scratchy dinosaur

As I type, the good lady wife – whose name escapes me for the moment – is telling me about some 18 year old uber-genius she read about who has just sold his cyber-business for a trillion, gazillion dollars. I am 40 this year, and am uploading a picture of a toy dinosaur that blows bubbles. Ho-hum...

british museum

And here's page 7. Now move along please. There's nothing to see here.

british museum

...and here's page 5...

british museum

... and here's page 3 from the same sketchbook. Left-middle is my favourite thing here. It's no surprise that it's the strongest image; I'm a south-paw so I tend to start at the top of a page and work right to left. It was the last thing I drew on this page, so I was starting to hit my groove by then.

british museum

A page from my current sketchbook detailing a recent visit to the British Museum. I spent a lot of time in the 'Mexico' room photographing the sculptures I found there. Drawings were made back at home from this reference material...

lynda hardy on an envelope

My reasons for not posting ANYTHING in the last four months are manifold. I'm currently doing lots of teaching and when I'm home, looking after my daughter. This doesn't leave a lot of time for DRAWING and COLOURING IN. Despite this, I have been busy, although a lot of the stuff I've been working on has been done in the guise of my alter ego, Bill Buswell. Maybe I'll post some of it here when I've chance...

In the meantime, check out this MASTERPIECE, a result of months of gruelling labour. I saw this newsreader on BBC South Today (or whatever it's called) and decided I had to capture her likeness. Subsequent rummaging around on the interweb has revealed her to be Lynda Hardy and I found a photo of her there which you can use to check the level of verisimilitude between my facsimile and the actual, real, living, breathing Ms. Hardy (in photo-form). I expect the National Portrait Gallery will be on the phone any time soon...

Click on the images for increased magnificity.

mosaic mask

Mosaic mask of Quetzalcoatl drawn during a recent visit to the British Museum.

Too much emphasis on hatching and not enough on the mosaic tiles – something I tried to remedy when I coloured the drawing. I drew random four-sided objects in Photoshop and then made custom brushes of these to try and capture the irregular shape of the tiles used on the original mask.