My Pink Half Of The Drain Pipe

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"All The Way Up To Eleven" Recently the BBC has r...
2007-06-11 02:25:00
"All The Way Up To Eleven"Recently the BBC has rediscovered its loon pants and has produced the music series "Seven Ages Of Rock", narrated by the top dirty posho vowels of Julian Rhind Tutt. Sounding like a cosy chat in a sixth form study group, Rhind Tutt's voiceover places a glossy coat over some of popular music's most potent moments.This week was heavy metal, with all its attendant masturbatory guitar thrashing and tight leather keks. So far the series has dealt with the Velvet Underground, Bowie and glam rock, as well as the Californian rock scene of the early 1970s with the Eagles and the goldrush of singer songwriters. Next week is Led Zeppelin and the birth of stadium rock. With it's heart set in the 1970s as the apogee of the form, Seven Ages Of Rock lays out how aggressive rock used to be.Rock music is not aggressive now, or if it is, it is likely whingeing about something. The bands that dominate the airwaves are Coldplay, Snow Patrol, Keane, My Chemical Romance, Muse...
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"Smile, You're On Camera" Big Brother restarted ...
2007-06-08 16:56:00
"Smile , You're On Camera "Big Brother restarted last week, with its addictive blend of puerile voyuerism and shameless self promoting contestants.I've always been an outcast when it comes to Big B rother. I have never watched it for longer than five minutes, because after that time I feel my brain falling away like wet cake. But Big Brother is appealling because it makes us feel superior to its inmates, who cavort in a similar fashion to Hogarth's Bedlam. I hear the makers, Endemol, weed out the well adjusted in favour of racists, harridans, sexists, the mentally challenged, and neurotic queens just to guarantee the programme keeps pulse with the true character of the nation.The rest of us, while sat watching the idiot parade, are slowly getting used to being scrutinised on a daily basis. Last night, in addition to Big MoneySpinner, there was a documentary on Channel 4 last night which discussed civil liberties and how they are being eroded in Britain.When I started to study law, t...

"Just The Way You Are" Today I've been working on...
2007-06-07 11:40:00
"Just The Way You Are"Today I've been working on a comic called, "Just The Way You Are". It isn't my first comic, since I drew those at four years of age, but it is the first to be done on a compuder, Mr President.Having spent yesterday being wowed by filters and special effects, today was a much more pared down affair. Each panel is quite enough work as it is, without starting to set naturalistic light settings and whatnot. This comic is an experiment to see how to put something long together. The last comic I drew was 16 pages, and that was done with several sheets of A4, a propelling pencils and some glue. This is to be a shinier, more glossy product.The start is pretty much the same, with the layout paper and ultra crappy Bic Matic pencil I use. I always thought artists had special equipment to draw with until I saw Ralph Steadman's drawings of the Kentucky Derby done in lip stick and eyeliner, and then I realised that cartoonists aren't that precious about their materials. ...
More About: Working , Been , Workin

"Flying Squirrel Rock" I've been mucking around w...
2007-06-06 11:15:00
"Flying Squirrel Rock "I've been mucking around with Photoshop again, to create my squirrels. Since I'm familiar with the program now, I can follow some of the tutorials which previously seemed baffling. Today I'm learning from Al Mackey.Mackey has some great tutorials which take you through step by step, teaching you how to use layers, shading, air brushing and flat colouring. Following stage by stage, I have been able to create something more life than my early efforts, which appeared very flat and didn't really make much use of Photoshop's more refined features. If I simply wanted to colour, then I could use Corel Draw and save time and effort.Here's our plain jane squirrel, dirty and speckled but engaging. I'll call him "Winston" :Using Mackey's tutorial, I'm giving Winston a makeover so that even Trinny and Susannah wouldn't recognise him afterwards. Here he is with spit and polish:He looks good! But he is pointless too, so its the best kind of aesthetic. A flying squi...
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"Deep Cover" I've been working on some designs fo...
2007-06-05 14:13:00
"Deep Cover "I've been working on some designs for my site, flying-squirrels.co.uk. I've put together some pencil roughs and now I'm inking up to create nice fat lines when it goes into Photoshop.I also had a nice letter from a political magazine who said they were interested in my work. This is great news, but they expressed a preference for New Yorker style cartoons. The cartoons of the New Yorker are legendarily unfunny. I have the New Yorker cartoon cat calendar (£2.99, found in the remainder bin at Waterstones) which even though we have now hit June, has still failed to make me laugh at all.Tone is an important factor in cartoons for magazines, and while I've never liked the New Yorker due to its dense newsprint, tiny adverts for enormously expensive jewellery and at least one column every issue on why Nathan Lane is the cat pyjamas, it is one of the few publications left that accepts the classic cartoon that stands alone, without a topical reference. There is one other thi...
More About: Working , Been , Designs

