John's Quavering Pencil

I am writing this to avoid slipping into a blogging block. I think I am already in a sketching block and this might be impacting on my writing here, since I had hoped to establish this blog as an illustrated journal. In order to kick start a blog, I open a simple word processor, such as Notepad, and then let my fingers dance around the keyboard; the stream of consciousness becomes the choreographer. I wish the equivalent would happen on the page of my sketchbook when I pick up a pencil, but it seldom does. Danny Gregory urges me to draw every day and, in his book, gives me lots suggestions as to how to overcome the sort of block that I seem to have.

Not a Guptill boot - pencil 26.10.2009

Arthur Gupthill, writing back in 1922, advised me when I was reading him before I went to sleep last night that I should start today by drawing an old boot. At first, I didn’t think I would be able to do that, but here is a rather pathetic attempt at a modern boot (as opposed to Gupthill’s 1922 boot). 

I thought about taking a few reference photos in my garden but it is windy and that makes the close-up photography difficult. I abandoned that idea and went down to the local newsagents shop, instead.

I found that I had won GBP 10 on the national lottery. I spent GBP 8 on an entry per week for the next two months and pocketed the remaining GBP 2. I then spent £1.05 of that princely sum next door at the bakers on a loaf of bread. My winnings most certainly would not have stretched to a bottle of champagne. I have to say that I am ambivalent about doing the lottery. On the one hand it does seem to offer support to a lot of worthy causes but, on the other, it thus seems like a form of indirect taxation.

Progress on the piano continues to be painfully slow, although I have learned a few new songs on keyboard over the past few weeks. I shall stop this post now, and struggle with the decision between tickling the ivories or sharpening the pencil. Speak to you later.

Cherylesque - pencil sketch 21.10.2009

This blog features a pencil sketch of Cheryl Cole and, once again, I do not claim an accurate representation. I therefore follow  the convention I established in naming my sketch of Marilyn Monroe as Marilynesque, and I title this one Cherylesque. I arrived at the decision to draw Cheryl somewhat obliquely. Woody, from Cascadia in Second Life, had suggested that I might look into the Pet Shop Boys repertoire for possible covers. I’ll come back to this in a minute, but Neil Tennant hails from Newcastle and I started to explore other pop singers from the North East, setting aside Eric Burdon and the Animals, and discovered that Cheryl did too. I am not terribly familiar with Girls Aloud songs but I have now listened to Cheryl’s single. I have to say that it didn’t do very much for me; just not my sort of thing. Still, she seems to be a very attractive young woman and I felt that it would be a challenge to draw her. Hence the sketch.

I know little about Pet Shop Boys, although obviously I remember some of their hits from the 1980s. I think I enjoyed their music for dancing to at parties. At the time I was into worthy folk singers, such as Ewan McColl, and I did not devote any time to seriously listening to PSBs. Yesterday, I read a bio in Spotify by Jason Ankeny and immediately became curious. I then listened to the 50 minute track by track commentary by Neil and Chris on the Yes CD tracks. This is an excellent commentary presented with intelligence and good humour. I now wish that I had followed their musical career more closely but it doesn’t matter too much; I can enjoy delving into their past albums over the coming weeks instead.

As for the Cheryl sketch, I have decided to start signing my artwork. Last year while I was taking the life drawing class at university I spent some time playing with ideas for a signature or mark. I have always disliked my real life name (John Smith) because of it being so common. This is a problem when you want to put your name to creative works, be they songs, poems, pieces of fiction, sketches or paintings. When I joined the Performing Rights Society back in the 1970s they insisted I use my full name and so I published my vinyl LP in 1982 as John Lewis Smith. One of the ideas I had last year for signing my sketches was to write my name as if it were a swan (the S of Smith providing the main shape in silhouette, with the J and L fitting into the head and making a beak). So, today sees the first public outing of my signature logo.

Time is moving fast. It seems only a moment ago that I was having my early morning piano lesson and now it is time to make lunch. Speak to you later.

