Illustration Friday - Cars!!!

It can be very dangerous when dogs chase cars, and this brave police sergeant is doing his best to stop the mayhem ...

Another reconstruction drawing of Avebury

As you will have noticed, the people on this one look rather different to the ones on the first reconstruction.  This is because their culture is slightly later, but not much.

Some text will be going into the empty space at the bottom.

Sketchbook thingies - sketches, even.

I'm getting concerned about the lack of posts on here.  Chris from Raven Madness has kindly sent me the script for the travelling clock you will have met on here, but that doesn't really count.

I'm working on another Avebury reconstruction, but although it should be finished tonite, I can't scan it until tomorrow on account of not having an A3 scanner.  (note:  don't try to scan A3 artwork on an A4 scanner in two bits and then try to join them together.  It'll make you cry.)  It's in colour, but just to whet your appetite, here are sketches of some of the characters in my latest pic.

If you're not sure whether the last thing - the one with four legs - is a 
sheep or a goat, this is entirely appropriate because they were very very 
similar in neolithic times. 

New Look Blog!

I've always been meaning to explore the 'customise' bit of Blogger, which is quite good fun because you can change all the colours and stuff, and it's much easier to add links.

However, there's always a down side.

It's like with cameras.  I used to have a Samsung AF1050 Zoom.  It was brilliant - loads of manual overrides, you could take multiple exposures and do all sorts of messings.  This was in the days before I had Photoshop.  I lost this camera in a burglary, and it was replaced by the 'up-to-date' version, which had none of the versatility of the supposedly inferior one and I've never got on with it.  It was a great relief to get the digital camera.

The downside with this new, user-friendly version of the Blogger layout is that it won't accept the HTML which I used to put in to create the really tacky, hot-glittery headline which greeted visitors to this blog.  I feel rather put out about this, but I'll survive.

In the meantime, you might be interested to know that the headline is done in a font which I created myself.  It's called 'Herbert' and if you look closely enough it does indeed appear to have been nibbled by a hamster.

Falafel's Plumes

Falafel isn't sure whether he's a long-haired hamster or not - he's always been really fluffy, but he's recently started growing these really luxuriant plumes.  Some of them preserve his modesty, but he's also got two really nice tufts which grow from his flanks, which you can see quite clearly here.

Personal Trainers

When I go to the gym, which is very frequently, I am always struck by the number of posters around the place which advertise 'Personal Trainers'.

I thought that people might be interested to see my personal trainers, and here is a photo of them.

The white markings document the process of painting my studio white (it had previously had two different types of wallpaper - not bad for a room measuring approximately 2'6" x 3'6"!).  These can therefore be viewed in the same spirit as the spatters in a Jackson Pollock masterpiece.

You will also notice that the toe bit on the left one is parting company with itself.  This is where it gets caught on something in my car when I take my foot off the clutch, which is something I do even more frequently than going to the gym in the first place.

I'm not sure if 'Personal Trainers' are supposed to put up with a lot of grief and punishment, but these guys certainly do ... many thanks to the pair of them ...

Putting together a REALLY LARGE rockery!

Here is a sort-of reconstruction drawing of Avebury!  We know very little about these people, which is why I've made my piece look a bit spaced out.  I have seen reconstruction drawings with really terrible figure work, which purported to be 'deliberately stylised, to show how little we really know about them'.  I felt that it was nicely symbolic that this piece should have been finished today, being Beltane an' all that, but I'm too tired right now to think of 
anything to put at the top.  In any case, it will only be a short paragraph - the end result of weeks and weeks of research!

And I see Blugger has ideas of its own as regards my layout - as usual!

Oh, and by the way, I've noticed that Falafel is getting plumes - I hope to put a picture up here soon, as they're getting more and more spectacular!