Category: Nature

Axolotls

After multiple people asked me, I did a print design of everyone’s favour­ite neoten­ous, cute but some­what canni­bal­ist­ic Mexic­an sala­man­der.

Fitzroy Gardens, Melbourne

Fitzroy Gardens is a park in the centre of Melbourne with a model village, lovely botan­ic­al conser­vat­ory and some fairly strange sculp­tures and tree carvings.

A walk along an empty beach

Not many people are getting to the beach these days, but I live right next to it (in fact I can see the sea from my living room window). It’s strange to live in a tour­ist town when there are no tour­ists.

Robert Smith’s Cabbages

A couple of years ago I went down to Aldwick, near Bognor Regis for the summer to house-sit a relative’s house. I ended up being stran­ded there due to a lengthy train strike. Robert Smith of the Cure is prob­ably the only famous local resid­ent. The owner of one of the local shops told me where he lived, and I went along to see it once out of curi­os­ity. The house was dull and expens­ive look­ing, but the beach it stands next to was much more Robert Smith like, with windswept shingle like Dunge­ness and rare sea cabbages. I never bothered to look at Robert Smith’s house again, but I made many trips to the beach because I liked it so much. I was usually the only person there.

Cambridge Botan­ic­al Gardens

I was sort­ing out old folders on the hard drive and have found a lot of photos from the past couple of years that I never got round to sort­ing out. Here are some from the Botan­ic­al Gardens in Cambridge two years ago. I was work­ing teach­ing on a summer course there, which was stress­ful mainly because they hadn’t actu­ally hired enough staff to cover all the hours, so we were doing some extreme over­time. So a stroll around the gardens while the students completed their activ­it­ies was a nice respite.

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Feral Prac­tice

Earli­er this week I went to a free art work­shop hosted by Open School East. Open School East is a combin­a­tion art course/​residency and students are required to organ­ise public art work­shops. This time envir­on­ment­al artist Fiona MacDon­ald aka Feral Prac­tice was the visit­ing artist. There was a talk about ants and fungi and the aim of “meet­ing  with animal/​plant/​place through the processes and reflex­iv­ity of art”, and then we went out into a local park with a wood­land area to do some clas­sic sensory/​location art activ­it­ies. Here are my sketch­book pages and some snaps from the day.

Old Stripy Bum

A couple of months ago I adop­ted a young cat from the local anim­al shel­ter. The profile said he was play­ful and curi­ous, had a miss­ing tail and needed a lot of atten­tion and activ­ity.

Bismuth

Hello from the south­ern hemi­sphere. Here’s some new press shots of my friends’ band Bismuth I took a few weeks ago at the origin­al UK Botany Bay…

Hahnen­kamm

In July I went to Kitzbühel in Austria for work. I was there to run a work­shop in the local middle school, and the mayor gave me and my three co-work­ers tick­ets for the local ski lift…

New print- Sheep Skull

So here’s a new illus­tra­tion I did. It’s actu­ally based on a draw­ing I did when I was 17 that I found while sort­ing out some paper­work recently. You can buy mono­chrome and colour prints for £3-£30 over on the shop.

Büren-Harth

Here’s some more photos from Germany. From Harth in Nordrhein-West­falen to be more precise. It’s a small village in the Sauer­land, a scen­ic forest region about a hundred miles east of Cologne, popu­lar for hiking and cycling.

Nara Garden

While we were in Nara we also visited a tradi­tion­al Japan­ese tea garden. Unfor­tu­nately the tea house was shut, and it was rain­ing, but it was still a lovely garden.

Indi­ana Jones and the Temple of Deer

Our final stop in Japan before flying home from Osaka was Nara. In the 700s it was the capit­al of Japan, at the time when Buddhism really became estab­lished in Japan. Nowadays as well as Buddhism, it’s known for the tame deer who live in the forest park surround­ing the temples and shrines. We stayed in a hostel in the forest. It seemed a short walk from the train station, but we ended up walk­ing along dark forest paths drag­ging cases seem­ingly forever, with deer star­ing at us accus­ingly like some­thing out of Prin­cess Mononoke. (The hostel turned out to be a pretty weird place too).

Okun­oshi­ma- Rabbit Island

While I was in Japan we visited the island of Okun­oshi­ma. In the Second World War it was a top secret chem­ic­al weapons plant, but now is a nature reserve famous for its free-ranging tame rabbits, who are prob­ably the descend­ants of the lab rabbits.