"Gloria Suburbia" I was pleasantly surprised to s...
2007-06-01 16:32:00
"Gloria Suburbia "I was pleasantly surprised to switch on the television the other day and discover a happy accident. Jonathan Meades had returned to the BBC with his brilliant visual essays on British architecture in Abroad In Britain.Meades doesn't have an immediate persona. He has a donnish air, if dons were down with Pink Floyd and wore sunglasses indoors. He performs his views with so much elan and bite that he makes Kenneth Tynan look like a toddler. If Tynan was always breaking new ground with saying fuck on BBC2 and creating musicals about the impossible loveliness of bottoms, Meades creeps up and spooks you with his ideas.For a start, you have to concentrate on what he is saying. Most television presenters are now in the habit of stressing every third word they say so if you drift off to pastures more invigorating than the Ten O'Clock News you can catch up. Not so Meades, whose vocabulary passes from the descriptive to the satirical and then drifts into either merciless sn...
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"Paint It Black" At the moment I'm reading Dr Ant...
2007-05-30 23:58:00
"Paint It Black "At the moment I'm reading Dr Anthony Storr's "The Dynamics Of Creation". This book is one my mother gave to me, and I never got around to reading it when she was alive. I realise now with regret that if a person bothers to give you a book, you should return the generosity by reading it during their lifetime, as it may entirely change how you think.But in another way, its no bad thing to finally settle down and appreciate the wisdom of the book. For a start it has introduced me to Freud, who I had no serious prior knowledge of, aside from fnarr inducing jokes about cigars. I spent six months in the arms of modern psychiatry and did not hear a peep about Freud. Not once did I really understand how mental disorders are classified, and what their roots are. It seems entirely obvious that mental illness is in large part not inherited, but induced by events in your own life.Reading Storr's book, I realise that this is what is missing from modern psychiatry. No one brin...
More About: Moment , Paint It Black

"Nintendo Ow" The man bought a Nintendo Wii over ...
2007-05-29 23:39:00
"Nintendo Ow"The man bought a Nintendo Wii over the weekend. I haven't asked how he obtained this coveted item, though suspicion lingers over whether he still has the right number of kidneys.For the uninitiated, the Nintendo Wii is a games console which allows you to control the game by moving the controller with your hand. You hold the controller in your hand, and simply move it to make an action on screen. In this way, you can move a virtual tennis racket or baseball bat towards a ball. There are those of you out there thinking, if I stand waving my arms around me for no particular reason, I'll look like a total tool. Well, the news is that the playing of computer games, with all communicant actions of pressing buttons over and over again like a amphetamine addled rabbit and twiddling tiny joysticks already makes you look like a tool, combined with the terrible facial expressions you pull. So the Nintendo Wii, by making you move about, is at least getting you off your arse and d...
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"With Our Love, We Could Sell The World" The firs...
2007-05-26 01:25:00
"With Our Love , We Could Sell The World "The first album I bought with my own money was Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. That act thankfully cancels out that bad music karma received from a "Big Fun" 12 inch I won at a scout hut disco in the late 80s. More of an insult than a prize really.Sgt Pepper is 40 years old this year and still provides a taste of what must have been one of the most fertile creative sessions in history. Sgt Pepper made me a Beatles fan because it is the one album closest to everyones fantasy of the Beatles, the psychedelic troubadours. It has a spirit which you'd have to be cold hearted to ignore. The album invites you in, with brass bands doing oompah rock next to screeching guitars and whooping calls of "we'd love to take you home."There's a nostalgia built into Sgt Pepper. The uniforms they chose to wear on the cover are inspired, acid silks with silver epaulets, pink and orange braiding, wearing their MBEs, clutching brass instruments. The imager...
More About: The World

