Mr Porkpop

Picnik integrated into Picasa Web Albums

2010-07-14T09:13:00.001Z

So, Google have integrated Picnik into Picasa Web Albums, following their purchase of the web app some months ago. Of course, it's long been possible to edit photos in your Picasa Web Albums from the Picnik interface, but it was always a bit fiddly, and this makes it far more accessible to the casual user. Picnik has long had a nice range of simple to use tools with which you can make real improvements to your photos, and while it may be no Photoshop, it allows for some casual playing about with photos that you might not otherwise bother with.

My only grumble, and it's not a major one, is that Google are pushing the "premium" features of Picnik quite hard. So as you edit your photo, you'll find that a number of features are labelled as "Premium", and you might even get the occasional pop-up asking if you want to upgrade. Google is usually more subtle than that, and it would be nice if the premium features weren't quite so "in your face". In addition, it would be nice if, in time, some of the editing features of Picnik made it into the Picasa app itself, and weren't just available for online editing. Whether Google has plans to go in this direction only they can know, of course.

As an example of what you can do with Picnik, I spent about 5 minutes turning this photo from my Drop Box:

into this:

OK, not much of a picture I know, but a definite improvement on the original, and a fun five minutes.

Twitter's official iPhone app

2010-05-20T19:22:00.001Z

I installed the brand new official Twitter client for the iPhone this morning, and I must say that so far I'm pretty impressed. Based on the iPhone app Tweetie, which Twitter Inc. bought a while back, as well as adding a number of new features, it comes with a much improved price: free. Of course, that's exactly what you'd expect in these days of free access to social networking wherever you happen to be, but it's nice to see nevertheless.

What I've seen so far of the new Twitter has impressed me. I never used Tweetie, being relatively new to the iPhone scene, but I have had some experience of TweetDeck on both the PC and the iPhone, and I have to say I prefer this. Never a great fan of the rather confusing TweetDeck user interface, I find the Twitter interface refreshingly simple and easy to use. Unlike TweetDeck, you don't have to spend ages adding columns to display the tweets you want to see; instead everything is just displayed in a single stream (which of course is true of the default TweetDeck setup as well, but somehow seems less confusing). However, you also have instant access to any of your Twitter lists (again, in TweetDeck you have to set these up for yourself) so it's very easy to filter out the tweets you don't want to see at any time. Because this is the official Twitter client, any customisation you've made to your account on the web - lists for instance - are immediately available in the iPhone client. No additional work required on your part.

Twitter has some great, even killer, features. You can install a bookmarklet for Safari so that you can quickly tweet any web page you're viewing. Strictly speaking I suppose this isn't part of the app itself, but it's a welcome addition. Twitter also has support for offline readers such as InstaPaper and Read It Later. This is a brilliant addition: with just a click you can add an interesting link in a tweet to your reading list for later offline perusal.

Another neat trick: swipe across any tweet in the timeline to display an online toolbar giving you access to common functions such as favouriting, retweeting, or the aforementioned offline browser links.

Twitter is pretty nippy as well. I hate to make the comparison again, but it's the only one I have: it's faster than TweetDeck, which always frustrates me with amount of time it takes to update.

Unlike TweetDeck, Twitter doesn't offer support for Facebook information, and you may see this as either a failing or a virtue, depending on your taste. Personally, I lean toward the latter opinion; Facebook has its own perfectly usable iPhone client. The only feature that you do lose is the ability to update both Twitter and your Facebook status with one tweet. A shame, but I can live with that.

In conclusion, then, I would definitely recommend the new Twitter client to any Twitter user with an iPhone. In fact, even those without Twitter accounts can use the app for searching and browsing, and of course there's a convenient sign-up form in the app for those who decide to take the plunge. I believe it makes Twitter less confusing to use than TweetDeck, it looks nice, and it's a joy to use. And you can't argue with the price.

Reviving the blog

2010-05-18T06:47:00.000Z

Well, I've long since given up hope that I can keep this blog going on the strength of my drawing and painting alone. I have neither the output nor the talent to be able to keep going on that score. However, I don't just want this blog (and my others) to languish in some forgotten corner of the blogosphere. (Hark at me: talking as if someone ever read this blog in the first place!) If nothing else, it's good for my soul to keep writing, and now that I have a convenient little app that lets me post from my iPhone, there's at least half a chance that I may be able to do this on a more regular basis. That's the theory anyway. At this stage I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to write about, and I'm certainly not convinced that I have anything that anyone will want to read, but let's give it a try, eh?

So, if you like, you can take this as formal notice to keep watching this blog. The odd thing or two might start appearing here ...

A walk in the Lake District

2007-09-04T10:28:00.000Z

I haven't been at all good about updating this blog for a long time. I'm still not sure what the long-term future for it is, but for now, I thought I'd add a few pictures that I took on a recent walk in the Lake District. We spent a fortnight in Cumbria and managed to do a number of lovely walks: more pictures soon, hopefully.

On this occasion, we walked from the little village of Braithwaite, just outside Keswick, up to the top of Grisedale Pike, and then across onto Coledale Hawse, and from there, down and along Coledale Beck, and back to Braithwaite. A beautiful walk of perhaps 6 or 7 miles. Although the weather wasn't magnificent, the clouds decided not to encroach on our route, getting trapped just a few hundred yards away from us on Hobcarton Crags. Anyone familiar with that part of the Lake District will recognise it as a very common route.

You can see full size pictures on my Picasa Web site, and you should be able to see a small slideshow below. Follow the link for this post to see the big pictures. And while you're there, take a look at the rest of my pictures on Picasa Web: Google have recently made a lot of improvements to this site, so I'm hoping to use it more.

Grab yourself some free music

2006-08-22T07:44:00.000Z

Just to move away from the usual topic for a while, you might like to head over to
Thomas Dolby’s Blog, where he has generously made available a track for download. This is a mash-up between a new song of his, and a Peter Gabriel song, and since Thomas Dolby and Peter Gabriel are among my favourite (musical) artists, I couldn't let the opportunity pass by without saying something. I had the pleasure of seeing Thomas Dolby live for the first time just a few weeks ago.

To my regular readers, I apologise for the lack of posting of late. I will try and get back to a more regular schedule, but life has been (and continues to be) hectic, hence the drop down to the more occasional, and sometimes off-topic, post. Bear with me, please, and do please keep reading!

Update 23 Aug: Sadly, Thomas has taken the track down. He didn't feel comfortable putting it up without Peter Gabriel's permission, which sounds fair enough to me.

o2 Wireless Festival

2006-07-19T10:48:00.000Z

Martin singing
Originally uploaded by Neal Dench.

Slightly off-topic I know, but I've just uploaded a bunch of photographs to both Flickr and Picasa Web Albums that I took on my recent trip to see the o2 Wireless Festival at Hyde Park. If, like me, you're around about the 40 mark, and (despite, or perhaps because of, your excellent and eclectic taste in music) your heart is really in the 80s, you might be interested in taking a look.

On a more artistic note, I'm quite pleased with some of them, having fiddled with several of them to make up for the excessive zoom I had to use for many of them, and the blur caused by not being able to use a flash from a distance.

You can find the Flickr pics here, and you can find the Picasa Web album pics here .

Illustration Friday: Skyline

2006-07-10T11:56:00.000Z

This week's Illustration Friday theme is "Skyline", so I thought I'd repost this picture that I originally published almost ex actly a year ago. Sorry it's not new, but I thought it was a pretty good fit with this week's theme.

A trip to London, the NPG, and the BP Portrait Award

2006-06-27T10:16:00.000Z

I took a trip to London this weekend to meet up with some old school friends and celebrate our 40th birthdays by going to the last day of the O2 Wireless Festival at Hyde Park.

Before meeting up with them, I had to take some time out to go to the National Portrait Gallery, which I love to do whenever I get the chance. As always, the visit was worthwhile. I think portraiture is one of my favourite "forms" of art. In terms of a painting's emotional impact on me, I think I get more from a portrait than from almost any other subject, much as I love all forms of art. People often mistake portraits as being about the subject, but this is only telling at most half of the story. For me, a portrait is at least as much about the artist as it is about the subject, often more so.

Although it's only about 3 months since my last visit to the NPG, a lot has changed there. In particular, most of the Ondaatje Wing is taken up by the BP Portrait Award 2006, which you can see thumbnails of by clicking the title of this post. I was blown away by this exhibition; the depth of work, the intensity that many of the pieces had, and the quality were quite stunning. Of course, the thumbnails do the exhibition no justice: with exhibits ranging from a few inches square to 6 feet or more in height, the range of pieces on display was enormous. I spent a happy hour looking at this exhibition, basking in the talent that was on display, feeling both inspired and inadequate at the same time.