Kyoto II

Here’s some more photos of Kyoto. I have split the pictures up into sever­al entries. You can see more photos from Kyoto and other cities in the Japan category, and also read about the trip in the zine I wrote. Kyoto is famous for its cherry blos­som, but sadly we were there a couple of weeks earli­er than it comes out in full bloom. You did see the odd bud here and there though.

Trif­fids in search of a new home

I’ve got a large number of cacti and succu­lents, some of which I’ve had for years (and have their own offshoot chil­dren grow­ing in separ­ate pots now). By the end of the summer, some of them were look­ing a bit sad, and were in seri­ous need of repot­ting. I collec­ted a load of Hornsea ware and other vintage pottery for £1-3 a time over the summer, and then had a big repot­ting session outside, just before the weath­er star­ted turn­ing cold.

That cat’s some­thing I can’t explain

I don’t currently have any pets. Land­lords in London who allow cats or dogs are a rare breed. My house­mate has a trop­ic­al aquar­i­um, and I don’t fancy getting hamsters or mice, and don’t have space for rats. So no pets other than fish for us.

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Gener­al wander­ing round Copen­ha­gen

About 6 weeks ago I went on a short break to Denmark and Sweden. It shows how busy I’ve been lately that it’s taken me so long to post these. I unex­pec­tedly had some extra holi­day days I had to use up quickly before the end of my work contract, and none of my friends were free to travel on the specif­ic week­end I had to use them, so I went by myself. I saw cheap flights to Copen­ha­gen, and booked them on a whim, on the grounds that I’d never been to Denmark before, and it was also easy to visit Sweden from Copen­ha­gen. I also have a danish friend Sanne I used to work with in London, so I arranged to meet up with her while I was there and drink some Mikkeller beer at normal prices (rather than the exor­bit­ant prices they charge in the UK). (Good luck with the PhD viva Sanne!). I liked Denmark a lot, although I’m not sure if I’d want to live there. They seem very set in their ways. In fact it reminded me a lot of Austria, but with sea rather than moun­tains.

Trif­fids

I’ve built up a collec­tion of cacti and other succu­lents over the last year or so. They’re desert plants from the Amer­icas and south­ern Africa which store water in their bodies, so they don’t need a lot of look­ing after, and they have a huge range of dramat­ic shapes, which explains why they’re such popu­lar house plants. They’re also cheap to buy- mine all came from the super­mar­ket, Wilco or IKEA and cost £2-4 each- and can live a long time if kept in the right condi­tions. (Opuntia cacti also produce deli­cious prickly pears and nopales pads for cook­ing). My current room has a large windowsill which gets some fierce sunshine around lunch­time, and is next to a radi­at­or which dries up the air through­out the winter, which is the ideal condi­tions for grow­ing them. I used to be into grow­ing orch­ids and indoor herbs as well, but they just don’t thrive in the condi­tions here.

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If it ain’t brack­en, don’t fix it.

I refuse to apolo­gise for that pun, you’ll just have to suffer. Here is a photo I took of myself recently in my dad’s garden. I can’t remem­ber the last time I had a new photo of myself bar a few awkward phone snaps when I’ve been out. Perhaps you could say I was commun­ing with nature when I took this photo, but I was sat on a plastic bag to avoid sitting in anything nasty hidden under­neath the plants, so I don’t think I was that in touch with nature. Luck­ily we don’t have pois­on ivy or danger­ous snakes in this coun­try, I was more worried about the milder perils of sting­ing nettles or fox drop­pings. I was also a little limited with angles and fram­ing, because stick­ing a wide-angle lens in your face is rarely flat­ter­ing, but I couldn’t get the distance to use my portrait lens because I didn’t have a tripod with me.

Slugs. Ugh.

I forgot to post this before. My friend Tukru does a free­bie Halloween themed zine every year for her zine distro. She needed some extra pages and asked me to draw a monster, so I cobbled this togeth­er and scanned it in about 45 minutes. I hate slugs. Horrible things. In my final year of uni, I lived in a house which had seemed fine when viewed in the summer, but come winter turned out to have a real damp prob­lem, and a slug prob­lem in the kitchen

Pick­ing Black­ber­ries

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A little while ago I went to visit my pál Erika (sorry, can’t resist the terrible pun) in Surrey for black­berry pick­ing. Her friends Stephanie and Katja came down too, and we went out on a sunny day into the woods and picked some berries and had a picnic and drinks (for N. Amer­ic­an read­ers, Brit­ish woods aren’t very wild). Black­ber­ries grow every­where here at the end of August and most of Septem­ber. They don’t belong to anyone, and it’s safe and legal to pick and eat them. I used to pick huge amounts of them when I was grow­ing up. They’re also good for jam, pies, crumbles, coulis and wine-making. We made jam this time. Foxes also like them as much as humans.