"Set Filter To Cheat" A few changes here at the P...
2007-05-23 11:23:00
"Set Filter To Cheat "A few changes here at the Pink Half. The pink's gone for starters. I just didn't like how the blog looked, too busy and yet I didn't want to remove things from the page. I think I miss the colour but can't work out how to get things pink again without pfaffing.I've spent the day twiddling around with Photoshop, which offers any number of ways to make your photos look better. In my case, I wanted to create an image which used a real photo as a background and then stick one of my drawings into it.So I found a interior picture of the Troubadour here:And a quick drawing that I made with WACOM:The idea was to bodge the Troubadour and the pint drinker together. I hate drawing backgrounds since I always either make them too fussy or too brief (as I have done here). So I mucked around with hue and saturation which was rather like fiddling with the colours on the television ande lightened the Troubadour so that it was less dark. And a lot of other rubbish too, like ...
More About: Changes , Chang , Chan

"Novocaine For The Soul" Just a catch up post whi...
2007-05-22 14:55:00
"Novo caine For The Soul "Just a catch up post which means I'm busy drawing squirrels, greeting cards and dicking about with Photoshop. I have a project to do by tomorrow and as usual I have left everything until the last minute."He's the perfect flatmate, a teetotal, non smoking vegetarian and by the looks of those symbols, a card carrying Buddhist. You just never like anyone I do."I've also been to the dentist today and came back with a set of teeth that frankly I am not sure I am entitled to smile with. They look so nice. When you live like I do which means five espresso for breakfast, cigarettes and chewing gum, then teeth can have a hard time of it. Today they look good. And unusually for visit to the dentist I received some praise, which was that my gum health was great. Yes, I live terribly, but my teeth are actually pretty happy. Amazing."And a number 7 chisel please, Nurse."The inner fear of how dentists workEven better is that this is all on the NHS, which means its reaso...
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"A Goosestep To The Music Of Time" I spent some o...
2007-05-18 12:46:00
"A Goosestep To The Music Of Time "I spent some of yesterday looking after the shop at the Cartoon Museum. I discovered that I am truly middle class in that I have never operated a till before in my life and still managed to cock it up royally. I covered lunchtime, which on a rainy Thursday in Bloomsbury means the place gets very busy.Since most of the visitors to the Cartoon Museum are tourists who are lost on the way to the British Museum, there is opportunity to see direct evidence that national stereotypes are indeed true. Japanese girls do giggle constantly, which is completely unnerving when you're trying to communicate. Americans are often larger than even SuperSize Me would lead you to expect and have a sense of enthusiasm about everything in London that makes you feel rather inadequate about your own feelings on the capital. However the top marks go to the Germans who invaded the Museum yesterday and filled the place with guffaws. German is about the only language aside fro...
More About: Step , The Music , Este

"We Are The Music Makers, We Are The Dreamers Of D...
2007-05-17 10:30:00
"We Are The Music Makers , We Are The D ream ers Of Dreams"Many things have been happening here at Queens, behind the scenes. To make me a success, I have a whole team who never get a moment's rest or any credit. Today I'm keeping it that way.In the future, you will be able to find galleries of my work at www.flying-squirrels.co.uk. Why decide on flying squirrels? One, squirrels are generally cool, emboldened in London by the fact that most of us are frustrated wannabe pet owners who will coo at them. Two, a flying squirrel is a surprise, which is similar to me when you've spent much of your life being a serious professional and then decide to be a cartoonist. Three, I have a hunkering to design a flash animation with a flying squirrel bomber squad and had no idea how else I was going to get it anywhere on the web.Yesterday I took huge step in Photoshop and did two lessons in one session. I'm beginning to understand how it works because its rather like animation. If you understand ...
More About: The Music