If you're in London any time before 17th September, do yourself a favour and go and see this exhibition.

And for anyone interested, the Wireless Festival was great too. Treats for the eyes, ears, and heart all in the same day. (Though my feet weren't so happy. I hate my feet .)

Scots Pine

2006-06-23T04:42:00.000Z

I had intended to post this as an entry for this week's theme at Illustration Friday, which I thought was "Jungle". Well, I must have been going mad, because it's "Dance" -- "Jungle" was some while back. I'd written the post, published it, and everything. It was only when I came to add the link at the website that I discovered my error. Hmm, what went wrong with my brain there, I wonder?

It's actually a tree in Cumbria, right outside the caravan that we stayed in a few weeks ago. A Scots Pine, to be exact. I painted it from inside the caravan on a lovely sunny, but cold, Spring afternoon. I've been looking for the excuse to post it, and here it is.

Flickr resolutions

2006-06-16T05:07:00.000Z

Well, finally my Flickr account has been un-NIPSA'ed, so my public photos will now show up in searches in Flickr. It works: I've tried it.

I had a nice reply from the support group at Flickr. They still didn't actually tell me I no longer have a NIPSA on my account (what is their problem with that?), but they did at least answer my original points by assuring me that they are looking at a different site model which will allow different types of images, with the aim of eventually doing away with NIPSA altogether. We'll see.

I can't fault the support group in this instance. My query didn't drop into a black hole as I was worried it might. They answered my questions -- albeit with their hands tied due to a restrictive policy, and sorted my account. Was this because I blogged about the experience? Who knows. My site has certainly attracted a lot more traffic recently as a result.

I received my invite for Picasa web albums, by the way, and have been trying it out. Some more details soon.

Picasa web albums

2006-06-16T04:56:00.000Z

Following Google's announcement that there's a beta version of Picasa that publishes to the web, I've managed to get myself an invite to test it out. My initial impressions are all pretty good. It's very easy to use, especially from Picasa itself, they give you a pretty generous 250MB to use for your photos (with a reasonably priced option to upgrade to a massive 6GB), and photos load very quickly, allowing smooth transitions between different photos when you're viewing. It all looks very pretty, if perhaps not quite as pretty as Flickr.

There are a few things that are missing. You can't add "post-it" type notes to pictures like you can with Flickr. While captions are uploaded from Picasa, tags are not. They have a "favourite users" feature, but it's not easy to find other users unless they share the URLs of their public gallery. Also, most tragically of all given that this is a Google product, you can't yet search across the whole of Picasa web albums for something. This is in stark contrast to Flickr, and I can't believe they're not going to address that.

But, for a beta product, it's already very stable and usable. Which, to be fair, has been my experience with most beta products from Google.

In the meantime, you can view my public gallery here. There's not much there at the moment, but I hope to change that reasonably soon.

Creative Commons License

2006-06-14T09:25:00.000Z

I've decided to apply a little licensing to the stuff I publish on this blog. Nothing heavy, nothing that will change what you can do with this stuff (in fact, it may encourage you to do more), just enough to make sure nobody takes any of my images and does something that I don't approve of.

To that end, everything published on this blog is now covered by the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

What does this mean? Simple. You can take any of these images and use them however you like. Take copies, publish them on your own website, even include them in your own works -- go on, mash 'em up, I encourage you. So long as:

You make it perfectly clear that I am the original artist of any images you use
You don't make any money out of what you do
You license any derivative works of your own using the same Creative Commons license.

I did wonder for a while about the last of these clauses. I did think perhaps it was a bit restrictive, but then I thought about what would happen if someone else mashed up your derivative work. For instance, it's not unknown for musicians to sample other musicians. But what if the bit they sample is itself sampled? I want to make sure that my rights to my own work remain in place down the line as well, hence the restriction on you using the same license in any derivative works.

Flickr fixes?

2006-06-14T08:16:00.000Z

Well, maybe "alternatives" is more appropriate than "fixes", because with my Flickr account still NIPSA'ed, I greeted the news that Picasa is soon to support publishing web albums with enthusiasm. I'm a big fan of Picasa (no other web album software, either free or paid for, comes close in my opinion), and have been using it for quite a while now. The new functionality is still by invitation from Google only, but I signed up for an invite. Fingers crossed that one will be dropped in my mailbox soon!

Flickr Frustrations

2006-06-07T13:19:00.000Z

You may have noticed the new widget on the right hand side of the page: a little moving mosaic of pictures. This is a toy from the Flickr website that lets me display a random selection of pictures that I've uploaded to my Flickr account, for your viewing pleasure. Just click on one of the pictures and you'll be taken to that picture in Flickr.

For those that don't know, Flickr is a photo-sharing website, allowing you to upload your own photos, and explore those that have been uploaded by others. You can tag your photos according to subject, and search the whole of Flickr for photos based on the tags that other people have applied. As well as making photos available in several sizes, you can add descriptions, captions and, most fun, "post-it" style notes to individual pictures. I've had a Flickr account for about 18 months now. There are free and paid-for versions, and I opted for the free version.

Until recently, I haven't made a lot of use of Flickr. When I first joined, I only uploaded a few pictures. To be honest, cool as it was, I just wasn't that taken with it. I wasn't particularly impressed by the interface, and I didn't think that I was going to make a lot of use of the additional features it offered beyond a service like Blogger. It was great for finding photos, but for uploading my own, I could take it or leave it.

Skip 18 months, and quite a lot has changed at Flickr. They were bought by Yahoo (which you may or may not view as a good thing), and a lot of improvements have been made to the interface to let you organize and upload your photos better. I liked the new interface much better, so I started to use it more. And here began the problems.

I noticed pretty quickly that the photos that I was uploading weren't searchable by anyone else. If I searched my own photos, I could find stuff based on the tags I knew I'd applied, but if I tried searching the pool of everyone's photos, mine didn't show up. Thinking that my account was still "pending" because I hadn't uploaded enough photos, I uploaded some more. Still no joy. Having searched the forums and the online help, I threw in the towel and contacted Flickr support. Hats off to them: they answered my query within 12 hours, identified the problem correctly, and gave me a solution. Unfortunately, the answer wasn't particularly encouraging.

My account wasn't "pending", it was "NIPSA", which stands for "Not Included In Public Search Areas". In other words, what I was uploading was marked as unsuitable for general viewing. Why? Because some of the pictures I'd uploaded were not photos, they were pictures. You know: the kind of pictures I upload to this very blog all the time. And this decision had been made without even the courtesy of informing me. If I wanted the "NIPSA" label to be removed from my account, I had to set permissions on the offending non-photos so that they were only viewable by friends and family, or I had to mark them as "potentially offensive". Excuse me? Hands up the first person who has ever, I repeat, ever, found anything genuinely offensive in any of my pictures?!

So, a picture of one of my daughters is to be considered potentially offensive by the powers that be at Yahoo? Well, excuse me buddy, but I'm potentially offended by that idea. I can understand that Flickr is a photo site, and I can understand that they are very keen to avoid copyrighted works being published there, but there has to be a better way to do it than by employing this sledgehammer policy.

So what should I do? My immediate reaction was to stop using Flickr altogether, but then I decided that was cutting off my nose to spite my face. If all I want to do is upload photos, then there's no doubt that Flickr is a whole lot easier than Blogger, and gives you a lot more functionality.

I could just remove all the non-photos from Flickr. After all, I post them all here, so what's to be gained? Well, at the moment, very little, but you could potentially visit Flick to download larger versions of the pictures, if you so wished. I could also use their cool "post-it note" functionality to add notes to specific areas of pictures, for those of you that were interested in the more technical, geeky aspects of what I upload.

I could mark them as visible only by family and friends, and then require that all readers of this blog ask me to be added as one of my friends. Which, for all I know, may require you to sign up to use Flickr yourselves. That sounds a bit steep to me, and a bit of an administrative chore for me.

Or I could (and this is what I've chosen to do for the time being) just mark my non-photos as being "potentially offensive". But sorry, as a long term solution, that just sticks in my craw. My pictures are about as offensive as guinea pigs, and I object to them being lumped together with porn.

To be honest, I'm erring towards the option of removing the non-photos. There aren't that many anyway. But I'm interested in hearing your thoughts. I'm also interested in finding out exactly what you can see by clicking on a picture in that little widget on the right as things currently stand: do you just see photos, or do you see my pictures as well? Please let me know via the comments button!

