Thursday, November 30, 2006
moving out
While awaiting word on the wonderful rickety house I am moving out of the flat, in a travelling light kind of way, tomorrow and stopping for a spell with m'good friend Steve. Should hear about the other place at the weekend so next week I'll either be moving properly to there or moving more fully into Steve's spare room and continuing my search for a more long term solution from there.
As such, updating this blog and replying to email may be even more sporadic than usual for a while. Apologies. But those of you that do, do keep writing, I'll get it eventually.
And hopefully while I have reduced access to t'interwebnetwork I'll do loads of drawings that I'll be able to bore you all with when I'm fully back online.
Cheers for now.
Dave
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
waiting
Nothing much to report. Breathlessly awaiting news of a place that I want to move into which has (moderately hideous) wallpaper held to the wall by packing tape (and in places seemingly holding in the crumbling plaster), has the ugliest light fittings you ever did see, has a builder owner/landlord whose eventual intention is to kick out all the tenants and knock the place down and is a few miles out of town when I'd intended to remain pretty central. And yet it's strangely wonderful and I want to live there very much.
Meanwhile I am packing stuff into boxes and finding that I own too much stuff and should probably have got rid of a stack of it weeks ago. Need more boxes. And somewhere to move them to.
Hope the phone rings soon.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
sleeping with a polar bear for a pillow
This is a friend of mine who I did some 24 piece jigsaws with recently. I am so rock and roll.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
old
Although I've yet to finalise where I'm going to, I have made the smallest, slowest start on the task of putting stuff in boxes ready for when I move. In doing so I'm trying to thin things out a bit (the Amnesty bookshop should do quite well out of this) and give away/chuck out a certain amount of stuff.
Anyway, there's an old, old sketchbook that very nearly got binned but for these images and a couple of others. Slim pickings for a whole book but I'm inordinately fond of the second one, probably because I don't quite know what's going on (or, indeed, who or what Henshaw is).
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
2 more chicks
Aah, ain't they cute.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Mr Reid
Also yesterday, I was looking at a bunch of stuff by the late great Ken Reid and drew this under the influence...
curse you, Persil
So yesterday, in amongst obsessive checking of flathunting websites, I was picking away at a recent idea that involves a penguin character (but not The Bird from Edwin and Molly, a different one, this one's called Ethel) and, having discovered that emperor penguin chicks don't, in fact, look like small emperor penguins was trying to redesign her. And I feel like I'm beginning to get somewhere...
...and I'm thinking: "This is good. People have done loads of penguin characters before but I don't think anyone's done a penguin chick before. I could be the first. This could be huge. I shall sell the film rights, retire on the proceeds and spend my days doodling by the pool using liquid gold ink." And then...
An advert for bloody Persil comes on the telly featuring... a CGI emperor penguin chick. Bollocks. And of course it turns out that this is a cross promotion (or whatever the correct term is - NWM are you reading this?) with a major animated movie called Happy Feet featuring bloody thousands of cute emperor penguin chicks. I find this dispiriting. People may think that I'm just trying to cash in.
But then this morning I look up Happy Feet on imdb.com (ooh look, from the director of Mad Max, featuring the vocal talents of Robin Williams and the late Steve Irwin - an enormous effigy of whom, coincidentally, I recently saw in the Lewes bonfire night parade) and watch a trailer online and I think, oh, it looks awful. Fantastic! I can avoid any association with the movie simply by doing something good. Happily, this was already my aim. Wish me luck.
Friday, November 03, 2006
congratulations
Congratulations to Stephen Davies on winning the Best Children's Book section of the inaugural Glen Dimplex New Writers Award for Sophie and the Albino Camel. Hurrah!