Ink Master Copies

I had a whole folder full of artwork masters, so I decided to stick them into sketch­books this after­noon (these kraft paper folio-sized books are around £6 from Muji). I tend to draw the line artwork by hand with a non-photo blue pencil and posca mark­er, and correct mistakes/​add the colour digit­ally.

Pinup Payback- Anti sexu­al harass­ment campaign

I recently made this poster for Pinup Payback, a femin­ist/anti-sexism organ­isa­tion in Medway run by a friend. I was given the theme of  “girls just want to have fun” without creeps, so here are some gooey, sticky creeps. My homet­own has a really dispro­por­tion­ate rate of sexu­al assault for the popu­la­tion, and a lot of people whose atti­tudes are stuck far, far in the past. Grow­ing up there, and also going back to visit, I have had men say the most appalling and disgust­ing things to me and my friends, far more than any other place I know. This poster (along with train­ing for staff) will be going up in the pubs and bars in town that sign up to the campaign to show custom­ers that if someone if harass­ing you, the venue prom­ises to take it seri­ously, a campaign also being run in London by Hollaback.

To find out more about the campaigns, phone app and to donate, visit the website.

(and yes, girls in this instance does include anyone who feels they fall into that category)

Kerguelen Islands

Recently I was look­ing up some­thing on a map, and my eyes were drawn to the Kerguelen Islands at the bottom. They seemed quite substan­tial, yet I’d never heard of them. It turns out they belong to France, are unin­hab­ited except for a few scient­ists, and are full of penguins and cabbages. Sail­ors used to stop off there to have a grim cabbage feast to fend off scurvy. Here is a lonely penguin in the cabbage fields. I will never have anoth­er reas­on to draw that. The picture is avail­able as a print and vari­ous other items on Soci­ety 6.

Lassay les Châteaux

Last month I went to visit my mum in France. She lives just outside a small town called Lassay les Châteaux. It does indeed have sever­al ruined castles. It’s on the Pays de la Loire /​ Normandy border, and most of the houses in town are old stone cottages. She considered buying one, but it was too damp. When people are think­ing of France being cosmo­pol­it­an and chic, they are not think­ing of rural Normandy. It’s a lot like Derby­shire, but without the moun­tains. The local cuisine is heavy on tripe, bacon and sour cream, served with teacups full of cider (there are two rival triper­ies in anoth­er nearby town). While I was there, I mostly ate my own weight in brioche and sour cream, and sat in the sun read­ing a book about the post-war polit­ic­al history of Europe. I took quite a lot of photos on film, so I’ll wait until I have those developed before writ­ing more.

Life Draw­ing

Last night I went with some friends to a life draw­ing class in the base­ment of a pub in Stoke Newing­ton. I went to life draw­ing most weeks when I was in 6th form, but have been very sporad­ic­ally every since. I think the last time I went was 9 months ago. Usually they’re in some sort of neon-lit muni­cip­al hall. This one was in a purple room, with music play­ing and with the most flat­ter­ing light­ing I’ve ever seen at a life draw­ing class. It was nice, I’m going to go back. Usually return­ing to life draw­ing after a long break makes me want to cry in frus­tra­tion, because my pen just won’t do what I need it to do, but it wasn’t so bad this time. I didn’t produce anything of any value, but it was a good start, and I’ve lost the knack of fore­short­en­ing and hands. Here are my sketches. I had to resort to taping them to the door and photo­graph­ing them, because the paper was too big for the scan­ner. I always write comments all over my sketches. Is that the draw­ing equi­val­ent of talk­ing to your­self?

Space is Ace

Tomor­row at Power Lunches in Dalston, my friend Melanie is putting on an event with her compadres from the Art & Science MA at St Martins. There’s going to be bands, sound art, projec­tions, edible sugar glass plan­ets, and a very large amount of tinfoil. I did the artwork for the flyer. If you like it, and are coming to the event, you will be able to buy A3 posters of it (a few people asked already). I don’t know the exact prices yet, because I haven’t got them prin­ted yet, but the b&w edition will be roughly £1.50 and the colour version more.

Sketch­ing

I’ve had the bug that’s been going around over Christ­mas, albeit not badly, but I haven’t really done as much work/​creative stuff as I’d like. Here’s some sketches I did this after­noon. I didn’t really plan what I was draw­ing, I just star­ted making some lines and went from there. Mostly I just wanted to try out the white mark­er.

Et tu, pipio?

Last March, I drew these fat pigeons for Moogie Wonderland’s Ides of March event. I did a silhou­ette projec­tion about Juli­us Caesar, and made some fortune telling games based on the Roman prac­tices of divin­ing by watch­ing birds or inspect­ing livers. The birds read “turn me over for your fortune”, and were hung up with strings around the room (you can see that version here).

Print­able Castle

I drew this castle that you can cut out and fold. There are two pdf versions for A4 paper and US Letter. By the way, it’s delib­er­ately trapeze shaped rather than rect­an­gu­lar, so if you make it, don’t worry about one side being longer. 

Were Pigeon

I drew a werepi­geon for Tukru . It was a silly private joke, and she insisted I drew it. So I did. I don’t draw much. It’s for a halloween zine she’s putting togeth­er, you should make some­thing for it (details here). It’s prob­ably good that I gave her the draw­ing before it frus­trated me so much I threw it in the bin. This is what always happens when I draw stuff.

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