The Chronicles of Narnia: An alternative illustration

What's this? Another new post? It just so happens that I've knocked two guddans out today, so here's an illustration to C.S. Lewis' fantasy classic The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, albeit an alternative illustration...

Sunday afternoon with the Bourgeois Family

The Pied Piper of Hamelin comes to the UK

I don't really delve into political topics that much, but with the current state of Britain at the moment, I couldn't help myself. My condolences go to the poor people affected by the unsettling behaviours, which are, at least in part, a product of an equally condemnable widening social division and alienation that many of us have blissfully ignored.

En ville

A little pen and ink drawing based upon a mix of French architecture, including some from La Rochelle, where I spent a few months teaching English as a foreign language through the British Council. I suppose one could call it a sentimental, naïve and quite frankly rose-tinted view of all things continental, but as much as there may be personal sentiments and memories in it, it's really a fictional, innocent rendering meant to evoke storybook illustrations and that sense of childlike wonder that exists in most of us (sorry if I sound like I'm quoting Walt Disney wholesale there!).

It was done on a sheet full of doodles and other sketches, so if you're wondering why it may look a bit cropped at the top, it's because I hit the top of the page.

Mickey? Is that you?

Not the greatest drawing I've ever done in my life, but a slight bit of humour.

Bits and bobs: Espresso

 

Another little thingy I found lying around on the computer, and in truth, something that I probably meant to post ages ago. An ode to coffee, a drink I have only in the past year started to like.

Bits and bobs: Prince Noname

Yes, it's true. I'm terrible at updating. First of all, I've been busy with other things that this blog has to come pretty low down the priority list. On top of that, I still can't get access to a scanner regularly, and the battery to my SLR has gone poof. I'm returning to the UK for good in a few weeks time, and I hope that the return shall remedy my problem. In the mean time, here's the first part of a few "bits and bobs" - nothing important in particular, just some little sketches and other such things.

This is something I did a few months back, pulled from a sketchbook. It's a quick scribble of a prince or equally aristocratic youth, complete with my attempts at replicating 16th century fashion from memory. I will also admit that it was done to experiment with ink and gouache. I think that I either drew this character as a potential design for a fairy tale illustration (I can't remember which story, though!) or as a character in one of my own potential stories. Either way, I like to think that, despite not looking like me a great deal, I instilled some of my own positive attributes into the character.

Postmodern Expressionism? To Bremen!

A few gouache studies on "The Bremen Town Musicians". A sort of mix of Mary Blair and expressionism, part of their aim is to attempt to capture the underlying Gothic spookiness that the original Grimm stories possess, with a sense of irony thrown in for good measure. The studies are for the scene of the animals standing on one another's back and bursting through the window of a woodland cabin in an attempt to scare away the robber inhabitants. It works, as the robbers wrongly believe they're being attacked by a demon...hence my choice of hellish colours for an otherwise cosy cabin and demonic forms for a bunch of otherwise cute animals.

Happy Thursday to You...

Happy Thursday to You, as a naive French school child once sang thinking he was going to pass his English test for singing an English song correctly. Either way, I'm back after one of my ridiculously long pauses.

This is a bizarre, rather shoddy, and ultimately twisted sketch with some pencils I did on a train to Saintes (a French town around an hour or so north of Bordeaux, famous for its various numerous Roman ruins, including a stunning amphitheatre), depicting somewhat inappropriate and cruel minded gift-card designs. I swear that they're all in jest, and that I would never have enough negative energy to send out such deranged gift cards out. If you really pissed me off, you simply wouldn't even get a card in the first place!