Autumn leaves

It is a bright morning and the leaves are moving to their autumnal hues. This tree is glinting in the sunlight as I wait for my lift to the Middlesborough Guitar Show. I see the 4×4 approaching. It is so off-the-road rope and pitons might be helpful. Clamber… grunt… clamber.. I am seated in the back. Sigh of relief and some good humoured banter with my mates as we make the drive to the show. We swing into the car park of a brick built 1960s hotel, gleefully savouring the ambience.

We pay in  and reconnoitre the stalls.  The unanimous conclusion is that the fair is smaller than the one we went to in Gateshead about six months ago. At this point Alan dives off to buy pots and bits and pieces for the mandocaster he is building (don’t ask). I mooch around in a much more leisurely fashion with Tom and he talks me through some of the ukeleles that are on display. There are some very nicely made wooden ukes going for about GBP 100 (the baritone does look good). They do come in a case, although the salesman keeps apologizing for the fluffy pink lining. Me and Tom quite like the lining. I move away from the stall, since this would amount to a major purchase and I did not come out prepared for that. I content myself with buying a 10 foot guitar lead for GBP 6 and a steel bottleneck for GBP 3. Tom snaffles some Elixir strings for a snip at GBP 6, too. Suddenly we are standing in front of another uke stall and listening to a much more extroverted sales pitch and demo. The ones on display here are made of plastic, sound passable and are going for GBP 17. The issue is no longer whether I buy, but rather what colour to opt for. I reject the yellow and red and plump for the blue. And off I toddle, the owner of a little uke.

Bacon Banjo

We meet up with Alan again and decide to get coffee. As we join the queue, I notice a makeshift menu and am attracted to the idea of a bacon butty. Tom and Alan inform me that another name for that is a bacon banjo, and this seems highly appropriate for this occasion. I present a pic of the said banjo for your inspection. It is a bit dry in the eating; I should have taken a pat of butter for it but I can’t be bothered to go back to the counter. We discuss the show and our strategy for the remainder of the day. We decide to got to a demo of guitars by a company that makes vintage guitars but with contemporary design and equipment improvements.

Gavin Coulson

The demo hall is almost full; I leave Tom and Alan and find a single free seat. A very pleasant and unassuming young man with extremely long hair takes the stage and starts to explain what the company he represents (he is Gavin Coulson of John Hornby Skewes & Co  Ltd) has to offer. Gavin then starts playing the guitar and an awed silance descends upon the audience. At one point he plays a bass guitar, fingering the bass notes and picking out a classical  tune with harmonics on the higher strings. He finishes his demo by playing a Gary Moore piece on one of their flagship guitars. I have heard some good guitarists in Second Life but this guy just puts all that into a very parochial context as far as I am concerned. The demo ends. I go up to Gavin and ask him if I can take a pic for my blog and then hook up with Tom and Alan again. They could barely speak; they seemed almost stunned by the brilliance of Gavin’s technique and the emotional quality of his sound.

We shuffle out and make one final lap of the exhibition. Then it is a case of hauling on the rope and pitons once more into the back of the 4×4. A leisurely pint of Guiness in a delightful hostelry down by the river wraps up our day out. When I get home I mess about with my uke for a while and soon have enough chords to do a very basic accompaniment for Girl of the North Country and I play that at my Cascadia show. Speak to you later, my dear blogophiles.

Marilynesque - pencil & watercolour 18.10.2009

I was speaking with Nad the other week and I had thought that he did a cover of Elton John’s Candle in the Wind. He told me that he did not and so I said I would learn it and play it at Cascadia. I did play a very rough version last Sunday but I was not satisfied with my treatment of the song. This past week I have been looking to see how I can improve both my accompaniment and also the way I handle the irregular phrasing of the verses. Given that the original song is about Marilyn Monroe (not the later version that Elton sang at Princess Di’s funeral), I thought that it might be nice to attempt a sketch of Marilyn. I think the best that I can claim is that my drawing is moderately Marilynesque. Anyway, here it is for your enjoyment.

