Today is 20 12 2012! This date seems special. The weather here is grim today, wet and overcast; so wet that the fields are saturated with water and huge puddles are appearing on the surrounding fields.
With the wet weather of recent months, it seems so odd to reflect that throughout the first half of this year parts of England were experiencing a drought. Meteorologically speaking, 2012 seems to have been one of extremes.
Last week I have been in the south lakes. I have been taking part in a hedge-laying working holiday for the National Trust. I had a great time in the fresh air. I have improved my pleaching and laying of the plants in the hedge.
I stayed at the Acland Block of the Highwray bunkhouse, which was the first bunkhouse built for the National Trust. It is situated high on a hill with really excellent views over Windermere and north towards Ambleside.
At the beginning of the week, the site was very boggy and muddy, but not rainy. The sun came out from Wednesday onwards and by the end of the week it became very cold and crisp, though not too windy. On the whole the weather was good, and there were plenty of great views especially of Helvellyn and Fairfax from Basecamp and the site.
Another curiously special date: 20.11.2012.
And here is a drawing that I did on the 20th of November. I was experimenting with the combination of an eye and the rising sun.
... and here are two painterly drawings that I did on this curiously special date.
The artwork below is of my black Labrador, who turned fourteen years old on the 7th of November (that is ninety-something in human years); he is still a puppy at heart, though!
He is part chocolate as well, and when the sun catches him in the right place you can glimpse patches of chocolate colour amongst his back coat. Charming. I tried to capture this by using a chocolatey under-drawing with solid greys and black to fill in the shape.
Acylic inks and watercolour were used.
Another nice date: 8.8.2012 . I like it when dates align like that, in some way it seems special.
The artwork on this jigsaw is called “Wings of the World” and is by American Wildlife artist Charley Harper.
I bought this jigsaw from a charity shop, and my young cousins and I put it together in July. It caught my eye because I like Charley Harper’s style of painting.
I discovered his work serendipitously, at my University's library, where a new book caught my eye: Charley Harper: An Illustrated Life by Todd Oldham.
I liked the simplicity of his style, his colour and his compositions. His work seems to be notable for the simple, geometric style that he employed when painting wildlife, especially bird life.
The author and illustrator of "Where the Wild Things Are" has died today, the 8th of May 2012, at the age of 83; may he rest in peace.
Maurice Sendak was born in 1928. He was a prolific illustrator and is the author of prize-winning and internationally renowned children's books, most notable among them is "Where the Wild Things Are".
My favourite book by Maurice Sendak has to be "In the Night kitchen", its use of the comics format and the rhyming of the words that go along with the pictures is just brilliant. A close second would be "Where the Wild Things Are".
NY Times website."Maurice Sendak, Author of Splendid Nightmares, Dies at 83".
BBC News website. "Wild Things author Maurice Sendak dies at 83".
Sieruta, P. D. "Maurice Sendak, 1928-2012". A great article about Sendak's first book illustration project, for a physics text book Atomics for the Millions.
The film is directed by Akira Kurosawa. It stars Toshirô Mifune, Takashi Shimura and Keiko Tsushima among others. It is set in 16th Century Japan, and tells the story of a poor farming village beset by a group of bandits, who plunder their crops and abduct their women. A few villages go to the nearest town to seek help from samurai in return for the meagre payment of bed and board; most samurai consider the terms insulting and rebuff them. Finally, they meet a master-less samurai, a ronin, and he agrees to help them fight the bandits, so long as they can find seven more to follow him.
This film is definitely a classic of world cinema, and as such deserves well its place among the British Film Institute's selection of World Classics and its status as number one in Empire's The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema1: it has at least seven great actors, great characterization and great action sequences, a great score and great peaks and deep troughs of the human spirit. This is a tremendous, terrific, thrilling film.
(spoilers maybe found below)
I have entered a competition by the House of Illustration and the Folio Society. The brief was to produce three illustrations for Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories". Each illustration was for a different story: "The Bloody Chamber", "Puss-in-Boots" and the "Company of Wolves". I did not give myself very long to produce the final artworks, but they are still quite pleasing.
This artwork was for "The Bloody Chamber".
This artwork was for "Puss-in-Boots".
This artwork was for "The Company of Wolves"
