Illustration Friday - Quiet

My take on quiet this week is to draw "Hear-No-Evil", one of the three wise monkeys. He's enjoying a quiet bath in a natural hot spring.

This kind of monkey (Japanese macaque) watched humans having hot baths and decided it looked like a good idea, so now they like to have a dip too.

The other idea that came into my head with this topic is the way in which we're besieged by noise - so I thought I'd draw an oasis of quiet in the middle of the noise. Unfortunately, it couldn't all fit on my scanner, but it was fun to draw.

Illustration Friday - Phobia

I have an unusual phobia: coulrophobia, or fear of clowns. Seriously, I am coming out in a sweat as I type. I hate them. Clowns are not fun for me. When I was little, I rejected a chocolate icecream from a clown. It takes a lot to make me reject an item of free food, particularly one which is (a) ice-cream and (b) chocolate flavoured. My mother, my sister, my grandmother and my cousins also suffer from this phobia. We are wondering if it is genetic? We are not alone: there is a website called "I hate clowns".

It's actually quite difficult to draw one's phobia; the unfortunate thing is that I felt sick when drawing this week's artwork. I drew a normal man's face from a magazine (a perfectly acceptable looking person) and then coloured him in pencil with clown make-up. Yuk. It really is my worst nightmare.

My friend Tim and I have written a cartoon. In the second episode (still in the pipeworks) there is going to be an evil clown, called "Knuckles" for short. He's a nasty specimen (see below).

The final clown image I did was a horrible image which I then distorted using Photoshop.

Illustration Friday - Change

The chameleon came into my head when I thought about change. They are amazing lizards. Apparently they have both brown skin cells and green skin cells. When they are standing on a brown tree trunk, they dilate the brown cells (so they look brown) and contract the green ones (so the green skin can't be seen). When they are standing on a green leaf, they dilate the green cells and contract the brown ones. We saw some in Malaysia when we went there a few years ago.

I did a pen and ink drawing and then went a bit crazy with Photoshop and some coloured pencils.

Drawing - Powerpoint presentation...?

I teach Property Law at university two days a week. The students have asked me to produce a weekly Powerpoint presentation.

I had lunch with some friends last week, and I was telling them how I put a different photo or drawing on the first page of my presentation every week, just for my own amusement. The funny thing is that no one has really asked me about them yet. "Why not do picture of a powerpoint - your very own special "powerpoint presentation"?" suggested my friends, who have the same gloriously sick sense of humour as me. We got quite hysterical imagining a Powerpoint presentation entitled "Powerpoints of the World"...hmm, guess you had to be there.

So I drew the powerpoint in our loungeroom this morning. Now I'm looking forward to my lecture tomorrow. That's the good thing about being a lecturer - I've got a captive audience who has to put up with my sick sense of humour!!! Heh heh heh.

Illustration Friday - Farm

I was at a bit of a loss for this week's topic. Then I thought about those ant farms - you know the ones, where you have a thin glass walled case filled with earth and the ants make their tunnels in the case. So you can see all the ants going about their ant-y business, wandering around their tunnels. That's the kind of thing which would keep me transfixed for hours as a child.

This sketch was done with pen, ink and brush. I just bought some new vermillion ink this week so I thought I'd have a play with it. I looked at electron microscope pictures of ants on the net to see what they looked like close up. They look pretty alien. The amazing thing is that they have lots of "fur" on their legs and mandibles. Once when I had a really bad fever I hallucinated that a giant ant had come through the wall and looked at me. Looking at this picture, I'm glad that it was just a fever dream!

Illustration Friday - Safe

After I had my little girl, I was struck by how much I wanted to keep her safe. I understood my own parents' actions so much better.

In the first week after my baby was born, I would just have to look at her to be overwhelmed by tears. The tears arose both from the depth of my love for her, and the sure knowledge that I couldn't keep my child safe forever. In order to live and grow, people have to be allowed to make their own mistakes and hurt themselves sometimes, no matter how painful that is for a parent to watch.

I guess this drawing was inspired by Pietas of Madonna and Child, but it's more personal than that. I am trying to convey the way I want to surround my child with my love and keep her safe. But already she's managed to get an arm out to explore the world...both inevitable and necessary. Hopefully when she grows up, she will have the strength to explore the world, secure in the knowledge that her parents love her and will always be there for her.