Weekly drawing 47: Captain William Kidd, The Pirate Hunter

Through reading The Pirate Hunter The True Story of Captain Kidd by Richard Zacks. I discovered Kidd was never actually a Pirate.  But a privateer commissioned by some of the most powerful British families in the colonies. The book is an amazing tale of historical adventure with great story telling by Richard Zacks I can't recommend the book enough.

This is my attempt to capture Kidd's character the high-tempered Scotsman wrongly executed for privacy.

Weekly drawing 24 - Huckleberry Finn

 "It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky, up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made, or just happened... "

This week's drawing is a mocked-up cover of a book I love, and dream of illustrating one day. My desire was to create an image which brings to the fore the innocence and freedom of Huck and Jim. Many depictions I've seen of the book have glossed over a fairly major symbol of their innocence and freedom: that they did, in fact, travel most of the time naked. 

"We was always naked, day and night, whenever the mosquitoes would let us - the new clothes Buck's folks made for us was to good to be comfortable..."

  

I wanted to create an image which depicted this, but ensuring it looked natural and innocent rather than dodgy. And I'm very happy with how it came out!

Weekly Drawing: week 23 Muttonbirds

The big day for a young Shearwater

An amazing day: Ron Cobb, Stanley Awards conference & Mic Conway album launch

Ron Cobb speaking at the Stanley Awards conference

Last Friday I attended the first day of the Stanley Awards conference. It is hosted by the Australian Cartoonist Association and involves many great cartoonists in the industry.

I was extremely excited that Ron Cobb was speaking. As a child in the 80's I had read his books The Cobb Book and Cobb Again; collections of his political cartoons from the 1960's and 70's. So much of his work is still relevant today, and influenced my own political cartoons during the Howard years.

Highlight of the day:
Meeting Ron Cobb and discovering that Goya's disaster of war was a major influence on his cartoons.

What's ecology? Ron Cobb cartoon from 1967

New discovery of the day:
Leigh Hobbs' book Mr Chicken goes to Paris.
Children's book illustrators Leigh Hobbs, Cathy Wilcox, and Stephen Axelsen gave a talk about illustrating childrens books. I hadn't heard of Leigh Hobbs before but his talk was very amusing and his illustrations are hilarious.

Later that evening after a big day of talks, I saw Mic Conway launch his new CD Street of Dreams at The Vanguard in Newtown. I think I enjoy hearing him play these old-time tunes most out of all his material.

 Drawn on paper tablecloth while waching the show. Photo: Andrew Lorien