Weekly Drawing: week 22

Morning walks with Eileen Scollay

Childhood memory from the South Coast in the 1980's. Morning walks with Eileen Scollay, a great family friend and wonderful baby sitter.  If we were early enough the beach would be unmarked by foot prints. My sister and I had a game of trying to walk in Eileen's foot prints, to trick everyone into thinking they were the second person on the beach.

weekly Drawing: week 21

Childhood memory of Rowville in the 1980's. Climbing over the farmers
fence with Grandpa to pick mushrooms for dinner. I was scared of the cows
so I stayed closer to the wheel burrow then my sister. 

A water colour painted while juggling my 10 month old daughter. I really like the looseness of this one, the medium captures the mood of the memory.

Weekly Drawing: week 20

While preparing for Christmas this year, I've had lots of fun drawing on wrapping paper and hand drawing Christmas cards. It's been great, I've drawn more then I expected. The only problem was I couldn't decide which drawing to upload for the Blog. So I've picked a couple of my favourites from this prolific week. 

Hand drawn Christmas card 2011

Scarfy the giraffey

Tap dancing octopus

Pirate Gran's dream Christmas, staying home and eating pizza

Vikings celebrating Zoe-mas.
Zoe-mas is an annual commemoration
of the birth of Zoe celebrated on December 23rd.

Weekly drawing 19: Nature's Gift Native Bird pet food

Weekly drawing 18: Seeger & Lead Belly



Seeger and Lead Belly



This drawing was inspired by reading To Everything There Is A Season: Pete Seeger and the power of song, a biography by Allan M. Winkler (Oxford University Press, 2009). Pete Seeger has amazing credentials: he spent time travelling with Woody Guthrie and they wrote 'Union Maid' together; he was friends with Allan Lomax, the great field collector of folk music; he even played with Lead Belly. 

I wanted illustrate a young Seeger, full of energy and enthusiaism, with the aging hard man who was finally free after a long life in and out of jail.

Allan M. Winkler writes:

Through Lomax, Seeger met Lead Belly. One day Lomax called Seeger and told him to grab his banjo. Off they went to another apartment on the Lower East side, this one inhabited by the fabled folk singer (...) Wearing overalls in an awkward effort to identify with the working class, Seeger at first had a hard time relating to the well dressed Lead Belly."There I was," he said, "trying my best to shed my Harvard upbringing, scorning to waste money on clothes other then blue jeans. But Lead Belly had on a clean shirt and starched collar, well-pressed suit, and shined shoes." Seeger nonetheless found himself fascinated by the man who "moved with the soft grace of an athlete. He had a powerful ringing voice, and his muscular hands moved like a dancer over the strings of his huge twelve-stringed guitar." As he watched him play, and played along with him, Seeger saw that Lead Belly "was not the cleverest guitar player; he didn't try and play the fanciest chords, the trickiest progressions, or the fastest number of notes... The notes he played were powerful and meaningful."

Weekly drawing 17

This illustration is inspired after reading Alan Moorehead's book 'Darwin and the Beagle' published by Hamish Hamilton 1969.

In 1831, Captain FitzRoy had given Darwin the opportunity to join the HMS Beagle. In hopes that a Clergyman-to-be and Naturalist might provide a valuable service substantiating the Bible. Finding evidences of the flood and the first appearance of all created things upon the earth.
Unfortunately for Captain FitzRoy, Darwin's research lead him to developing the theory of evolution and natural selection. All the evidence he gathered came to ahead in 1835 after the Galapagos islands. He noted the different forms of mocking-birds, tortoise and finches on the different islands. They were all different forms of the same spieces.
As they sailed away from the Galapagos in there narrow cabin I imagine this was science and religion facing off or as Alan Moorehead writes "putting forth their ideas with all the force of young men who passionately want to persuade one another and to get the absolute truth"

Special thanks to Anton Emdin for recommending the japanese waterbrush pen Pental pocket jet pen which I drew this sketch with. Anton gave a great talk at the Stanleys on digital and ink. Also congratulations Anton for winning the Australian Cartoonists Association‘s Bronze Stan Cross (“Stanley”) for Best Illustrator and the Gold Stanley for Cartoonist of the Year at the annual ACA Stanley Awards.

Weekly Drawing: Week 16

The Barista Cats

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

Weekly Drawing: week 15

I recycle to work everyday

Our new recycling bin sign

Weekly Drawing: Week 15

Out on the Savannah, protecting the young.

This drawing was inspired by crawling around the lounge room with 8 month old daughter.

I started the weekly drawing goal to give myself a regular deadline to sketch funny ideas down and make sure all my time didn't go on housework. I was motivated to work out a way to draw and create regularly without it taking too much time away from my young family. I wanted to do art but I also wanted to be a great parent and husband. I've been reading a book about other parents who have grappled with this challenge: The divided heart: Art and Motherhood by Rachel Power.

 Here's a quote that really spoke to me. It's from Rachel's interview with children's authors and illustrators Martine Murray and Sally Rippin. Sally quotes a fellow parent and author, Chester Eagle:

"It sounds impossible but, after all, even the most hard-pressed parent usually manages to brush teeth, iron the odd garment, make a bed or remember to buy tomatoes, so why not write as well? I mean it. Why not?

 I'm fairly savage on this matter. If one wants to, one will. If one isn't organised enough to do it, one isn't a writer, only a would-be writer and the world's full of them. Build your life around what must be done and let other things go, or drift, but write the book... (...)

I sound ruthless about this because I am. If it matters, it'll get done. If it doesn't get done, it didn't matter enough."

...at which point Rachel reflects:

"At the time I found myself arcing up at these words. Perhaps I wasn't yet ready for the cold, hard reality of what lay ahead of me. I was looking for the secret to maintaining a creative life - but not one that involved waking in the middle of the night (more than I already had to) or letting the house go to pot...."