"New Model Zombie" Yesterday I was in Canary Whar...
2007-05-15 19:02:00
"New Model Zombie "Yesterday I was in Canary Wharf, where I was visiting a friend of mine.Canary Wharf is such an odd bit of London because it looks like nothing else in the capital. There's no rubbish on the streets, everyone is wearing a suit and the number of SUVs is even higher than here in West Ken. It's a curiously antiseptic sort of place.I'm not an inverted snob who says that you have to spend your life keeping it real. Keeping it real in London can often mean that crack dealers conduct their business on your doorstep and in severe cases, firebombings of your local curry house. Streets should be safe, and there's no virtue in grime for the sake of grime.Canary Wharf is the antithesis of grime. But every time I go there I have this feeling that real life is elsewhere. I could easily be in any big financial district in the world. Canary Wharf was the product of Thatcher and it shows. Unless you have a car you will feel like an ant as you wander by slip roads which take you ...
More About: Este

"Friday Night In The Kingdom Of Doom" It was only...
2007-05-14 11:25:00
"Frida y Night In The Kingdom Of Doom "It was only last week that I was congratulating myself that my health was now better than it has been for a long time. In the last two years I have substantially given up drink, Bolivian marching powder and other moreish treats that London has to offer. Previously I've always been of the opinion that you get a few years to thoroughly bosh your insides and then one gracefully retires to shake their head at the madness of young people and their heedless quest for chemical romance. Largely this is because there tend to be some serious health problems in store if you carry on. Also it can just get seriously embarrassing to be pushing 30 and still running around like an energised hamster. Your face seems to be repelled to by the expressions you keep pulling.Now there's a point to be made that much of this illegal and therefore a v bad thing, but illegality makes very little difference to availability.I could write something like, drugs are bad, mmka...

"Don't Let The Door Hit You On The Way Out" Tony ...
2007-05-11 13:47:00
"Don't Let The Door Hit You On The Way Out"Tony Blair announced yesterday that he was ceasing to be our Prime Minister. The media have been analysing his legacy with the happiness of a thirteen year old boy dissecting a frog in Biology. And yet they can't quite bring themselves to look at one significant change which Our Tone has left the nation with.I was one of those original saps who voted Labour in 1997, having just turned 18 and consequently not having the knowledge that only comes with age that voting is a fruitless activity, since whoever you vote for, the Government always gets in.What a glorious evening it was as the Tories fell away in droves. I stayed up all night watching the 1997 election and my parents were so pleased that they allowed me the day off from the super expensive private school I attended (like all good middle class socialists, they decided that the personal was not necessarily political).You'd have thought with such a stonking majority in the Commons, L...
More About: The D

"Why Every Woman Needs A Willie" "Oh it'll grow...
2007-05-10 23:57:00
"Why Every Woman Needs A Willie ""Oh it'll grow on you."Another day spent at the Cartoon Museum today, in the library, cataloging endless Mickey Mouse comics.I'm bound to say that I didn't spend my entire attention on the task, and was easily diverted to the shelves around me, where I spied an old friend, Willie Rushton.Willie Rushton is the reason I began to think about how cartoons were put together in the first place. He created the Little Gnittie which sits atop Private Eye whenever it hits the newsstands, in addition to co founding the magazine with Richard Ingrams in the early 1960s. But that's not the reason I like him so much.I have such warm memories of this man that its hard not to imagine him as a family friend. He was, in a way. I can recall hearing him over the kitchen radio as part of "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue" while my mother was cooking on Sundays. Much as I like Peter Cook, Willie Rushton was better because he was sillier, much sillier than most old drunken s...
More About: Grow

"Ten Year Sentence" Ten years have passed since I...
2007-05-09 11:52:00
"Ten Year Sentence "Ten years have passed since I was at college. Not that I have much interest in attending reunions, since there is a tacit acceptance that the best years are behind you. Nothing worse than being surrounded by those nudging 30, wearing suits and commenting about the irresponsible days.I am still being thoroughly irresponsible, and I am not looking to change my circumstances. I have no itch to gain children, or be married, or settle down with the ball and chain that is a mortgage. If you've got these things, and they make you happier than a kitten with an angora jumper, then kudos to you. However, one of life's unique privileges in London is that you can carry on mucking about for much longer than any of your mates who settled down in Province 12 A. That's the reason I'm still here. I like cackling into the wee hours, never having more than old bacon and champagne in the fridge, dancing with the underground, and wearing clothes that would earn me a beating outsid...
More About: Years , Ears , Since

