I have taken this from my ‘to scan’ pile. Drawings go in the ‘to scan’ pile if I am not filled with enough enthusiasm to scan and use them, but they are worth keeping rather than throwing in the bin. It is a kind of purgatory-like state in which cartoons can stay for many weeks or months. Possible years in fact, but I do not think that the ‘to scan’ pile has existed for a year yet. Before that the ‘to scan’ pile was part of a shared ‘paperwork’ pile, which in turn has existed in one form or another since I was old enough to own paperwork, so perhaps about thirty years.

It is a rough copy of a motivational Bible reading poster. The idea is that such a poster would be affixed to the wall, perhaps with blu-tak, and by its presence would encourage greater diligence in Bible reading. It is a project I might or might not pursue depending on the demand. The artwork is shoddy thus far, I will admit. The man has a thin head and no ear. I know that there are people with thin heads and no ears, but this is a poor depiction.

I could produce motivational posters on other topics if the demand was there. Perhaps general ones: ‘Show greater enthusiasm’. That sort of thing.

Posted by Dave at 11:57 pm on June 17, 2007 and filed under Art, Religion.

10 Comments

This post is of interest mainly to people reading who are fairly local to me, which is probably in the region of between none and three.

The Leigh Art Trail is on at the moment in Leigh on Sea. The idea is that lots of local artists display their work in different venues, and people can wander around and take a look. This is a BBC report. It finishes this Saturday, the 16th of June, so I am a bit late posting about it.

We are going there this evening as some of my oil paintings are on display in the college where I have been doing my evening course. It is part of an exhibition called ‘ART’, so called because that is what it is. The exhibition does not really seem to be advertised anywhere unfortunately, but it it is at the Leigh Community Centre in Elm road, which is about 12 minutes from the railway station. It is next door to the Police Station and just down from the Sarah Moore pub. Leigh is about 50 minutes from London Fenchurch street using the railway. The Art Trail would make a nice day out on Saturday perhaps. You could print off a map and everything. Do not travel specially to see my paintings from any distance though as your disappointment will be widespread and bitter.

If art isn’t your thing there is a free folk festival in a few weeks time.

Posted by Dave at 1:27 pm on June 14, 2007 and filed under Art, Essex Life.

7 Comments

At the weekend we went to a Church Weekend Away. This is a time when a church goes away, usually for a weekend. The aim is to become a more enthusiastic Christian. We went to Ashburnham. I love Ashburnham. It is a sort of a Mecca for Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and those on Church Weekends Away. For Evangelicals it is probably one of the holiest sites in East Sussex.

These are some leaves I wrote on and left on a bench for the Pentecostals to discover. I enjoy leaving messages for Pentecostals. You should try it.

In the end I went back to the bench and retrieved the leaves as (1) I decided that you might enjoy them more than the Pentecostals, and (2) It occurred to me that one of the Pentecostals might have their Church Weekend Away ruined by finding the leaves and not knowing what to make of them. The last thing I want to do is ruin someone else’s Church Weekend Away.

Posted by Dave at 9:41 pm on June 12, 2007 and filed under Art, Church, Religion.

18 Comments

There is a new church cartoonist in town – see Ian’s Youthful Blog for the particulars. I am impressed. I am not good at doing cartoons about baptism and especially communion, so have secretly made some notes.

On a not-really-related-but- slightly-related-I-suppose note, here is a good piece about how to display artwork on the internet. It is taken from the promising-looking ‘lines and colors‘ weblog. I will be reading half of it because I do not really do colours.

In News: I had mozzarella, tomato and basil sandwiches for lunch in an attempt to lift my morale. I pick the basil leaves fresh from the plant in the kitchen which you are only supposed to water when it droops. It seems cruel but that is what the label says to do. I love basil. I even like the sound of the word. Basil, basil, basil. Mmmm.

Update: Ian has added more junior cartoon church pictures.

Posted by Dave at 11:59 pm on June 6, 2007 and filed under Art, Cartooning, Links: cartoonists.

9 Comments

If you want to become a world renowned artist overnight the Anglican Communion can help you. All you have to do is design the official Anglican Christmas card for 2007.

The only slight confusion is that the Anglican Communion website says “please note the request to send a copy, rather than the original artwork”, whereas the poster says “Original artwork only please”.

This is the true test. Anyone who can solve the riddle an produce artwork that is an original but not an original ca win the glittering prize.

Posted by Dave at 5:23 pm on May 22, 2007 and filed under Anglican goings-on, Art, Religion.

6 Comments

This is a scene from my Tuesday night portrait painting class. The model is reclining, and the painting is midway through the first of four two hour sessions. The medium is oils. Viewers with eagle eyes will perhaps see a thin brush poised on the easel.

I don’t know how people model for art classes. I tried it for ten minutes and found myself wanting to laugh at nothing in particular. I think it is because the tutor has to explain to each pupil why they have not quite got your chin right and that your nose should be longer etc.

I have been enjoying this class – even more than the still life oil painting course I did before it. The people who paint portraits are more sociable than the ones who paint still lifes (or should it be ‘lives’ – I don’t really know). I find it relaxing because with painting one does not have to think up as many ideas.

I don’t know whether I will do another course in Leigh on Sea next term. On Tuesday some youths in a car pulled up as I was walking back to the station and started to ask me questions in silly voices. All very funny, but intimidating when you are on your own armed only with a sketchbook, a small tube of burnt umber and a nearly empty bottle of turps. This is the third incident involving threatening groups of youths in cars in the twenty five weeks I have been going. I do not feel that safe in this part of Essex after dark, but perhaps I need to toughen up a bit. I’m sure it is very safe compared to many places in the world. And armed with my tube of burnt umber I could probably take on most adversaries anyhow.

