Memento Mori

I found this dead juvenile Blue Tit in the garden. Barely fledged and either just out of the nest or nearly so, it was lying on the lawn where it had been dropped. Maybe a magpie got it and was scared off before it could eat it or something. I don’t know. It looked so perfect and poignant that I wanted to photograph it.

In my studio I have a kind of deliberately neglected window sill, behind a tatty curtain that came with the house, which I will replace someday ( yeah right ). This window sill is the repository for all sorts of odd stuff picked up from the garden or just accumulated. Shells, leaf skeletons, acanthus seeds, a dead hornet, small bits of blue and white pottery, fossil shells, a red rear light lens from a Morris Minor and even a few bullets from the battle of Omdurman in the Sudan that a friend gave me years ago. That sort of thing, all overlain by a drift of cobwebs.

I laid the small corpse down on that window sill and took some shots of it, influenced by a book of John Blakemore photographs that I got recently probably, and just because it felt right.

Then I noticed that one of the larger shell fossils was shaped just right to take the dead bird. So I took some shots of it lying in state on it’s fossil shell.

Technical stuff – I have a 49mm to 46mm reducer on my X100 which allows me to use my Nikon WC-E68 wide angle adaptor (as I mentioned in a previous post). It also allows me to use a x1 and x3 macro attachment, though not at the same time as the wide angle thingy obviously. . .

I used the x1 and x3 together for these shots with the X100 set to macro mode. The depth of focus was pretty shallow, but the results were sharp enough when I got the distance right.

Processed in ‘Raw file converter ex powered by silkypix’. Which I have only just discovered and is brilliant once you get the hang of it. I wish it was compatible with non Fuji cameras too.

New post at Picture Book Den

http://picturebookden.blogspot.co.uk/

About how my illustration technique has evolved etc. Including a dodgy video. . .

Not a Lot I Can Say. . .

It’s all very well having a fancy blog and intending to post a lot about what I do and all that, but it turns out that the main thing I do, Children’s Book Writing and Illustrating, isn’t something that lends itself to sharing.

I can’t really show you what I am working on right now, as that would break confidentiality with the publisher. So no ‘in progress’ pictures. . .

I can’t really share ideas I’m working up with a view to publishing, as somebody might nick my idea. . . So no ‘I had this great idea for a picture book!’ posts. . .

I can show you stuff I have just had published, but that isn’t going to keep a blog going for long 😉

It’s a bit frustrating. But I guess I can write something more general about picture books and my approach to them etc, but I have to avoid at all costs being like all those earnest websites with endless tips for would be authors who want to ‘realise their dream’ and publish a children’s book. . .

Call me cynical, but tip one would be ‘Lay off the inspirational websites and start doing the necessary hard work!’

Tough love Dude. . .

I’ll address the issue of what feels right to post about and what doesn’t, and hopefully come up with something worth reading, but in the meantime I drew some more cats. . .

I’m a Denizen

I did a guest blog post for a site called ‘Picture Book Den’ a couple of weeks ago. You remember. . . hah, course you don’t 😉

Anyway, the post went down well, and I have been asked to join the select band of eminent and widely published Children’s Book writers that make up the site’s admins and regular posters. I have graciously accepted the offer of course.

So now, and henceforward, if you visit the site you will see my name on the important list just under the banner at the top, and if you click on said name you will be spirited straight to the ‘about’ page where you can marvel at the wonders there revealed concerning who I am and what I do. That is, if you weren’t fully clued up on my wonders already.

It will be nice to feel like part of a community of writers. Writing and illustrating is an isolated profession, we all beaver away in our own little bubble.  (which makes me want to draw beavers in bubbles but I shall restrain myself) This relative isolation does have it’s advantages of course, like not having to commute anywhere, and not being required to deal in or with office politics etc, so it can be a perfectly pleasant way to exist, but not all the time. It can be isolat-ing as well as isolat-ed. 

So being able to connect with people who know what I am talking about because they do the same thing as me will be a refreshing and valuable thing too. I’m pleased 😉

That being said, as I will be posting there four or five times a year at least I had better start working out what to post about. . . hmmm. .

Oh well, if all else fails, draw rabbits. . . in shades. . . that’s what I say.

The Dads!

Engaged as I am, in an ongoing decluttering process. Not going mad and throwing everything out but just being sensible, in as far as that word can apply to me, and shifting stuff I don’t need, don’t want, and haven’t looked at for up to ten years. You know the kind of thing. . . Yes you do. . .

Every now and then I come across things of interest. To me anyway.

Some of the things I find are possibly interesting enough to share. Yes they are. . .

Here’s one of said interesting things. A small scrap of very yellowy paper with some artwork on it. (Scanned and cleaned up for your delectation and delight) Interesting to about five facebook friends who may get to read this anyway.

This is a Logo I knocked up for the band I was in at Art School. Yes, an Art School Band, oh dear 😉 Not so much of the ‘Oh dear’ please, we were all right. We were all young kids in the sixties, which seemed like a golden age for pop music, so playing sixties covers seemed the natural fun thing to do. So we did. This was before the short lived sixties revival mini trend of the late seventies/early eighties so we were ahead of our time, sort of. It was fun, but fell apart by slow degrees over the years that followed. No commercial success was forthcoming, largely because we didn’t have a bleedin clue, and didn’t have a go-getting managerial type involved either. Ay well, I hope any ex Dads reading this get a twinge of nostalgia 😉

Why ‘The Dads’? Was fatherhood a desired prospect at the time. Nah, it was more to do with the concept of not being hip and cool, reacting against the self serving narcissism of the self proclaimedly cool. We liked ( were amused by ) the patronisingly fatherly  older men depicted in sixties comics and magazines. Men with pipes dishing out good humoured advice and instruction. We thought that calling a band ‘The Dads’ would be funny in an absurdist kind of way. We didn’t really think it through to any huge extent, we just went with it.

