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Not sure why the jar appears orange when uploaded as its actually drawn blue, but never mind.

9 - 5

It is very nearly Christmas, and with only 4.5 days left of work, it is very hard to remain in office mode. Almost time to cast off the office attire and relax.

Christmas is coming

Good coincidence, todays IF: topic is "might" and I have just drawn a little fellow who is mighty indeed. He is one of many cheerful characters hidden behind the doors of my advent calender. (See below).

To make the advent calender, simply download and print out the following two images. Overlay on each other and rip/cut away the little boxes each day. What fun.

The files you need are:

front sheet
http://static.flickr.com/114/311193544_7042079735_b_d.jpg

rear sheet
http://static.flickr.com/113/311214549_d36c20b10a_b_d.jpg

It's a small world after all

On a recent visit to London, we stumbled across the National Guild of Toymakers annual shop/exhibition and there we saw some wonderful things. Inculding a cut out and make red paper dragon and the amazing teeny, tiny automata toys of St Ledger Autmomata.com.
http://www.stlegerautomata.com/index.html

These miniscule painted metal figures are only around 1 cm tall but when you wind their handles, they start to move and come alive and tell short, humorous tales. Brillant. Personal favourites, were the wizard, the dentist, the levitating lady and Samson the strong man.

Invention

Here you can see, my initial sketch for the storytelling machine and a photo of the finished article. It has now been sent up to the museum in Shetland which will be opening sometime in the new year.

Sailing home

Lily Ship
(30 x 15)

Things I saw in London and Brighton

Brighton Pier

Nice Horsey

An old woman contemplates facing the wild river

A disco ball weather vane

Bad Horsey

A nice little tent - what wonders does it contain?

A lone man faces out to sea and meditates on the smallness of life - or maybe he is just having a pee

Tower Bridge. Doesn't Ann look like she's having a great time in London.


The exit from the secret bunker - somewhere near Epping Forest? This is where the Government would have gone in the event of nuclear war right up until 1993.

Top thing to go see if you are in NYC Friday night

If you are around Brooklyn on Friday night then you should go visit the Riviera gallery in Williamsburg and check out the "MY TOWN IS YOUR TOWN, I LIKE WHAT YOU LIKE" show by rachel salomon, gina triplett and matt curtius. Where you will some great work by the very talented miss rachel salomon. http://www.rachelsalomon.com/

opening: friday, november 10, 7-10 pm

RIVIERA
103 metropolitan ave (718) 599-5589
www.seeyouattheriviera.com

IF: Smoke

My first entry into the weekly illustration fun and games of "Illustration Friday" http://www.illustrationfriday.com/.
I'm going to have to come up with a proper name for my wee blobby guy as I keep on drawing him. Here he is telling a lighthouse keeper off for smoking a pipe.

Boom, boom shake the room

Tonight is bonfire night in the UK, a celebration of the failed attempt to blow up the houses of parliment some several hundred years ago. Slightly odd tradition, we all gather round large fires and unskilled and untrained people start setting off small but powerful explosives into the sky.

I sat up on the roof eating a pizza and watching the events occur 360 degress around the city. All you could hear were loud bangs and distant booms, intermingled with the sirens of countless emergency vechicles zooming around. Was a beautiful but slightly uncomfortable experience, felt like the city was under attack on all sides, from a very bright and sparkly enemy.

The power of hoo doo

Yesterday was a spooky day. I foolishly read a horror story when I got home from work and less than an hour after finishing it the power cut to my whole flat. Gav and I investigated but could find nothing wrong. I phoned Scottish Power who advised they were sending out an engineer. I then sat up in bed waiting, reading by the light of a candle and trying to put the spooky sounds of distant fireworks and things on the roof moving, out my head. I waited and waited as my candle flickered and burned lower and lower, I fell asleep.

The next morning, a little annoyed, I called Scottish Power again.

"I'm sorry sir", they advised "We have no record of you calling last night. Are you sure you called us?"

I think halloween arrived a day late to Camphill Gate.

Robots of the future 2

38-58 (20cm x 14cm)
R45-22 (20cm x 14cm)
K5 (20 x 14)

Some more wee Robots from my Robots of the future series.

Had a grand weekend away on the Isle of Arran for my cousins wedding. Was good to see all the family away in such nice relaxed settings dressed up in their finest. Spent a lot of time beside big log fires and enjoyed some nice ice-cream but have caught a cold, boo.

