Mitzi

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Here's a recent portrait I did. I say 'portrait' because although pictures of animals aren't usually referred to by this word (they are mostly drawn or painted as representatives of their species: as 'cats' or 'horses'), it is nonetheless equally important to capture an animal's personality in a drawing as it is in that of a human. There is no difference in this respect.

Mitzi was a graceful and patient model and seemed very conscious and pleased with the attention that was focused on her. Of course, there was always the possibility that she would move, which is why I first sketched all the essential things (like the general pose and her eyes) very quickly and why the drawing came out as well as it did. There is a danger, when you have a lot of time, of getting bogged down in details. On the other hand, when you have to work fast you get the essentials down and then improve on them. This makes for a more expressive image.

It's time to play to play the music, it's time to light the lights!

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Lately I've been rewatching one of my all-time favourite shows, the Muppet Show. Having spent the first years of my life on the other side of the Iron Curtain, this show was one of my first impressions of the west: I remember the giant image of a skinny frog emanating from a movie screen on board the ferry from Poland to Sweden. I'm not going to go too much into the show at this point, although I might write more in the future. If you've never watched it, I believe that it's available from lovefilm.com, or to download from places like the Piratebay (although I would, of course, never encourage crime...).

Here is a link to an amazing sketch, featuring the comedian Dom Deluise. The clip starts with the sketch in question and then continues for another 5 minutes but don't bother with those.

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88JqfsvDNmA

Snakes for a Head

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This is the most random page in my sketchbook. Sometimes random is wonderful.

Yeah, Good Luck...

While I wait to be sent pictures of my Newcastle murals, so I can blog about them, let me indulge in this lovely/weird postcard I found at a fleamarket. Some observations:

1. Portrush is a pretty hellish place (unless you're really into deep-fried food, low-rent casinos and tacky plastic souvenirs) but on the other hand, they apparently have a giant kitten.

2. When you write 'Good Luck' on a postcard it just seems really scornful and ominous.

3. Imagine if all postcards featured adorable, fluffy kittens.

Newcastle Exhibition

I'm off to Newcastle tomorrow, where I'll be doing some murals in a bar called The End together with Manchester-based artist Tasha Whittle (you can see her wonderful work here and here). The murals will be finished on Saturday and we will have an opening party hosted by the Ghetto Method crew.

So, if you're in Newcastle on Saturday evening, come and say hi at The End, 78 Scotswood Rd.

Random Creatures

This Will Explain Everything

An open call to comic artists and illustrators.
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The Edinburgh-based Forest Publishing is putting together a graphic novel anthology and we are looking for work from artists who combine words and images in various ways.

This anthology is an imaginary encyclopedia: a compendium of knowledge that is true, half-true, false, absurd or very confusing. A reader will come away from this book intrigued, amazed, mystified, puzzled, perplexed, bewildered, bemused and befuddled but not necessarily informed.Your entry should explain something. It can be a piece of disinformation, speculation or thorough nonsense. It could be about how a tractor works, what heart burn really is, an explanation of long-distance running or zen. Facts are fine but, for this project, they are not the ultimate point. We're looking for unique points of view on a wide-range of objects and ideas.

When submitting: do consider the different forms of informative imagery you could play around with: diagrams, maps, tables, technical illustrations, instruction manuals etc.

Technical specs

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You can submit multipage strips, spreads or single-page images in colour or black and white. The format of the book will be 245mm x 168mm (portrait) with a bleed of 3mm If your image reaches the edges of the page, don't put anything important in the bleed zone where it might get chopped off. If you intend to do a spread, please keep important things away from the centre of the image as there will be a deep gutter. (These specs aside, if you already have finished work in a different format, we might be able to fit it in anyway.)