Currently, my account still seems to be "NIPSA". I've no idea how long it will take to be reviewed, but I await the change with baited breath.

Illustration Friday: Portrait

2006-06-06T04:26:00.000Z

This week's theme at Illustration Friday is simply "portrait". So here's one that's quite old, though I don't think I've ever posted it.

This is my youngest daughter, taken from a photo of her at the age of four. It's painted in acrylic on canvas paper. I've always liked this painting, because it was the first piece I ever attempted in acrylic, and only the second portrait I had done. I really had very little idea what I was doing (like I have any idea now, when I start a piece!), but I liked the end result.

Illustration Friday: Sorry

2006-05-26T04:36:00.000Z

This week's topic (just -- it ends today) is "sorry". So, to my few loyal regulars: I am sorry that I haven't posted in such a long time, and I'm sorry that this particular post is nothing to shout about. I just haven't had much chance for sketching or painting lately, and I have always felt strongly that if you have nothing worth posting on your blog, then it's better not to post!

So anyway, this was just a strange idea that I had which didn't work out as well as I'd hoped. I may have another crack at it.

Tomorrow, we're off to Cumbria for a few days, so I hope to be inspired by the scenery. Mind you, given the weather for the last few weeks, I may be drawing clouds and rain!

Illustration Friday: Feet

2006-03-22T05:23:00.000Z

The sleeping lady

2006-03-15T05:19:00.000Z

For a long time now I've wanted to write a longer article that went into more detail about how I created a specific piece: what enthused me about the piece, the different stages I went through to get to the final result, how I chose colours, media, and so on. Just before Christmas, the opportunity presented itself when I worked on a number of pieces based on the idea of a sleeping lady. I posted the first of these as soon as it was finished, but, as I suspected at the time, it ended up being just the first in a series, each of which built upon the last until I ended up with the piece that I'd had in mind to begin with.

The original inspiration for this piece came from the artist Anita Klein . I was walking to work early one morning and passed a gallery that included one of her pieces in the window. I was immediately struck by the deceptive simplicity of her work. Beautiful colours, incredibly assured brush strokes, bold shapes. I knew that I wanted to try something similar to this, and the idea for the sleeping lady sprang immediately into my mind.

One of the things that I love about sketching and painting are the times when that happens: a picture just leaps into your mind. Usually, it's inspired by some event, no matter how small. Something you've seen, usually, or perhaps a photograph you've taken, but it can sometimes be something you've heard, or something you've discussed. But no matter what it is that's inspired you, I find it amazing that an almost complete picture can form in your mind from just the grain of an idea. The challenge then becomes to transfer what is in your head onto the paper -- and there is the real challenge! If you can get within 90% of your original idea, then I think you're doing well, always assuming that your original idea doesn't change along the way of course!

With the sleeping lady, I saw this woman (who is she? I still have no idea), asleep, presented using simple, almost cartoon-like lines. The background needed to be unidentifiable, and possibly even ambiguous. Her location was totally unimportant to the piece other than as a way of framing her: is she on a bed or on the ground? Inside or outside? That's up to you. They key to this piece was going to be the colours. I wanted very bold, brave colours, and if they weren't right, then the whole piece would have failed.

So there it was: the grain of an idea, taken root while walking to work. The first thing I did was write it down in my Moleskine. If an idea is worth a grain of salt, I need to write it down. This isn't just a memory thing: writing it down is almost like a proof of concept. If I can write the idea down, come back to it at a later time, and decide it's still a good idea, then it's probably worth doing. Some of my favourite pieces (other than sketches that have just been done on the spur of the moment) have started with entries in my journal. You'll notice that I didn't include any details at all in my journal; just a record of having had the idea was enough on this occasion.

The first sleeping lady was the pencil sketch I've already posted. Funnily enough, the basic shapes for this version came very easily, and changed little during the various phases of this project. I sketched the rough shape of the lady using a B grade pencil, put in a little background detail, and then went over the outline in more detail using a dark sketching pencil. At this point, I thought to scan what I had, even though I intended on adding colour. I knew that the colours I chose were going to be essential to this piece, so I wanted to be able to produce several versions easily so that I could experiment later on.

Next, I needed to add a little colour.I knew I wanted a bright red, and a rich, turquoisey blue. I thought orange would be a good contrast to the blue as well. And what to lie on? A dark green was as good as anything; funnily enough it was this dark green that ended up changing the least. Having chosen four colours, I went on to colour the original sketch. I used standard colouring pencils, partly because it was quick and I knew I'd need to experiment with the colours, and partly because I just wanted to try using some colouring pencils -- something I hadn't used since I was a kid. Hey, this was just like a colouring book!

I was pleased with the result -- pleased enough to post it to Mr. Porkpop -- but I knew that this was just the first stage in getting the colours right. The first task was to identify the range of colours that was best, and where they worked best in the image. The next day I printed out two copies of my original scan and coloured them in using different schemes.

Now these were very rough, and at the time I never intended to post them; I'm only including them here to show what an important stage in the process it was. One of the sketches -- the one with the orange dress -- seemed obviously "wrong" to me. Repeating the orange in the background just didn't work. The other introduced an important new concept: another colour! I'd added a yellow background just to break up the image a little after the "orange dress" sketch looked so wrong, and in doing that, the obvious jumped out at me. I had five regions in the image, so I needed five colours. But this second rough version worked in another way: the blue dress. I had always felt that blue was going to be the pivotal colour in this image (although at this stage, I hadn't even come close to producing on paper the blue that was in my head), and so to make the woman's dress blue seemed like the obvious thing. I knew then that I had my colour scheme.

At this point I put the piece to the back of my mind for a few days to enjoy the Christmas break. I knew that I wasn't finished with the sleeping lady, and I was becoming more and more convinced that her final "form" would be as an acrylic painting, but I knew I wasn't ready to dive straight into the final version, and I didn't know yet what the next stage was going to be. A change can be as good as a rest: after a few days I knew that I need to do a test piece in watercolour.

I had a number of reasons for wanting to do another test piece. Firstly, I wanted to try something on a larger scale: all the sketches so far had been small, on A5 paper, so I wanted to try something on A3. Secondly, because the previous sketches had been coloured with pencil, they had been fine for getting the colours approximately right, but I wanted to continue to experiment with them. Lastly, it was really a case of elimination: I thought that my final piece would be an acrylic, and if I tried a watercolour first and still wanted to continue, I could be certain.

To recreate the sleeping lady for the watercolour, I sketched her from scratch on A3 cartridge paper. When it comes to reproducing images several times, I use a variety of techniques, and tend to go with my mood on the day. Sometimes I'll scan the original picture, overlay a grid on a print-out of the scan, and then reproduce the contents of each grid square for the new image. Other times, I'll trace over the original image. Often, I'll just draw the image again from scratch. For this picture I opted for the last of these methods because I wanted to retain a certain spontaneity in the piece, and I was confident that it was an image I could reproduce fairly well.

The watercolour also gave me a chance to practice the heavy black outlines I wanted to use on the piece. For these, I used undiluted black paint to achieve a heavy look. It worked well, better than I had expected, to be honest, but there was a certain spontaneity missing that I wanted. The outlines in the watercolour seemed to contrived, somehow, and one of the things I had admired about the original Anita Klein was the natural, almost carefree approach of the outlines in her piece.

And so to the final piece. At the very beginning, I knew this would be an acrylic, rich in colour and texture. So far, nothing I had created had changed my mind about this; each version of the sleeping lady had been a way of getting to know her better. The original sketch had settled her form very well, and the subsequent pencilled versions had helped confirm the colours that I wanted. The watercolour had let me practice creating a "real" painting of her, and had given me the chance to experiment with texture and shading, so that I had a good idea of what I wanted in the final piece.

The sleeping lady is painted on A3 acrylic board with a canvas texture on the top. I love this particular type of support: it's light, firm to work on, and very durable. You don't have to place it on an easel to work with it (I have still not made up my mind whether I prefer working on an easel or not), and it's reasonably cheap as well. It's great for acrylics, and I presume for oils as well, though I have never painted with oils.

First of all, I sketched the sleeping lady for a third and last time, directly onto the board. You'd think I'd be pretty familiar with her by now, but funnily enough this was the hardest part of the acrylic, and it took three or four attempts before I was satisfied with the result. I put this down to the difference between trying to achieve a particular thing, and happy circumstance. With the original pencil sketches, I arrived at the final shapes easily, more by luck than design. It had been those original sketches that had confirmed what I wanted. When I drew the sketch for the watercolour, I knew that it wasn't my final piece, and so I suppose I was less fussy. By the time I got to the acrylic, I had a very fixed idea of what I wanted, and getting it proved to be less easy!

