Cheerful Charlie.

Charles - collage, brush, gouache, pen (Mitchell calligraphy nib) and inks on black card.

Found this old monkey behind my bookcase, dusted him off and got Chewie to punch the sucker into cyber-space. Just listening to a programme on Radio 4 about the theme of golden ages. So things ain't what they used to be, thank heavens for that!

One Fine Night in his Attic Flat

"A raw chicken downed with Sauvignon Blanc did not deter Professor Castus Vitrubian from uttering rambling incantations, which when said enough times made a desperate kind of sense. His attic flat was Spartan, no carpets, furniture, or decor of any kind. Memories, alcohol and Stilton cheese were his main companions most nights of the year. His associates at the academy thought of him as a very dour individual, not one, viewed him for pleasantries, but thorough and reliable in his working practice. He was a man out of place amongst his competitive peers, but loved by his grey haired students. The masks people wear. At this moment in time, as he slurped more of the wine, he began to puff and melt, but his nerves were dead to it. He could still smell though, that the wafting aroma of the arrival was pungent and acrid, sulphurous even. 


"The correct spell had caught the ears of the ones who dwelt elsewhere in stygian blackness. A good result, but he was an academic was he not? Was the source of the smell a good score though, with its foetid and threatening intent? Naively and somewhat nostalgically, (though some might remark that he possessed some semblance of a sense of humour), he had summoned his Auntie Lilly back from the penultimate level of Hell. He had just wanted to delight in her permafrost gaze and crusty cackle. Particularly after she had habitually hit his left ear with her cane and chastised him endlessly for his existential uselessness. She had not changed that much really, despite being deceased fifty-one years. One thing particularly notable is that as a creature of habit, she suffocated fools gladly..."

Pen, brush, ink and white correction fluid.

This one is something I worked out in pencil last summer, I inked it with Stephens Drawing Ink this week. Stephens is a very well established ink dating back to the 1830's and is still the official ink of the British government. What they get up to with it heaven can guess. It is a really nice deep black and dries relatively flat and matte. Very cheap too, from £2.30 a bottle so good for students too. Additionally I drew the image with a Gillott 303 nib and a Brause Musical nib (it has 5 points and is used to put down  line mark ups on musical sheets). The latter nib was useful for getting the wispy abstracted smoke trails. Brush wise I used a Winsor and Newton Sceptre Gold rigger brush and a DaVinci Maestro kolinsky sable watercolour round. Additionally used a toothbrush to spatter some of the ink, plus a Pentel Correction Pen to clean up, get wisps of smoke, etc.

The picture suggested itself to me last year and as time went on I thought out a little back story, this type of process frequently occurs when I work out comic strip stories. More stuff to follow shortly.

Grivokh, a problematic customer...

Grivokh - Pen, brush, various inks, watercolour, gouache and crayon.

Another one of my sketchbook creepy crudities, who quite often crop up in stories many years later. Will be doing a post quite soon on my comic book project in development, Skewer.

Manga Sized!

Manga Boy, pen, brush, ink, screen tone and everyone's trusty friend Photoshop.

Here is an updated version of the Manga demo drawing I showed you all in B/W a couple of weeks ago in my Educational Projects Part 3 post. It was fun to use some computer colour and this one will feature in DevelopEBP's First University programme's catalogue. For this I will be running a one week Manga Mini-Comics course for gifted and talented youngsters this summer, as part of the Creative Strand in early August. 

It is nice working on this part of this programme for Susan Ploetz the coordinator because it lets you work with youngsters and really put the through their paces. Will be working again on the First University at the very end of August on the Academic strand doing a workshop focusing on oceans. However these are not just any oceans, but extraterrestrial ones, more particularly the ones beneath the icy surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. Strangely this week the European Space Agency has sent a probe there, so I look forward to its findings. The thing about Europa is that it is oxygen rich so might even have alien fish beneath its crust. The artist's life, eh? Can't be bad.

Eschova Michael Satanus

Pen, brush, assorted colour inks and correction fluid.

First in a series of 'friendly' creepsters from my sketchbooks.