Now, I have to get myself to a guitar fair at a hotel in Middlesborough. I must get my skates on! Speak to you later.

The Leader of the Opposition

I woke up this morning and decided to sketch another politician. So here’s David Cameron. I think I prefer yesterday’s drawing of Gordon Brown. I mustn’t get hooked on politicians or I’ll end up drawing the whole of the House of Commons! I am trying hard to draw something each day but I’m finding it difficult to keep up the momentum in terms of everyday scenes and objects. I have decided to draw famous people in order to keep my hand in, on days when I don’t have much else to draw. I have started re-reading Danny Gregory’s book on the creative license for the third successive time (as soon as I get to the end, I go back to the beginning and start over). Maybe, eventually, what he says will rub off.

Earlier this morning I made a board to raise my feet when I play the piano. As things are, the pedals on my piano are a little high and I find it uncomfortable to have my foot resting on one when it is not pushed down. The pic shows the board near the end of its construction. I used an off-cut from a kitchen worktop that I had lying around. I have now tried it out and I find that the worktop is a little too fat. I shall keep the shape as it is but replace the board with something about an inch thick. I made all the measurements in feet and inches. I like to do that in the privacy of my own workshop. Can’t stand metric. I’m thinking of introducing in internal household economy using pound, shillings and pence tokens.

I woke up last night very early in the morning and could not get back to sleep. I practiced some piano, although from the way I played later this morning at my lesson, you would not think I had. I decided to do a sketch but I got into one of those moods where I could not think what to do. In the end, I drew Gordon Brown from a reference pic that I found on the internet. I gave him a blue suit and a pink tie. Speak to you later.

I find myself bundled up, sitting in the garden once again. It is not very warm but I wanted to get out of the house and breathe some fresh air. I remember reading that Roald Dahl used to write his children’s books sat in a shed at the bottom of his garden, wrapped up in a rug when it was chilly. I have some empathy for a man like that.

The day started well enough. I awoke early and spent an hour or two playing piano. Because it is a digital piano, I can do that through my IEMs whithout waking up the household. I was able to use my Bose IEMs for the first time for several weeks. I had had a bad connection problem (although I did not realise that was what it was until a few days ago). Toby Lancaster, from Second Life, advised me to get some Halfords Electrical Contact Cleaner and I did that yesterday. A couple of good squirts, and it seems to have worked very well, so far.

I had a pleasant breakfast at the Bungalow cafe overlooking Roker harbour. When I came home, I felt tired so I went to bed (I had been up playing piano very early this morning, as I have already mentioned). I was woken up from my nap prematurely, but I don’t think I will go into the details of that. Suffice it to say that the shine of the day has been tarnished somewhat.

Out here, sitting in the garden, a sprightly robin red-breast comes to see me from time to time. Some of the shrubs are continuing to flower. I have taken a pic. Last night I read some more of the book on keeping an illustrated journal (by Danny Gregory). The author advocates drawing frequently each day. I still have not got my head around that. The act of drawing interferes with the activity of the moment to a considerable degree. Yesterday, for my blog entry I made a pastel sketch of the supermarket car park. I looked closely at the carpark when I was there, and took a reference pic to work from. But the actual drawing took me quite some time to complete. And I had to do it back in my studio. I just did not have my full set of pastels with me in the car when I went to the supermarket. And in any case, I had some frozen food in the boot, which needed to be put into the freezer. I am clearly drawn to the idea in principle because this is the second time I have read the book. However, I do have problems about drawing in public, because I am very self-conscious. I don’t like doing it.

I know that sitting here in the garden, at this time of year and on a day like this, would be considered strange by many people. Of course, if I were to potter it would be ok. And there are lots of things I could do. The easiest would be to weed a border. I could even run the mower over the lawn. I just don’t want to do any of that. If I am not careful my watchword will become I can’t be bothered. My friend Tom asked me whether I was now starting to enjoy the freedom of not having to go down to the studio and meet the deadlines of my MA degree. I said that although I had felt very sad about leaving it, I was now beginning to enjoy the lack of pressure.

