Hobbit trailer-dump

There's just so much Hobbity goodness out there.  The more I see of it the more I think they've probably got it about right.  The Hobbit was never a massive epic like LotR, but a light-hearted, grumpy, homely little tale.  They seem to have expanded it to dovetail better with the overall narrative of how The Hobbit fits int the bigger history of Middle Earth, but hey, I'm fine with that.

Anyway, here's the current amount of stuff that's getting me excited:

Bilbo Baggins, the original Hobbit hero, paving the way for the Fellowship of the Ring years later, putting bad ideas about 'adventuring' into the heads of impressionable young hobbits everywhere...  and I do rather like his patchwork dressing gown.  Quite enjoyed the comment about incineration in the contract as well :)

Also, someone found this, which is rather epic.  Elvish as it was originally imagined, spoken by the man who knew it first and best.

Summer 2012 - Greenbelt

So, where've I been?  Well when you see the amount of summer events I want to blog, you may understand why I've been away so long!

Firstly, after last year's successful experiment as a volunteer at the Greenbelt Festival, I decided to return as a regular camper.  Volunteering was a great intro to Greenbelt, but my hours meant I couldn't see everything I wanted to.  This year I saw A LOT.  In Case of Fire, Aradnha, Weapons of Sound, The Proclaimers, Speech Debelle, Hope and Social, Shlomo, Nitin Sawhney, Folk On, Seth Lakeman, The Imagined Village, Bellowhead, and that was just the music!

I went to talks that stretched my brain, split my sides over comedians, was challenged and awestruck by drama...  but if I'm giving you the highlights there's one thing I should mention first.

1. The MUD

Return of the Geek

Fifteen birds in five fir trees

Virtual biscuit if you know which scene in The Hobbit this is from!

Podiums... and potatoes

Ok, I'm not really one for hype.  I was enjoying the Olympics from a distance, catching odd races on the television and hearing updates on the radio, but I knew I wasn't going to see it any closer than that so I didn't worry about it...  However, when my friend Graham very generously offered me his spare ticket to the badminton  I was not going to say no!

Getting Out - 4 of 4

On my last day in Norfolk there wasn't really time to go anywhere very far away.  Anyhow, with my brother and sister both working that Saturday, someone had to walk the dog.  This is him on the left, the soppy animal.  His name is Galaxy (like the chocolate) or else Gal, Gally, Galvin, Gallifrey, Galvanise, Gallivanting...  

We got him from a rescue centre so we don't know exactly how old he is or what kind of cross-breed he might be, but as you can see he's a very god looking mongrel.  A collie shape, but with retriever fur the colour of a chocolate labrador.  

He normally gets taken on the same walk every lunchtime, so the poor boy was very confused when I bundled him into my car and took him to the small patch of heath near the Nun's Bridges as you leave Thetford towards Bury.  He's not a young dog any more, but I have never seen him so excited.  He was bounding - bounding! -along the path and, because I prefer to keep him on the lead as his hearing is going, I had to run to keep up with him. 

Getting Out - 3 of 4

Holkham to Wells

The next day I headed off for the coast.  

20 min watercolour sketch of the salt marshes at Wells-next-the-sea

Getting Out - 2 of 4

Cambridge Folk Festival 

That same evening (I had a busy day!) I took my sister up to Cambridge for the 2012 Folk Festival.  It’s quite a small festival and we were only there for the evening, but after months of rain the weather was stunningly hot – exactly the festival weather we would have wanted.  Drank fresh lemonade, which had a massive kick, tried on various hats, and were well entertained with some great music. 

First we saw Megson, a married couple with a cheerful lightness to their music.  Then we listened (because the tent was so full we couldn’t get in) to the very harmonious ahab.  We could probably have got a seat with a view but on our way there we were side-tracked, as so often happens at festivals.  Blackbeard’s Tea Party were sending up a might ruckus from one of the beer tents, which distracted us.  Imagine folk music crossed with rock music played by pirates, and you’re heading along the right lines.  (Apparently ‘Pirate Folk’ is a real genre.  Who knew?!)  They were a lot of fun, and we told them so. 

The other bands we saw... honestly I can't remember their names, but they were awfully good.  Even as night snuck on and the beer kept flowing, the atmosphere stayed happy and relaxed.  It was a great night, and after a quick stop at the merchandise tent we had our memories to drive home to.

Ok, this is getting silly now

Ok, a brief interlude here, because this is (I think) the third Brave related post I've put up on here, and the film's not even out yet.  I was just having a quiet doodle and suddenly found I'd drawn this:

Ok, I just have to hang on for two more weeks.  How is it right that the US premier is before the UK one, yet they held their premier in Scotland?  Makes no sense to me at all.