Kerguelen Islands Prints

I’ve done some prints of this picture I drew of the Kerguëlen Islands off the coast of Antarc­tica. Noth­ing there but penguins, cabbages and the odd french scient­ist. What could be more delight­ful? They are avail­able in two sizes- A4 for £7 + post­age and A3 for £20 + post­age (the small ones will be sent flat, the large rolled into a tube), and are prin­ted on 250 gsm semi-gloss paper with a white border. Avail­able now from the shop.

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.

Aquar­i­ums

Louise, a friend of mine from Brighton recently set up a creat­ive writ­ing website. The idea is that every­one is given a monthly writ­ing prompt, with all the submit­ted work posted the follow­ing month for comment. I decided to have a try follow­ing the first prompt- the theme was Aqua­mar­ine. I couldn’t really think of any idea for a story, so I just wrote what came to mind. What they call a five finger excer­cise. I think I’ll ramble less on the next one. Here is what I wrote

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Hermannshöhle

While in Kirch­berg am Wech­sel I also got to go on a tour of Hermannshöhle with anoth­er teach­er. It’s a series of caves inside one of the moun­tains, with lots of stalac­tites and a bat colony. Usually the tours are at set times and only in German, but we got a private tour in English, which was really nice.

Kirch­berg am Wech­sel

Last Summer I spent a week work­ing at the juni­or school in Kirch­berg am Wech­sel, a tiny moun­tain town on the east­ern end of the Alps on the border between Lower Austria and Styria. It is essen­tially one long street between some moun­tains, with “Lower Austria’s finest stalac­tite cave” (more on that later) and a yearly Wittgen­stein fest­iv­al. As moun­tains go, by Austri­an stand­ards they are pretty tame, mostly being below the tree-line. When I said some­thing to the kids about the moun­tains they basic­ally went “what moun­tains?” and when I poin­ted out of the window they went “oh yeah, those, there are much better moun­tains in other places”. Still, I like any kind of moun­tains, and the Wech­sel is still 1,743m high, so it’s hardly a hill. Mountains/​hills and water, that’s what I like. I wouldn’t do well some­where like Kansas.

Dreams of the Alps

I spent a lot of last summer trav­el­ling up and down the Alps by train. Here are a couple of pictures I took out of the window. Taking photos from the window of a moving train can be very frus­trat­ing, you see a spec­tac­u­lar view, but by the time you have taken a photo some­thing like a fence is in the way. I like long-distance solo train trips, espe­cially ones with spec­tac­u­lar scenery and no stress or time pres­sure when it comes to connections.Both of these pictures are some­where near the Austrian/​German border. Inter­est­ingly German for night­mare is Alptraum – “Alp dream”. That alp is a night time incubus type thing, not the moun­tains, but it gives a strange mental image if you’re an English speak­er. An Alp dream would prob­ably involve frol­ick­ing with goats in a sunny moun­tain pasture. I clearly read Heidi too often when I was young­er.

The hills are alive with torren­tial rain.

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I’m currently in Kirch­berg am Wech­sel, at the east­ern end of the Austri­an Alps for work. I didn’t really have much access to the inter­net last week in Dresden, so I haven’t updated prop­erly. I saw most of the sights, also went to the DDR Museum in Rade­beul and ate a lot of pastry and spätzle.

Regent’s Canal

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The other week I went for a walk along the east­ern end of the Regent’s Canal with my dad. I used to live down the other end of it, and I’ve pretty much walked the entire length a lot of times. It’s one of the few short canals around here, most of the others are long inter­city ones.

The world is not my oyster

Here are the other photos from Whistable. I took more of the boats, seashore etc with my wide-angle lens on film, and I haven’t had it developed yet. I much prefer my film SLR to my digit­al one (70s Pentax camer­as just feel so nice to use), but I’m too broke lately to use much film, and I still have 5 rolls sitting around that need devel­op­ing. I didn’t eat any oysters while I was there, because I’m veget­ari­an, but I did have a really great mascar­pone, truffle and rose­mary pizza.