One of the things I love about acrylic painting is that you have to work so quickly; it is a totally absorbing medium to work in because once you start, you can't just put it aside. Unlike watercolour, where you can reinvigorate a colour with some water even when dry, once an acrylic is dry, you can do nothing other than paint over it. For this reason, I tend to divide acrylic paintings into sections in my mind, ensuring that I can complete each section successfully before moving onto the next. This allows me a number of stopping points in my work, should I need to do something else. Planning the painting in this way means that I won't have to leave it in a state that I might later regret.

For the sleeping lady, the painting divided naturally into six sections: the sky, the hill, the curtains, the lady herself, and the ground. The last section, not really an area of the painting, was to put in the outlines.

The rule of thumb, at least for me, is to start with the lightest, and the topmost. In this case, it so happened that the painting started off light at the top and got darker towards the bottom, so my approach was clear. I started with the yellow sky first, laying down a thick base layer of yellow and then working in white at the top and orange at the bottom before the yellow had dried.

The hill was next, and this was fairly similar to the sky. Lay down some orange, and blend in a little red towards the bottom.

The curtains were trickier. I had marked each fold in the pencil sketch, and so I started off by filling in the gaps between the folds with the lighter red colour. I then mixed in the darker colour and painted over the folds; by this time the lighter red was beginning to dry, which is why the boundary between the dark and the light is better defined in some areas and more mixed in others: an effect that happened by chance but which I liked in the final result. Once the curtains were completely dry, I carefully overpainted some highlights in yellow, and darkened some of the folds by painting faint blue lines.

Next came the lady herself, which I suppose was really two sections in itself: the skin and the dress. The skin divided neatly into shaded and unshaded areas, and I didn't want to blend the two, so painting them was straightforward: I mixed two shades of pink, one using some grey and blue, and painted the relevant areas. After starting, I worried briefly over whether I had the shading correct. I suspect it's not natural around her neck, but I quickly decided not to worry about it, and just to go with my instinct.

For the dress, I had to get exactly the right shade of blue. I'd had this shade in my head since the very start, and I was a little worried that I wouldn't be able to reproduce it on the page. As it happened, I needn't have worried, since I mixed the right shade almost straight away. I combined this with a darker blue and a bit of yellow to suggest shading and highlights in the dress. I'm still not sure about the yellow highlights -- I added a few to her skin as well -- and they're the part of the finished painting that I'm least pleased with, but the effects are pretty muted, so probably not worth worrying about.

The ground was easy. Some very dark green, overpainted with some brown strokes.

Lastly, I needed to add black to the picture. I was pretty nervous about doing this, because one mistake could have ruined the picture, and yet I wanted to capture a roughness in the outlines that I hadn't achieved in the earlier paintings, and painting too carefully wouldn't have allowed me to do this. The use of black really went back to my earlier admiration of Anita Klein's work: natural, almost carefree outlines, using a paint brush to capture shape as a child does, rather than to paint. Well, I didn't achieve that, but I was pleased with what I did achieve: shorter brush strokes to give a thicker, blockier effect. Lastly, I darkened the shading under her dress and on the ground fairly crudely using black -- another trick I had picked up from Anita Klein -- and I was done.

I hope you like the end result; I do. I still have no idea who the sleeping lady is, but whatever her identity, I hope she's having sweet dreams!

Concentrating on a Gameboy

2006-03-10T05:18:00.000Z

On the train after a trip to London to see the Science Museum. My youngest daughter slumps on the seat opposite me, tired, footsore, and so wrapped up in layers of clothing that they seem to swamp her (it's been a cold day). Clothing isn't the only thing she's wrapped up in, because she's playing on her Gameboy, unaware that I'm sketching her. She looks as if she's asleep, but actually she's on Level 4.

Mr. Porkpop is a year old today: it's a year since I wrote this post. Sorry Brenda, no time to draw you a cake, but hopefully I'll be able to post something more interesting in the next few days. Did I think I'd still be here, posting sketches, in a year's time? I hoped I would be, but I had no idea.

Glashaus [The Portfolio of Peter Hoffmann]

2006-02-28T08:32:00.000Z

Have just discovered the Glashaus [The Portfolio of Peter Hoffmann]
website. Peter Hoffman is a freelance illustrator and designer, and he has some lovely sketches on this site, as well as some pretty cool design work.

Illustration Friday: Tea

2006-02-27T05:13:00.000Z

Along much of its length as it runs through Teesdale, the River Tees is the colour of tea, and that's not intended as a pun. A beautiful rich brown colour, and crystal clear, I'm not exactly sure why the water is this colour, but I presume it's to do with the minerals that are naturally found in the ground over which the river runs. Somehow, to find out the secret would be to lose some of the mystery of the place. This is a pastel sketch of the Tees at High Force, one of England's biggest waterfalls. Watching the rich brown water crashing down its 70 foot height, hearing the roar of the water, is quite an inspiring sight.

Illustration Friday: Simple

2006-02-16T05:26:00.000Z

A rather late entry to Illustration Friday this week! This week's theme is "Simple", and this is a watercolour I created while on a holiday in Cumbria last year. I wanted to see how quickly and simply I could create a landscape with just a minimum of colours. If I recall correctly, the answer was about two minutes.

Illustration Friday: Chair

2006-02-06T05:09:00.000Z

This week's theme for Illustration Friday is "Chair". Here's a sketch of a garden chair that I drew one sunny summer's afternoon nearly three years ago. I've never posted it before because it's not one of my favourites: I drew it not long after I started up sketching again, and the proportions are all wrong -- not enough width. But when I saw this week's theme I though "ah well, in for a penny, in for a pound", so here we are: chair.

Illustration Friday: E is for ...

2006-01-16T05:44:00.000Z

I don't often post pictures more than once, but this week's Illustration Friday theme is "E is for ...", so I had to enter this one.

In my case, E is for Ellen, my ten-year-old.

moleskinerie

2006-01-12T08:27:00.000Z

Happy birthday to Moleskinerie, two today. A fine site for all lovers of Moleskine, which has been kind enough to send me a few visitors in the past.

Although dedicated to all things Moleskine, it is not just about Moleskines, and you can be guaranteed to find something interesting just by looking at the home page.

Happy birthday Armando! I wish Moleskinerie a long and prosperous life.

Illustration Friday

2006-01-12T05:45:00.000Z

Hello to anyone visitng from the Illustration Friday website. I submitted my parasol picture for this week's sea theme, and my site stats have gone through the roof. So thanks to all of you for taking the time to visit. I hope a few of you will come back :-)

Tony Hancock

2005-12-27T15:37:00.000Z

Father Christmas brought me a lovely, tiny sketchbook, four inches square. I was watching a program about Tony Hancock on television last night, and it struck me what a wonderful sketchable face he had -- gentle and full of expression. I haven't yet perfected the art of either sketching from life, or sketching from memory (hi Doug), but as luck would have it, the Radio Times had published an old photo of him to advertise the program. So this has become the first sketch in my new sketchbook.

I hope to carry this book around with me much more than my old sketchbooks, and so hopefully I'll be able to sketch more when the mood takes me, without having to worry about being in the right place with the right materials.

A Christmas sketch

2005-12-23T15:46:00.000Z

My first day off work, and I've managed to spend the afternoon sketching!

I got the idea for this piece about a week ago after seeing a picture hanging in the window of a gallery in Cambridge. The painting of the woman had simple lines and bold colours, and I wanted to see if I could achieve the same effect.

Eventually, I'd like to do this as an acrylic, but for now it's just a pencil sketch, with the outline drawn over in dark charcoal (which unfortunately smudged a little). The colours aren't quite right -- I'd like to get a more vivid mix of red, orange, and blue than I've achieved here --but they're along the right lines.

Since it's Christmas, and this will be my last post for at least a few days, let's call her Mary.

Have a happy Christmas!

Update: If you'd like to read an article about how I developed this picture further, click here.

Last minute Christmas presents

2005-12-21T09:20:00.000Z

Now this is a real treat. Go and have a look at Liz Plummer's blog, and in particular at this entry on how to make a concertina book. And if you're feeling crafty, and still need to get a few last minute Christmas presents, then look no further. As soon as I get a chance, I'm going to try this at home.

