holidays are coming, holidays are coming, holidays are coming TIS THE SEASON etc.

You can see all 4 of my Real TV Wisdom Christmas card designs here now.

I also wanted to share with you some pictures from the Gallery of Mo portrait events I've been doing. Still my absolute favourite way to spend an evening. Photos courtesy of Gallery of Mo on Facebook.

The Movember Gala party has the added bonus that people are in fancy dress. I get to draw people in fancy dress? Best thing ever. You could totally pay me to do that at your office Christmas party you know, just saying. 

Drawing live musicians is great, although it gets harder (and more exciting) the more mobile they are. 

A week or so ago I went to a gig my friend Cynthia of Sophecy played in King's Cross, but managed to catch only the last fading notes of her performance as I rushed from a Year 7 parents evening 

(I made a 12 year old cry, worth it). 

To console myself I drew two of the remaining acts, the Mumfordesque Narrow Plains and the very exciting Shockolady. The latter was an example of the harder kind of live drawing as she was pulling out a lot of sexy moves. 

Hello all.

This week I was commissioned to do a piece in the style of my minibook from 2009 ‘What birds are really thinking’, so here is Penguins thinking about world domination. It’s a Rockhopper penguin.

This has now really made me want to do a whole other books worth of these. Like I’m not already doing enough personal projects! I’m only three Ians into the Is on the facebook project, and I actually started another new project already this month. 

Ian

What was that Mr Internet? I didn’t tell you about my new project on this blog yet? How silly of me.

The new project I have started is a TV drawing project. This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time and the impetus finally jumped me by a combination of factors (I decided not to do a portrait competition because I didn’t have time, and suddenly felt like I had more time, also I have entered it into the Mother brief on Ideastap, so if you could follow the twitter that would really help me out) and I decided to finally do it.

I always wanted to call this project ‘At the end of the day, it is what it is’. This was because of two Big Brother contestants from different series’ catchphrases (Craig, and Siavash) separately, (I really wasn’t sure where to put the apostrophe in that sentence, Mr Gove where are you?). Which were, when combined, I thought the ultimate in meaningless meaningfulness. Which is to say, a cliché which has a universal application. 

But I don’t think anyone remembers those catchphrases except me. So instead I have given it a more descriptive title: Real TV Wisdom

I put it on Blogger, although I may move it to Tumblr, except I hate Tumblr, so I might not. 

Here are some of the pictures I have done for it so far:

I would be very happy to receive suggestions, especially if you live tweet them to @realtvwisdom while the show in question is on. I am most interested in quotes which stand alone (you don’t need any contextual information to understand them) and which are abstractly wise and clichéd. 

blessed

the blogger dashboard has all changed and stuff. so the buttons are in different places and the box i'm typing in is all big and blank.

it's vaguely unsettling.

But enough of that. This is a positive positive positive blog post.

Because despite having been ill all week, and repeatedly getting lost in the Barbican, I am feeling very blessed.

Partly this is because I have been doing a lot of stuff, having a lot of 'cultural experiences' shall we say. I am blessed and lucky because in my life I have a lot of awesome friends and family and editors who regularly invite me to attend things that are awesome. All I have to do is say yes. Like that man who says yes, what's his name? the YES man?

So yes, I have done lots of cool stuff in recent weeks, lots of cool stuff I would never have had time for when I was being a full time teacher type. Horay.

The first thing I did was go on a HELICOPTER RIDE!

Also I went to see the Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble play in the Southbank Centre. They were very good, especially the dancey fun bits. (that's my preference in life, I like the dancey fun bits of life) here are my sketches of them:

the singer who performed for a couple of songs with them was super creepy and doll like. which worked, you know, with the music.

Mere days after this I was sketching live portraits at the Movember UK launch party as part of the Gallery of Mo team. I wrote the whole thing up here for Storyhands.

the whole thing is to do with growing moustaches for Men's health, raising of the money and the awareness and stuff. I'm not growing a moustache sadly, but will be drawing people with them on for said charity at the rate of £1 a minute on the Gallery of Mo website, 
here's the self portrait I did for the promotion of said portraiture. 

It was a fun party.


Later in the week I went to a fashion show in Soho, it was probably the most exciting and ridiculous fashion show I have ever been to, and I have been to several. It was for Sorapol, and included epic creepy masks, excess, novelty motorcycles, and Ruth and Vince off of the Voice!!!

here is a drawing I did of 3 of the creepy celebrity characters, and here is the rest of my drawings and writings on the topic I did for Amelia's Magazine

The day after that I got to go see Chilly Gonzales with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican (where we did get very lost), I wasn't even going to do any drawing on account of I drew him this one time before, but then I did. He was much more fun this time, plus I learnt stuff about music.

The best bit was this bit, which is probably why it's turned up on the youtube

So that's some of the fun, cultural stuff I've been up to recently. 

tata

priorities and sketch book highlights

Ok kids, so blogging has not been so high up my to do lists the last few years.

the lists, oh god the lists.

endless to do lists on post its, in notebooks, in sketchbooks, on word documents, in me head, lists of priorities, lists of strategies, shopping lists, must should and could lists, lists of friends i need to have round for dinner or they may no longer count as friends lists, lists of reasons not to give up making lists.

I'm sorry where was I?

But come September I am officially going to be a part time (3 days a week) teacher, which was the plan all along, which is a good thing, so priorities get to change.

Take into account I've been on the Summer Holidays sitting at my messy desk doing stuff for 4 weeks already and blogging has not yet happened. (One of those weeks was actually spent sitting on a sun lounger in the south of France, drinking cheese and eating wine, so three weeks really).

