The Loving Mother

Have you ever been on a bus or a train, or any public space for that matter, only to be stuck next to an odious parent coarsely addressing his/her screaming children (often given diabolical names such as Dwayne, Britney, or perhaps even Armani?)? Does the parent annoy you immensely, making you question whether or not the parent actually loves the children? Well, I have on many an occasion, and one time, I had just had enough and opted to satirise such folk. I mentioned the drawing I did in one of my first posts, and now you finally get a chance to see it. The obnoxious mother's appearance was mainly based on images of such parents passing in my mind, as well as taking some inspiration from the Queen of Hearts as portrayed in Walt Disney's Alice in Wonderland. Enjoy!

A Day in the Life of a Student at a University of a Provincial British City

Another post? So soon? Sure is! This was done back in May with my first set of Faber Castell PITT pens, just after I had finished my final year of my BA degree. But by the end of it all, I had basically had enough of being an undergraduate. Now, I shall first of all like to mention that I was content with the academic side of university and have been interested in doing some sort of postgraduate course, but I had essentially become tired of being stuck in the transitional and cliquey lifestyle of an undergraduate, ultimately a conformist existence no matter how much "alternative" stuff anyone was into. I'd spent much of the past few months in the library, from time to time finding amusement and/or displeasure in overhearing the immature whining and boastings of a great deal of arrogant and boisterous "fauxhemian" students, all in the library from the looks of things just for a coffee and a cake than to actually do any serious work.

This particular cartoon sums up a lot of the opinions I had by that stage of being a student. The dialogue was based on a conversation that a friend overheard on a bus and posted on a "post silly things u overhear" Facebook groups. Not that it should really bother most people stumbling across this blog, but the cartoon has a bit of coarse language and a few drug references, all ultimately done in good humour.

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

In the darkest depths of a very cold British winter, unnerved by the night arrived just after 4pm, shrouding a below-freezing and snowy landscape in black, out came a delightful fellow from my warped mind:

This creepy creature was created with gouache, with a Faber Castell PITT pen providing the teeth. After having scanned this image into the computer, I did some minor touching up (the removal of a few pencil marks, as well as the addition of a pupil). Oh, and did I mention that I did this on Christmas Eve?

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

It's been a while since I last posted, but hopefully any future breaks won't be over a month long. Kick starting off the month of December was a wave of snow and cold weather engulfing the European continent. Sadly, currently residing on France's Atlantic coast means that I have so far missed out on a lot of the mayhem; we got temperatures on Tuesday and Wednesday just dipping south of freezing, but no snow accompanying it. So imagine my excitement this morning when I opened the curtains to find a certain something...

Once Upon a September

Once Upon a December

Out with my camera I went and took loads of pretentious arty photos in the town and the park, as well as a few videos at the beach (sand covered in snow!). Anyway, the snow has already started to melt, but I was simply happy to just hold it for even just around five minutes. Obviously the perfect start to the month of December, and a perfect thing to get anyone in the mood for Christmas.

"Out in the woods stood such a pretty little fir tree."

And speaking of Christmas, snow, and winter: here's a drawing that I did a month or two, inspired by the Christmas tale, The Fir Tree, a yarn penned by none other than Hans Christian Andersen. I was coming up with ideas for illustrations and Christmas designs at the same time, and the two ended up fusing together into one image.

Yikes! It's the Fish Wife!

This is another one that I did quite a while ago, when I still had access to a scanner. I understand that some could interpret this image as misogynistic, but it's meant nothing more than a bit of daft fun. I recently heard the term "fishwife"; it originally meant a woman who sold fish at markets, but ultimately became a derogatory term for any coarse, shrewish woman of low background. When I heard the term, however, I couldn't help but think of an image similar to this, a sort of female version of the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

In fact, the whole image sums up my dislike of fish. It's not a fear, it's just that I find a lot of specific types to be quite ugly. Thus, the perfect inspiration for a creation apt for a horror/sci-fi B-movie, and a perfect thing to display in the run-up to Halloween!

La Belle et la Bête

And another piece inspired by a fairy tale! This time, it's inspired more directly by a story and its characters as opposed to being a satire incidentally using elements of a traditional tale.

In the light of Disney's Beauty and the Beast appearing on Blu-Ray and again on DVD after an extended sojourn of nearly a decade in the infamous Disney Vault, I've been thinking of both the 1991 animated film and the original story. Though I wouldn't consider it the absolute best Disney film like some people, I still do really like it. It was one of the Disney films that I watched a lot on VHS when I was younger, so it has a lot of childhood memories attached (I also saw the film at the age of four when it was originally released). It has a great score, and I'd single at least two or three of the songs out as some of cinema's best tunes. It doesn't have the best animation and art direction of a Disney film, but there are some lovely touches, especially the exterior of the castle, a French château built in the dreamy, high turreted style of Schloss Neuschwanstein. The first shot of the film, a Multiplane close-in on the said edifice through the forest, is beautiful, and the film's introduction told through the castle's stained glass windows is very effective.

Ultimately, a lot of the film's lure quite simply derives from the story's basic backbone, and the film's creators' wise thinking in keeping that intact, regardless of the addition of singing tea pots and saucy French candelabras. Underneath its fantastic exterior, the tale is essentially a story about human perception and love, touches upon primeval nerves. The story is versatile; it can be stripped to its skeleton and completely retold potentially as effectively as before, as Disney's, Cocteau's and many others' versions all have.