Smooth down the aven­ue glit­ters the bicycle

I’ve always had a soft spot for 30s subur­bia. These two pictures are a place called Twydall, near where my mum lives. I went along there to buy some wool, and I wasn’t disap­poin­ted, the area is full of old ladies. Also, the fact that the wool shop is called World of Wool­craft and is run by what could be the broth­er of the Comic Book Store Guy made me laugh.

Patterns in the trees

I snapped some pictures of the patterns in this tree bark a while back. I might do some­thing with them later.

Mari­po­sas

(This is my 200th entry here- do I get some kind of prize, or should I just get out more?)

When I was caught outside without an umbrella in torren­tial rain on my break when I work­ing at the museum over the summer, I took the time to snap some more butter­fly photos. My previ­ous efforts are here. I went back with my film SLR just before the exhib­i­tion closed too, but I haven’t got round to scan­ning those yet.

St Ives 2008

Here’s some photos of St Ives from 2008. They were on the same roll of x-pro’d Sensia as the Lille photos. I think it was the last of my freezer­full of expired slide film I got when I worked at Jessops as a student.

Bird has flown

Here’s the rest of the pictures from where I took the panos at the River­side Coun­try Park. There’s a promon­tory which goes out to an island in the river, almost at the mouth where the Thames and Medway meet, with narrow beaches with reed­beds and aban­doned boats along the edge and woods and pools in the interi­or. I used to come here a lot. I partic­u­larly love it in the winter when there’s prac­tic­ally no-one there except me and some water birds.

The seas will reach and always seep

Today it was sunny and I had the day off, so I went to the River­side Coun­try Park. It’s where the Medway meets the Thames Estu­ary. It’s one of my places. I exper­i­mented with making some stitched panor­amic pictures. I also took some normal pictures. I’ll post them later. I’d love to have one of those turny Russi­an panor­amic film camer­as, but I’m too poor.

Butter­flies

At my work they’ve got a butter­fly garden in a heated tent over the East­er holi­days. I popped in to take some pictures in my tea break earli­er this week. I don’t know what any of the species are, I don’t know much about butter­flies. They had a refer­ence board to compare the live ones to, but I didn’t have time to look closely.

Get Out of the Office and Into the Spring­time

At last, some sunshine. Today me & Tukru went out for some coffee and draw­ing. It’s the London Zine Symposi­um on Sunday, and we have stuff to do. We didn’t actu­ally get much cafe time, because we forgot how early stuff closes round here. I’ve got some new stuff up my sleeve, but I don’t want to show it until it’s done.

Wander­ings

The other day I was round my dad’s. It was a sunny day, and I didn’t fancy spend­ing the whole day cooped up indoors. I got my dad to give me a lift up to Kit’s Coty, a strange isol­ated place nearby, which has the remains of a Neolith­ic barrow there. The barrow isn’t very evid­ent these days, but the gate into the tomb is still there. There are more houses round there than I’d thought, all detached with big gates and long drives and beware of the dog signs, and on unpaved roads. It was totally quiet and a bit David Lynchish round there.

Mystery film- pleas­ant but bland

I’ve got a whole load of unscanned negat­ives here which I’m slowly work­ing my way through. There was a whole film of pictures of this place with a lake, but I have abso­lutely no idea where it is, or when I took the photos. I also have no idea what camera I used for these, but the film is Kodak Ekta­chrome 160 Tung­sten, cross-processed. The pictures are pleas­ant but bland, and I’ve got a real feel­ing this was a test roll to see if some­thing worked right/​was any good (char­ity shop camera? lens found in someone’s loft and given to me? who knows). Whatever it was seems to work fine.

I know it’s too late, I’m lost in a forest

Next in my mammoth scan­ning session, tree abstracts. Made by putting 35mm film into a 120 camera (in this case a holga) and then delib­er­ately over­pro­cessing the result­ing film to give a high contrast look.

Someone Tell Me Why I Do the Things That I Don’t Want To Do

One of the many rolls of film I have sitting around wait­ing to be scanned. This is from the days when I used to live in Read­ing. I want it to be sunny now! I long for long walks and picnics and lying on the grass in the sunshine, I’m fed up of the scrag end of winter. Diana + camera & Kodak Ekta­chrome 100 cross-processed.

Broad­stairs

Here’s some pictures I took in Broad­stairs last summer, they were languish­ing on my hard-drive until this week­end.