Frank and Barbie

Unexpectedly roped into building a barbeque with many instructions in Latvian, Hungarian and other assorted languages to accompany the bulging bag of nuts, bolts and washers. Time taken? First break after placing three legs on only to discover you are supposed to put twiddley bits for holding plate on first. Unscrew legs. Screw legs back on, third one will not. Lunch break, cooked a fish that I bought on the way back from bike ride. So incredibly disgusting I threw it out and had a tuna sandwich instead. It is now five o'clock. The barbeque is finished. So am I and Alice who used to be Frank is coming for a barbeque in two hours.
I have a very challenging week coming up. The Spanish health service is excellent but unfortunately means I am reminded every two years to turn up for routine X-ray. Alice has hers on Monday, me on Thursday (I'll miss the group, blast). I have been in both the prostrate clinic and lady X-ray  clinic with Alice as moral support. No, no, not at all...I am in the waiting room. But I did go into a consult once as she was very worried. Did I mention the consultant asked which one of us was the patient? Of course I did. I'm still smarting with being mistaken for a bloke.

Bad Night?

The Bean and I walked between endless rosemary bushes, over clumps of wild thyme, over the rust red earth, through the wild purple iris. The air thick with smells of herbs. Sort of the mediterrenean version of being in "Cider with Rosie."
The sun is hot, the sky shining blue and we saw over two hundred birds flying in a crazy formation. I have no idea what they were.
Oh...and I think I have a tooth on the blink. Please nooooooo.

Sumurun - by Helen Marshall (Nikos Apollonio Bell Cittern)

Ratbag siblings 2

This could go on for ever but I suppose I should sweep a floor now and then.
The wysteria is out in huge armfuls of creamy, violet flowers. The birds are peep, peeping, clouds racing by and here's some shocking photos...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1370199/Detroit-Haunting-photos-crumbling-remains-highlight-decline-Motor-City.html

Ratbag siblings

I know, I know, you'd think I had better things to do but all ideas seem to come at once. This isn't finished. Once I have wrestled  Manga Studio into exporting or saving as I wish then I'll be able to finish it.
Ominous, purple sky rolling in.

Nick Drake - Fly

Renaissance World

 

I have this amazing book called "The clothing of the renaissance world." Which is actually Cesare Vecellio's "Habiti Antichi et Moderni." Anyway, it first came out in 1590 and is full of every type of dress that everyone in the whole world wore. I love it. It's like a roadmap of people and it's a real joy to transfer some of the clothing to my army of unreal people. This is the same drawing as yesterday which I have put through the wringer a bit.

The book is also useful for standing on to reach the top shelf of the bookcase...I would add a photo of the bookcase but you might think me frightfully untidy.

Medieval madness

My mind is constantly replaying the image of that woman being bundled into a car by a pile of minders as the journalists watch from their parallel universes. What has happened to her?
That is nothing to do with the drawing by the way.

Medinaceli - Pueblo Medieval de Soria (by GuS)

wacom drawings2010.wmv

Public Secretary

And sometimes illustrations come out all by themselves. Mixture of Artrage, Photoshop and the endless world of fractals. Sometimes, I wonder if you took away fractals there would be nothing...anywhere...not even universes. Click to enlarge picture if you really have nothing else to do. Listening to Radio 4 on the headphones, it's a programme about religion or poetry, I'm not sure, because when I am drawing I swim in and out of deafness..."angels don't have freewill.".....they don't?