Getting Out - 1 of 4

So having self-diagnosed myself with massive case of Cabin Fever, I decided to turn a brief trip home to Norfolk into a four day stay in the hope that this would give me enough space and quiet to... recalibrate or... whatever it is I do when I get like this.  I grew up in Norfolk, specifically the Brecks, and decided to re-visit places I’d been to as a child, but perhaps didn’t fully remember or had been too young to appreciate.  

Grimes Graves and West Stow

This was definitely the case with Grimes Graves, a Neolithic flint mine, and quite the loveliest heritage site to visit because there is really nothing there.  You drive into the middle of nowhere, enter what appears to be a large field (there is one small cabin for the loo, another marginally larger one for the visitors booth), and the rest is open land.  At least that's what you think at first...

A birds-eye view of Grimes Graves, scanned from the English Heritage guidebook

Getting Out - Prelude

I needed a holiday.  I know people always say that but it’s still true.  Or not even a holiday, but a lack of …civilisation.  The previous weekend I found myself pacing in the office.  Literally pacing, like the big cats you see in the zoo, going quietly nuts.  Clocking out couldn’t cure it and I spent the rest of the evening in a lovely wee melancholy and had to take myself out of town and off to the top of Beacon Hill for a few hours to sort my head out.  It was a good decision in the end, because if I hadn’t gone I would have missed this phenomenal sunset.  

It helped.  At any rate it patched me up enough to get through the next week, until I could make my escape!

Er'abody lurve cake

Finally, FINALLY, I have made a sponge cake that has risen.  I've always had a problem with sponge cakes (bar lemon cakes, for some reason).  Anything larger than a fairy cake usually ends up like a dense brittle biscuit.

BUT NOT TODAY!!!  TODAY, I HAVE MADE THIS!!!

And before I forget how I did it, I'm going to write it down.  I got the recipe from a friend of mine, and clearly she knew something I didn't.

Ingredients for cake
3 eggs
Self raising flour
Caster sugar
Margarine
Cocoa

For icing
Icing sugar
Cocoa
Margarine
Dark chocolate

1)  Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C/ Gas Mark 4
2)  Weigh your eggs, still in the shell.  Remember that weight, because that's how much you'll need of everything else (this was my mistake before.  I used to measure the other ingredients by rote instead of matching them to the eggs each time).
3)  Weigh and mix your 'wet' ingredients, the eggs and margarine, and the sugar.  It will look like mush.
4)  Weigh the flour, but replace about 3/4 oz of it with cocoa.  When you add it to the mixture, don't swirl it in with the spoon, fold it in, in stages.
5)  Fold in one teaspoon of boiled water.
6)  Bake for about 30 mins, or until a skewer comes out clean.
7)  For the icing, mix together the icing sugar/cocoa and margarine in a 2:1 ration to make buttercream.  Then mix in a few lines of melted dark chocolate.  This will make the icing less tooth-rottingly sweet and more like rich fondant.  Once your cake is cool, cut it across the middle and spread your icing there, then put the rest on the top.

8)  EAT IT!!!  OM NOM NOM!!!

Blank canvas

Been doing a bit of painting.  I've not sat down and tackled something big for a while.  It was really fun!

Here we are about three-quarters done.  I'm not much of a planner when it comes to drawing.  I find it I draw the same thing too many times it tends to take the spark out of it.  If you're lucky I might doodle you a scruffy thumbnail.  I'd rather have a rough idea in my head, and then tackle the whole painting as it it was a massive problem-solving exercise...

One or two more evenings should do it and then I hand it over to go up in the lovely Lizzy's office.

Hidden Loughborough

You think you know a town just because you have your day to day routines, your favourite haunts, and your regular aquaintances.  You think you know a town that is ordinary, but you don't.  Right below the surface, tucked away in back rooms and modified sheds, is a vast well of incredible people with hard-won and well-nurtured talents and interests you never saw before in your life.

This is what's going on outside my office right NOW...

I know this is a terrible drawing, but it's done in MS Paint with a mouse because that's literally all I have on this computer (I'm at work.  Shhh, don't tell anybody)

MS Paint and dodgy mouse

It's been humid and muggy for three days and finally the weather breaks and I get my thunderstorm.  Right outside my window.  YES!!!

Also that that tower block on the left is new.  It's such a eyesore, we all hate it.

Why the Bible is awesome

I've had more speed-doodling challenges (so much fun to do but with technically abysmal results so I don't know why I'm sharing them with you! ;D ) which is where someone reads a story aloud and I have about 5 seconds to draw it as it happens, standing sideways, on an A-frame.  It's not easy, but it has proven one thing: the Bible is awesome fun!  Just one chapter, in this case Acts ch12, covers all your major TV soap genres...

