Pencil Pushing

While my head has been below the water for the last few weeks, I'm still making time for life drawing when I can. I missed out on a few sessions when I was away over the holidays but I'm gradually getting back to where I was before.



I've been reading some very old though pretty helpful books by the late Andrew Loomis, whose books on drawing have been out of print until fairly recently. They are slowly being reissued but as they're so old as to be in the public domain you can download them all in .PDF format here (courtesy of Alex Hays). Definitely worth the time as the principles are timeless.I was put onto them through meeting up with a Bristol-based sketch group over the past year or so, which is free for all and generally a nice relaxing way to start the weekend. I haven't put many of my own sketches up here as I'm far less enamoured of my landscape and architectural sketches, but here are a handful I'm not too embarrassed by:






The last few are from the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery which I plan on dropping by more often once I'm less snowed under. Drawing subjects are generally better at staying still when they're dead and stuffed.

Quickies

The screening time for "The Naughty List" at Children's Film Festival Bangladesh has been confirmed as this coming Thursday (26th) at 2pm at the British Council Auditorium in Dhaka. I'm very happy and humbled to see it's amongst some great pieces of work such as Victoria Mather's "Stanley Pickle", Sal Maldonado's "Night Island" and Richard Phelan's "Damned".Additionally I've learned that both "Naughty..." and "Ground Running" are to be screened at the upcoming Ciné-Court Animé in Roanne, France. This will be late March, so watch this space for deets.
Yes, I just used the word 'deets'. I'm not proud, nor am I ashamed.

"Aardman erectile dysfunction"

While I've pretty much retired the film from festival circulation at this point, "The Naughty List" still gets the odd request from time to time and I'm happy to say it will get its first 2012 showing later on in the month. The 5th International Children's Film Festival Bangladesh will take place from the 21st to the 27th, as ever I'll put up my screening time and venue here when I find out.
On the non-me front, my first Skwigly feature of the year is an interview with fellow Bristolian and indiemator Sam Morrison, who's probably best known for the short "Rocket Science" which was pretty heavily circulated a few years back. His latest film "Greetings" got one of the best responses at this past Encounters Festival (for the fairly obvious reason that it's very goshdern funny) and is worth checking out along with his other work at his website. You can give the interview a read here:

A Conversation With Sam Morrison

Aside from him being an all-around nice chap, a perk of putting together the feature was being probably the first person in existence to type "Aardman erectile dysfunction" into Google for research purposes. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Hermit Ben

Just before the holidays began, I made the conceivably misguided move of getting a whole mess of plates a-spinnin’ which will hopefully lead to some exciting stuff I can reveal come March. Until then I expect things on the blog front will get pretty quiet. Try not to drown in your tears.
The game plan is to shut myself away and barrel through as many ongoing commissions as I can so as to get started on what’s looking to be a ‘biggie’ with relatively few distractions. So if it seems like I’m not posting much on here, that’ll be why. I don’t anticipate many (if any) new festival screenings or film updates in that time, but if anything comes in I’ll put it up here while attempting to reign in my usual shitheaded editorialising.Before making myself disappear completely I may as well plug the first TV broadcast of 2012 for “The Naughty List”, which will be shown this Sunday 8th at 8:52pm on Canal+ Comedia in Spain. If you miss it, you can keep checking back on their channel page for upcoming broadcasts (there is, of course, the highly-defined online option available to y’all as well).Another piece of happy, non-animation news is that my most recent album “The Book of Women” is now available to buy through Amazon, either as a traditional CD (for us nostalgic old-timers) or as a digital download for the youthful hipsters out there. Check it out here, there are clips and everything! FANCY!

Struwwelpeter - "The Book of Women" on Amazon

Right, back to the cave and my faithful bogman companion. Little post-John K R&S reference there for ya.
Yup.