Sketch

Ladies who lunch

Mexico, Nib and ink, Sketch, Street scene

ladies who lunch

Elite ladies with expensive fashions in a city café. Sketch made with a nib and ink bottle – makes for a nice ‘live’ line.

New scanner!

Sketch, Watercolour

After struggling for a long time with how to get watercolours into a digital medium I’ve acquired a new scanner for the purpose – an Epson V37. According to illustrator lore this is slightly less great than the truly great Epson V600 – but on the other hand it weighs about two kilos less. So now I’m looking forward to tinkering with the settings to get all those pale subtle washes onto the screen!
scan test 1

Here’s a test scan from the sketchbook.

I’ve had the honour to be asked to illustrate the invitation and menu for a friend’s wedding… featuring the bride & groom’s ‘spirit animals’ and the wedding venue. What a pleasure. Here are some of the pictures!

Invitations, Private client, Sketch, Watercolour, Wedding

Hammock croquis

croquis, Just for fun, Mexico, Sketch

You’d think that someone lounging in a hammock on the beach would stay still for more than five minutes. Not the case. My drawings of friends in hammocks ended up as express sketches – croquis – live drawing done with very little time.

Hammock 2
Hammock 3

But once they moved and messed up my portrait I could still work on the ropes and knots.

Hammock 1

Hammocks define the outermost points of the person inside… it’s as if they wrap a plane around limbs and protrusions which makes for fun drawings. There’s something early-90s-computer-graphicksy about them.

Hammocks2

And you get to feel like you did something creative on holiday.

Cycling cartoon

Comics, Sketch, Tanzania

One of my back burner projects is a comic about cycling in Dar es Salaam… Here’s a little preview, and meanwhile if you like the subject, you can join UWABA – the Dar cyclists’ association! (with more photos of this heroic organisation here.)

Familiar situation in Dar es Salaam

Familiar situation in Dar es Salaam

Mirerani hairdressers

Africa, fieldwork, Just for fun, Sketch, Street scene, Tanzania

This sketch was inspired by some hairdressers we interviewed in 2012 in Mirerani in Tanzania. Mirerani is a frontier-flavour mining town – the origin of all the world’s tanzanite, a precious stone. Our partner organisation was finding out about the social impacts of the tanzanite companies – and small-scale miners. Our interview with some women at the hairdressing salon turned into a major streetside spectacle.

Sketch Hair salon

Sketch: Seven Survivor

Africa, Comics, Just for fun, Sketch, Street scene, Tanzania

Seven Survivor is a Tanzanian band who play the urban music mchiriku. This is a sketch from a gig of theirs in November 2013. (Another famous mchiriku band is Jagwa Music.) Mchiriku is a frenetic genre based on high-octane staccato drumming. The rest of the instruments and the rapping seem almost secondary to the drumming, which sounds as if the drummer is on speed; or as if he’s anticipating the end of the world any second and is trying to fit in a lifetime of drumming into a few short minutes. The pace and intensity of the drums ebbs and flows but never falls below ‘feverish’. It’s a rhythm that you can only dance to by jumping up and down, but you’d have to do that very quickly – almost vibrating! – to keep pace with the drums. The band also featured a lethargic mini-Casio keyboard player; a rapper (the lyrics are political and worth getting into), another percussionist using sturdy sticks on a small coffee table, and a guy shaking home-made maracas made with nailed-together bottle tops. Here’s a link to one of their gigs. And the main man – the drummer – was in some sort of trance with his head thrown as far back as possible. You’d need to really be at one with the flow to manage to keep that level of intensity going for hours.

Sketch Seven Survivor