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4/3/08 11:05 am - Happy Birthday, Carly!


Here's a card I made for my friend, fellow student and genius illustrator, Carly Greene, who reached the grand old age of 26 on Sunday.  Amongst her many other contributions to making Camberwell College of Arts a fantastic place to be, Carly has singlehandedly organized our forthcoming class exhibition at the Waterloo Gallery.  She is SO cool!  Yay Carly!!! 

3/24/08 11:29 pm - Scientific Enquiry


This attempt at a third Staff-led Project didn't progress beyond the initial sketch phase because of the time factor.  The theme was "Little-known facts" and there were some pretty cool ones.  Did you know, for instance, that the United States has never lost a war in which mules were used?  And apparently a duck's quack has no echo, and "no one knows why..."  Well, I don't understand how, but why seems fairly self-explanatory. It stands to reason that when danger threatens, a mother duck (and it is only females who quack) would find it very useful to call her young to her with a sound whose direction they could easily pinpoint.  If it was echoing all over the place, the ducklings would have a hard time knowing where to go.  But I digress.
Right in the middle of this list of weird facts was the above information regarding what happens to cats when dropped from different heights.  Surely the point that needs to be grasped here is that somebody actually saw fit to "research" the consequences of throwing live animals from high buildings.  I mean, WTF...?

I promise, I will actually get around to posting some finished artworks soon...   

3/16/08 10:09 am - If Beauty is Truth...

 
I have very little grounds for complaints, since the whole ethos of art school seems to be "do whatever the hell you want", but from time to time we are required to complete "staff led projects", basically fulfilling one of a range of briefs that one or other of our tutors has worked on in real life.
It only seems onerous because because as usual I have left it to the last possible moment (the end of Unit 1 being tomorrow.  Oops!) to discover that we are required to complete not one (which I did months ago) but three of the bloody things.  In somewhat of a hurry I picked out the magazine article about Prozac.  

I'm sure there should be more to life than this, but I cannot imagine what...

3/14/08 12:02 pm - Primates' Progress


Briefly enamoured by what a couple of my classmates were able to do with Flash and After Effects, I was toying with the idea of a comedy animation based on hominid evolution.  On reflection, I suspect that if I did attempt such a thing, then neither it nor my main project would ever come anywhere close to being finished.  However, I'm pleased with these characters and suspect that some of them will rise again in other contexts.
Particularly the Paranthropus boisei character.  Now, there's a subject very close to my heart.  This is SUCH a cool species, with molars four times as large as a modern human's and a crested skull for improved jaw-muscle attachment, suggesting an immensely powerful chewing ability, but very small canines implying a much more gentle social life than chimps or even gorillas.  When first discovered by Mary Leakey (and originally named Zinjanthropus) this species was found in association with the oldest known stone tools and, naturally, assumed to be the first primate not only to use implements but actually to make them by adapting and improving them.
Later research made it clear that Paranthropus was not a direct ancestor of modern humans but something of an offshoot from the family tree.  So it was promptly decided that the species couldn't possibly have been clever enough to make tools after all, and that the Olduwan toolkit must have belonged to our nearer relative, Homo habilis.  Arguments in support of this included the fact that P. boisei clearly had adaptations to a strict vegetarian diet and would have been too much of a specialist to display any kind of experimental or inventive behaviour.  This prejudiced thinking is alive and well, as witnessed in Lord Winston's appalling TV series Walking with Cavemen, which sticks close to the brief of the rest of the BBC's Walking with... franchise in mixing scientific fact with wild conjecture    
But O ye of little faith!  Current thinking by serious anthropologists is that P. boisei may well have been the first toolmaker after all.  It's the only species to have been found in close proximity to those tools, and the latest fossil finds show that its hands were more highly developed and more dextrous than anyone would have expected; certainly more than mere climbing and grasping would seem to necessitate.  As Henry Gee pointed out, there is nothing but our own anthrocentric prejudice to suggest anything other than the obvious conclusion; that Paranthropus really WAS a toolmaker, and that he was doing it even before our own ancestors caught on.
It's nice that in the Horniman Museum, some of these primitive flint blades are exhibited alongside the replica Paranthropus skull as "associated tools".  The Horniman is a wonderful time-capsule, full of badly stuffed animals and out-of-date labels which will never be changed. (A rather bedraggled juvenile rook, for instance, will forever go inder the name of Trypanocorax).  In the case of those tools, it's so lovely to see how the information has been wrong for so long that things have come full circle, and this is one Horniman exhibit that is once more in line with the latest scientific theories.