Posted by Dave at 11:56 pm on May 3, 2007 and filed under Art, Photographs.

9 Comments

Former Beano and Dandy artist Graham Kennedy sent me some links to a couple of sites that he runs to do with illustrating the Bible. First of all the Bible Picture Website, which has his work available to buy for use with children’s sunday school groups etc, and then the Bible illustration blog, which deals with some of the issues faced when illustrating the Bible. An interesting sample post: Bible pictures: Cartoon Vs Realism.

Above: Feeding the 5000 in 3D. This will be ideal for readers who happen to be wearing green and red tinted spectacles. You can buy this image and some others as a powerpoint here (I’ve had to reduce it to fit into my template – the original is way way clearer). You can buy the special specs too.

I don’t know that my black and white cartoons would work terribly well in 3D. I’d need to do lots of sculpting with bits of wire.

Posted by Dave at 9:39 am on May 2, 2007 and filed under Art, Cartooning, Links: cartoonists, Religion.

5 Comments

I enjoy looking out of the window whilst on the train and taking pictures of things that seem interesting to me. I can sit there for 5 hours or more with my camera poised, whilst my wife and all the other passengers occupy themselves with reading or puzzles or whatever they like to do.

The only problem is that my camera takes a photo about 2 seconds after you press the button, so I have a fine collection of things seen from the train 2 seconds after we passed something interesting.

Just occasionally it works quite well though, as in the case of these terraced houses seen near Durham on Saturday.

For every one of these I have 20 pictures with subjects such as ‘field obscured by telegraph pole’, ‘house with blurred railway trackside equipment’ or ‘trees accidentally photographed at speed’.

Anyway, we are back from being away and in Scotland. We had a lovely time and got to see lots of interesting things and people, mainly in Edinburgh, but also for one day in Glasgow where we went to see Jack the Lass and the Glasgow School of Art.

So, now I am back and will be doing drawings once I find my desk. I also have some extra duties to attend to, about which more later.

Questions for study groups
1) What have you seen out of the window on the train?
2) How does this tie in with all the verses in the Bible?

Posted by Dave at 9:22 am on April 16, 2007 and filed under Art, Mundane, Photographs, Religion.

17 Comments

Skip over this post if you don’t want any profound analysis. Thank you.

1 Chocolate Jesus
Some of the catholics are grumpy because someone has made a chocolate Jesus. I was thinking about this this morning and then Kester wrote it better than I was planning to:

I’ve obviously not seen the piece properly, but my sense is that it looks like a wonderfully cheeky critique of the saccharine nature of modern Easter-tide. I wonder if those in the Catholic League would normally purchase chocolate eggs for their children around this time? Are we not all guilty of sweetening the impact of Christ’s death?

2 The three quarter labyrinth
The labyrinth is a sort of a maze thing you walk around in a prayerful manner. It is all very well, but it can be a bit dull and prescriptive for those of us who like to wander off and do things our own way. Perhaps Real Live Preacher’s three quarter labyrinth is the answer:

…you might find a shortcut and get to the center quickly, or you might never arrive at all and spend an entire afternoon endlessly circling. Who knows what would happen.

In my experience, that’s a pretty good description of praying. You pray. You don’t know why, exactly. You’re hoping some things, I guess. You don’t know if praying will be a journey with any end at all. I know people who have prayed for things their entire lives. Or who knows, you might get a miracle right away. I don’t know about this stuff. It makes me nervous making claims about prayer one way or another.

3 Liturgy isn’t everything
Some interesting words from Joel, the director of the Evangelical Alliance. This is taken from an Ekklesia news item entitled “Africans and Caribbeans ‘alienated’ by Westminster Abbey slavery service, say evangelicals“.

“The Church of England needs to learn how to be the Church for England,” he said. “There should have been some space to depart from the script and speak the unscripted language of the heart.

“The protest was a master-stroke of opportunism, but, as we experienced a beautifully choreographed act of worship, it was an important reminder that pain cannot be choreographed,” he said.

Right, these uplifting thoughts were part of a plan to get me into the right mood for work.

Note to self: Get on with it.

Posted by Dave at 1:49 pm on March 30, 2007 and filed under Art, Church, Ecumenical matters, Religion, Spirituality.

7 Comments

Some Lenten reflections done in a Moleskin watercolour notebook using ink and watercolour

They are by Paul Soupiset. His blog, which also contains the watercolour sketches with some added commentary is here.

I found this via Real Live Preacher, who introduces the work here.

Posted by Dave at 12:24 am on March 29, 2007 and filed under Art, Religion.

2 Comments

Photograph taken in Bournemouth on Saturday:

The little additional sign and the quotation marks both made me happy.

If you enjoy unusual uses for quotation marks you will also appreciate this post by Little Red Boat.

Later on I will explain why were were in Bournemouth.

Posted by Dave at 10:48 am on March 26, 2007 and filed under Art, Photographs, Signs.

7 Comments

This is scanned directly from my notebook having been drawn in the depths of the night time.

The great thing about posting a picture of ‘strange hallucinations seen whilst ill’ is that no-one can write in and say what a rubbish picture of strange hallucinations it is. These were my very own hallucinations and they looked like this picture and if they did not then it is only I who know that they did not. Other people are welcome to their own strange hallucinations, but these are mine. With this in mind I am considering posting more pictures of strange hallucinations during weeks when new material is a bit limited knowing that I will be immune from criticism.

Thanks for the kind comments that have been made this week. I feel a lot better then I did at the beginning of the week. I am trying to catch up on various things, so sorry if I have been slow to reply to your messages etc.

I am away for much of the weekend. Some links will hopefully appear here by some miracle on Saturday morning.

Posted by Dave at 9:19 am on March 9, 2007 and filed under Art, Utter nonsense.

3 Comments