Oh, let me in, the soldier cried

It's a cold, haily, windy night.
Let me in, he says
Oh, but I can't. My parents wouldn't be happy.
I'm going away. I might not see you again.
Oh, alright then.

....

Ooh. Shouldn't you marry me, now?
No. 'Bye.

The words in the song are more poetic. But the soldier is still a cad.

His name is Jock Stewart

I'm a man you don't meet every day
(Mixed media on Bockingford Not paper, A3)

A folk song, known to me cheifly via the Caitlin O'Riordan voiced version by The Pogues. I do like a bit of gender switching in songs, but I decided to play this one straight as an image. That is the Stewart hunting tartan, by the way. Approximately.

Sketchbook Exchange 2016 (part 5: Shiny)

Shine on you crazy diamond and Venus in Furs (Shiny shiny, shiny boots of leather)
Graphitint, graphite and ink; Quink, white and silver Uniballs, carbon pencil and coloured pencils

Wine Glass Reflections
Oil pastel; Watercolour and white uniball

There is a house...

... in New Orleans.

I think you may have heard of it.

Sketchbook Exchange 2016 (part 1)

Artists from West Berkshire and North Hampshire Open Studios have started their 2016 sketchbook project. This time, we made our own sketchbooks, concertina-style.

I wasn't enamoured of the floppy card cover. Having been assigned the theme/subtheme Textures/Grain, I decided to use some things with grain to replace the card...

3mm beech-faced plywood, carved, with leather. Held together with nuts and bolts from an I-can't-believe-it's-not-Meccano toy and annotated with Molotow marker pens

There are only four pages per artist in these books, so I crammed several grainy things onto my first page:

Pine grain (Derwent Drawing), grains of rice and salt (Molotow), wheat (pen and ink, acrylic); sand (Molotow)

(It being a concertina, I thought I'd use the back of another page and put some grains there, to be seen through the knot holes. There are a few that can't be seen easily, too).

... and the next page was also home to several thoughts:

Wooden handle of hand chisel (Molotow), alabaster grain (watercolour and watercolour pencil); pointillist landscape, imaginary (Molotow)

But the last two pages were home to one idea. A fairly off-topic idea, inspired by the "grain" more than by the the "texture".

John Barleycorn, folk song, as sung by Traffic. Molotow and acrylic inks

It's a song drawing. They started in last year's sketchbook exchange project, and they've come back in this year's.

Safe as Houses

I selected Elvis Costello's "Indoor Fireworks" as a contrast to the 1812 - a large scale, dramatic piece often used to score large scale, daramatic outdoor fireworks displays. Costello's song is a small scale, singer-songwriter song, about the approaching end of a passionate relationship.

But dont think for a moment, dear
That we will ever be through...

It's the last of my 25 pages. The Song Book is done.

One Page Left...

My Song Drawings to date. The "Song Book" has 25 pages.

1812

When I started this series, I didn't think I would end up doing a classical piece. No words, but the drama is in the music, and the bangs and the crashes speak volumes.

Hospital Blues (St. James Infirmary)

Unable to Lunch Today

Cole Porter kills off two of his characters in this tragic standalone song-story. Miss Otis - both culprit and victim - is too polite not to send her apologies.

I couldn't resist adding a visual pun in the centre of the page...

Far Away in Time

Martha and the Muffins watching the sun go down after a day of tedium at the office.

The Beatles and the Stones

The Beatles, "Eleanor Rigby"

The Rolling Stones, "Sympathy For the Devil"

Two more entries in my song book... and a song (not drawn) about the two ubiquitous 60s bands.

All I Want is a Photo In My Wallet

A small resemblance of something more solid.

Blondie's "Picture This" lends itself well to a visual representation.

Streets Wide and Narrow

I've never been to Dublin, so I placed Molly Malone in a generic cobbled street... and then they sort of acquired a graffti'd look.

Skewball

Last weekend I went to Newbury Races (mainly for the sake of the fibreglass horse statue that we painted at the school). There is clearly a modern influence on my picture of this C18th racehorse.

I knew the rather fanciful Peter Paul and Mary song (Skewball was a racehorse/And I wish he was mine/He never drank water/He only drank wine). Then I discovered the False Lights song of the same name; it was a completely differert song. It was one of several broadsheet ballads that spoke of the wonders of this horse.

I used bits out of several of these songs.

Trudging Slowly Over Wet Sand...

Grey. Graphite!

Parsely, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme

A shirt with no seams, a well with no water... nowt so strange as folk, is there? Unless you are Simon and Garfunkel, Scarborough Fair usually includes a female response. Well, she says, if he wants that shirt, I want an acre of land... between the sea and the sand... and he can plough it, sow a peppercorn all over it, and harvest it, too!

In a Dead End World

East End boys and...

For All She Knows

A song about friendship.

I am... sitting in the diner

Actually, I was sitting in the diner (on the A339) earlier today. And it was raining outside.