you think my model's got a wonderfully medieval face?

Look what's grown!

Last year, at the end of the season, I bought a very sad looking lily from a garden centre, largely because I felt sorry for it and it was being sold off cheap. Its leaves had been nibbled by vine weevils and it was generally rather the worse for wear.

At the start of the year, the new little shoots suffered from late frosts, depredation by slugs and an attempted incursion by lily beetle. (This was strange. I only found one, which was squished immediately. I haven't seen traces of either them or their disgusting larvae since. Here's hoping).

It's only a very small lily, around 40 cm high - but look at the bloom it's rewarded me with! There are two more huge buds waiting to open, and this one's about 21cm across. But you'd never have guessed from last year that it was capable of a performance like this!

P xxx

I wouldn't describe myself as a digital artist, but...

Actually, the main reason for putting this on here is so that I can send it to Gretel at Real Illustrators cos for it's her birthday!

I've been experimenting with Photoshop recently, which is something of a departure for me on account of the fact that the only way in which I could be described as a 'digital artist' would be down to the fingers which seem to grow on each hand!

Still, I hope that because it's a swift, it makes you think of summer ...

CAS xxx

Illustration Friday - Dance!!

Here are some very elegant bears dancing gracefully round a rose bush. It's a pity to think that 'Ring a ring o' roses' is actually a reference to the Black Death, but these bears don't seem concerned.

I gather that there are some illustrators who don't like it when people put links on Illustration Friday which relate to work they did yonks ago. Well, I put up my hand. I'm an offender. But it does mean I actually get to put up SOMETHING, which I just wouldn't have time to do if it was all starting from scratch.














So, hope you like this one anyway ....

CAS xxx

Yay! Looks like we're back on air!

Blogger seems to have had some technical problems over the last couple of days - I haven't been able to put up any new posts, or even publish comments. Never mind! It all seems to be sorted now! Anyway, this is the final one in the series of Puflet's window cleaning adventures ...

Still cleaning Windows ...

Puflet has to stand on the window sill to reach the higher levels.

He is clearly having lots of problems with those white streaks you get when you have lots and lots of soap suds. You know, when every time you wipe one line away, you have two others and so on...!

This cleaning cloth is one of the yellow jobs with red sewn edges.

CAS xxx

Cleaning the windows of Puflet Palace

Puflet is normally quite shy about being seen in public places, but here he is, cleaning the first of the windows of Puflet Palace. Eventually, the Palace will have a gallery all its own where people can go and look at pictures.

Hence the need for a spring (?) summer clean.

He'll probably do the next one tomorrow.

CAS

xxx

This is where I went on my 'olidays. Well, some of it.

I have to confess to not being much of a one for taking holiday photos, unless they're for reference purposes. If you're going around looking at the world through a camera lens it's very easy to miss interesting things, fall over people, put your foot in a puddle or not notice you're about to fall backwards off a cliff.

Anyway, we went to the Chippenham Folk Festival (cold and wet) and then went via Glastonbury to stay with friends in a wonderfully remote part of Devon. These shots were all taken in the Somerset Museum of Rural Life, in Glastonbury. This first one is of a tithe barn - I do love the timbering they used on these things.















And here we have what I assume is a cider press - though if any of you know better I'm prepared to believe it. It's just that it was Somerset, and it looked too big to be used for pressing flowers.




















And, finally, a view of Glastonbury Tor from the yard at the Museum. It seemed much more effective to take it from ground level, cos for the Tor itself is EXTREEEMLY steep, and the top of it was awfully windy (see also my comments on why you don't want to spend your holidays looking through a camera lens, above). Considering we are supposed to be having the worst drought for 100 years, don't you think that the countryside looks rather green? And somebody forgot to tell the Rain Gods in Chippenham that they were in drought mode.





















Still, it meant that we came back to a nice, green, lush garden where Nelly Moser is just starting to flower ...

Love,

CAS xxx

Illustration Friday - 'Under the Sea'

Now, gentle readers, this may look like a landscape featuring some horse chestnut leaves in the foreground, but if you look carefully, you will see that the air (if you can call it that) is actually populated by mackerel. They live under the sea, so I thought that other people from Illustration Friday might like to see them. The original of this is an oil painting, which took ages to do. I also like to work from direct observation, which poses problems when you're working from things like fish which get smellier and smellier the longer you keep them. You can't photograph these things - you just lose all those shimmering colours. In the end I compromised by doing a very careful drawing from observation, and then painting from the drawing.

I bought the mackerel from Sainsbury's, in the absence of any proper fishmongers in the area. I asked for just one, and said that I'd be drawing it rather than eating it, so could I have a pretty one. The girl behind the counter was really helpful, but my other half was trying to pretend he wasn't with me.