Sketchbook of Russ Stutler

2005-12-20T15:58:00.000Z

I have just, via Moleskinerie, come across the Sketchbook of Russ Stutler. I must say, this is a fantastic site for anyone with an interest in sketching, and Russ's sketches are full of life, colour, and lovely to behold. As well as beautiful sketches, his site also includes a lot of information on materials and tools, and gives a good insight into the way he works. Fascinating reading.

In addition to his sketchbook, Russ also has a number of comics available, and a sketching discussion page, which features some articles he's written, and a wealth of links to other sketching resources.

Highly recommended if you fancy losing yourself for a while.

Sketches from my Moleskine

2005-12-14T05:15:00.000Z

It's been a while since I posted anything from my Moleskine. In fact it's been a while since I posted anything at all; I've never been the most prolific sketcher in the world. So here's four in one post for you, all recent entries into my Moleskine.

First up, a pen sketch of my wine glass that I did quickly a couple of weeks ago as it sat on the coffee table. There were some interesting reflections in the glass, and I wondered how easy it would be to capture them quickly. Umm, it wasn't.

Anyway, as a little extra, there's also a bad joke for you to groan at (though you may have to click the picture to see the larger version in order to be able to read it). If anyone from the UK is in the middle of putting on a pantomime at the moment, you can have that one on me! (As I understand it, most people from outside the UK have yet to discover the joys of a good pantomime at Christmas ...)

You might notice the pointer from the joke back to another page. Yes, I have more of these! I tend to write them down as I hear them. They're never original -- pantomime jokes should never be original.

Next is a doodle which, strictly speaking, isn't a Moleskine doodle: I just stuck it into my Moleskine because I kind of liked the shading, and the way the shadows in the guy's face blended into the random bits of shading. As the note in the Moleskine says (if you can be bothered to read it), this was really the result of me scribbling to try and get my Pilot mini gel pen working again. I carry it around with my Hipster PDA (I hate that term) in my back pocket, and it tends to get full of fluff. Bonus points if you can identify the words that I've scribbled over ;-)

If you like sketches with beautiful shading, by the way, you should check out the sketches Mike Rohde has posted on his blog. He does this sort of thing so much better than me. Hey Mike, if you're reading this, it's a long time since you posted any sketches!

Now this strange looking thing is actually more true-to-life than you might first think. My wife (who, you might remember, is studying for an Applied Arts degree), made this fantastic wire sculpture a few days ago based on her hand. She can't make up her mind what to do with it, though I think she's currently thinking in terms of "skinning" it using the stuff you use to make plaster casts. Anyway, there's this fantastic bare wire hand sitting on the coffee table. I thought "hey, that's all one piece of wire, I could draw that with one continuous line", so I did. While I was doing this, I found myself thinking about the differences in the way my 2D sketch was composed, versus her far more complicated 3D "sketch". In particular, it mattered far less to me what order I drew each part, whereas for her sculpture it was absolutely crucial. And I could take shortcuts: the springy spirals around the base were just drawn over the top of the line representing the stand, for example, whereas she had to spend a lot of time curling wire round and round the base, creating the spring ... All a bit obvious, perhaps, but interesting to think about these sorts of differences.

And finally, a lesson on when to leave well alone. I was chatting to my girls a few evenings ago, and there was a ballpoint and some paper on the table in front of me, so I started to doodle while they told me about their day. It started off as a sketch of my youngest's hand, but, as usual, she never keeps still enough. The hand ended up looking cupped, and though I didn't particularly like it, it put me in mind of someone shouting. So that's what I ended up doodling -- a shouting man. I didn't like the hands, but I did quite like his comic-book face, and the mouth in particular. Yup, that's a keeper, so I'll stick it in the Moleskine.

And there I should have left it. But no, I decided it would be nice to repeat the exercise in the Moleskine itself, but in black ink this time. Like the doodle, I was looking for something quick and instinctive, but I ended up with something that was just rubbish. I started with the hand again (why?), and it didn't even look like a hand. Then I started on the face, and he just ended up looking scared. At this point, I gave up, annoyed with myself for not stopping with the original doodle.

Turner Prize

2005-12-06T11:32:00.000Z

So Simon Starling has won this year's Turner Prize with Shedboatshed. Another installation that keeps the controversial flame of the Turner Prize burning brightly. Personally, I've never been much of a fan of the material that typically gets nominated for the Turner Prize, but that doesn't mean I have anything against the prize itself. Personally, though, I preferred Gill Carnegie's Red, which apparently is one in her series of "bum paintings", and certainly offers more in the way of erotic imagery than Shedboatshed does. Well, for me, at least.

BBC's Mock Turner Prize

2005-11-28T13:55:00.000Z

For the last two years, the BBC has put on what it calls the Mock Turner Prize, at the same time that the real Turner Prize is chosen. Of course, they intend it as a tongue in cheek parody of the real Turner Prize, but nevertheless it turns up some genuine pieces of art. Take a look at the main page to see this year's finalists. I voted for this one, which rather put me in mind of my parasol piece.

Which reminds me, if you do a Google image search for "parasol", mine is the third result returned, which is kind of neat.

Word verification

2005-11-18T08:50:00.000Z

I've turned on word verification for comments to Mr Porkpop, in order to avoid comment spam. Although I wasn't getting as much of it as some other people, I was getting enough that it was becoming annoying. So now, if you add a comment, you'll have to verify that you're a real person typing a real comment by typing in a string of random letters that are shown to you on the screen. Sorry about having to introduce this extra step, but it's become necessary.

Curse of the imagination

2005-11-03T05:46:00.000Z

As the husband of a ceramicist, I can relate to the false expectations built up by the Curse of the Imagination, as described by Grayson Perry in this week's article in the Times. I don't think it's just limited to ceramicists, however. I know how disappointed I can feel if something that I imagine in my mind doesn't come out the way I intended on paper.

Chelsea Crafts Fair 2005

2005-10-20T10:39:00.000Z

A change this week: words, rather than pictures.

Last weekend (Sunday to be precise) my wife and I made the journey into London for the Chelsea Crafts Fair. A trip to London is a fairly rare thing for us these days (although this year, as chance would have it, we've made several), and neither of us had been to this particular fair before, but is was an experience well worth having.

The main reason for our visit was that my wife has recently started a part-time Applied Arts degree at the University of Hertfordshire. In the field of applied arts (up until now she has been purely focused on ceramics), this is one of the biggest fairs of the year. I just fancied going along for the ride, seeking an excuse for inspiration.

The Chelsea Crafts Fair is for buying and selling pieces, rather than being a trade fair of the sort that you can buy raw materials from, so we really went with the intention of looking at some beautiful work. We weren't feeling rich enough to want to part with money (and nor did we). What was so nice, though, is that almost without exception, the artists who were exhibiting were more than happy to explain their methods, talk through pieces, and so on.

The Chelsea Crafts Fair has a huge diversity of artists exhibiting. There are ceramicists, jewellers, textile artists, book and paper-makers (anyone who has followed this blog for any length of time will appreciate how much these appealed to me), glassworkers ... the list is almost endless.

So, who inspired me the most? There were so many beautiful works there that it seems unfair to single out a single artist, but I have to say that I was bowled over by the work of Michelle Holden (pictured left), who makes things from paper and material, especially from the pages of old, discarded books. She can take an old piece of paper and somehow make it come alive with flowers, or turbines, or just random shapes, in a way that has to be seen first hand to be appreciated. Sadly, she seems to have very little in the way of a web presence, but if you find her in the list of exhibitors at the Chelsea Crafts Fair website, you'll find her contact details.

The Chelsea Craft Fair is on for two weeks, and the nice thing is that the exhibitors in the second week are completely different from the first. If you happen to be in London in the next few days, I highly recommend a trip there, though don't expect to see the work of Michelle Holden. The Fair is on until 23rd October.

Sketches by Ullswater

2005-10-14T04:26:00.000Z

Here are some sketches I did "in the wild" while on holiday last year. I'm generally pretty bad at sketching people (or any moving objects, for that matter) from real life, but this was one occasion when things seemed to come together. I liked the ghost-like quality of the silhouettes.

The main figures are my wife and children, poking about by the side of the lake looking for tiddlers while I sketched. A few hundred yards away, some kids were throwing themselves into the water from a low cliff-face. It looked terribly dangerous, but they kept coming back for more.

Dad

2005-10-05T04:18:00.000Z

I seem to have had so little time for sketching lately that I'm having to look back at my old stuff. Here is a very old sketch that I did of my father several years ago, as a birthday present for my mother.

You can see the original in my other blog, which, one day, I will add some real content to.