Educational Projects Part 3

Good to get back to a spot of writing on this fine day, with the sun shining in the garden outside. So in this episode I will be looking at workshops completed at Hanslope Primary School in Milton Keynes 2009-10, which is a partner school of Stantonbury Campus, which I explored last time. The brief involved another curriculum Key Stage project with students from Year 6 i.e. youngsters who are aged 10-11. The topic concerned the culture of Japan, which I have a personal inclination towards. Initially I did this with the school in 2009 and my approach was to get the children to create large-scale ink and watercolour paintings drawn with bamboo and reed pens. 

The subject matter had an emphasis on feudal Japan. It was an interesting period of Japanese history 1185-1868 symbolized by the powerful regional families (daimyō) and the military hegemony of warlords (shōgun). It was also a time of great patronage of the arts by the nobility. So I did a historical introduction and slideshow talk on the nature of Japanese ink paintings and woodblock prints, with emphasis on artists such as Hokusai, Kyosai, Utamaro and Kuniyoshi amongst others. 


So the task was to get students to use photographic reference materials, for example costume, samurai castles, landscape, etc to create a large scale picture which would be worked on with bamboo and reed pens, plus India ink. This would then be developed using watercolours/coloured inks to reflect the character of Japanese art of the period. One of the important things to emphasize was the linear nature of Japanese ink drawing so I did a quick marker sketch of a medieval Japanese man on the board, this was to emphasize the loose, expressive nature of ink painters like Kyosai. The latter's art I saw for myself in an exhibition at the British Museum in 1991 (I think), it was amazing seeing huge, colourful silks of expressively painted demons and the like. Apparently he would sometimes work in the early hours of the morning having imbibed much sake. Anyway it was at the end of the period I graduated. 


Back to the point, the demonstration I did was to illustrate the way Japanese linework, like Chinese ink painting too, has a fluid quality. It is not realistic in nature, not having hatching, or shading in the way that realistic based European artwork did. The drawing they have done has some parallels with some cartoon artwork and seems to be about distilling the essence of subject matter, with some exaggeration too rather than trying to create something a camera does.  So the children did a number of rough designs within the workshops, moving on to a final piece where I showed them how to use reed pens and watercolour brushes to put lines down expressively. Watercolour came into play later on and I tried to get the students to use colour schemes to again get an approximation of Japanese art from the samurai era. Here is a quick sketchbook drawing I did using a brush, Brause Pfanen nib, Calli Jet Black ink, watercolours and Winsor and Newton Colour Drawing Inks to try and get into the flavour of the subject matter.

The above project I did in 2009, but it was really nice to return and work there again in 2010 because of the positive reception by the head teacher Debbie Doherty and art teacher Christine Czornj. It was a nice surprise when I returned to the school in 2010 to find that Mrs Doherty had found funding to frame the 2009 Year 6 Japanese themed artwork. The following examples are beautiful examples from the 2010 class, photographs by Cara Jones and used with permission.

Some weeks later I returned to the school to continue the Japanese themed residency, but this time focusing on contemporary Japan. So...modern Japanese art, whaddya reckon...?! Yes I got the chance to do a Manga project with the same class. Here is a drawing I did for the project using brush, Gillott 303 nib, Calli Jet Black ink and Pentel Correction pen for highlights (screen tone added at home)

The workshops involved getting the children to learn how to capture the stylistic elements of  Manga art, create several characters, generate a storyline, pencil and then ink it like Manga artists. They also took onboard visual language such as authentic speech bubbles and sound effects. In fact students used Japanese language calligraphic sound effects too, which helped to link in with the school's Key Stage project in a nice way. However something more was involved, I got them to design their own A5 sized mini-comic i.e. a small press publication, effectively their own comic. Have a look at some of the excellent work as it was being drawn, photos again by Cara Jones (have pixellated children's faces to protect their identities).

The thing with children in the year 6-8 age groups is that they are very open to trying different art styles and easily engage their imaginations. Yeah, it was really nice going to Hanslope Primary from the enthusiasm of the kids to the great cooperation of the staff, plus they let me do Manga, so 'nuff said, pilgrim!! In the next in my short series of Educational Projects posts I will rattle on about a gifted and talented programme I was involved in for DevelopEBP (who I mentioned in the first part of this seies), the Children's University Academic Strand in summer 2011. The overall theme was Ancient Civilizations and I did the Aztecs, who have always fascinated me.