The guy in the logo was nicked from Tiger comic circa 64 I think. There was a page called ‘Talking Sport, with The Skipper’. He is ‘The Skipper’. Obviously all sporting activity benefits from a good puff on a pipe. . .

The Wonders of Old Book Covers – Trash in The Attic

I’ve been sorting through the boxes of comics and books in the garage with a view to sticking a lot of them on ebay. The idea of photographing them all and listing them one at a time is daunting, but if I divide the task into manageable chunks it should be doable.

Who knows, I might get a bob or two out of it. Considering a lot of the stuff I bought was in the region of ten or twenty pence I might just get me money back 😉

I’ve started the process anyhow and so far I’m enjoying it.

You see, the reason I accumulated a lot of this stuff in the first place was for the artwork on the covers. You know the kind of thing, hand painted dramatic scenes from cheesy, hard boiled detective fiction, based on cheesy American films. Garish and overblown, but often beautifully drawn. It had a sort of kitsch value for me at first, but now I have a much more genuine admiration for it. And if I don’t admire some of the genre, I have an affection for it. It’s stuff that my parents would probably have thought of as a bit naff, and therefore not something I would have been exposed to as a kid. Which is probably why it had an impact on me when I did discover surviving examples lurking in junk shops and suchlike places when I was a feckless Art Student.

I love the boldness and the often clichéd, but unashamedly so, drama. As time goes on I like these book covers more and more. At least if I photograph them all I will have something I can look at on screen, which makes the images a darn site more available than them being in a box in the garage or the loft. And it means I can share them with you lucky people!

As you should have noticed by now, dotted throughout this post are some great covers from a really cheaply printed series, The Sexton Blake Library. Captured before they completely fall apart. No date inside, but looking on ebay at similar ones they might be from the thirties and forties. The clothes and hairstyles seem to suggest that.

Anyway, enjoy. . .

I want to be a Commercial Artist. . .

And ‘I Want To Be. . . An Eagle Book of Careers’ is here to encourage me. from about 1962 I would guess. There is no date in the book. There are all sorts of careers featured. I will scan and post requests 😉

‘I want to be a Miner’ being possibly the most ironic. . .

I must develop my personality and try to make my designs more splendid. . .

A wonderful word, a Valerie Singleton, Blue Peter word. there are not enough splendid things in the world these days.

My old art teacher at school used to wear a velvet jacket and a bow tie, maybe he was at Art School (approved by The Ministry of Education) with young Adrian here.

And when was the last time you called anyone ‘sir’?

Just started up a Tumblr

Which sounds odd. .  ‘A tumblr’ as if a tumblr was a specific thing rather than a type of blog or blogging platform. Still, it has it’s own sort of feel, something a bit more throwaway and loose than a ‘proper’ blog. Somewhere between a flickr page and a pinterest board (which I haven’t explored yet. . . do I need to? I dunno)

Any road up, here it is –

http://jonathanburgessallen.tumblr.com

I’m going to put an old illustration, a digital pattern/artwork and a photograph up every day and see if I get any likes or follows or whatever. It does seem quite a hassle free process so I’m enjoying it in a quiet way. There does seem to be quite a lot of good stuff on Tumblr. It’s easier to find it than on WordPress or Blogger I reckon.

Here’s a pic from my tumblr, which, by the way is called ‘lessisless’ which isn’t necessarily true but I had to call it something.

cheers

Jon x

Cambridge Drawing Society

Well, it’s that time of year again, and my partner, Gill is getting her pictures ready to submit to the Cambridge Drawing Society open exhibition. She paints lovely watercolours, and gets voted the favourite in the show quite often. This sort of thing. . .

A portrait of my daughter Isobel

Good huh?

For my part, I have never indulged, mainly because I draw directly onto my computer for work purposes these days and computer prints are not allowed. Also, I have never been that sure if my stuff would fit in with the ethos of the show seeing as it’s work from my imagination and is humorous in style and content. But there is nothing in the guidelines that says that submitted work has to be drawn from life or be deadly serious, so this year I thought,’Well, why not?’ and sent in my entry form just in time. Which left me about five days to come up with four actual physically-drawn-on-paper type pictures that I had hurriedly called on the entry form, ‘Cat 1’, ‘Cat 2’, ‘Cat 3’, and ‘Cat 4’.

Well, I’ve managed that, for better or worse, and found that I actually enjoyed the process. What the ‘art loving public’ will make of these daft fat cats I don’t know. They may not even get accepted in the first place. Still, Ronald Searle was the honorary president, so daft fat cats may resonate 😉

Here they are.

I think I may have priced myself out of the market at £120 a go, but I had to think of a figure off the top of my head and subtract the CDS’s 40% not to mention framing costs. . .

The exhibition is at Cambridge Guild Hall and is on from Saturday 13th to Saturday the 20th April. Pop in and have a look if you are in the area.