... I know what I like

2005-09-23T04:28:00.000Z

Grayson Perry's new regular column on the arts in the Times has made for some good reading in the last few weeks. In this week's article he talks about the pressure to conform to artistic "good form" when deciding what's in, and what's not.

Am I alone in thinking that there is too much “good taste” around these days? People seem to make fewer eccentric “mistakes” in dress and decor. Are things blanding out? Does everyone need to be told what’s beautiful? Can’t we tell for ourselves any more?

Article over at DIY Planner

2005-09-21T10:36:00.000Z

OK, the cat's out of the bag. One of the reasons this blog has been a bit quieter in the last few weeks is that I've been turning my attention a little bit more to the written word.
Dr. Moleskine, or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love My Journal is the result of this and, I think, is the first article I've written for the internet that hasn't been self-published. I'd love it if you hopped over there to have a read, and while you're at it, have a browse around the rest of DIYPlanner.com, which is fast becoming a home to a vast array of useful and entertaining material.

DIY Planner: Surfing the Alpha Waves

2005-09-20T07:47:00.000Z

Surfing the Alpha Waves is an excellent post over at DIYPlanner.com by site-host Douglas Johnston on harnessing your creativity. I heartily recommend it to anyone who needs to turn on that spark of creativity in whatever they do. Rather than waiting for the muse to strike you, here are some ideas on how you can go and look for it yourself.

2005-09-19T04:32:00.000Z

OK, never one to shy away from posting stuff I'm not so keen on, here's the one I was going to post. One thing that I'm really not very good at is sketching people (or animals) from real life. I don't know whether it's something I should persevere with, or whether I should just stick to taking photos and sketching them, but this picture of my youngest daughter on Charmouth beach in Dorset is typical. She was examining the rocks around her, looking for fossils (unsuccessfully). To me, she looks like she's sitting sulking. It doesn't even look like her. Ah well, I'll post it anyway.

Trainer

2005-09-19T04:25:00.000Z

Here's an oldish one I came across yesterday from my trusty Moleskine notebook. I was sitting down in the living room one evening, having just got back from work, and I felt like doodling something. My trainer was in the middle of the living room floor, my Moleskine was sitting next to me, and there's just something nice about drawing shoes, don't you think? This picture is better than the one I was going to post, anyway.

Slowing down the artistic process

2005-09-09T04:18:00.000Z

I can't admit to being a great fan of his work, but this article by Grayson Perry in yesterday's Times is interesting reading, and a lot of what he says makes sense. His basic premise is that, because of the appetite for art by the public, the artistic process has speeded up, and that artists should think about slowing down a little, at least sometimes.

Art-world acceleration I put down to various forces. First, we are just as prone to being sucked into the idea that fast is somehow central to modernity. To be relevant is to be broadband-quick and dressed for next season. Apparently artists also need to become museum-supply companies with a high turnover of works if they want to succeed internationally.

It's an interesting article. Go and have a read.

Link

2005-09-07T04:28:00.000Z

Here's another sketch drawn on the beach while on holiday. The village of Charmouth has a wonderful, fossil-filled beach, and a great view of Lyme Regis, just along the coast. Lyme Regis is probably most famous as being home to the pier in John Fowles' "French Lieutenant's Woman", and you can see that pier here. From this distance, practically every building in Lyme Regis seemed to be surrounded by trees, and I tried to mirror this in the sketch. The sky had just the lightest haze, with the vapour trails being the most dominant feature.

2005-09-01T04:30:00.000Z

It's been a while since I had the chance to post anything to the blog, what with one thing and another, but I've finally got round to scanning in the sketches I did while in Dorset. The Dorset coast, famous for its fossils, consists of wildly varying coastlines that I found very difficult to recreate, but here goes anyway. Here's a picture of Lulworth Cove taken on a fairly overcast day. The cove is almost completely circular, and makes for a quiet haven for wildlife and man alike. Dozens of boats (there were far more than I sketched) spend their lives moored there, bobbing quietly up and down. A very relaxing place.

2005-07-26T04:18:00.000Z

I'll be on holiday from the end of this week for most of the next three weeks, so my ability to upload stuff to the blog will be sporadic, at best. I'll try and squeeze one or two extras in this week before I go.

This is a sketch I did from an old photo of my father, as a young man. He's dressed in costume for a play, though I don't know which one. This is one of my favourite photos of my father, and sits on our mantelpiece in the living room. It was one of those spur of the moment sketches - the kind where you sit down after returning from work and just pick up a pad and a pencil without any real idea of what you're going to do with it. I was pleased with the result because I have tried - and failed - in the past to do a more careful drawing from this photo. This was relatively quick to draw, but also had a spark that was missing from my previous attempt.

2005-07-19T04:24:00.000Z

A particularly misty, hot afternoon by the side of Crummock Water nearly two years ago. Thoughts of impending holidays sending me back to memories of past ones this morning ...

2005-07-13T04:17:00.000Z

Nothing new to upload this week, so I thought I'd upload this old sketch I made of the sunset over our back garden. One of the benefits of living in a very flat area is that you get a lot of sky, and it quite often looks like this in the evenings. As far as the sketch itself is concerned, it's mostly pastel, though the line of the silhouette itself was done using an ink pen to bring out the detail. Look for the bird sitting in the tree.

2005-07-06T04:29:00.000Z

My first "proper" watercolour. I painted this a couple of weeks ago. Sometimes you have a moment where it just all comes together, and I think this was one of those. On our recent holiday, I took a picture of my eldest daughter, and it was completely out of focus. However, I quite liked its composition, and the most powerful thing about it was this lovely blue eye which served as the centre of the picture, so I cut out all the colour from the picture except for that eye. Suddenly, a bad photo was turned into a more interesting photo, and I figured it would make a nice pastel. Then I was given my new watercolour set, so I decided to have a play with those instead. This is the result.

New sidebar links

2005-07-01T08:31:00.000Z

Just a quick post to alert you to the fact that I've updated my "Blogs of note" links in the sidebar on the right, to add a couple more of my daily visits. I recommend you try them out. I try and keep this list reasonably small: rather than going all out and listing, say, everything I keep in my Bloglines account, I just like to hand-pick a few of the more unusual and entertaining blogs. Yup, I visit BoingBoing too, but everyone links to them ...

Parasol

2005-06-30T04:21:00.000Z

Here is a pastel I drew some time ago. The situation and place are pretty unimportant as far as the drawing is concerned (though it was based on a photo taken on the beach at Holme-Next-The-Sea in Norfolk): it was the simplicity of the layout and the colours used that I liked.

I tried to do a larger version of this, making the colours brighter and cleaner, but it all went horribly wrong and I never finished it. In that picture, I tried laying down a base layer of acrylic to strengthen the colour of the pastels I placed on the top, but I wasn't careful enough and was never able to subsequently cover up my errors. Ah well. Maybe I'll go back to it one day.

Make poverty history

2005-06-24T13:37:00.000Z

I think this is a worthy enough cause to take a short break from the usual sketching fodder. Since the G8 Summit is taking place in the UK, I figure the least I can do is post the message below, which comes courtesy of the G8 REBOOT website (link in the title above):

Every single day, 30,000 children die, needlessly, of extreme poverty.

On July 6th, we finally have the opportunity to stop that shameful statistic.

8 world leaders, gathered in Scotland for the G8 summit, will be presented with a workable plan to double aid, drop the debt and made the trade laws fair. If these 8 men agree, then we will become the generation that made poverty history.

But they'll only do it if enough people tell them to.

We don't want your money - we want you!

Visit these sites to find out more:

Make Poverty History

Commission for Africa

Live 8 Live

2005-06-23T04:15:00.000Z

And while they carried on looking for stones, I carried on sketching. Here is a picture of Seaford Head: a view that I have photographed many many times, but not drawn until now. It might be nice to do this one as a watercolour some time.

2005-06-23T04:11:00.000Z

Beautiful weather here in the UK at the moment. Went swimming in the sea on the South Coast on Saturday, and afterwards, while the girls gathered interesting stones, I sat and sketched their pumps drying in the sun. I like the loose style of this, and the contrast between the dark shadows on the inside of the pumps, and the brighter areas where the sun shone on them. Amazing how something that is black can provide such a range of tones.

Father's Day

2005-06-20T07:43:00.000Z

Well, this weekend was Father's Day in the UK. Not traditionally an event that we as a family make a great deal of fuss over. But this year, my two lovely girls proudly presented me with a beautiful Cotman Painting Plus Watercolour set.

