How to use The Sketchbook:2011

and you listen to the radio. There is a test match cricket broadcast. And you draw. I don't remember exactly what came first but it was more than likely the hare in the hole with the fish swimming through the eye sockets. 

January 23rd 2015: On reflection I think I would have started drawing the boy first and then King Neptune Father figure emerging from the North Sea behind him.........and then the horizon line spreading eastwards across to the other page followed by directionless animal nonsense, and there you have it.  

And you dip the pen in the bottle at intervals and you draw. Like scales, not fish scales. Practice makes perfect. Like playing the piano. Like bowling a cricket ball. Because I'm scared. And the ink spreads. The line marches outwards. Invades the cheap rag paper. Draw from experience. Recent history. Two days in Cromer.Why are you doing this?  Because the commissions have dried up. Because people don't get my ironic humour in print? Because Americans don't get my sarcasm?  Because my past has caught up with me. Because I became complacent.  Because my brain is a pea? I'm attempting the impossible. I'm trying to dig up, I'm trying to find an idea for a childrens book. Huh. Hysterical. Hilarious. Git! So why don't I scribble with a wax crayon? 

Day 1: 2015

Mediocre weather. Dog chewing himself to pieces. Un-required hangover drawing loaded onto here for passing rubber neckers with a passing fascination with illustration maybe. It's a start. Pen and ink on cheap paper, with a little colouring in by pencil on the blanket and a bit round the man's eye.  I'm in two minds how to proceed with this blog, for now. 

Silence. The dog has sunk into dreamland and capsized his basket in the process. Just the hum in the wires or is it a head stuffed with catarrh, bit of both. Wind's getting up. Bird call, at intervals, one, two. One two, one, two, three. Like two slices of slate rubbing together? 

Rochester Snowman.

Distracted. I ought to be at the desk earning the rent. Maybe it's the temperature. Feverish. Below zero. Zero drawing. Be more use, more productive stacking logs. Lighting fires. Shovelling coal. 

Don't believe in Wikipedia

Christmas Eve card from my daughter by Cecil Aldin - 

Christmas is Coming, 1898.

Merry Christmas believers bleeders and readers.

Scratching post.

D I Y. Magic at home.

Unwanted. Encased in a frame. Past catches up. 1988? 1989? 1990 sometime in the distant at Hamiltons Gallery, London a one word theme sponsored by tobacco - Benson and Hedges cigarettes....... can't smoke in the park these days. Drawing done the morning of the deadline I seem to remember, in a rush just so I could be judged. Didn't get a prize but got hung on a swanky gallery wall. Private View. As many cigarettes as you could smoke washed down with fizzy plonk. Dog end days. The one word theme was Magic. This is not illustrating magic it's a trick, a sleight of hand. It's domestic, it's morbid. It's been propped up in a small room in Teddington for over twenty years I've just excavated the mould from it's frame. He didn't want it, he's having a clear out. Sign of the times. And a signed poster. Jettisoned. It's come home to clutter up my room. To rot.

There's a theme, there's a thread. Up on the couch sunshine.

Slow out of the trap.

Should've stuck this on here a couple of days ago in acknowledgement to my friends across the pond. Late Thanksgiving early Xmas. happy Holidays an all that crap, Black Friday? Obscene. I'm disappearing, retreating I'm going to chop some logs it's so bloody mild, maybe it will stimulate a drop in temperature.