This little drawing, done in pen and ink, was my attempt at rendering the protagonists, be they from the standard Madame Le Prince de Beaumont narrative or a potential new version of it (I have a new idea in my head based around the Beauty and the Beast story). As with any tale already done by somebody else (read: Disney, and with this case, Jean Cocteau as well), it was somewhat difficult to come up with something that was different yet familiar. Beauty/Belle wasn't too difficult to draw anew, but every image I had of the Beast screamed either Cocteau or Disney; I therefore hope that nobody imagines this Beast as having the voice of Robby Benson or being Jean Marais in a mask. What I did try to do was to dress them as characters of the eighteenth century, for that was when the standard version of the story (the one written by Madame Le Prince de Beaumont) was penned, and it seems to me the perfect epoch to set the story. Beauty's dress was inspired by one that I saw at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (it was part of an exhibit on 18th century life in British India), and I looked at paintings of French kings for the Beast's costume.

I could really use a wish right now...

Well, it's been some time since I last updated this blog. I hate it if I've seemed like the type of person who opens a blog for a certain thing and then forgets to update it. I will admit that the post flow on this blog could be very slow for whatever reason. Needless to say, hang on in there for more Jarvworld fun!

This particular image (pen and ink) will probably seem somewhat melancholy, so let me explain its origins. For those not in the know, the lyrics at the bottom are adapted from "Airplanes" by rap artist B.O.B. What really gripped me was the chorus, sung by Hayley Williams of the band Paramore:

"Can we pretend that airplanes
In the night sky
Are like shooting stars
I could really use a wish right now (wish right now, wish right now)"

In a dark world, these lyrics may seem quite resonant, which is probably one of the reasons why the song did so well in the charts. I took that chorus (with a bit of tweaking, mainly of "airplane" to the more correct "aeroplane"), and came up with an image to compliment them. I used a child, an innocent so sensitive to the idea that horrible things go on in the world. What is seen here is not a downright depression and despair, but a type of lingering worry for the world, and the inevitable prospect of facing that magic is non-existent. The persistent use of sepia is there to give the sense that hope really is running dry, sort of like a throwback to the Kansas scenes from The Wizard of Oz.

NOTE/CONFESSION/APOLOGY: As I haven't got access to my faithful scanner at the moment,  I have used my SLR camera to photograph this picture. I feel that the reproduction quality isn't as high mainly due to my erratic photography skills. Hopefully I'll get access to a scanner of sorts (mine or someone else's), but for now let's hope my photography can improve for later attempts!

Red's Adventures on East Midlands Trains

This little piece was, as you may expect, drawn on a train. It came to me pretty much out of the blue once aboard the East Midlands Trains service between Norwich and Liverpool, which used to be the line I would have to take if I ever wanted to go home from Nottingham when I was at university there (or to go from home to Nottingham, naturally). Using the line quite regularly, I developed a love-hate relationship with it. On the one hand, I enjoyed passing through some of the Peak District area that lay between Sheffield and Stockport/Manchester and observing some of England's most stunning, unspoilt countryside (especially when covered in snow, or around early evening on sunny days in the warmer months). On the other hand, I also had to pass through a huge stretch of really ugly, monstrous places in between Sheffield and Nottingham (similar to the sights that you can see through the window in the picture) and there were times when the projection of passenger numbers and provision of carriages were so ridiculously poor that the journey became cramped and unpleasant. Moreover (and this is the case with any form of communal transport), some of the riders were so disagreeable that I came to the conclusion that they ought to be sent to a correction camp; I honestly feel sorry for the good-hearted train staff who have to serve such nasty creatures on a daily basis. I did a little sketch one time, which I may or may not share here at a later date, of a "loving mother", a type of rider whom I often found aboard the service - the overbearing and coarse matriarch who will shout and hit their children in public without thinking that she is making others around them feel uncomfortable (and so as not to appear misogynistic, I'll state that I've seen similarly awful fathers in public too). I drew two vignettes of this evil maternal figure and her offspring, basically of her terrifying her children as she threatens to murder them somehow for their insolence.

This picture, as I've stated, came into existence fairly randomly and has nothing to do with anybody or anything I ever saw aboard any train; if anything. It was probably a parody of first class services, mixed in with some imagery of Little Red Riding Hood. I can admit to having a morbid fascination with the classic story; it's really an unsettling yarn that part of me says I should hate, but there are so many vivid and fantastic aspects of the fairy tale that are a dream for anyone interested in the arts. It's no wonder that the visual potential of the tale has gripped so many painters, animators and illustrators, ranging from Arthur Rackham and Gustave Doré to Tex Avery and Friz Freleng. I prefer the Charles Perrault version (the first literary version of the tale, which ends with a dead Red), as the happy ending in the Grimms' version (aka the one used as the basis for most modern editions) always came across to me as unnatural and in some ways creepier than having the heroine and her grandmother dead for good. As far as getting a complimentary meal tailor made to my needs goes (by the way, I'd take the pasta or sandwich option as opposed to the storybook heroine), I never had the same success aboard East Midlands Trains as the Wolf may have done in this picture, but I observed enough personages and situations to inspire sketches in a dozen sketchbooks, all without having to pay any additional pennies. And that's fine with me.

JARVWORLD goes live!

Welcome to JARVWORLD. This is a new blog showcasing some of my drawings and doings. I'm not a professional artist, in fact that dream has yet to come true, but I thought that I'd share some of my work to the wider world. It mainly consists of cartoons, illustrations and observant satirical pieces, often delving somewhere into the fantastic. So anyway, let's go...