{Cheese and Beans}

I continue to wrestle with the idea of drawing a regular comic strip…

While rooting around for something in our bookshelves yesterday I found an old sketchbook tucked down the back of a row of books – a sketchbook I had presumed lost years ago. Here are a few of the sketches I did 11 years ago;

I’m just trying to remember where I was, and what I would have been doing 11 years ago. 1999. I still lived with my parents in Oxfordshire, and worked for a local company as their IT manager. The drawings were probably done around the same time that I started attending night classes to force myself into drawing more (an attempt that lasted about a month).

We also unearthed all my childhood school books and christmas cards last night – I’ll post a few of them up over the coming days.

A selection of drawings discovered in a decade old sketchbook – back from the time I did a night class to force myself into drawing again.

If I look back at the various scribblings in my Moleskine, I sometimes wonder at my own sanity…

While replying to somebody on Twitter earlier, it occurred to me that I had not posted any of my old artwork on this blog.

Time to put that right!

Once upon a time (about 18 years ago!) I went to college, and spent the best part of 2 years drawing people. Here are some of the results (some are from the time I was at college, some are from the years that followed when I still used to pick up a sketch book from time to time)

This is the friendly Moleskine notebook that has travelled with me over the last couple of years, being filled with all manner of idiotic ideas, opinions, thoughts and rants about life, the universe, and everything (although you would be hard pressed to find any investigation towards the question behind the number 42).

Figure this out – after two years writing in the book with a fountain pen, I recently started using a drawing pen and discovered that not only is it faster – at least in my hand – but I tend to write more neatly with it too. Go figure…

Of course at some point soon this book will come to an end, and the shiny new replacement will be pushed into service.

The quote on the front of new Moleskine notebooks is wonderful;

The legendary notebook of Hemingway, Picasso, Chatwin

For some reason – and I’m not quite sure if this is by design, or a happy accident – Moleskine notebooks have attained thesame aspirational value as Apple computers. I wonder how many Mac owners also have a Moleskine notebook…

Anyway. There it is.

I promised to draw a few people a couple of months ago, and have not got around to it – while taking a half hour break from freelance work yesterday evening I dug out a drawing pen, and a scrap of paper, and came up with this…

She’s an unlikely internet friend from Norway, takes wonderful self portrait photos, and writes a crazy blog at LiveJournal. Go check her out :)

While not revising for another Microsoft certification exam tomorrow, I have been wondering what to write a blog about today. The “common sense” part of my brain is telling me that if I have nothing to write, I shouldn’t try to do so.

Perhaps it’s time to crack out the drawing paper and start drawing the people I promised to the other day.