I will talk more about the priorities another day I think, and possibly ask for some help with them, because they are complex and confusing, and I am still going to be trying to fit to do lists into days in which they will not fit. It's the way it is.

What I wanted to share with you today was some sketches and such that I have drawn that you have not seen, I toyed with the idea of faking the dates on these and making it look like i'd been regularly updating them all year, because you can do that on blogger, though I've no idea how it would look on a bloglovin update or whatever, but I'm not doing that. I can't be asked. As children like to pretend they said.

So in approximate chronological order, and please forgive blurriness where my sketchbooks fail to sit flatly on scanner beds, here is some sketchbook stuff and things that I did;

I saw exactly two professional plays this year, at the old and young vic respectively, though not by design,

Noises off was very funny, especially the bit when his laces were tied together

We also went to see Patrick Stewart in a play called Bingo which was pretty odd and mental, and about Shakespeare being a senile socialist. or something.

We went on a brief holiday to Amsterdam in the chilly cold, it was awesome.

One of the good things about being a teacher is you get to go on school trips for free, if you don't count paying with your sleep and your sanity, so I went to Disneyland Paris with Year 7,

and just recently went to Chessington with year 8, where i spent a deal of time drawing animals in the zoo

I got to go see England play football, in a friendly manner with Belgium, and I did some sketches

And then in just the last few weeks, I did some sketching at the only Olympic event I got a ticket for - the first day of Dressage at Greenwich park,

sketched at a few musical events, a concert in Arundul Cathedral seeing the Sussex Festical Choir,

and a Radio 3 chamber prom featuring the wonderful L'Arpeggiata,

then had a lovely holiday in the South of France

oh and also this one, done in Norfolk while visiting with the amazing Ros Davis

sketchbook special summer 2011.

It is 2011 right? yes. good.

so here are some sketches I only just got round to scanning.

sketch of goings on at Paint it Make it

only sketch completed (well, started) at the beautiful Mattlivia's wedding before I became too drunken to doodle. I was a guest not there in a professional capacity, otherwise that would have been very unprofessional obviously.

Sketches from my trip to Dalyan, Turkey

After I wrote that I realised it sounds weird and American, like how they say Paris, France so you know they don't mean Paris, Texas.

I wonder if I could get married in Paris, Texas, just to confuse people.

London skyline as seen from the 'Heath

Sketch I did at the cleanup after the London Riots - it was a strange day.

I make no political statement.

Here you can see Sainsbury employees giving out free donuts to the enbroomed masses waiting for the police to clear the scene.

Jane Ellison at the Clapham cleanup talking into a megaphone at a camera man, hoards not pictured.

blog blog blog blog blog

obviously I am a bad person and have not blogged recently. I could post-date and fake it now and be all like, oh you have not read my blog? well it was here, full of stuff. But because I have respect for you, and myself, and because such a rouse (sp?) would require some planning to hang together, I'm not going to do that. However. stuff has happened. so prepare for epic stuff. And probably I will forget something so will have to post again anyway.

firstlymost here is a recent TheyDrawAndCook.com design I did, I am particularly proud of the fig leaves, although why I decided to include the rhino I honestly couldn't tell you. It must have been due to some tacit knowledge (that's a pedagogical theory joke, well, not really).

In February I went to visit my darling sister Hazel in Lisbon where we were blessed with optimal tourism weather. I recommend it. Here are some drawings I did of some Fado we went to see in a restaurant in the old part of the city, where these sorts of things traditionally take place. It is a cultural thing where everyone is very depressed and grumpy and moved to sing about it.

Before this, I had some London Fashion Week fun, which I wrote up in some more depth on Amelia's Magazine here. I drew pretty things and met fashiony people. Below are some of my favourite illustrations and sketches from my A/W 2011 haul. For the non-fashionistatastic among you, that means clothes what they invented last year for next year that you can't buy yet but should be the only thing you are thinking about apparently. All for Amelia's Magazine.

Bora Aksu also featured the above illustration on their facebook page

I got to see the Jasper Conran show where I sketched at lightening speed - see my write up and sketches here, my favourite works in the show were def. these sturdy jumpsuit sort of things.

I'm pleased with the atmosphere in this Clements Ribeiro piece

Live sketches of Edward Finney and Nicole Murray with their dresses.

This is Eun Jeong, elegant innit?

In Facebook Project news, I did this manga style portrait of Danni, because she just looks like an Oh My Goddess character, and everyone is all over it. Which is nice. But, not to sound whingy, I am not a manga artist. This is not my thing. Do not expect more. Unless specifically requested. They warned me about this at illustrator school. Why it's not good to be flexible. Which really begs the question why I am posting about it if I don't want people to notice. Um. well I've written it now.

A while ago I promised to draw a free commission for my 750th twitter follower. probably a little prematurely tbh, as the flurry wasn't really going to happen till I was pretty close. Although I plan to do something similar for my 1000th follower, watch the space of hereness. The lucky winner was Acronia Lyubov (not her real name, apparently) - I lucked out here as she is stunning! (see below) and wanted me to draw her in my favourite style, so this was a joyful undertaking.

In other news, my illustration will be included in the amazing memories project, an art book about the experiences of poetic cancer survivors (when I got the story to draw from through I proper cried, this will definitely be a worthwhile purchase when it comes out - chock full of beautiful art and heart rending true stories) to raise money for Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres.

Poppy Cleopatra has featured my live portrait of her in her blog banner, looking lovely.

Also, I have been dieting. Which I have a lot of complex feelings about so I might write a blog post about that when I have finished. I'm not sure how I'll know when I've finished. I might not last past Easter. Or maybe I will just stop when i am a size zero. ha.