2/7/08 10:35 pm - Meeting of Minds


 Sort of developed this bird character quite some time ago, but there was something not quite right before.  Then I figured his beak was just too thin and pointy.  I think he has lots more character with a very deep bill like an Abyssinian raven.  
The idea here is that Abyssinian ravens have for a million years or so been subjected to the same forces of natural selection that turned a green fruit-pigeon into a dodo, except that they've retained their high brain/body-mass ratio and even increased it, developing an advanced culture and... well, you can't expect me to give away the whole plot, now, can you? ;)

1/29/08 12:03 am - Happy Birthday, Desmond!!!


Today (well, yesterday, as it looks like it will be after midnight by the time I post this) is the 80th birthday of Desmond Morris!
( More )

1/21/08 04:46 pm - Ups & downs...

    
These abysmal doodles are by far the most important work I have done since starting college, and probably since long before then.
After getting accepted to college, I started training myself to go out, with the ultimate objective of being able to draw whilst out and about again, like the old days.  You have to understand, this has been a lost skill because ever since getting my diagnosis it has been one of the activities that is strictly taboo.  Sketching, reading or any activity that gives away the fact that one is not completely blind will very, very often provoke anger in others.  If they've just given up their seat for you on the bus or something, this is kind of understandable.  But keeping up the "act" is a big part of making one's way in the world, even though it often means being unable to make full use of the sight that one has.  It's remarkable how even in South London you can bumble along like a little clownfish among anemones if you play by the rules, but even so much as inadvertently making eye-contact can expose you as a fraud and might easily lead to trouble.  It is an extraordinary and counter-intuitive thing; everyone knows someone who is hard of hearing, but there appears to be no concept of hard-of-seeing.  Sight is apparently perceived as like a light bulb, that either works on full power or doesn't work at all.  Strange, but there it is. 

That's pretty much why I have a huge mental block on that most artistic of pursuits; sketching in cafes.  It's just not allowed.   Not for me.  I've been working on this ever since passing the college interview.  Part of the strategy involved going to the same cafe as often as possible, and getting accustomed to the people (that bit wasn't hard, 'cause they're lovely) and the physical layout (which was hard, but not impossible due to the much better than average lighting).  After umpteen visits, occasional crude scratchings were made on tiny pocket-sized sketchbooks while no one was looking, but actual observational drawing was still out of the question.  It's hard to explain when you know no one is going to attack you or call the police, it is still very difficult to overcome the conditioning.

This is why today represents a significant leap forward.  Feels like I have begun to break through the "permission barrier".  Small beginnings, of course.  The first sketch is of a friend and fellow student who was busily sketching me at the time.  The others were two women at the next table, which was really too far away to see clearly except they had pale faces and dark hair which was kind of nice.  It felt okay today, but there is safety in numbers.  The real challenge of doing this kind of thing when alone may take a little longer.  I'm really pleased with myself, though.

On a less chipper note, I went blithely buzzin' to the local high street printers today to get something done for college, and... it had GONE!!!  The place is now an African Takeaway.
 

1/7/08 05:03 pm - Goodbye to all that

 
For what it's worth, here's my finished piece for the staff-led project "How to Boil an Egg".   A valuable exercise, although some of the lessons learned were somewhat negative ones about what to avoid in the future.
One thing that I've definitely established is that I never want to work in ink again.  It takes too long, hurts too much and just never looks right.  Fortunately I'm discovering alternatives about which I'm really quite excited.

Another lesson is that my concentration span seems to have diminished to an all-time low, from which I must conclude I will never be any kind of editorial illustrator.  I just didn't have any belief in this idea beyond the sketchbook stage where it should have remained.  Presumably hence the extreme sloppiness of the last couple of panels.  If the spirit isn't interested, the flesh cannot be arsed.

On a brighter note, Paul's quest for graphic novels that might provide some sort of inspiration continues apace, and a sumptuous and hefty package showed up at the door on Saturday.  Turned out to be the three-book set of Lost Girls, by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie, which I ordered so long ago that I'd forgotten all about it.  Nice when that happens.  Content-wise it looks like being a bit of a smutfest, but the presentation is SO classy, with all the lovely soft-focus artwork.  A nice reminder that a book can still be a really gorgeous object...

1/4/08 04:50 pm - How to Boil an Egg, with Amanda Plummer

 
A propos of nothing, and in the spirit of showing more rough sketchwork that might have been better left unrevealed, here's a bit of very basic storyboarding I found in a sketchbook the other day.