Sitting here, I suddenly miss Harold Hake. He was the hero of my e-novel. I read it in instalments on the first Sunday of the month, about a year ago in Second Life. There were about 6 installments and a little group assembled at Hexx’s Rastafairy Beach venue. Each reading lasted for about two hours and  I played some songs during the reading, relating them fictionally to the story. It was, for me, a very exciting thing to do from a creative standpoint.

I remember when I was writing the fiction. My characters lived with me in my mind. If I went shopping, then Harold came with me to the mall. It was like having a cast of invisible friends. My everyday life became a scratchpad for possible episodes in the plot, as it unfolded. I would make a few notes on a scrap of paper (the literal back of an envelope) about any ideas that had occurred to me while I was walking around the stores (or whatever else it was that I was doing), then at the next opportunity I would type them up into draft manuscript and file them into an appropriate chapter folder.

Sometimes I wrote longhand drafts on a pad. I would them type them up, often word for word, or sometimes making a few alterations here and there. I also had a very small computer, not dissimillar to the one that I am using now and I would frequently use that on location. I would park my car, preferably somewhere I would not be disturbed, and turn the steering wheel so that I could lodge a stiff plastic bread board against the rim (the other side resting on my tummy). This provided a stable enough table to enable me to type using all fingers (my mother taught me how to touch type when I was a teenager).

I have just read over what I wrote concerning my fiction writing practices on location. Why on earth I can’t adapt that strategy to include sketching, I do not know. I must give this some thought.

Fyrm Fouroux is about to enter some changes in Second Life. His little performance venue will cease to exist in a couple of weeks time. Already The Vibe island, where he performed two Mondays per month, has vanished. There is only ocean visible where it once stood. Fyrm’s performance island, Terra Fyrmusica, is going to the south ocean in Acheron. It is bound to take a while to adjust to these changes but I think they will be good in the long term. Tonight there is no gig, but it will be Foxy Hollow on Saturday morning as usual, followed by Cascadia Harmonics on Sunday.

It is starting to get a little cold out here. I shall get on with something else for a while. I’ll speak to you later, my dear blogophiles.

Pastel & Charcoal 08 OCT 2009

I pay for a handful of items at the supermarket, whizzing through the basket only check-out. I barely have enough to fill the single cloth bag that swings rhythmically at my side, as I stride towards my car. The key is in my right hand. I press a couple of times. Two dull flashes of the indicators, two barely audible clicks, a little pressure on the lock, and the hatchback glides upwards in its balletical gesture. A deft flick of the wrist deposits bag into carpet-lined hold. Two short steps and I have the door handle. Body is turning now, bottom in first, into the drivers seat. I retract the left leg, and then the right, twisting my trunk and leaning into the steering wheel, as right hand completes the drill with a satisfying ‘clunk’ of the closed door. It is warm. Finger on electric window button… szzzzzz. My head turns to the right (remember, we are in the UK) and I orient my nose to the breeze. I gaze upon a vista as commonplace to me as the haywain might have been to John Constable two hundred years ago. I used to bicycle to Flatford back in the 1950s.

I can give you no oil painting and my pastel sketch of the supermarket car park will never hang at the National Gallery in London. I did it for you, my dear blogophiles, so that you could share in this fragmentary moment of my quotidian life. I shall definitely speak to you later and, hopefully, shall draw for you too.

This is an autumnal experiment. I am sitting in my garden, looking at a fabulous expanse of clear blue sky, with only the haziest trace of a cotton wool attempting a slow scud from left to right. I am seated on a sun lounger, even though I have chosen a shady spot. The reason for this is that it is difficult to see computer screens in the sun. In fact my notepad screen is barely visible as it is. I think my touch typing skills do help in this regard. Maybe I could come out here and do a blog on Guy Fawkes night and tell you about the pretty fireworks. I might need some fingerless gloves for that. That would be an interesting experiment, too.