In the end we had it grilled for breakfast the following morning.

P xxx

More Puflet Politics

We were enchanted to hear that David Cameron described the UK Independence Party as 'fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists' ... and that UKIP objected to being called 'racists'!!!

Reminds me of a joke: there was a girl called Mary Smellie; she didn't like her name, so she changed it to ... Jane Smellie.

P xxx

Illustration Friday - Spring!

Well - spring's definitely here - it was absolutely chucking it down with rain today. But spring rain, rather than the winter stuff that creeps into your bones.

Anyway, here's a nice cheerful springtime picture showing the birds marking out their territories, and shouting abuse at each other. Nice abuse, though!


There are blue tits using my sparrow terrace, which I wouldn't mind, but:

a) Sparrow terraces cost about three times the amount that tit boxes do.
b) We carefully constructed a tit box, using specifications supplied by the RSPB, and situated it in the sort of spot that blue tits are supposed to go for. Evidently somebody forgot to tell them!

I've got a beautiful corkscrew hazel, which is covered in catkins at the moment. If it's not raining again tomorrow, I'll try and take a photo of it for this blog. You'll be impressed, but not if the lens of the camera is covered in a pretty pattern of raindrops ... we'll have to see.

Have a nice weekend everybody!

CAS

Illustration Friday - Monster

This is an illustration I did for a sweet little book called 'The Tale of Trellie the Troog' by Douglas Hill. Troogs are described thus:

'Old stories of scary monsters only tell about things like trolls and ogres. And while troogs could be scary, they weren't as horrible as trolls or as ugly as ogres. They knew, of course, that people were always frightened out of their wits if they saw a troog. But troogs just thought that people were a little odd.'

They're perfectly right, of course!

Anyway, enjoy!

Lots of love,

P xxx

Illicit recording in the news AGAIN!!!!

This is Sir Ian Bear, the Chief Police Commissioner (he was on the Today programme on Radio 4 this morning). As you can see, he is one of our 'boys in blue'. He is in a lot of trouble for secretly recording his own phone calls with other people.

He can explain everything, though. 'I just can't believe some of the things I'm hearing. So I have to tape the phone calls so's I can play them back later to make sure I really heard what I thought I heard. For example, someone has recently tried to ban 'Baa Baa Black Sheep' on account of it being offensive. They haven't tried to ban Eminem, though. And recently the Chief of Police taped a phone call to the Home Secretary on the very subject of phone tapping. Can you believe that?'

In defence of Sir Ian, though, Puflet would like to point out that he has some difficulty in hearing at all, on account of having cloth ears. Very nice, furry cloth, but cloth nonetheless. And he likes to wear his helmet in the bath.

Puflet's ATC's

Just to cheer everyone up on a grey day like today (strictly speaking this is inaccurate because it's actually dark at the moment), here are some of the 29,000 floating ducks who sat there still enough for me to draw them.

I think these are much more cheerful than the previous lot. What do you think?

Anyway, I hope to go swimming again soon, to get in training to go and trace some of these fellas.

Lots of love,

P xxx

29,000 Floating Ducks

At the moment I'm working on a design for ATC's for the fellow members of the 29,000 Floating Ducks blog, and I thought some of you might be interested in the process. This is the start - draw out the thing in biro, and sort out the tones. Not just any old biro will do. It's got to be one of those see-through plastic bic medium jobs, or it's considerably more difficult. I'm glad that you don't need really expensive ones.

Then I will put this through Photoshop, and drain most of the tone away so as just to leave faint outlines. Then that means that I can sort out colours. In fact with a piece this size I wouldn't normally go to all this trouble because it's a fairly simple composition, but with the more complicated ones it's a good idea!

Then, having done that, I'll trace the design onto watercolour paper, put in the background colours as a wash, and then begin the laborious task of doing all the cross-hatching with watercolour. Again, this is a small piece and won't take that long, but some of them do ...

I hope you wanted to know all this. Sometimes people do ask!

And for those of you who haven't visited '29,000 Floating Ducks' yet, there's a link on the right.

Lots of love,

CAS

Animal Welfare Bill

An old copy of The Times (January 30th) has just been doing the rounds. Well, Herbert had put it down on the floor to protect her woodshavings while she polished her shoes. It caused a lot of consternation and dismay, starting off with the suggestion that there would be 'pet police'.

Herbert, as the largest of the domestic animals, was adamant. 'But they don't make good pets!' she pointed out. 'They wouldn't be very pleased when I chew the buttons off their uniforms, pouch them and put them in my nest. And I don't think they'd be very nice to Mervyn.'