On the course I'm studying, we get to pursue mostly our own projects, but we have been given a few "staff led projects" too.  The theory is that they will provide some diversion for anyone in the grip of illustrators' block, as well as offering some insights into the nature of commissioned work, since they are all based on briefs that members of the teaching staff have had to fulfil in real life.  Some of them sound deadly tedious at first, but for the purposes of the exercise you are supposed to assume that you'v been selected for the brief precisely because of your quirky originality, and therefore you have licence to do pretty much anything you want.

"How to Boil an Egg" was one of the briefs, and it occurred to me that the only way anyone would ever get me topay attention to that would be if it were in the form of a training video presented by world's-greatest-actress-EVER Amanda Plummer.  Since Ms Plummer is known for the intensity with which she throws herself into any role that she accepts, a comic strip on this theme seemed replete with possibilities.  Trouble was, apparently no one at art college has ever seen an Amanda Plummer movie or has any idea who she is.  If that ain't the 7th Sign of the Apocalypse, I don't know what is...  

In the end I went with a completely different storyline involving Cherie Blair clad only in a pinny, getting the most out of dropping the egg into boiling water by pretending it was Gordon Brown.  Bit o' politics there! Oo-er!  Oo-er!  (And a bit of an eighties reference there!  Sometimes I wonder why I bother...)  It wasn't too bad, but I rediscovered this rough-as-rough draft of my original idea the other day and it seemed potentially so much funnier.   

1/4/08 12:29 am - Happy New Year!

The times they have a-changed, and Paul did not spend New Year's Eve sitting in a cupboard, but out on the town with two very dear friends.  Not at all sure where we were when I took this.  The original plan had been to bus it all the way to Westminster Bridge, but the bus driver had other ideas and announced at the Elephant & Castle that he would go thus far and no further.  So we walked from there in a generally Thamesward direction and this, given that my digital camera isn't designed for night work, is a sense of the rather amazing view we had from wherever we happened to be at midnight. 

Ee, but it's been a strange year.  Suddenly I know people, and go outside... and somewhere along the way I have become an art student!  Not quite sure how any of these things happened, except that it had everything to do with

[info]jabberworks and some other remarkable people.  I'm sorry I've let things slide a bit (well, a lot) with regard to posting, commenting and generally staying in touch with people whilst making these adjustments.  But I think things are going to be better now.

 

 

 

12/31/07 12:48 am - The shape of things...

 
A bit more experimentation with adding colour to a pencil sketch in Photoshop.  Needs some work, but this is definitely a way forward...
Way back in the summer I agreed to have a go at illustrating a children's book about a dinosaur that a friend had written, and er... I seem to have done nothing about it since.   I have a vague recollection of feeling quite overwhelmed by all the considerations about colour and layout and stuff.  And then other things started going on and... oh, you know how it is...  Would like to get back to it, though.  A promise unfulfilled is a sad thing. 

12/30/07 01:25 am - These we have loved

 
It's going to be mostly rough sketchwork for the time being, I'm afraid.  I am working on advice not to attempt too much in the way of finished pieces until I am happier with the general look of things.  Not only is this sound advice, but it suits me very well for now.  The sketching was always the fun part.  Why can't it always stay like this...?

My grand scheme requires some suitably exotic aquatic creatures, so it seemed an appropriate time to delve back into childhood memory in search of an old and cherished friend, the Black Moor goldfish.

A product of selective breeding by generations of Chinese fish-keepers, the Black Moor is a form of goldfish with two tail-fins, a deep body shape and big protruding eyes which actually make it quite difficult for the fish to see where it's going.  They are "supposed" to be a deep velvety black all over, with no trace of any other colour, but so deep is the imperative in just about all fish species to be paler underneath and therefore less conspicuous when seen by a predator from below, that it is hard to get them to breed true.  I remember reading with horror as a sprog how some "unethical"(!) breeders flooded the pet market with imperfect specimens that "should have been culled at an early stage".   

Racially pure black moors are highly prized, and never found their way to the little pet store in Brockley, so every one that I ever owned (all of whom were named Peem Birrell, in honour of an extremely obscure character from the Beano comic, just because I thought it was such a great name), were beautifully imperfect survivors of ethnic cleansing, black above but a lovely burnished bronze on the underbelly.

Being visually impaired, none too nifty and not very tolerant of cold, black moors don't thrive in outdoor ponds and are only really happy in an indoor aquarium.  Aha... but in a post-climate-change future world where reckless human activity has wiped out practically every other fish species, their time might come at last...  I envisage them growing to huge size and becoming ever more strange as they adapt to fill all the vacant niches of the aquatic ecosphere  This is only the beginning...

The theory is that by delving for inspirations in one's personal hinterland, one ultimately produces a work of greater resonance, even if, for the most part, nobody has the faintest bloody idea what you're on about, which is kind of my default setting anyway.  I'll go with it for a while, and see where it leads...  