Anyway, I have checked my garden thermometer and it is 11 degrees Centigrade. I am wearing: thermal undershirt, cotton shirt, thin woollen cardigan, thick woollen sweater, an old padded gillet, a woolly hat, underpants, jeans, socks and trainers. I am just about warm enough. Five more degrees and I would consider a BBQ but to have one in these conditions might be thought a little eccentric.

Earlier this morning I went for my piano lesson. My teacher was very patient and managed to find something positive to say about my playing as I mangled my way through the exercises that I had been learning this past week. She made a few suggestions for me to try in terms of my vamping technique when I play my internet concerts and I shall think about them later today.

Veg patch full of hope & promise

When I got home, I came straight out into the garden and planted three rows of onion bulbs in my vegetable patch. I also put down a couple of rows of spinach seeds, since it said on the packet that you could over-winter them. Once they left my hand, they take their Darwinian chances.

I do have a pair of trainers I keep especially for garden work but this morning, in my eagerness to get planting, I was too lazy to put them on. The result was that my general purpose household trainers became caked with mud from the vegetable patch. I then needed to sit down and scrape this off each boot with a knife and a stiff brush. It would have been much better to have changed shoes in the first place. However, the activity sparked a memory of sitting on the stone steps at my junior school, scraping mud off a pair of football boots.

Of all the many, many, many things I hate about my schooldays, playing bloody football comes pretty high on the list. Looking back, I bitterly resent having being forced to run around after an inflated leather ball for what must have amounted to hundreds, if not thousands of hours. It constituted a complete and utter waste of time and opportunity in terms of my childhood development, although I accept that hanging about at square leg or whatever on the cricket field was almost as bad, if not worse. These recollections have put me in a really foul mood. I think I’ll go indoors and play a bit of piano. Speak to you later.

I had fully intended to get out my sketchpad, yet here I am with my netbook open writing to you yet again, my dear blogophiles. Twice in one day is perhaps a bit excessive, I know. I am sat in the supermarket cafeteria, waiting for today’s special offer of scampi and chips. It is 2.30 p.m. which is, by convention, too late for lunch and way too early for dinner. Indeed, it is too early for afternoon tea, although scampi is hardly the thing for that delightful repast, in any case.

The weather has not improved: rain, rain, and more rain. I munch.  The scampi is rather tasty, and the chips are not too bad. I am eating American style, with fork in the right hand. This enables me to move between keyboard and food without too much hassle.  There is a rather severe looking old man at the next table, with white hair and wrinkles that add oodles of mysterious character. I contemplate getting out the sketch pad, but I rather think he might lurch over to me and give me a whack with his walking stick if start to measure the cut of his jib with my 2B pencil. A woman with the most amazing blonde hair stacked up in an ice-cream cone bouffant glides off in the direction of shopping with a grace that might only be matched by the Queen of Acheron.

I could use some tomato ketchup on these chips but I can’t be bothered to go and get it. Everything seems to come in sachets nowadays. I miss the bottles and dispensers with congealed gunge around the neck. One very good thing about this cafeteria is that there is no musak. However, it is a little cold if you sit by the windows. I therefore chose a seat quite near to the serving counter. The problem with this is that I have the drone of the refrigeration cabinet in my left ear. This is nowhere near as interesting as the sound of a Copenhagen bus that Torben Asp uses in one of his electronic music compositions. In fact it is getting on my nerves.

There is something a tad depressing about this place. It feels as though the aliens have landed and we are the bunch of folks who got fed up with all the government emergency instructions on TV and decided to go out for a quick snack instead of reinforcing our doors and windows with the laser-proof sheeting the council lorries dumped in our driveways last night when the news of the invasion first broke.

The last pea has been speared by my fork and is now en route to my tummy. I am swigging down the remains of the cup of coffee. It is a little cool. I am looking at my shopping list… Razors. You might find that odd for a man with a beard but I need to shave my neck else I start to look like a bit-part actor in a horror movie. Speaking of which, I need to get some garlic, always good for warding off the vampires. Ok. I must get trolleyed up (in England we call a shopping cart a trolly). Speak to you later.