"Soundtrack To Nothing" Some who read this blog o...
2007-05-07 21:16:00
"Soundtrack To Nothing"Some who read this blog on a regular basis may have formed the opinion that I spend most of my time being highly irritable and misanthropic, that I'm some sort of aspiring curmudgeon who can't wait to get old, get cats and wave her stick at young people."A knife? What are you, an amatuer?"Well, I think you're right. I'm now completely out of step with mainstream British life. I find myself thinking that Morrissey doesn't go quite far enough. I'm insanely irritated by short people on High Street Ken, cud chewing blondes, girls who go "mmkay yah", beige trousers, people carriers and wannabe ruperts everywhere."Was it entirely wise to call him a pussy?"In the main, I can bear this, just about. Like most over intellectualizing depressives, you end up taking sanctuary in books and music. Or you could.Today I went in a record shop and was totally unable to find anything that I wanted to buy. Not even anything particularly obscure. If I'd trotted in and said, ...
More About: Blog , Read , Thing , Trac

"Hey Mickey, You're So Fine" Today I am preparedl...
2007-05-04 11:51:00
"Hey Mickey , You're So Fine "Today I am preparedly grumpy for a visit to the dentist. In a bizarre inversion, my private guy couldn't see me but the NHS could, so money doesn't always talk. That doesn't mean I relish the visit but I chipped a molar over the weekend and it has to be fixed for fear of something worse.Spent yesterday at the Cartoon Museum, doing a bit of curating. Anita (the chief) gave me a pair of little white gloves and I spent the day going through a Royal Cambridge Poleson sausage box bearing the warning that those who use this box for the sale of inferior sausages will face a heavy penalty. Clearly the box had been in someone's attic for years but like attic boxes all over the country it contained comics in mint condition.Specifically the comics turned out to be Mickey Mouse. I've never had much time for Disney because they're too sweet. In Disney shorts everyone ends having a hearty chuckle at the end and perhaps if they're being edgy then Donald Duck wi...
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"What's That Coming Over The Hill?" Today in prep...
2007-05-02 10:57:00
"What's That Coming Over The Hill ?"Today in preparation for my class I've been dicking about with Photoshop. I did a drawing inspired by the Automatic's track, "Monster". You can find out about the Automatic when their website is working, which it isn't today. They play good thrashy rock, suitable for moshing and headbanging (if you've got the hair for it).The colours are a bit flat but its a work in progress. I want to use Photoshop effects to create more depth, so there will be updates to how it looks as I get better with the program. For today I did some basic colouring, text and word balloons. Drawing word balloons is a pain in the bum, so I'm glad I've finally mastered it here.I can see that I need to be a bit more careful in using word balloons, and planning where they go. Too often I just draw and then don't think about where the text will go, but its early days.Now I'm off to start a new project to experiment with all the super wizzo stuff like airbrushes and opacit...
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"Ebony and Ivory Goddamn" Today I checked out som...
2007-05-01 14:52:00
"Ebony and Ivory Goddamn"Today I checked out some of my work at different sizes. Recently I sent off another set of submissions and suddenly wondered if my work reproduces well at 50% or even 40%. These are the dimensions that printers work at and I never really given it much thought aside from the boldness of the lines when inking up. When I post work here I do most of this job myself so by the time anyone sees it, the work is scanned at printing resolution and cropped, which produces a much more tidy image.I had a flick through my portfolio and realised that there were several cartoons in it that while being funny, they reproduce pretty badly. Anything that has wash in it has to be redrawn because at 50% the image is too dark. Also detail is lost very quickly when you shrink anything.These requirements can determine your style to a great extent. When I started I liked lots of detail, cross hatching and fiddly little lines. I still like all that stuff but unless you have 1:1 reprod...
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"Jackie and Jim" Out this weekend to the arches o...
2007-04-30 14:50:00
"Jackie and Jim"Out this weekend to the arches of Vauxhall for dancing until the sun came up (and staying for a while after that) .A good night but extra fun as on the dancefloor I met another escapee from Slaughter and May. He was another ten years down the track, having been entirely miserable with his experience there, he left, took some time off and moved to New York.He is no longer a lawyer, but seemed very happy with his decision. This accounts for us meeting at 3 am in the morning in a sweaty club under a railway arch. I have met investment bankers, lawyers, government spooks and all manner of establishment members in nightclubs over the years but I was still surprised at this.Slaughter and May is the English law firm and they remain the standard by which all other City law firms are measured (noted from official firm literature). I lost count of the times that other firms would change their work to match our mark ups - the reputation was that good. But one thing they are not...
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"Do You Like Soul Music?" If you don't, then the ...
2007-04-27 10:47:00
"Do You Like Soul Music ?"If you don't, then the chances are you are a property developer. I know, its the easiest thing in the world to despise property developers with their perma tans, BMW MX5s and tasteless jewellery. I should pick on someone my own size. But I'm not because I am angry. The news is that the Spitz in Spitalfields Market is to close and be turned in flats."Good Lord! It's the final piece of the jigsaw!"London is obviously an expensive place to live now, and every day the property market gets a bit higher on more money. There's now a relentless sniffing of money everywhere, with any fragment of land being snapped up. The property market is insane, it is a monster that is destroying what makes London great.One of the things that foolish visitors say when they come to London is that it lacks decent public transport, and it is scruffy. "In Brussels/Frankfurt/Paris [inset your EuroCity here]", they say "We have a clean city, and people are not so rude. London is the...
More About: Soul Music , Then