We need your vote

Some good news, my T-shirt design on a wee blobby man talking to a horse (see below) has been selected for the Threadless T-shirt competition and it needs your votes. Please click the below link and let them know what you think. A 5 and a "buy" click would be most appreciated.

http://www.threadless.com/submission/96797/You_smell_but_I_love_you

On a cold and dark night

Luna - Chapter 5: The deepest wood

Hmmm, I shall have to start making some new things and stop stealing work from my portfolio and posting them up here. This is a sketch from a picture book I started playing with about a little girl who goes in search of the Moon.

Portrait 2

Royal Tenenbaum. (20cm x 14cm)


Think I'll try to post a new image on here every few days. Will be a good idea to force myself into being more creative.

You Smell

Decided to enter the above into Threadless. www.threadless.com (A website where people submit T-shirt designs, vote for their favourites and then the winners get made into limited edition T-shirts.) I think the above would make a cool T-shirt. Also the wee bird below but on yellow would also be quite nice.

My painting of the pie and bovril several posts below was selected for the Lowry "One Love" exhibition in Manchester. Will be on display from mid November.

Choosing an image

Trying to choose an image to be my logo on this blog thingy. I've always liked this wee pic so think it might do the job. Think I'll walk around in it for a while and see how it takes. Bonjour.

Three days in Manchester

Ann and I spent a grand three days down at our friend Lindsay new house in the cheerful little village of Chorlton in Manchester. We went to see "To Kill a Mocking Bird" at the Lowry which was very enjoyable if a little difficult to get to through the car-park waste ground maze of fences, ditches and canals.

The next day was more homely, with a bit of breakfast, B&Q and then digging, nailing, strimming and planting while we set about Lindsay garden.

On our last day we went to visit "Another Place" a sculpture by Antony Gormley which I was surprised to discover was ten years old? I thought it was fairly new. The work consists of 100 hundred iron casts or the artists own body located along 3km of beach near Liverpool, starting out towards the horizon. Well worth a visit and will be packing up and moving elsewhere in November.


One of the one hundred statues staring out to sea
Some drift wood - I took a lot of photos of drift wood. Lovely stuff.
The wee metal men were quite friendly looking if you got close enough
There were a lot of bricks, stones and other asorted building remenents which I also took a lot of photos of.

Time to leave - The best thing about the exhibition, is how the constantly changing coast and sky, completly alter ther mood of the work.

The Witches of Halloween oooh ooooh

This is an old image I drew last summer but one which i felt suited a conversation about Halloween.

I think for this Halloween I shall borrow an idea from Ann and decorate my close for this spookiest of holidays. I bought some black card yesterday and I plan to cut out and hang some bats in the stair well. I might also get some pumkins. This will then pose the question of what should the pumkin faces look like. In the past we've had a pirate pumkin and a scoobydoo pumpkin but what should this year hold. Maybe a vampire or a robot pumpkin?

Robots of the future

Steve the robot (20cm x 14cm)

Started a series of paintings of robots, spaceships and spacemen of the future. This is the first one and is called TR3-01x otherwise known as Steve.

The Storytelling Machine

The Storytelling Machine v1.3 (1896)

Here's a sneak peak at the exhibition piece I am making for the new Museum and Gallery in Shetland. Powered by marbles, this curious device can not only play recordings of some of Shetland's wonderful myths and legends but can also detect the presence of Trows and listen in to their conversations. The machine will be completed this coming Friday and will be winging its way up to Shetland shortly after.

Footie

The most hated man in the world (20cm x 14cm)

Half-time (20cm x 14cm)


Going to enter a competition to make some art related to football for a competition at the Lowry in Manchester. Made these two last night and unsure which to enter or if to enter them at all. But after a couple of months of studying its good to get my paintbrushes working again.

Alburt Crown Affair

Ann and I went to the newly refurbushed Kevlingrove Art Musuem in Glasgow on Saturday. Was very pleasent and we saw lots of interesting things, including: A giant Irish Deer, the remains of a crannog, a beautiful occury and Salvidor Dali's Christ on the Cross.

Having watched the Thomas Crown Affair last week Ann was very disapointed when I wouldn't steal one of the paintings for her and just bought her a postcard instead.

Portrait 1

Captain Steve Zissou of the SS Belafonte. (20cm x 14cm)

Is sunny today

I worked out this morning that I've either eaten out or had a takeaway ten days out of twelve. Thats pretty good going, no wonder I'm skint. I also spent a pleasent afternoon fighting swarms of white fly in the stairwell and then as a celebration of my victory did a bit of crown bowls in Queens Park. I sadly came last.

No roads today please.

I did a couple wee sketches for the Arches, for next months List magazine. Apparently the Arches are doing a take over of the publication, as part of their 15th anniversery celebrations. The brief was to draw something political, so I created a few ideas about the new M74 motorway, six lanes of traffic two storeys high, which the council plan to drive through the southside of the city. Not a good idea, especailly when its costing £1billion for just 5miles of road, think what the public transport system would be like if it had that much spent on it!!

