Who’s coming for tea? 07 plus added cats

I have been drawing every day – honest! I’ve just not been posting…

tea time

Here’s the last part of the tea-time epic.
I’ve been out in the garden talking to the tomato plants and observing the local cat politics. I may have mentioned this before but my neighbourhood has an embarrassment of feline riches, and my next-door neighbours have (amongst other animals) NINE cats – a fact I find so astonishing I keep repeating it (NINE cats!).
Here’s a few of them:
Cats!
The Great Darkness belongs to my upstairs neighbour and is very fat, elderly and possibly the most bad-tempered cat I’ve ever encountered. Do not approach without a big stick.
The Daft Ginger One is the youngest of The Nine and generally harmless. It finds snails totally fascinating.
Bob is the only one of The Nine whose real name I know and is the only friendly one, which is a pity as he’s a complete fleabag. I also suspect mental issues. Will fight with all-comers.
More Cats!
Until I saw The Evil Stripy One I hadn’t realised cats could frown. Possibly the most dangerous of The Nine, though the ‘Incident with the Hose’ probably didn’t help.
Bob’s mate lives a few doors down and is a total ‘fraidy-cat. For some reason Bob tolerates him so they hang out a lot. He reminds me of the cat from Kiki’s Delivery Service so I probably should have drawn him with a bead of manga-sweat or something.
The Ginger One From Across the Street is a player in the politics of the neighbourhood. He occasionally (foolishly) ventures across into the territory of The Nine but soons learns the better of it.

Also I popped into London Underground Comics‘ LUC176 event on Saturday. Ellen Lindner kindly sold some of my comics from her table (you should check out her masterpiece Undertow) so I could go and have a sneaky beer outside with my friend Sam. It was certainly a great venue – I hope the event was a success for everyone.

Lastly, my pic of me aged 100 received an honourable mention from the honourable Phil McAndrew in his competition, which was nice news to wake up to. The winner was drawn by the amazing Britt Wilson.

D.S.E.D.

Draw something every day!

No. 1

I’m nailing my (new) creed to the church door here. I’ve never had the urge to draw constantly – I can go weeks without drawing and I don’t miss it one bit. I’ve loads of nice expensive sketchbooks which just felt too beautifully pristine to fill with my silly scribblings (my drawing paper of choice is Tesco value copier paper) and so sit empty, yellowing and neglected.

But I’ve probably not done myself any favours. Development cannot come without practice.

So here goes.

Supreme Broship

scottc
An artist’s reconstruction of events.
Scott C is one of my favourite cartoonists – quirkily humorous characters in bizarre settings, all drawn with a lovely thick inky line and splashes of paint. He’s currently over in the UK for a show with Jim Mahfood at the London Miles Gallery in Notting Hill. Sarah McIntyre and I went along for the opening night and got a chance to talk to Scott and meet some other interesting and nice people too. We bought Scott’s book which he most graciously drew in for us whilst Sarah took pictures. I’ve interpreted the scene in a Scott C style above (Treehead is a character of Scott’s) – for the photos take a look at Sarah’s blog.

Life Drawing

life drawing

My life as a model.

A group of local illustrators got together for some life drawing practice yesterday. Viviane Schwarz was the hostess and made some very fine jumbo chocolate chip cookies to feed the inspiration and Sarah McIntyre, Gary Northfield and myself made up a quartet of models/artists. It’s hard to sit still when you can smell freshly-baked cookies, I can tell you. I’m not proud enough of my drawing efforts to post them here but for some photos take a look at Sarah’s blog.