9th February 2009
I've decided to move by blog here so that I can use it more easily and you can RSS it if you wish.
16th September 2008
Ten years ago I had a J.R.R. Tolkien calendar, and I'm ashamed to admit that when I was boxing stuff up for our move next month I discovered that I still had it. I can sort of see the logic of hanging onto a calendar for a year or two after you've finished the year, particularly if you've taken the trouble to note birthdays and anniversaries on it, but a ten-year-old calendar is useless, and I threw it away. But not before I removed one page. Most of the artwork for this sort of thing is very dull, with the exception of Alan Lee and a few others, but this page was very different. It was a picture called the Mumak of Harad by Cor Blok
I think it's great. It reminds me of a lot of the Eastern and Northern European illustration done for children's books in the 60s and 70s, and also of those ancient Persian Miniatures. It's quite difficult to find any online information about Blok. He did his illustrations for Tolkien in the 1960s as far as I know, and he is now Chief Curator of Contemporary Art at the Museum Boymans van Beuningen in Holland. Other than that I've drawn a blank in terms of online research. There's some really great images if you follow the link at the bottom of this post, but here's another one that I particularly like:
Images from here
13th September 2008
I've not posted here in a while because there's always something else to be done. In October I'm moving with my girlfriend Amy to the village of Higham, to a very small house on the edge of the North Kent marshes. If you've ever read Great Expectations, or seen the old black and white David Lean film, this is the flat, boggy, frightening landscape where Pip meets Magwitch. There are fewer gibbets and old smithys dotting the horizon than in 1860, but it's still quite a strange and lonely place. There's a convincing argument that Lower Higham (where we'll be living) is the actual setting for the beginning of Great Expectations, that the churchyard at the bottom of the garden is the place where Pip's parents and brothers are buried, and where the story begins, and that the nearby deserted gun battery where the escaped convicts hide from the search parties is nearby Shornemead Fort, on the banks of the Thames estuary. It'll also be the first time we've had a garden, and a kitchen bigger than an airing cupboard.
5th June 2008
After a tooth-and-nail ebay bidding war I've secured myself one of these:
It's a fairly standard version of the legendary Gocco kit, the self contained screenprinting outfit from Japan, where sales have dwindled steadily since its heyday in the late 70s and 80s. The advent of affordable desktop publishing in the 90s sounded a deathknell for the Gocco, which was marketed as an easy way to make birthday cards and the like. This month the manufacturers, Riso Kagaku, ceased production of the Gocco after 31 years, although a concerted effort is being made to lobby the company to maintain production for the European and American markets, where the kit is proving immensely popular with the New Craft movement. Unlike other home screenprint kits, the Gocco allows you to make screens photographically from photocopies and to print multiple colours with a single screen. This video explains how it works and how to use it. A bit of googling reveals quite a few artists producing awesome work with the kit. When mine arrives, and if I can get it to work, I'll post the results.
2nd June 2008
I've just stayed up far too late reading It's Nice to Have a Friend Such as Yourself , a self-made book by artist and illustrator James Nash. I'm not usually a one for comics, but this is great. Every day James draws an encapsulation of the day's events. They're short, beautifully executed in a loose, simple style that still shows exactly what's happening, and they're very funny. This book covers the whole of 2007 (yep, every day- that's value for money) including the end of a long relationship, a cancer scare for his mum, touching interactions with his family, intimations of the end of youth, dates and flirtations, gigs and records by the dozen, the simple pleasure of tea, lie-ins and oversleeping, a throat infection and an over-affectionate dog. It's Nice to Have a Friend Such as Yourself avoids all the pitfalls a public diary can fall into; the entries, while always personal, have a resonance for us all, and, as tough as life sometimes gets for our hero (and he's not too proud to grumble about it) we're never subjected to self-pity. Honestly, one of the best books - of any kind- I've read this year. If my copy looks a little crumpled here, that's because I've read it, and so's my girlfriend. You can read more about James here and here. You can find this book here at joemclaren.com at the bottom of the shop page or at Gosh!, Dave's Comics and Platform Clothing in Birmingham. or you can email him at jamesnash61@hotmail.com.
all ©James Nash 2008