These clever folks www.jam74.org are trying to put a stop to it. Drop by and give them your support.


EDIT: I did actually do a new drawing for Illustration Friday this week (click here to see it) but I remebered at the last minute about this previous post which was for a very good cause.

Sadly since originally placing the above post, all attempts to stop the road in its track have failed and it now looks like the new road will be built despite the public inquiry, the environmental study and the business report all concluding it is a bad idea. Last month, in preperation of the work going ahead the community gardens that lie on the route were bull dozed. Looks like unless there is a massive change of heart in the government or a massive public display the new road will be going ahead. Which will not as its promoters suggest decrease the problems of congestion, it will merely initially make it easier for people to drive around the city, which will encourage more road users and will ultimately result in the same congestion problems but this time with 10 times more cars. We should be spending our money on improving public transport and giving people a genuinilly better optino than to jump in their cars. I've got a car and only use it when i've got no alternative - for every other joureny I walk or get the train/ bus and at the moment, the public transport option is smelly and unreliable. Lets spend on sorting that out and the rest will follow. rant over.

Monkey Politics

Saw this on my way to Falkirk the other day and thought it rather interesting. If you don't know what it's taking about then check out-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/5238222.stm
- for the full sordid and rather bizarre story.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, when I was at University, we bought some toy dart guns and had a merry old time chasing each other around the studio firing little rubber darts at each others heads. Come lunch time we decided to have break from this hilarity and nipped down the road to buy some sandwhichs. On our way back we started playing with the guns again. I was chasing my mate Gerry past the City Chambers and as we passed the front door I pulled the gun from my pocket and at that same exact moment a man stepped out of the front door and into the firing line. Luckily I didn't pull the trigger or I would have hit a rather startled looking Mr T. Sheriden square between the eyes.

more green fingers

As promised here are some more pics of the veggies I've been growing on the roof. We enjoyed a tasty vegetables Thai curry with them the other night. There are still plenty of tomatos and carrots to be dug up, and the pepers and chillies are just about ready. I also planted some more potatos and onions and they started growing already, so it should be a veg filled summer.

I'll have to apologise to my neighbours though, as the tomato plants in the close are kind of taking over the stair and are now nearly 10ft tall. I half expect them to attact me.

Green fingers

Since April I've been growing lots of pots of vegetables in my tenement close and on the buildings flat roof. I've never tried to grow anything before and I've found it strangely addictive. I've got pots of onions, potatoes, carrots, chillies, peppers, herbs and tomatoes. At the weekend I had a wee rumage in the dirt and dug up my first potato and was delighted by the result. As you can see from the photo above, its a beauty. I'm thinking of entering it into a "most beautiful potato" competition. My inital plan was to grow enough vegetables to make a bowl of soup but I think I might just buy a big display cabinet and show them off to friends.

This coming weekend I plan to dig up some onions so look forward to some more exciting vegetable based images next week.

Moffat, Dumfries and Southerness

Ann and I spent a very pleasent day driving about Dumfries to see what we could see. The below are some photos charting our discoveries.

Inside a lovely old Antiques shop in Moffat. We purchased two items from the above display. Any guesses which two we bought?

Sweeties from the world famous moffat toffee shop.

An extremely bizarre little holiday village with about a few rows of houses, tons of caravans, a hotel, a golf themed pub, a lighthouse, some very poor quality amusements and a doctors surgery. Surgery opening hours - TUESDAY AND FRIDAY 11am - 11:30am

A very odd looking pub along with the amusement arcade appear to be the only source of entertainment for the multitude of tracksuit wearing, white trainer sporting young folks hanging around the corners. All in all, Southerness holiday village is quite a forlorn looking place - with grey skies and strong wind battering it's streets. I rather liked it though. There is something so poetic about forgotten holiday resorts. Think Ann and I might travel about some more and take lots of photos to record them before they all dissapear through lack of custom.

The amusement arcade was home to all the favourites, the 2p falls, the bandit style fruit machine, that whack a gator with a hammer game and of course the wonderful "place a bet now please" horse racing game. If anyone knows where I can purchase one then please let me know.

Strange Council Certificate

I was in Falkirk Counil's offices the other week and noticed this rather strange certificate hanging on their wall. They seem very proud to be the Runner Up in the National Christmas Tree Recycling Campaign 2001/02. Bet all the other councils are well jealous. I particularly like the jonty angle they have decided to hang it at. Well done Falkirk.