Educational Projects Part 2

Today I am going to wind the clock back a little and look at the Artist-Educator work I have done for Stantonbury Campus, a really large school in Milton Keynes which has a specialist Arts College status. From 2007-10 I have participated in their Artist in Residence Programme - coordinated by Cara Jones. This initiative places: felt makers, wood turners, cartoonists, musicians, ceramicists, painters, sculptors and digital photographers in their partner schools to engage in a variety of specialist workshops for a negotiated number of days. In this article I will look at a couple of residencies involving students of differing ages and creative briefs. The latter one involves art workshops I did for a Key Stage Topic at two of Stantonbury’s feeder schools, Willen Primary and Brooksward School. However I will begin by focusing on some residencies I facilitated at Stantonbury Campus itself.

Throughout the year Stantonbury run a number of special days when the timetable is suspended and other curricular activities take place known as Hall Days. These projects involve specialists from a number of disciplines, who provide single day workshops per group under a loose theme. One I did was called ‘Celebrations’ with two Year 8 groups on separate dates; one of the nice things here is that artists were allowed to follow their own drummer. My approach to the theme was to look at the Mexican Day of the Dead festival, which is wonderful because it is a celebration of the former lives of the deceased. The celebration occurs every November on the 1^st and 2^nd, and relates to the Catholic holidays of All Saints' Day (Nov 1) and All Souls' Day (Nov 2). It also has origins in indigenous pre-Conquistador Mexican customs. It was really fun to take a look at this festival, as I have a particular interest in Mexico. In fact I tackled Aztec Art in another project for Bedford’s Children’s University last summer (more on that in a future post).

For those of you that don’t know the Day of the Dead has most Mexicans creating amazing masks, decorations, festivities and a procession where people are decked out in an inventive number of death themed costumes. So taking all of that artistic wonderment as a point of inspiration I created a lesson where children brainstormed a set of alternative pictures around stated theme. From here they did a final A2 size piece of mixed media artwork, by using collage, pastels and poster paint on black card. The following piece of artwork below is a demonstration piece, which I also use as my blog profile avatar.

It was completed at home, just in terms of creating a background with spray paint, the rest was done at the school using collage, oil pastel and acrylic. Now we can take a look at some of the students' artwork (most of it art in process), images of the students have been pixellated to protect their identities. All photographs taken by Cara Jones, and used with permission.

Stantonbury's Year 8's had a really intense go at it and produced some vibrant artwork. The Art Department displayed all of the mixed media work in the school, which is really nice and gives the young people a sense of accomplishment.

The next piece of work I will describe is involving a Key Stage 2 project, which I put my hand to at two separate schools, Willen Primary (Year 4) and Brooksward School (Years 3-4). At these schools the children had an assignment called ‘Take a Seat’, which looked at the development of seats as furniture, and as part of their coursework designed their own chairs. Additionally this tied into other areas such as English. So I did a set of workshops relating to the subject matter, but allowing the children to create illustrations where their chairs came to life as cartoon characters. 

The above image was an idea sketch I did to get into the groove so to speak. Can't find the demo pieces I did at the schools, I think I gave some to one of the schools, but my memory is a bit foggy, heh! As you can see we explored how to take an object like a chair and anthropomorphize it i.e. give it human characteristics. The children created pictures where they used their imaginations to create cartoon worlds where a chair is as alive as you, or I. Pictures were done at A2 size, to give a sense of scale (youngsters at this age quite often work smaller at school) and also to develop younger children’s ability to explore composition boldly. On another level I taught them about why cartoonists use ink line work to make images stand out and add expressive qualities too. The work was drawn in pencil then inked with India ink and bamboo pens. Finally colour was added using watercolours and coloured inks. Some lovely work indeed that follows, photographs again by Cara Jones and used with permission. The first three pictures are by Willen Primary students and the final four are from Brooksward School.

The students in all of the workshops discussed really got into the subject matter. I think working in slightly different ways and with an out of school hourly mode i.e. working for a day on one subject allows young people to enjoy themselves. Dare I say it allows me to enjoy myself too?!

In the next Educational Projects post I will look at my residencies at Hanslope Primary School, another of Stantonbury's partner schools. Here the theme was a Key Stage project on Japan. Here I led two projects covering Feudal Japan (involving ink paintings); as well as modern Japan where students focused on creating a Manga Mini Comic (--YES, IN A SCHOOL!!) More on that soon.