Faded Thoughts

I found an old photo of an ex-girlfriend in a book I picked up last night. Realized I hadn't thought about her in a long time. It seemed a lifetime ago. It's funny how time changes the way you feel. Once apon a time you feel like you would die for someone, then you feel the oppposite, then you feel nothing.

Sometimes in life that is, happily it doesen't always turn out that way.

Still, made me think. Wondered how she was. Not exactly intrigued, too much water has passed under the bridge, but hope she’s doing well.

Remembered these little sketches I'd scanned from an old sketchbook of our time together. Pretty good.

The Cabinet Sketch

In keeping with the theme of posting old drawings, I found this little sketch I did a year ago today.

How amazing that I would sit down at my parents place and discover it on their computer..?

I’ve always been the type of sentimental person who looks at old things I have held onto; even movie tickets, and wondered what I was doing on that day. What I was thinking… Feeling… Was I happy or otherwise?

Today I can look at this drawing with the scribbled little date underneath it and know this time last year I was doing a drawing of my grandmother’s old cabinet.

She passed away not quite 20 years ago now. So much has changed.

I wonder what she would have though of it..?

Drawing Lessons

An initial sketch for an old proposal for a mural... Nice line-work, completely from my imagination. The client wanted a waterfall in order to relax customers.

Happy Valentines Day

More Flowers… already! Another floral still-life!

Well, it was done on St. Valentines Day; the day of love and romance, so I felt it appropriate.

Life on Mars

I’ve been watching Carl Sagan’s Cosmos: A Personal Voyage on cable. I haven’t watched it in over 20 years.

http://www.carlsagan.com/

Of course Sagan has long since passed away, a real loss for us all, and fair to say back into being a part of the universe he loved. Ashes to ashes; as we are, as they say, all made of stars.

I did a sketch in an old notebook in the 90’s, right after Sagan died in 1996, and planned to develop it one day. So, thanks to Dr Carl Sagan’s inspiration, here it is.
























Hopefully, one day I’ll see something like it in my own lifetime.

It’s been a long time since I’ve considered myself a spiritual person but this show is amazing; truly awe inspiring when you realize what a tiny little rock we live on, and how vast space is and how science really is more than a dry subject at school; it’s us and everything we see, know and even think to a degree.

The show’s production values have really dated, I was blown away to learn it was made in 1980. But somehow that’s part of its charm. This is also thanks to Carl Sagan’s remarkable mind and his laconic ability to bring the wonder of Astronomy to the layman. Even in the eighties I can recall doing my Carl Sagan impression and cracking my mate Nick up with it; he was the only other kid at school who seemed to also watch the show.




Original Sketch

Still Life: Lillies & Violets

More colour pencil on Canson paper; this time with oil pastel.

Hmmn, I realize better than anyone it's an artistic tradition, but It might be time to lay-off on the still life-posts for a while, and stick to painting Muriels...

Still Life: Diana Jug

I knocked this up last night whilst watching a John Wayne flick. A connection I'll explain presently.

Man, I'm really loving colour pencils at the moment; here's another effort on Canson paper.
The subject is a Jug by the Diana Ceramic Company of Bendigo (Vic, Australia) which is a well known pottery region in Australia, circa 1940.

My folks have owned two of them for years; inherited when my grandparents passed away. Only after I picked the dern things up did I read underneath "Grand Crest Whisky by Diana". After a bit of research on the net it turns out they were a promotion by the liquor Co. as water jugs for their whisky drinkers.

Hmmmn, that’d be right…

Oh yeah, my grandfather loved a scotch, and John Wayne, so it goes hand in glove...