quite a 'Lancastery' few weeks... Battle Of Britain Memorial Flight hanger sketches... and two roaring Lancasters

I've been meaning to post these sketches for weeks, and what with the Dambusters 70th anniversary today now seems the ideal moment. I recently visited both the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight hanger that houses the BBMF Spitfires, Hurricanes, Lancaster et al, and a nearby airfield called East Kirkby where the Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre have a Lancaster bomber that taxis, gives rides and poses for photos and sketches! Plane geek that I can be I won't go on... suffice to say I highly recommend both venues if you like your aircraft or would simply like to learn more about the just what those RAF flight crew went through in the war.

The BBMF guided hanger tour was very comprehensive and you could get right up next to the planes while they were being serviced (not strictly allowed I suspect, but you could even affectionately pat bits of Spitfires, all carefully labelled, that were on shelves yet to be screwed back on). Fascinating stuff!

Equally wonderful was the chance to see the East Kirkby Lancaster glide past right next to you with all it's engines going like the clappers. The Lancaster stops being a museum piece and really comes alive (and nearly shakes it's tail off !) when you are able to stand (well try and remain upright) right under it's wing tip as all four merlin engines truly roar at full power! Awe inspiring.

And finally, as if all that Lancaster time wasn't enough I also got a chance to see the BBMF Lancaster again last Sunday as it did a Dambusters commemorative flypast just down the road from me at Brooklands Air Museum. Strangely the weather was practically perfect and I managed to take some OK photographs.

Quite a Lancastery few weeks all in all...

pine cone pangolin...

It's pangolins on a little bit bunny blog this month. Now I was going to go for an hilarious (that remains to be seen...) illustration of a pangolin for my submission, but whilst out walking the dog, I found the perfect pangolin pine cone. I thought it would turn out to be a quicker alternative to a full illustration... how wrong I was... ... fiddly but rewarding (the varying leg geometries was a challenge..). Nice to have an object sitting on your desk after a project. I'd also recently, at long last, managed to get along to the truly superb Pitt Rivers anthropological and archeological museum in Oxford and I think I was somewhat channeling some of the wonderful animal carvings, ceramics and artwork on show there. My own little pangolin totem. Here's a sneak peek of my process and the end result. There is a photo of the final assembled chap over on the a little bit bunny blog. If I could of curled the pine cone and had the pangolin touch his tail, so much the better. Think I'll have to keep an eye out on my next walk for a pine cone 'doughnut'...

an eagle looks for lunch or no stone left unturned...

It's eagle for this months creature submission on A Little Bit Bunny so here once again is a sneak peek of my efforts. I have to admit to going a smidge overboard on this one as far as planning goes. I certainly got into the eagle sketching zone by the end of things. For me that's a fringe benefit of submitting creatures to ALBB each month... I've filled the dreaded "first blank page"... and have my design thoughts on eagles underway should they be needed again. With every month of ALBB I get another creature for the sketchbook 'ark'.

Given how obsessive I got over the planning stages I decided to make a conscious effort to loosen up with the linework and colour treatment on the final piece (just a detail below) and, all things considered, I'm happy with the results... although, looking at all the sketches I'm sure I could take another crack at the tortoise, hhmmm, maybe the eagle's face too... and perhaps the tail feathers... ... enough!

I'd waffle a little more but scanning all this in took much longer than expected, I'm starving and need to go and "turn over stones" in the kitchen to find myself a meal! Pop on over to ALBB if you fancy seeing the final pic.

He's gawn... swept away. R.I.P. Uncle Monty

Condolences to Richard Griffiths family and friends. It's a sad day for all lovers of Withnail and I... Though I suppose Marwood needn't put the chair against his door tonight.

"the rather interesting octopus" or ... nothing I could draw would make it any more bizarre than it already is !

The challenge with doing illustrations for my other [group] blog "A Little Bit Bunny" is to make the chosen creature of the month a little bit quirky... a wry sideways glance... or just downright odd. This month it's the octopus, a particular favourite of mine.

I started out with weird doodles that amped up the fact it has a beak (something easy to forget, being buried as it is beneath those 8 arms ... we're not to call 'em tentacles by the way...), then I played about with stylising the anatomy, but no matter what I did, nothing was as downright bizarre as the actual facts about this remarkable creature. So that's what I went with... cold hard facts and a picture of an octopus... simple and to the point I hope.  Here are just a few sneaky peeks of my final illustion. As always the final picture is over on ALBB.

If cephalopods (or indeed natural history in all it's many and varied forms...) interest you I can recommend a glorious collection of 19th century scientific plates from the voyage of the H.M.S Challenger (and here too) that I found while researching all this. Just a closing thought... I do feel guilty that I ate some of the best calamari I've ever had while sketching for this illustration... It did taste great though! Maybe that's another fact to add to my illustration, "squid and octopus taste very nice"...?

Butterfly...eye...eye...eye...

Some fool went and chopped off the end of February...?! Who ever heard of a month with 28 days in it... That's why my a little bit bunny submission this (ahem... last...) month is running late. The creature is butterfly, here's a sneak peek. Pop onto ALBB for the full thing.

Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis book cover design...

Well here is why I needed to sketch upside down Volkswagen Beetle cars in my last but one post. The notion for this cover is a little bit tongue in cheek (for those who haven't read the short story it's about a chap who wakes up transformed into a giant beetle) but something about the idea appealed to me. Perhaps it's the mix of the iconic story and the iconic car... maybe the surreal nature of the plot is amped up that little bit more by seeing a car in bed...? Whatever it is there was also the challenge to show the cover without resorting to the usual  design treatment showing images of an actual insect. All the cover and spine text is hand cut from card or paper for that more disjointed, slightly insectish feel. I hadn't planned on the 'headlamp' O's for the title or the tyre tread pattern for the book's spine but they were spur of the moment choices that just seemed like the right thing to do to help with legibility of the title, tie the front and back covers together and also lay on the VW beetle theme a little bit thicker.

Ceci n'est pas un pope

On hearing the news that the pope was off this idea floated into my head and I had to do it... (apologies to Magritte... and any french speakers). Incidentally, with those red shoes, it seems to me that the Pope would make a cracking alternative to Dorothy in the Wizard Of Oz.... following the yellow brick road to the Emerald Vatican City... clicking his heels together saying "there's no place like Rome"... That's me dammed for eternity now I suppose...

upside down VW beetles...

I needed to sketch a VW beetle but it has to be upside down for the illustration I have in mind. Rather than draw the car the right way up then invert it I thought, why not draw the thing upside down to begin with (rotating and flipping the reference in photoshop) and see what happens...? I found it a very useful exercise in quick observational drawing. Very much looking at something familiar in a fresh new way. I also like the slightly disjointed feel it gives to the car (stand on your head to see what I mean)... as luck would have it that should fit in nicely with what I have planned for the bug... ...

Now what else can I draw upside down...

fishbowl ennui...