12/26/07 12:11 pm - Colour!

 

Woot!  Santa brought me a Wacom tablet for Christmas!  Suddenly I have total cursor control.  It's almost like being able to operate the computer by mind control the way Mac users seem to do!  
Don't know whether I'll ever actually feel confident enough to make the initial sketch with a graphics pen, and so long as there are scanners there seems to be no particular need to forsake my trusty pencils and paper, but I very much wanted thiis as a means of exploring possibilities for adding colour.  The above is a crude early attempt, and I don't offer it up as a triumph by any means, but I am rather attracted to this look.  Bit of an ink-and-watercolour thing going on, although being pencil-and-Photoshop it would have taken a small fraction of the time.  At the moment my first college deadlines seem pretty remote, but it won't always be this way.  Speed is going to be of the essence!  What I like least in this pic is the crude shading on the woman's arms and legs, for which the only defence I can offer is that this was originally done as a quickish pencil-sketch which I only later decided to experiment on in Photoshop.  With a little forward planning and minimal extra effort, this could have been done much better.  Early days, but I'm really excited about the possibilities!
Hope you're all having a lovely Christmas! 

12/21/07 11:09 pm - It's Longest Night!

It's that time again, when only a quote from the best book EVER written will suffice!  So here it comes again:

  Yet, however bowed down a system may be, nothing can quite destroy the spark of excitement that comes to everymole's breast with the start of the third week of December and the approach of Longest Night.  For even in the darkest hour there is a distant star, a tiny light of hope whose glimmer, though far off, is enough to thrill the most despairing heart.
  Longest Night!  The time when youngsters grow silly with expectation and adults grow young with memory.  The time when a mole may forget the icy months still to come in the knowledge that the imminent passage of Longest Night means that the nights are beginning-- however unlikely it seems-- to shorten once more.  Longest Night!  The time when darkness and light hang in a balance and the mystery of life is remembered again.
  Then are the old tales told and the ancient songs sung...

In honour of Linden at least some moles in every system traditionally trek to the Stone on Longest Night.  And what an exciting memory that is for those who take part, as jokes, smiles, giggles, whimsies, buffoonery, tomfoolery and games mix with prayers, silence and mystery in an evening of pilgrimage.  Then back to the burrows for a feast and a chatter and a tale well told; and then sleep, if there's time, before waking at last in the knowledge that Longest Night has been survived and the long journey towards spring has begun...
                                                                                                                              William Horwood; Duncton Wood    

12/20/07 01:05 pm - ...But change is a monster, and changing is hard...



Er...  Hello all.  Anyone here who was aware of me in the first place has probably given up on me long ago.  I'm sorry, I have been so remiss in both posting and commenting.  It's all been very strange lately.

Be it everso implausible, I have somehow been accepted as an MA Illustration student at Camberwell College of Arts.  This involves regularly crawling out from undeer the bed and placing myself in harm's way.  There seem to be an awful lot of car hooters and screeching of brakes around lately.  And the college building itself is widely acknowledged to contain several traps for the unwary.  Also there is an unprecedented level of social contact, and suddenly I am having to negotiate my way through intelligent conversations and hold more than half a dozen names in my head at any one time.   This has all required a great deal of adjustment, but the rewards are immense.  I now know some really brilliant people, and have the exceptional good fortune to be under the tutelage of the one and only Janet Woolley.  This student life is exhausting, terrifying, physically painful and more fun than I've ever had!  I love it!


I have set myself the goal of somehow producing a graphic novel, despite my near-total ignorance of the genre, which will have to be remedied in short order.  Immediate concerns are all to do with character design.  The above pic is the first thing in a long time that I've been really pleased with, although further improvements are still needed.  This is the result of an awful lot of expert guidance, with Janet having identified early on that my birds, dinosaurs etc had a distinctiveness and style that my human characters entirely lacked.  For which she devised the cruel and unusual punishment of drawing the same character at least 25 times in different ways!  Owch!  

Bitching and moaning every step of the way, you can be sure, I did comply.  And it really works!!!   This character has been stretched, squashed and otherwise distorted before finally morphing into something that I really do feel happy about!  Advice from Janet which seemed totally counter-intuitive at the time, like making the eyes smaller, has turned out to be right on the mark!  My tutor is a genius!  
I sort of wince with horror at the thought of this project having gone ahead with my original designs and no such inspired input.  Here, for one time only, is a glimpse into the mire that is Paul's Sketchbook, showing just a few key stages in this character's evolution.  

