Britain.

It only took 12 hours this time...door to door. I was wrecked.

I am sitting in the Windermere (England) library and there is a hailstorm outside. Even the ravens and crows are going to roost at four in the afternoon. The lake looks like something out of a dramatic Victorian novel with heavy mists swirling over the whitecaps and because it is a weekday there are no tourists so it is like walking through a story in a book. The sun has just come out which is the first time I have seen it since last Thursday.

Can't post a drawing from here but have got some sketches of schoolgirls, who this year are peering out from fur-lined hoods and wearing dancing pumps in the freezing cold.

Outward Bound

I'll be back when I'm back. Or I won't. Who knows?

A Late Walk

Here's another link to Bill Kilpatrick. Musical Poetry in motion.
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=w05TCS4t7b8&NR=1

Finally...ticket booked. Have to go via London, the Liverpool flight arrives too late. Oh arrggg. Last time it took nine hours door to door. Of course I may have the luck of there being no trains at all like three of the last times I went to the Lakes. I loathe Stanstead airport. They don't even have anywhere to sit down unless of course you want a cow lip/chicken spine hamburger.

Who is the mystery reader from Edinburgh College of Art?

Music

You have to open the link and watch this fellow. Somehow he has escaped the century he is naturally from and managed to sing his way into this one.

http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=ubphf5cHPbc#KHndBDfB0Vo

Saturday

I'll get there eventually!

How to Make Friends

Pals

The background is a fractal and the face and doggy done in Artrage and Photoshop.

Guitar class yesterday. It was a good one even though my teacher says his nerves are shot. Onto the second half of "Sons da Carrilloes" by Joao Guimarao. It's all up in the fifth and seventh frets. Eeerk.

Flat tyre on the cycle run. That's the second in two weeks. There's some kind of thorns lying on the ground near the campsite track but you can't see them from the saddle. Had to push the bike two kilometers to the bike shop. Squueeezap, squeezap, cathunk, cathunk all the way.

The sound of wind

Will I learn enough about animation to actually make a short film one day? Hope so, but I could see how animators could actually start believing in their characters. As soon as you put the sound effects in it comes to life. Now I am listening to everything.

Top speed on the bike 19 kms. Ha, ha. I'm going to fall off it.

I forgot to add this link

Here's a link to Paulo Sereno. I love his guitar playing!
http://www.livevideo.com/video/F09A1BA5243B400EAFB65B645BBA139B/-danza-bianca-fingerstyle-gui.aspx

Two, three, four and....

A friend sent me some drawings (on the computer!) by Sempe. That has an accent over the second e but I can't find one on this keyboard. Anyway, (Sempe that is) he does a lot of covers for the New Yorker magazine and a lot of his work depicts musicians and children. Here's my contribution. The little kid, by the way, is holding a triangle but you can't see it very well in this. It's a scan from my sketch book but hasn't come out very black and white even though I desaturated it and adjusted brightness and contrast.

Maybe I'll just get a one way ticket to Britain and work out the return flight and which airport once I am there?

Underneath the Surface

It's a fractal and the jellyfish thing is a brush called "pods" and "speed lines" in Corel Painter.

I am engaged with the awful task of trying to get to England. All the flights either leave at midnight which means I am stuck when I land in Britain or only land at London when I want to be just down the road from the Scottish border. But, if I go via Glasgow then that means a Virgin train, and let's face it, they hardly ever are running when I go to Britain. But if I go via London I get to stay with one of my very best friends. But it tacks on a considerable amount of hassle with more trains. I really like travelling but not in Britain.

Maybe I'll just astral project.

Bell

Dancing Dog

I actually met this dog on the beach by the campsite yesterday. His owners (German) told me that he is a "Potenco" and the fastest racing/hunting dog of Spanish roots. This is quite incredible because it must be the only fast thing remaining in Spain except for the car drivers.
He looked a lot like my avatar but without spots.

Today, I picked up my bike from the bike shop because I couldn't fit on the thingy that I was given at Christmas. It's for measuring how fast, how long and how many kilometers you cycle. I spent an inordinate amount of time staring at this thingy on the handlbars as I whizzed along (top speed 19 kms, lowest speed 4kms. The round trip was 11 kilometers so I can tell the heart attack victim when I see him jogging that his estimate of village, along the beach, village is out by 4 kms. I am a nit picker. I love gadgets.

Anyway, today I met an interesting character at the campsite who is from Edinburgh and has a Danish wife. We had a short discussion about Edinburgh College of Art and decided the staff are probably the same ones as in the seventies. I wonder if they are still wearing the stinking, shaggy coats that everyone brought back from Afghanistan. The corridors used to reek of uncured leather.
The English contingent at the campsite have all huddled their enormous vans into one corner of the site throwing no doubt as to where to find the English quarter. I was relieved to see the man from Edinburgh hadn't been pressed to join them. They seem to spend a great deal of time walking around in small groups with their hands on their hips. Maybe I should do a book about the campsite? Maybe I should mention "Roz Chast" so when someone Googles her name they come here...but they might not think that funny.

I Woke up in a Spaceship.

I suppose it could happen. I'm not sure which would be more scary....seeing a ghost or waking up in a spaceship? Lots of people report being abducted by aliens and taken onboard. In fact, I know someone who was married to a French man who said he had been abducted. But, she also said his eyes used to glow yellow in the middle of the night.

Mind you...I have seen two ghosts. One was a lady who looked just like Queen Victoria in a cottage in the Highlands of Scotland and the other was a Medieval Jewish man with leather wristbands and shoulder-length hair. That was in central Spain. What was scary about him was that he was as scared as I was before he disappeared. But ghosts are very difficult to draw so I have stuck the fellow above in a spaceship. He's actually part of a different illustration about dating in cyberspace.

The Beginning

And because of this music I came across I thought I would do a simple animation (I don't actually know how to animate yet) but suddenly the actual style of animation took on a life of its own. If someone had shown me this image a while ago I would have said...well, I don't know. I mean it's like these people that live in the Wacom tablet....where are they from?

So, here is frame number one. I gather I need another twenty three and I will have made one second of the complete animation. I think the soundtrack is 1:46 seconds. Ha, ha. Same time, same place next year then.