Murder...

June Update: Arts, Parks and High Hills

As usual I've been bombing it round like a mad thing, mainly trying to get my drawing deadlines done before I move house this Friday.  I like to be occupied which is good as this June there are boxes to be packed and cleaning to be done, and life going on in the meantime.  Things to do, people to see, opportunities not to be missed.  I just want to take a post to stop and get my ducks in a row.

End of Year Show

So, another academic year is over, and I may be a two-year graduate but in a town like Loughborough and with so many student friends thanks to church it's hard not to notice.  I almost feel sorry for next year's students - they've missed out on some great people.

The main milestone here is of course for the students, but one of the ways the town gets involved is through the annual Art and Design show, where each graduating class must orchestrate a display of their best work.  They're great for the upcoming students, the leavers and their friends and family, and potential employers and stakeholders in the university to get an overview of the kind of work the course produces.  My particular interest is for Visual Communication (Illustration, my old course, and Graphic Design), Printed and Woven Textiles, and Fine Art so my friend and I did the rounds.  All art students are encouraged to leave business cards so if I see something I particularly like and there are some lying around I'll scoop one up.

Zoe Marshall - www.zoemarshall.co.uk    Emily Creative - www.emilycreative.tumblr.com    Anya Raczka - www.anyaraczka.com    Sarah Lynn - www.sarahelizabethlynn.tumblr.com    Josephine Munsey    Sophie Hargrave - www.hargrave.blogspot.com    Heather Lee Durrant    Tamara Webster - www.tamarawebster.co.uk    Anniestration - www.annabrown.moonfruit.com    Abigail M. Cooper    Jessica Griffith - http://www.jessicagriffith.co.uk/

Movie roundup - June 2012

The Woman in Black, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Snow White and the Huntsman.  Warning: Here be Spoilers

The Birds! The Birds!

I feel like I've not posted any drawings up here for ages... mainly because I've been too busy doing drawings.  So while I finish those other drawings, here are some other other drawings just to prove I have been.  Drawing, that is.

I did these at work when I got bored.  Two magpies, one thrush, a gull and what I think was originally a raven but now appears to be some gigantic species of grey duck!  I love the slightly dense expression on the magpies' faces, but my favourite is that seagull.  Just look at him - pure evil.  He's clearly eyeing up some poor innocent's hotdog.

Warning: contains dead thing

Hmm, a very dramatic title.  I don't know if I'm just a bit weird (no, actually I do know that) but I've never had a squeamish nature for dead things.  Which is handy, considering what I'm about to show you...

This is a badger.  This badger is dead.
Still with me?  Good.
You can see he's (she's?) next to a road, so I'm going to assume it got hit while crossing.  No blood in this instance.  There was a couple of weeks in April where I kept seeing roadkill badgers - probably they had just come out of hibernation and were a bit groggy and sleepy so not properly obeying the green cross code.  It wasn't gross or disgusting, just dead.  I suppose that besides my Christian perspective of death, I take the view of Hogarth in The Iron Giant; "It's bad to kill, but it's not bad to die" so I don't have the aversion some people might have.  A couple of days later I passed the spot again and it was gone, removed by the council and thrown away.  Obviously I didn't touch it, but it was still pretty cool to be able to inspect such a reclusive and rarely-seen animal up close.  They really are beautiful creatures.

Here's something else beautiful (and not dead).

Foxgloves.  These ones are growing in our drive,  So lovely, so iconic... and so very very poisonous.  Don't eat them, they are quite capable of killing you.  I'm not sure why you would try to eat them, but don't.  Nevertheless, I'm not going to pull them up, I like them.  I think it's good to have something to keep a weather eye on.  Gives you a healthy sense of respect and perspective.

Death is always something sad, something we know in our inner beings isn't quite right, isn't supposed to happen, but at the same time it's very much a part of the world we're in.  Death is a part of everyone's journey, and whether or not you choose to worry about it, try to delay it, or attempt to dodge it altogether, there it is still.  Part of the paradox, part of the dichotomy, part of life.

June Jubilee

Ah Britain.  Any excuse for a party.  I suppose I am a royalist, though not a die-hard one, but who could complain about a four day weekend to celebrate our queen's 60th year on the throne?  Surely the holiday alone is enough reason to support the monarchy!  As well as a much needed break and time to get some personal work done, the Jubilee has awakened in Loughborough that community spirit I enjoy so much.

My Jubilee biscuit