"That's The Way To Do It" Spent the day at the Ca...
2007-04-25 23:58:00
"That 's The Way To Do It"Spent the day at the Cartoon Museum, finding Bill Tidy's series for Punch, "Sam Hinchcliffe".The Cartoon Museum has a nifty library full of old copies of Private Eye and Punch. Rather like law journals, Punch came bound in red and gold, looking like an authoritarian sort of publication. Instead it turned out to be an interesting read. In between looking for Hinchliffe I managed to read contemporaneous reviews of Dr Strangelove and The Music Lovers, both illustrated with brilliant cartoons by Ffolkes (completely unknown now, and his work is tremendously good), a surfeit of Alan Coren articles (demonstrating that Giles Coren's unnerving ability to generate clouds of copy is directly inherited) early Ed Maclachan, Quentin Blake before he got into drawing greetings cards, Ann Leslie as a sexy thirtysomething instead of that hag that now appears on Question Time, and incredibly sexist advertisements for cars, cigars, and brandy. And that was apart from the tw...
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"Cartoon Groupie" I must say it's the most extrao...
2007-04-05 13:24:00
"Cart oon Group ie"I must say it's the most extraordinary experience not everybody I suppose it's something to do with the sun and all that but I wouldn't understand myself really and I'm not sure its even legal.You know quite for no reason I'm here for the season and high as a kiteLiving forever covered in ink with nibs in the sink, which couldn't be rightEveryone's here and frightfully gay nobody cares what people sayThough Bloomsbury seems really much queerer than Rome at its heightOn Wednesday night I went to a marvellous partyWith Stephen and Bryan and EmmaIt was in the fresh air and we went as we were and we stayed as we were which was clever.Poor Kate started singing at midnight and she didn't stop singing til fourWe knew the excitement was bound to begin when the pints came in,And Morgan Freeman was pouring the gin - I couldn't have liked it more!I couldn't have liked it more…I've been to a marvellous party. We played a wonderful game. Bryan came dressed as a rabb...
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"Who Says The Germans Don't Have A Sense Of Humour...
2007-01-26 00:59:00
"Who Says The Germans Don't Have A Sense Of Humo ur ?"Yesterday evening I went to Central Saint Martins for my life drawing class. Real human beings to draw will be provided next week, so this week we played around with charcoal, using putty rubber or "bungy" to erase the charcoal covered paper. In this way, class, we learn how to understand the tone of objects.It was highly satisfactory to get charcoal all over my fingers and thoroughly destroy the bungy in the process. Bungy is great - whenever you think its all black, you fold it in half and presto, a white patch emerges, ready to be bespoiled. A few lightbulbs went on about angles and the space between the objects. You don't draw the object so much as the space around it. Detail can be sacrificed because the eye fills in the detail for us. That's the theory and I sort of got it.Had another class with Cat Andrew, who teaches me about the way spot cartoons work - all these ways of drawing have their own languages. Today we looke...
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