Submissions should be emailed as low resolution jpegs (make sure that any text is readable, though) to thiswillexplain@gmail.com. Write 'Submission' in the subject line. Alternatively, you can send us a good quality photocopy by regular mail. The address is: Magda Boreysza at Forest Publishing, 3 Bristo Place, Edinburgh EH1 1EY, United Kingdom. If your piece is selected we will ask you to send a high quality image file. Deadline: 30 August 2009

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About Forest Publishing

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Forest Publishing is a branch of the Forest, a non-profit art collective and vital part of Edinburgh's cultural life. Since August 2000 we have hosted thousands of free events and nourished scores of local artists and bands including luminaries such as St. Jude's Infirmary and Aberfeldy. We have put out records, thrown street parties, hosted more than a hundred exhibitions, built a darkroom, offered workshops on everything from Arabic to crocheting, grown a garden, given out thousands of pounds in grants, built a practice studio, started a swap library and a free shop, made friends, battled the bureaucracy, hired out free bikes and much more. In the summer of 2008 we launched the massively successful Forest Fringe as part of the Edinburgh Festival. Thousands of people have participated, volunteered, created and enjoyed the Forest as an alternative to the grim entertainment prospects and corporate art and culture scene elsewhere in the city. The Forest excites and inspires people.

In 2004 we launched a small publishing wing which we have quietly been expanding. Our publications have showcased fine writing, music, commentary and art. The most recent of these, Stolen Stories, was an anthology of rip-offs, published last year to critical acclaim, with support from the Scottish Arts Council.
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http://www.theforest.org.uk/

Close your eyes and burst into flames

Lynch with friend...................................... .........Herzog eating his shoe.

This is a little off-topic but I just read a piece of exciting news. David Lynch and Werner Herzog, two of the few living geniuses of film, are making a movie together. Herzog will direct and Lynch will serve as executive producer. This was announced ages ago but according to some new reports the casting was recently completed and imdb now has the film's status as 'filming' with a release set to 2010. The title will be My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done and the story sounds appropriately fucked-up. It...um, involves a man killing his mother with a sword. Oh, but there's more: among the cast members are Brad Dourif, Grace Zabriskie, Chloe Sevigny, Willem Defoe, Udo Kier and Michael Shannon (who was excellent in the otherwise crummy Revolutionary Road). Very exciting.

Two Pictures from Shetland

Here are two sketches I made this summer on Shetland. I've been making an effort, lately, to do more observational drawing and to use colours. These drawings were made with colour pencils. In the first one, I used them sparingly and focused more on lines, but with the drawing of my hand I really went for it, chosing some very vivid colours. In some places, like the palm, I then covered those reds and oranges with white, which makes the skin look smoother but you can sort of see stuff going on underneath and you can get a really nice feeling of volume and texture that way. I think that what I did here (something I often forget) is that I kept the drawing very lose and crazy and only tightened it up towards the end, with some brown lines and white layers. That goes for the architectural drawing too. It's easy to get really anal about lines when you draw buildings and the result can easily be boring. I'm normally terrible at it but here I just focused on big blocks of colour, and it kind of worked, I think.

Words

“It must not be forgotten, that a picture should always be the reflection of a deeper sensation and that deeper means strange and that strange means not known or quite unknown”

Giorgio de Chirico

Animation

My big project at the moment is a film I'm making as part of my MA at the Edinburgh College of Art. It's going to be a drawn animation and I won't say to much about the plot for now, except that it's about two characters who live in an observatory on a mountain. Through their telescope they can see everything. Here's a character sheet I drew up a while ago. A character sheet is part of the initial designing process for an animated film and is a good way to get a grip on the look and personalities of your characters.

Say Hello to My Little Friends

Over Christmas I made some new puppets. They're made out of found scraps of fabric (cashmere, felt and tweed) and stuffed with the kind of fluffy white thing you find inside pillows and winter jackets (not down). I also put some rice in them to make them weigh more. It makes them nicer to hold. Here they are:

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These ones are twins. The camera makes them shy.

The puppets now live in the Red Door Gallery on Victoria Street in Edinburgh, where they are waiting to be adopted by some nice people.

Hello

Welcome to Fox & Comet. Here's what it's about: I'm going to be posting my pictures and bits from my sketchbooks and I will talk about what I'm doing at the moment and share some thoughts on drawing and animation and art in general. I already have an online portfolio where I put up my best work. This blog will be a more casual affair. I think it could be a helpful way for me to get some perspective on my work and maybe it will also be of some interest to people who draw or like to look at drawings (and who doesn't?).