Laurie Anderson speaks about being an artist, so listen

Via BoingBoing

Internet Holiday

Hello World!
It's sunny and I can't be bothered to spend a more time at the computer than I need to.
So you're likely to read less from me than usual for a while, which means I am having fun, taking pictures, having picnics, drawing new books at the park, building things, painting, and eating salads in the sun.
No amount of phoning me up to tell me to post things to show I am alive will have any effect, you'll just have to believe that I am, especially since I don't hear my mobile most of the time.
Get in touch via email if needed.
Have a sunny time! Get out there! What are you doing reading the internet!
Seeya!

A Century Of Sleep

I have been meaning to make this drawing for a long time - it's an illustration for one of my favourite songs, "A Woman, a Woman, a Century of Sleep" by Emmy the Great.
Didn't ask for permission, pure fanart, this.

It very nearly didn't happen, I scribbled the rough in a sketchbook that I promptly lost - but I managed to find a blurry mobile phone shot of it, so here it is.

Small Things For Money

It's SUNNY! PROPERLY SUNNY!

I had all the windows open all day while I was working on a website design.. here are a couple of little drawings I did for it.

It's fun, but I really would have liked to soak up some sun in the park.
I'll have a tea break now, then I'll have a look at a dummy that needs remaking... busy days.

Tim Spooner Painting

I'm working in my new workspace in East London. It's all very exciting. Boyfriend is out to pick up some coffee.
I'm going to cover the wall above my computer desk with my art collection... I'm having it framed up piece by piece whenever I feel I can afford it. Here's a miniature painting by Tim Spooner showing a creature talking to a ghost (in socks)

Here is the whole series. LOOK AT IT!!! IT'S SO GOOD!!!

I'm working on my third book about Cats today, lots of fiddling with novelty flaps and logic and jokes and colour. It's going to be a fun book, I'm not allowing it to be otherwise.

Me, digitally

Someone asked me for a self portrait, so I painted one. I just shoved 16GB RAM into my mac, and wanted to try out if the digital brushes are still lagging... nope, they are not.

Making a Logo, in progress

I'm working on a website for the Colour Makes People Happy paint shop... I really want to get a portrait of Simon in there (it's his shop and he mixes the paints).
Siecle is the name of his company, and the company that supplied the basic white paint is supplied by a Dutch company called "De Drie Molens", so it seems right to have a windmill in the image. And I would quite like a slightly dadaist feeling to it as well as a Soviet poster flavour.

Morgue

Paperchase makes great scrap books - A3, brown paper, and SO MANY PAGES. Not the kind of thing you'd want to carry around - I imagine once it's full of scraps it will weigh so much it'll be a proper ceremony to get it off the shelf and onto a table. You'd have to clear the table first so as to not squish everything else.

I am printing out and gluing in illustrations collected off the internet because I noticed I never really look at them in their jumbled digital morgue. I like having a morgue. I used to have a big box of scraps cut from magazines and photocopied from books, but abandoned it in favour of a digital collection. What what is left of it is crammed into messy folders somewhere in the garage, I think. I'll see if I can find it and glue it into this tome.

The illustrations up there are by Heinrich Strub. 50 Watts posted them a while ago. No idea where the cat and mice came from.

Noodler's Ink Ahab Pen

Guys! Guys! Guys!
I have a new fountain pen... and it's BRILLIANT!
You might know that I like to draw with a Namiki. You might also know that I like to run all over the place while doing so, and that this isn't completely compatible at all times with an expensive pen.
So I have been looking for a cheap alternative that would sadden but not ruin me if I left it in a pub.
And I found one!

Check out the variation in line weight! And the line isn't breaking up anywhere, even though I tend to draw very fast.
This is the latest pen from Noodler's Ink - you might have heard of them, they make a lot of specialised inks for fountain pens, including the popular Eel Black that will dry waterproof on paper, so you can do ink and wash drawings with it. Their earlier effort was a bit small and unrealiable (but cute), so I didn't expect much... but the Ahab pen is lovely to hold, chunky, nicely made, light but not flimsy, it closes securely and it is easy to take apart to clean. It also makes a wonderful gurgling noise when it sucks up the ink.
I feel that it is a slightly superior drawing implement to my £80 Namiki. A tiny bit more scratchy, but it the flow is better, and it's nicer to hold.. And what does it cost?
TWELVE QUID!
What the...?
I wonder if I was just spectacularly lucky and got a brilliant specimen, but if this is what they are all like... GO GET ONE!

(I got mine from the US over ebay.)

High Tea

On Saturday night, the people four floors down had a balcony party all night, way past dawn. I didn't really sleep, so I missed the last day of the mask course I was doing and didn't really wake up until it was time for High Tea.



We went to a very posh hotel for that. The napkins were like a herd of crisp white stegosaurus until the waiter shook them out into triangles and placed them across our laps. I had three pots of silver needle white tea.

Later I met my friend Alexia. We soaked up the last bit of sun in Hyde Park, and went to a pub to doodle and talk about Digital publishing.



It's going THAT WAY apparently.
I kind of want to illustrate a whole story in fountain pen and crayon down the pub like this.

Masks

I'm on a mask workshop all weekend... It's a very odd experience.
Today we tried the masks out in a church in Chelsea. They seemed to enjoy it.



No better photos because I didn't want to dstract them, sorry.

Sunday

Today I am having a quiet Sunday. No work. The week ahead is so busy that I figured it was a good idea to have the weekend off. I watched some TV-on-demand and was surprised how hard it is to concentrate. I jusy keep thinking of work.
Here is a lazy bird doodle:

Working, working...

...I'm working.

Digital Brushes

I've been looking around for better brushes to use in Photoshop... here are some that I found through recommendations:
Chris Wahl has some wonderful texture brushes.
Stumpy Pencil is an old favourite.
Mister Bird makes some nifty brushes (for money) (I tried the inking set so far, it's not bad at all).
I might add some here as I find them.