wiLbur's blog

mending the net

here's a li'l sketch i did in the inside cover of my new drawing book. it's a 250 page peony press *artist's sketchbook*, a little bigger than a4, and it just has the best paper i have ever found for drawing in indian ink with dip pens and brushes... it's sort of a shiny paper which the ink just rolls across and sits on without the tiniest hint of bleed. luvverly.

regular readers may remember my series of posts about all the twists and turns in my drawing style over the years... (or not...)
anyway, i've started drawing this little chap quite a lot, and i suddenly realised he's actually very similar to a style i was drawing in ten years ago -- here's a drawing from 1999, (a bit tatty because it got stuck on the back of a sketchbook):

and here's a 2009 redraw:

now i know they're not identical, but i thought the similarities were striking enough to warrant a little postscript to all that archive hour stuff -- the more things change, the more they stay the same, eh...?

a small exercise in trying to get a bit more texture into my colours...

i thought i'd add some figures into an hotel scene like i sketched here a few weeks ago..

i had a bit of a splash around with watercolours on this card i did for theo's 5th birthday...

...must try and keep these evening sketches going...

(btw, that's a postcard from cyprus i received, not me sending a postcard from cyprus. i'm in england, as usual)

at the weekend i participated in the shrewsbury cartoon festival -- as well as having a few cartoons in various exhibitions about the place, my main contributions were drawing a couple of cartoons on one of the big boards in the square, and a session on saturday afternoon drawing on the 'who do you think you are' stand -- where members of the public stick their heads through a hole in a large piece of paper, and you draw them the body of their choice.

there are lots of photos popping up on the internet, including this lot of ger whyman's, and there are a few of me in action in the square but i think my favourite of these shots doesn't involve drawing at all and is probably this one of me singing 'why does it always rain on me' at the dinner on the saturday night (because it's about the closest i've ever got to looking like a rock star):

apologies to travis and... well, everyone else, really...

it was a tremendously fun weekend, stoked to the rafters with great cartoonists... alex noel watson, veteran of punch and the new yorker, regaled me with stories of some legendary figures he knew personally, like charles addams, whose 4th wedding took place in a graveyard, according to alex. coincidentally, martin honeysett told me that the new yorker once accepted one of his gags, but only the idea, they wanted the drawing to be done by... charles addams. actually a pretty good fit, when you think about honeysett's dark humour.

other than my official drawing duties, i only managed one sketch, which was made in the sitting area of the hotel at 4 in the morning during a caffeine-induced spell of insomnia i had on the friday night. it's not much, but here it is.

just a quickie...

heh... this one was fun...

that *mezolith* drawing i did (see last post) has kind of whet my appetite for more drawing with dip pen, brush and ink, which i used to use regularly, but in recent years have dropped in favour of a fine liner.

some folk seem surprised at how different it is from my usual stuff, but i'm pretty sure i'm drawing in essentially the same style, just with different materials.

i'm taking a certain amount of inspiration from the prodigious sarah mcintyre jabberworks and her incredible morning sketches, which, it has been noted more than once, would be a day's work to many of us. evening sketches suit me better, but anyway, i'm having fun with it, and as long as i keep it going i'll post up the results, so here's last night's sketch.


in other news, i updated my website recently, putting up some more recent gags, and more comics and strips.

also, don't forget to bookmark the super comics adventure squad blog, there are lots of posts going up from many of the *dfc* team, and there's even some good vibes about a possible *dfc* restart next year -- see the blog for the details.

*mezolith*

these are a couple of sketches for a short comic i'm working on...


and this is my kids overheard at bath-time:

it can be quite liberating to have a good old scribble sometimes...

and here's bozoartist's version

just back from a long weekend at the *beautiful days* festival in devon...here are some sketches...

i have various sized sketchbooks...this is my tiniest, pocket-sized one...

i was away last week, we had a family holiday in frinton-on-sea. here are some sketches...


new barnstables' story coming soon