Now, I know very very little about watercolour painting, but I've wanted to learn for a while. With luck, I'll be able to put some of the results of my trials up here on the blog in the coming months.

2005-06-16T04:33:00.000Z

Here's a sketch I drew while on holiday last year of Smardale Bridge. In the 1700s, this used to be on the main road between Kendal in the Lake District, and Kirkby Stephen, in the Eden Valley; this was one of the main East-West routes in the UK. There was a coaching inn right by the bridge. Now, the bridge is in the middle of nowhere, the road and the coaching inn have crumbled to the ground. You pass this bridge when you walk from the village of Ravenstonedale to Smardale Viaduct (a Victorian railway viaduct, again, disused now). We sat and had our lunch by the bridge, and while the others looked at flowers and insects, I sketched.

2005-06-13T04:23:00.000Z

Back to sketches after a bit of a break. Here's my daughter's handbag, sketched just as it lay on the table while we were on holiday. Surrounded by the beauty of Cumbria, and I draw my daughter's handbag. You've got to smile.

2005-06-08T14:49:00.000Z

Well, it's not very often you get to see the Queen, but I just did, on the streets of Cambridge, about half an hour ago. I managed to take a snap with my camera phone and thought it was worth blogging about!

No posts for a week

2005-05-28T04:13:00.000Z

We're about to go up to the caravan in Cumbria for a week, so there won't be any postings for a while after Friday. Hopefully I'll come back with my mind refreshed and my sketch books full! I did have a nice pastel of the caravan to upload in celebration of the holiday, but for some reason it doesn't want to upload to the blog

No rules. Just write.

2005-05-23T15:12:00.000Z

Brenda Coulter asks that everyone who enjoys her blog No rules. Just write makes a mention of it in their blog today. Never one to shun a bit of free publicity for my own blog, I'm happy to oblige (though I suspect I won't be responsible for increasing her traffic count that much ...)

Anyway, Brenda is an author of inspirational romance fiction, and although I'm no great fan of the genre, and have never so much as seen one of her books in a bookshop, let alone read one, I do enjoy her blog.

2005-05-20T04:27:00.000Z

It occasionally does no harm to post the sketches you're not so pleased with. I was flicking through the Sunday magazines last night when I came across a photograph of this lady which was ripe for sketching. Turns out she's the mother of jewellery photographer Jurgen Teller, and she's wearing something expensive round her neck, but I didn't realise that at the time. Anyway, for me, the whole photograph centred around her arms, so that's where I started the sketch. Consequently, her head is all out of proportion. That's the main thing I was unhappy about. Secondly, I put in the shadow down the left hand side, because it was there in the photo, but it just doesn't work in charcoal. Thirdly, for me, charcoal is all well and good for proofing something that I'm going to do again later, but I'm just not very good with it. I use it too much like I would use a thick, blunt pencil, which is just not the right way to treat charcoal, I know. I must learn more about the right way to use it.

2005-05-10T04:36:00.000Z

A pencil sketch drawn while on holiday in Cumbria last year. The highest branches of the tree opposite our caravan were thrown into silhouette by the brightness of the sky, and I was fascinated by the huge number of details in what I could see. I think maybe I captured a tenth of it here.

Discovering the design process

2005-05-04T04:40:00.000Z

We're having a swimming party as a joint birthday celebration for our girls this year, and I wanted to include some sketches on the invitations. What I had in mind was almost like a set of logos that could be scattered across the invitation: something very simple and bright that would have an immediate impact. But I wanted to go about this the "right" way, and produce something that was the product of a planned process, rather than a few off the cuff sketches.

I had previously been very inspired by a posting on Mike Rohde's weblog that describes his design process, and in particular how he developed a new logo for a company he was working with. Now, of course Mike does this sort of thing for a living, and I was just doing a few drawings for an invitation, but I could immediately see how his approach could have a big pay-off for what I was trying to achieve, and it was something I'd wanted to try for a while: this was a good excuse. So, armed with a sheet of quadrille paper (which fans of Douglas Johnstone's D*I*Y Planner might recognise), I jotted down a few initial ideas.

The only ideas that were firm in my mind were the overall simplicity of the figures, and that the head should be disconnected from the rest of the figure. This was personified by the figure with arms outstretched in the top left corner, which was the first I drew.

Based on this basic idea, I tried out a few different poses, and you can probably see which ones I liked and which I rejected. I rejected the diving and dive-bombing figures as soon as I drew them. The swimming figure went through a couple of versions before I decided I didn't like it.

There were some other details to get straight as well: how to draw the hands (I decided on no fingers), whether to include hair (no) and "speed lines" (no).

At this point I showed them to my wife. She pointed out that most of the guests would be girls so we should have a few swimming costumes: the figure on the bottom right is actually hers. Costumes meant colour, so I went back and added some colour to a few of the sketches. I didn't need to do much before I had a good idea of what I wanted.

On to the final versions. I decided to do "girl" and "boy" versions of my three favourite figures, as well as the splash figure. I drew them on decent sketching paper using a charcoal pencil and, because by this point I had a very firm idea of what I wanted, I was happy with the first version of each one. The colour was added using some old wax oil crayons (Caran D'Ache Neocolour if you're interested) that we had hanging around. After that, it was just a case of scanning each individual figure, cleaning it up a little in Photoshop Elements (to get rid of the minute specks of charcoal that had been scattered across the paper while drawing), mirroring them to give a few variations, and importing them into the invitation itself.

So that's it. A pretty simple design job, and not a lot of artistic effort, but I was fascinated by how the design process itself helped to solidify my ideas and give myself the freedom to play with forms without making any commitments. Thanks Mike!

2005-04-26T04:45:00.000Z

This guy should be famous!

Buckaroo

2005-04-22T14:56:00.000Z

Moving away from the subject of sketching for just a moment, this is what the interweb was made for. Classic!

We now return you to normal service.

2005-04-22T04:42:00.000Z

I've not posted much in the way of colour to this blog yet, so here's a pastel sketch that I made a while back of the church where my wife and I married. I'd like to be able to claim that I sat out in the beautiful English countryside on a glorious Summer's day in order to sketch this, but alas the truth is far less idealistic: I sketched this from a photograph of the church we have on our wall. Still, I was pleased with the result.

2005-04-18T04:46:00.000Z

This is my sketch for last week's Illustration Friday theme: Alone. Unfortunately I was too late to enter it to the website, but I thought I'd post it here anyway. I thought I'd post it, not because I think it's a great example of artwork (far from it -- it only took a couple of minutes, and I may have several more goes yet), but because I was pleased with the concept. "Alone" always conjurs up such negative feelings, and I was originally going to have my faceless alone person looking pleadingly towards the "in crowd". Then I thought about how much there can be to celebrate about being alone, and made him rejoice instead. Alone at last! How many of us have felt that before?

Illustration Friday!

2005-04-18T04:40:00.000Z

I've discovered a great website called Illustration Friday!. Every Friday, you're given (either by email or just by visiting the site) a topic on which to draw something. It doesn't matter how well you draw, or how ambitious the drawing is, the point is just to do something. You can then publish your picture and tell the website about it, and they'll add a link to it.

Last week's theme was "Alone" (about which more in the next entry), and this week's theme is "Reinvent".

2005-04-14T04:37:00.000Z

Here's a montage I made while on holiday last summer. We were on the banks of Ullswater in the Lake District. It was a warm, greyish day. The girls played on the rocks, looking for fish, and my wife combed the shore, looking for inspiration in the rocks for her ceramics, while I sat by the shore and sketched what I saw. The yacht was just moving away from the shore, hence the two views (and yes, it was called Skywalker). The walking boot was my daughters, one she left by me while she went wading. And the silhouette is of my eldest daughter as she balanced on the rocks looking for fish. Of the four items in the montage, that was the trickiest to capture because it was the fastest moving!

Featured on Moleskinerie

2005-04-12T07:20:00.000Z

Got featured on Moleskinerie yesterday and my hit count has shot up! Thanks everyone who takes the trouble to click through to here, and I hope you like it enough to visit again!

a million monkeys typing � Keeping It Personal

2005-04-11T12:27:00.000Z

Douglas Johnston's ever-interesting "a million monkeys typing" blog has a fascinating article at the moment called Keeping It Personal, which lays down his ideas for integrating personal items, such as doodles, sketches, journal entries, and so forth, into your daily planning system in order to build a more personal bond with your planner and help build what David Allen calls a "trusted system". This is different to the system I use (journal in a Moleskine, planning on a Palm) in ways which, frankly, worry me, because I love my Moleskine and, at the moment, I resent and distrust my Palm, and find it more inconvenient than convenient. I think Doug has an excellent point, but I shudder at the thought of changing my system in such a drastic way.