Mervyn was having a good look at the two copies of the paper as they floated past. 'Diet?' he queried. 'Does thish mean they'll want me to put tonic in my gin? Filthy, filthy shtuff. And whosh thish? Protection from pain? But I couldn't be happy without my hangoversh! They're my beshtesh matesh you know ...'

Puflet was really worried. 'But I moved out of that hole in a cliff side yonks ago! I don't want some bureaucrat moving me back in there again! Especially not after they've completely messed up my pension arrangements!' he muttered a bit. 'Living conditions - pah!'

The 29,000 floating ducks carried on floating. After all, they didn't have to worry about companionship. 'Wait for us!' squawked Puflet. 'We're all coming with you ...!'

Illustration Friday - Tea

This is Herbert, who is looking very hard for her tea. Being a hamster, and not one of the brightest stars in the firmament, she doesn't realise that it's all run out of the holes in this cutlery drainer. Doesn't stop her looking, though:

Now you've already met Filkins, who is a winter white (and grey in colour). You will have noticed that Herbert is white, but I would like to reassure readers that this is not because she is trying to camouflage herself against any snow in her cage. There IS no snow in her cage ... even though there's plenty on the ground outside.

Have a nice weekend!

CAS

Here's a bit of the other painting!

It's all been horrendously busy here recently, with a University assignment to do, while my computer was getting into a worse state than I was. I've got a bit of a breathing space now, so here's are some bits of the other painting that went into the RI:















In fact the most time-consuming part of this painting was the tail of the peacock, but when I scanned the whole painting the file size was so gi-normous that it would have taken half an hour to upload. Never mind. At least it means that there's something previously unseen in the exhibition!

And I've been so busy recently that I haven't even been able to contribute anything to Illustration Friday - bit late now, but I'll see what I can do tomorrow. Thanks to everyone who left messages for this hermit!

Cathy

Breaking News! Paintings from the Palace Collection to be exhibited in the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours Annual Show!

Anyway, these are the paintings they selected. The exhibition is on from 15th March - 9th April, and if you're in the London area I really recommend it. It's got a very wide range of styles, from really stunning traditional work to modern stuff that wouldn't be out of place in the AOI.

And I think there's something rather nice about pigs featuring in an exhibition in a posh gallery.

I hoped to put both the paintings in this post, but the layout won't really work, so I'll put up the other one some time in the next few days.


Have a nice weekend everyone!

Illustration Friday - 'Chair'

We've all heard of bird tables, but Puflet, as chief gardener, has been the first to install a bird chair. What a magnificent piece of furniture! (You may need to click on the image if you are having difficulty reading the designer's notes).

Another high profile art theft!

Maybe this is what's happened in the galleries I mentioned below!

CAS

We followed the cable to its source ...

As you can see, it was a grubby looking cable. It had obviously been there for a while.

Gingerly, we turned over the rock ...


... and found it wasn't a cable at all, but Mervyn's tail!




(Yes, it was still rather grubby, and had obviously been there for a while.)

'What-ho, Puffersh!' he warbled. 'Time to get up already? Y'know, I've been finding reshently that it'sh shtill really really dark whenever I open an eye. Sho what'sh a chap to do? Jusht keep going back to shleep.'

Mervyn tried to focus, without success.

Then he broke into song, of a sort. 'Forty daysh an' forty nightsh ... tempted but shtill undefiled ... prowling beashts about the way ... shtones my pillow, earth my bed ...'

And then - guess what? He went back to sleep.

Searching for listening devices

It was freezing cold this afternoon, but we were outside all the same. (Puflet saw March of the Penguins on Saturday - I think it inspired him) . Anyway, we turned over another rock and there ... yes ... was an EAR.

Well, an earwig, anyway.

'Huh', muttered Puflet. 'I bet it's him who eats holes in my dahlias. But look at those antennae! A surveillance device if ever I saw one!'

But before the earwig could protest his innocence, Puflet had noticed something else.

There, half buried in the compost, was a bit of cable leading to a spot under the next rock ...

Illustration Friday - Glamour

Glamour? Wish I 'ad some ... must have dropped it in the street somewhere ... fnah fnah ...

Well, look what we found!

Puflet turned over the first rock - and just look what was underneath! Bugs! Yes, it had been bugged!

They weren't very pleased, either, because we'd woken them up during the day when they had been doing nightshift. More specifically, a friend of theirs, a stag beetle, had been having a stag night, and these fellers had been detailed to attend. Eventually they calmed down, though, and introduced themselves as Silbert, Jethro and Ratz. Then they went back to sleep.

Still no sign of Mervyn.

Then we turned over the next rock, and inspected it for listening devices ... and do you think we found any ...?