( Sketchbook stuff here )

9/15/07 12:29 pm - Whither Shall I Wander...?


Based on a passage from Robin McKie's Ape Man, describing how our ancestor Homo erectus, "armed only with stone tools and doubtful intellect" migrated from Africa to spread through Asia and even Europe.  For some reason, erectus expert Alan Walker delights in labouring the point that the species, which probably had not evolved a sophisticated spoken language, was "profoundly inhuman" and "an awful klutz".  Yay and thrice yay for the one and only Leslie Aiello for reminding us that erectus had a brain twice the size of a chimp's, and was at that time probably the most intelligent animal species that had ever lived.
 
Have often thought of doing a comic on human evolution, but how'd you go about it without its being thoroughly depresing.  I did an OU course on the subject, and the story seems to chart a long slide into the abyss.  Even H erectus had it tough.  He hadn't yet reached the point of being terrified to step outside his front door because of all the cyclists on the fucking pavement, but current theory does have it that his main hunting trick was the long-distance pursuit practiced by some modern African tribesmen.  It works on the fact that antelope and other prey animals, with their insulating fur, cannot exert themselves for long without becoming dangerously overheated. People, with naked skins and plenty of sweat glands, have superior stamina.  So, the antelope whizzes off into the distance, but a super-fit huntsman with astonishing tracker-skills can just about keep on its trail.  Every time the antelope stops running, sooner or later the hunter appears over the horizon until finally the animal has no strength left.  The hunter, probably half dead with exhaustion himself by now, kills it and starts to think about walking the forty miles or so back to camp with a dead antelope slung over his shoulder.  It must have been SO much more fun to be an australopithecine...   
Current Music: David Bowie: Strangers When We Meet
Current Mood: scared

8/31/07 11:06 am - 37 layers in Photoshop



ARGH!  Don't know if I could ever do that again.  Not sure whether it was the computer or my head that was in more imminent danger of exploding.

( Some random musings )
Current Music: Iggy Pop; Don't Look Down
Current Mood: productive

8/25/07 09:40 pm - Out and about!!!

Paul has been a total tourist today!  Went with my brilliant friend, Emma, to Tate Modern, via the exquisite aromafest that is Borough Market.  Both places to which I've never been, if you please!
Oo, but I wish there were the equivalent of a camera for smells!  Serious hunger pangs as our nostrils were tantalized from all sides with all manner of sheer deliciousness!  And free samples of cheeses, chilli-flavoured olive-oil and...  I could go on...

Tate Modern is humungous!!!  Goodness knows how long, and how much stamina, it would take to see it all.  We stuck to the permanent exhibitions and the Global Cities exhibit, which has great aeriel photographs.  OH, and I've finally seen Rodin's The Kiss!  Beautiful...  And Monet's Water Lilies,  which is much more muted and lovely than I expected.
And I think I may be coming round to Picasso...  Not like he's suddenly my favourite artist or anything, and neither would I presume to claim that I "get" him.  It's just my resistance seems to be ebbing, is all.  What's happening to meee...?  
Even the shop is vast, and has a better (or at least more accessible) children's book section than a certain large bookstore I could mention.  All kinds of things that I probably should have bought, but I confined myself to two absolute gems; The Spider and the Fly by Tony DeTerlizzi, and the gloriously deranged The Stinky Cheese Man & Other Fairly Stupid Tales by Jon Scieszki and Lane Smith.

Here's a couple of photos that are a little below par because in this suddenly glorious weather it was difficult to see the viewscreen.

Thabnks, Emma, for a really fun day!!!!


The Golden Hind, crewed by mini-pirates, and dads all doing dodgy Robert Newton pirate voices.  A-haarrr...


The Golden Hind and the Gherkin


The Wobbly... er, Millennium Bridge


St Paul's Cathedral, from the cafe at the top of Tate Modern


 
Current Music: John Cale; Pablo Picasso
Current Mood: chipper

8/15/07 12:53 pm - "See ya!"

On Sunday, Paul was invited by the brilliant Dan Fone, photographer, digital artist, web designer extraordinaire and all-round good egg, to come up with a quick painting for an exhibition and charity auction at the House Gallery to raise funds for a slum development project in India.  "Quick" and "painting" haven't usually gone together for me in the past, and I think if I hadn't been on this course there's no way I could have tackled this.  I seem to be beginning to absorb concepts of how to manage a project.  
Kept it simple and came up with this

 
Current Music: Pixies: The Happening
Current Mood: creative

8/11/07 10:55 pm

Just found this on YouTube.  I saw it on TV years ago.  It's just so sad...



 

Current Mood: melancholy
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