Brushes with Robots

Have finally succeeded in making Photoshop brushes and layer settings that feel to me as subtle as sketchbook pages (well, as close as necessary for print or HD screens). Strange feeling, but so useful...






Still not quite there with the colour version, but nearly...

Been trying Painter 12 and Artrage as well. They can do some clever (and hideous) things, but I'm not at home in either one...
Painter 12 kills my machine too, and it's not a particularly weedy machine.

Unboxing

You know those weird unboxing videos that Apple geeks post on youtube (No? You must not be an Apple geek then…), well this is sort of one of those - and about as expensive.

A year ago, when I was in the thick of making Abney & Teal and trying to believe we'd ever finish, I pre-planned a kind of celebration for the never-to-come finishing and ordered two hand-made instruments. Well, one arrived yesterday. A set of Sean Jones' Border Pipes in G.

(A couple of months ago Sean was kind enough to let me make a few parts myself at his workshop, as I've always been interested in instrument making in general and particularly wood-turning. A few little bits are mine, the most obvious being the end of the long sticky-out bit on the right, next to the Ladybird).

These are pipes that look a lot like those in the Morpeth collection in the North of England, but play and sound like those played in Central France. I'll not post any videos of my playing, as it's not up to much yet -particularly while I learn to use bellows. If you want to know what they're capable of sounding like then watch this instead! 

(You see, pipe-playing is cool in France… at least Julien Cartonnet makes it seem that way).

Then today a box the size of a fridge arrived (note that you already can't take a picture in this flat without five instruments being in it, including Toby Dog's original Squeezebox):

What on earth am I going to do with all that foam pasta? Anybody want any foam pasta?

This is a Hurdy Gurdy made by Alexandra Betz in Munich

I'm no better at this than the pipes, but it's a wee bit quieter so here I am looking dishevelled and trying it out:

And trying it out again tuned down low.

There's probably going to be ructions with my better half over who gets to play this beastie, but anyway. Exciting!

If you came here to see drawings and that, here's a picture of a Mole-monster, and an over-cute doggie who has befriended a rat.

Somewhere

I tell myself this is all leading somewhere:

Battiness

These are the last few of the batch from the previous post. I don't really understand how the internet works anymore and host my own images at my website, hence problems when it gets full.

Experimenting with working entirely on the computer is fun, but is also driving me a bit batty (and possibly blind). Dried up pigment ink has killed my expensive printer, but I'm thinking of replacing it so I can experiment with combining digital drawing and real paint and papers. The opposite way round to how most of my books have been done. (Not the Abney and Teal picture books, which for a variety of reasons were done entirely digitally).

Combine that battiness with the battiness of adjusting to working at home again and trying to find my storytelling voice away from Abney & Teal and you get much battiness. Stop saying battiness.

How else to describe the following though...




I am still working through my Hockney obsession. I've had it since art school so I don't know where I think it's going.

It has begun to flash and thunder outside.

Here are some drawings of a small boy in a bib.

More Digital Scribbles

There were even more of these, and some other things, and I had something to say about them but now I have problems with my webhost so I'll come back some day when I've sorted that out!