2005-04-07T04:43:00.000Z

I've been meaning to post a page from my Moleskine for a while now. The trouble is, with it being a personal journal, most double page spreads contain at least something I'd rather not publish! This one from about six weeks ago is pretty general though, and contains a few doodles as well, which makes it a bit more interesting.

Thought for the day

2005-04-05T07:21:00.000Z

D O G S H A V E O W N E R S
C A T S H A V E S T A F F

2005-04-03T21:50:00.000Z

A family outing for Bank Holiday Monday last weekend, and we took our first trip to the Imperial War Museum at Duxford. I've only lived in this area now for 14 years, so it was probably time to go. Anyway, I managed to grab 5 minutes on my own with a cup of tea while the rest of the family caught up with me, and I managed to make a quick sketch of the plane that was nearest to me: a Dassault Mystere. It's not often I sketch something like this, so I was quite pleased, especially as it was positioned at a slightly unusual angle.

2005-04-01T04:49:00.000Z

I haven't had the chance to put anything up in the last few days, so here's a couple of old old sketches. Not particularly interesting or good, but quite fun: sketches of a couple of old Pooh toys that my kids got from a cereal packet or something. First up, Eeeyore ...

... and finally, Piglet. Note the pencil guides in these ink sketches. I told you they were old. You wouldn't catch me doing that any more. Actually, now that I think about it, there is one interesting feature about these sketches: they were the first ones I did when I started sketching "seriously" again (a couple of years ago) for the first time since my teens.

No updates for a few days

2005-03-25T05:18:00.000Z

I'm away for a family event over the Easter holiday, so there won't be any updates for a few days. Have a look at some of the marvellous links in the sidebar instead! See you in a few days.

2005-03-24T05:48:00.000Z

An ink sketch of my youngest daughter reading. I sketched this on the same evening that I did the quick sketches of comedians that I posted the other day. I had no choice but to be quick with this one -- thank goodness she had a book that was interesting enough to keep her still for a few minutes!

Blogwise

2005-03-23T08:27:00.000Z

Just thought I'd note the fact that I got listed on blogwise yesterday, which I hope will increase the traffic to the site just a little. When I submitted the blog, I had a message saying that it would take about 22 days to submit my blog. Fair enough, I thought, given that this all has to be done by a real person. Imagine my surprise when I received an email this morning telling me my blog was now listed. Fantastic!

For the record, my details are listed here, though given that you're already reading this post, there's probably no reason on earth why you'd want to go and look at them.

Punts

2005-03-22T05:26:00.000Z

Now let me be the first to say it before anyone else adds it to the comments: yes I know this is a bit "twee" and bit like something you'd see on a tourist postcard, but I kind of like it, and because I snapped it a couple of weeks ago while walking in Cambridge, I know it's NOT a postcard! :-) Actually, I currently have this set as my desktop wallpaper (in sepia tones with a bit of soft glow -- even MORE postcard-like), and it works quite well.

Triangles Part 2

2005-03-22T05:18:00.000Z

I thought I'd post this sketch just for curiosity's sake, since it's the closest picture I have to an actual representation of the scene in the triangles picture. This was sketched from the banks of Crummock Water on a slightly hazy day, and the two peaks - Dodd in the foreground towards the left, and Red Pike in the background on the right - are the two peaks represented in Triangles.

2005-03-17T09:04:00.000Z

I love pictures that show spontaneity and immediacy, and a lot of my pictures reflect that. The majority of what I do is fairly quick to produce, and I don't take on very many long term art projects. Actually, I think part of that has nothing to do with the art itself, but with my ability to invest a lot of time in something that's a risk -- I think I find it difficult to commit to long-term projects that might not work out how I hoped.

Anyway, all this notwithstanding, I do admire quick, assured, simple sketch-work, and here are a few examples that I came up with myself one evening. They are all of British comedians (who happened to be featured in that week's Radio Times), are drawn directly in ink, and there's probably a total of less then 10 minutes sketching involved in total for all three sketches.

First of all we have a trio of David Walliams, Ricky Gervais, and Matt Lucas. For anyone not in the UK, David and Matt are currently the darlings of the nation for giving us the fabulously funny Little Britain.

Next there is the straight-faced, straight-laced comedian Jimmy Carr. Of the three sketches, I think this is my favourite. The hand doesn't quite look right, but I think the general idea of having a disconnected hand worked quite nicely.

Finally, one who is known outside of the UK, Graham Norton.

2005-03-14T08:40:00.000Z

I did this little sketch some time ago when I was experimenting with ink drawing. At the time, I had never had the courage to go straight to the ink: I always did a light pencil sketch first and then inked over it. This was the first thing I ever did without a pencil underlay, and I was quite pleased with the result.

The subject is quite famous, but I'm blowed if I can remember who it is, and I was foolish enough not to write it down at the time. It's from a reasonably famous self-portrait of a well-known artist, Italian if I remember rightly, perhaps from the 17th or 18th century. If anyone recognises the portrait from my sketch then I'd be grateful if you could let me know via the comment box!

Washing line

2005-03-11T05:47:00.000Z

This is a quick charcoal sketch I did a couple of years ago in our back garden. It was a breezy day, and I wanted to try to capture the movement of the clothes on the line. I was particularly interested in the way the clothes folded around themselves and the pole to create quite different shapes.

Triangles

2005-03-11T05:37:00.000Z

Here is a little picture which is quite close to my heart, being as it is one of those pictures where I was brave enough to stick to my original ideas and go out on an experimental limb. So often I have an idea for a picture and what I end up doing is a toned down (no pun intended) version of what I originally had in mind. With this one, what you see is pretty much exactly what I had in my mind's eye right from the start. I call it simply "Triangles".

OK, a few technical details. It's an acrylic painted on A5 sized board, so is fairly small. It was painted in the early part of 2004. It's currently unframed, and sits on a book shelf in my office at home. It took me a surprisingly long time from start to finish: about four weekends of occasional work.

So where did I get the idea for the picture? Well, I guess it dates back to a holiday in the Lake District in the summer of 2003. For those of you not based in the UK, the summer of 2003 gave us consistently beautiful weather, and my family and I were lucky enough to spend one of the hottest weeks staying in a caravan in the village of Lorton, not far from Crummock Water. This picture is, notionally at least, a view of the gap between Crummock Water and Buttermere, looking across at Red Pike. Of course, none of the features in the picture bear the slightest resemblance to their appearance in real life.

Why the triangles? I'm not entirely sure. While we were staying in the caravan I read a fascinating book, written in the 1930s, by a Japanese gentleman who took a holiday in the Lake District and chronicled his adventures. Most interestingly, he illustrated it with Japanese-style sketches of his travels. To see traditional Japanese pictures of the Lake District was to see the Lake District in a completely new way, and I suppose that was the effect I was trying to achieve. Why triangles? Well, I suppose there's something vaguely oriental about the look of the picture, and after a holiday filled with triangular mountain peaks and triangular tent peaks (both of which are depicted here) one thing seemed to follow on from another, and it felt right to make the whole picture should consist of nothing but triangles. In contrast to the sharp angles of the triangles, I wanted the shading to be very smooth, particularly in the forest, and this is actually what took the majority of the time to paint.

My family and I actually did the walk depicted here during this holiday. A beautiful walk between the lakes of Buttermere and Crummock, up through the forest, and onto the peak of Red Pike (which, unlike the picture here, really is red). The plateau you reach above the forest offers a particular view that shields all aspects of modern life from you - even the villages below - and you really can convince yourself you've entered another world. I thoroughly recommend it to anyone that wants to escape from the pressures of the everyday world for a day.

First post

2005-03-10T10:48:00.000Z

Welcome to my blog. Indeed, welcome to the first post in my blog. I hope to post (reasonably regularly? We'll see) about the things that interest me, in the hopes that they may interest you too. My intention is to make this blog a vehicle for some of my artwork (I use the term loosely, since I am neither a trained artist, nor an experienced one), but I hope to cover other subjects as well. Which ones? Well, only time can tell.

A note about the name. Several years ago, my eldest daughter -- now approaching 10 -- made up the character of Mr Porkpop for a role-play game. I always rather liked the name and made a note of it, knowing that it would come in useful one day. While she has long since forgotten about Mr Porkpop, at least a little of him lives on in the name of this blog. I'm sure she'll be pleased.