Good Things Come To Those In Pain

Another selection from Hohhot. Needing an excuse to get out of my small flat, I today headed to the Inner Mongolia Museum to do some sketching, and promptly engendered a scorching migraine.

Before that, however, I took the opportunity to do this quick drawing of a tortoise-monster supporting a giant slab on his back with Chinese characters all over it. No idea what it was as the Museum has very few English signs. An old Chinese man came up as I was finishing and gave me the thumbs up, so I presume my rendition was respectful.

Anyway, it must have paid off somehow, because as soon as I’d returned home for pain medication, I found that my MA application at the University of Sussex had gone through and been accepted. So…good things come to those in pain! (Sometimes.) Huzzah!

I also saw Prehistoric Elephant Skeletons, a hat made out of a rabbit’s face, and a waxwork of a kid wearing said hat while shooting an arrow, with his grandpa looking on and probably saying “Foolish Child, What Are You Wearing”, oldly.

Stay tuned for those. 

“Cross Hatching”

If life has taught me anything, it’s to have many regrets and make only worthwhile apologies.

So I’m not saying sorry for that title.

(It’s a misnomer, anyway. The Little Sinister Teddy-Bear Things all have hobbies, and Ashley Rae’s is finding freshly-hatched eggs and sitting in them. He’s strange.)

Well. What’s all this, then?

SKETCHLINGS - Rita The Hermit

I drew this a long time ago, after seeing a picture of some kids playing with rocks, and watching my then-12-year-old sister running around with a cardboard box on her head.

Rita is an inhabitant of a place called Rajaton, a world which is the setting for a series of books I am planning to write and illustrate at some point in the future. She does very little except turn up and give poorly-phrased advice.

(By the above I am attempting to indicate that I am back. Or at least, that I am posting art.)

SKETCHBOOK: Moby-Dick

So that my last entry doesn’t keep the top spot forever, enjoy this age-old sketch. I quickly scribbled it out after seeing a riveting four-person pisstake of Melville’s immortal work at the Gulbenkian theatre in Canterbury. The theatre group was Spymonkey, and they were brilliant. The play featured Captain Ahab being beaten up by Moby Dick as a Mexican luchador in a white jumpsuit. Need I say more?

Anyway, this was intended as a more serious concept for a cover illustration of Moby-Dick - Queequeg, the cannibal, carries shrunken heads in the book, so I thought it would be fun to draw the head floating in a jar with its’ ponytail forming a whale shape, evoking Cap. Ahab’s watery death and crazed obsession (head=mind, geddit?). Judge for yourself how effective it is. Probably one to someday revisit, in colour.

Pencil-sketch, inked with nib pen.