Your world has never been my own...

This is nothing new. I drew this ballpoint Raven quite a bit ago, but having no inclination to drop everything and come up with some inherently "spooky" cliché, this is the token Halloween gesture. I don't know why the Corbie has such a dark reputation. Maybe it's because they eat the recently deceased, or because they choose to dress all in black. Maybe it's Edgar Allen Poe's "Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore." Bit harsh. Or perhaps it's because nobody has ever found out why a Raven is like a writing desk. Whatever the reason, I don't like it, cut them some slack. Quoth the Raven, Nevermore...Happy Halloween. 

Carrying around an empty head...

Now, I'm not really the macabre type but when I came across the delicate, fragile treasure of a bird skull on the coast at Flookburgh I just had to bring it home. It's some kind of little wading bird, though there's so many that look identical to the untrained eye, I couldn't tell you what it is (any twitchers out there, answers on a postcard). I really didn't have any intention of drawing it but I never had any intention of drawing anything, I just don't know what else to do with my hands..

Once I started I got a bit carried away and drew it quite a lot of times, which is an incredibly rare occurrence for my non-existent attention span. These are my favourites, drawn in dots (which is a bit habit forming, consider that fair warning!) Some people refer to this technique as pointilism but strictly speaking, it's stippling, which sounds like a style of painting to me. Although it's pointilism that is actually a painting technique. Confused? Yeah, me too. I'm just going to call it drawing with millions of dots. Genius! Like magnified subatomic particles. Actually, nothing like that at all.

This one is my favourite, the underside. These drawings are quite a bit bigger than the real life skull, I can scarcely believe it once housed a miniature brain. 

Sail away for a year and a day...

Talking about Edward Lear the other day reminded me that I'd done this little biro illustration a while back. It was a wedding card for a friend, awww. At the time it crossed my mind to illustrate the whole poem but I think that's been done to death. Be yourself, everyone else is already taken (thanks Oscar Wilde). I do quite like these whimsical little drawings though (when I'm that side out) and there are one or two in my portfolio which may make an appearance here. People seem to enjoy them, they're what one might call a crowd pleaser. Roll up, roll up...

A Moon age daydream...

Tonight's moon is known as a Hunters Moon which is the full moon that comes after the Harvest Moon (and that's a lot of moons in one sentence..) It won't be quite as exciting as the supermoon total eclipse we got last month (if you didn't get up at 2am to catch that, what were you playing at?) which gave us a deep, burnt, blood-red moon that looked to me, as it neared totality, as though there were flames licking up the sides trying to catch it on fire. Just stunning! But it's drawings (not moon related digression) that we're here for, so without further ado...

Sticking with the white on black theme, here's something I've been working on this week. Our beautiful Moon drawn in millions of tiny white dots. This is actually part of a bigger drawing so more will be revealed. Stay tuned. Do not adjust your set. 

Inktober

#inktober

I've just found out about this inktober thing (on the 26th...story of my life!), which coincided quite nicely with starting this blog and with splattering white acrylic ink around the "studio" yesterday. I was going for a bit of a Ralph Steadman vibe after seeing him the other night on a programme about Edward Lear. I've always loved his far out art... Anyway, I thought my splatters looked a bit like fish skeletons so here's one (with the crappy tail bit craftily edited out of the photo). I'm also kind of glad I've only just discovered inktober, there's no way I would have committed myself to an ink drawing every single day for a month! I was bored before I even began..(thanks Morrissey).

Before I change my mind...

Welcome. It's nice to have you here. I'm so glad you could come. I hope you like it...I think you will (thanks Willy Wonka). To avoid agonising over the perfect drawing to start with, I've decided to just go for it and keep it simple with this little Dor beetle. Leave 'em wanting more...