Sketchy-I SAW WARSAW: via LEGNICA

These sketches are from the Warsaw leg where I gave a performance to the illustration students of Professor Zygmunt Januszewski's Academy of Art. I think they appreciated my 'take' on the day to day adventures of a commercial artist. Anyway it was a good therapy session. Zygmunt delivered his verdict afterwards in a bar 'Gorgeous' - he says - 'gorgeous..........'. 

What a lovely man.

BIRD SPOTTING: OWL (Tawny/Brown?) R I P

The Walk: The wind blows in a carcass- I carry it home. Sad. It's weight gives me arm ache.  

VIVIAN MAIER:100,000 Negatives.

Interesting double page spread in yesterdays Observer about a Chicago-based nanny Vivian Maier who died in 2009 she left behind 100,000 negatives that no one had ever seen. There's a blog site: http://www.vivianmaier.blogspot.com/   ‎..as the Observer piece says the work reminds you of Diane Arbus-but these were shot before Arbus.........the bloke who discovered them bid $400.00 for a box of old negatives at an auction...................

Time wasting: WEB SITE-normal service is resumed:

Avoiding work pretending to be busy  post Festive/ anniversary hangover must diet - a whisky diet - to para-phrase the late great Tommy Cooper 'I've lost three days already'......three days I've lost over a week, there's a Playboy Magazine job been burning  away in the in tray of my numbskull since new years day, the deadline is at the end of the month, but after saying yes to the man having finally read the piece this week another excuse for whisky I have the feeling that I am probably second maybe third maybe fifth choice for the work it is gnawing away at me I feel sick. Leave it to the last minute wait til the deadline is burning and drilling away up your anus  I advise students on my occasional outings to art schools of England and next month Poland before the pen scratches and scores the paper. My Mac Man Jason fitted my computer with an external hard drive on Wednesday morning then I mentioned that my moribund web site hasn't been updated in over four years could he have a butchers and three weeks later between us we actually achieved the impossible and actually put something new on there hurrah! And I was able to delete some of the shit. Hurrah! So I have spent best part of yesterday and evening posting fresh images on the web site all the while kidding myself I am really working on The Playboy Magazine job. Times have changed in the past a Playboy secretary would phone and tell me to hold the line and that she had Playboy Vice President Tom Staebler wanting to speak to me............I could imagine the art director surrounded by a phalanx (is that the word?)of fluffy bunnies and quaffing vintage Dom Perignon now it's just an email. It is a Will Self piece of writing I am to decorate. Anyway what's the point now that the web site is operating -normal service has been resumed. I only started the blog as a substitute for the web site.....but is a bit of a confessional answers please dear reader let me know your thoughts no one leaves a bloody comment on here anyway I've wasted an hour of my life why can't you................and now trying to find samples of illustration to put on there I've forgotten so many past jobs I came across this character putting on a tie I have no idea who the job was for apart from I remember it was an American magazine so if anyone has an idea please let me know highly unlikely I know but it might start a dialogue.  

Last New Yorker 2010:

Mari Wilson-Shoreham By Sea

Half-Time Walked out. Went for a pint. Cry Me A River...

Beehive as tall as my face: 1982

Today I've chain-sawed large lumps of tree - before splitting the logs with an axe. It was dusk before I stacked the logs in the wood shed in an arrangement that satisfied my soul. Sad.

Tomorrow we travel to Shoreham By Sea in Sussex. On Saturday Mari Wilson performs at the Shoreham By Sea Art Centre. In 1982 the girl was retro, I fell for the tongue in cheek image, the fake glam, the joke. She reminded me of a girl I once knew, an older girl from my juvenile past.  I dug out the records yesterday and was sadly unimpressed. It was the image. I've got her autograph somewhere. Cry Me A River is better performed by Julie London