PUNS: In Space No One Can Hear You Groan

James Howard, aka The Mooks, runs 'Draw' events on Tumblr every so often. The last two were DrawCoenBrothers and DrawLynch. This one is DrawVader, and while I don't have much interest in Star Wars beyond thinking it an entertaining flick, I am happy to piggyback cynically on other people's enthusiasm in a tawdry and craven attempt to draw attention to my work.

So: hey everyone! It's Darthtagnan! 

 

I thought a more foppish Vader would permit himself at least a little dark purple.

A Work of Aut

This drawing, pen and ink on a sheet of A3, proved a useful disgnostic tool for people looking over my shoulder the past couple of days. They ranged from 'great patience' to 'autistic.'

Detail.

And this is one I did before; they all came from a doodle I did during a meeting.

Fans

Point and Shoot.

One of my favourite films, Miller's Crossing, the Coen brothers' stylish gangster masterpiece from 1990, featuring the great Albert Finney as Leo - who, despite his age, still has it in him.

John Betjeman's 'The Third Man.'

'Spies.' Pen and ink on cartridge paper, image size 17cm x 29cm.

All the structural stuff in this drawing is featured in a documentary made for the BBC by John Betjeman about railways, which was itself featured in another documentary on BB4 about railways in film and fiction. They showed a brief clip of this shot where the camera panned up from the dark tunnel to the ironwork bridge to the buildings beyond, and my antennae stood straight up. I love the massive solidity and complexity and weight that a lot of Victorian railway and industrial architecture has, and for some reason I'm intrigued by the notion of layers and depth in architecture, and as soon as I saw it I really wanted to draw it.

I had to scuffle around on the internet to find a video of the documentary and I took screen shots by using the 'print screen' function and stitching them together to work from.

Because Betjeman was walking across the bridge as the camera panned up, he appears in two different places in two different screen captures. I liked this, and drew him in twice. Mrs Johnson, looking at the drawing in progress, remarked that the two figures in their overcoats and wide-brimmed hats, looked like spies, and another little light went on. That's when I drew in the third figure (the third man...) standing in the shadows at the bottom.

I think what I seem to be saying is that practically none of this appears to be my own idea.

King James Version

 

It's all a bit oddly not quite straight. But that's, erm, deliberate, of course... psychedelia, isn't it.

Admiral

The imposing figure of Admiral Stellingwerf, and his navigational officer. Pen and watercolour on maritime chart.

The admiral is, of course, readily identifed by the Admiral's hat that he is wearing.

 

Add caption

Ozzy

The first page of an illustrated version of Shelley's Ozymandias. Full 6-page adaptation of the full poem can be found here.

Salty Dog

Danger! Danger!

Who's this handsome buck? Why, it's Derek Danger, newest man of action on the man of action scene and baddest cat in the UK Datsun Owners Club. Brainchild of righteous talents Robert Ball and Warwick Johnson Cadwell.

This is, unavoidably, 'fanart.'

It's Those Dreadful Beady Eyes, They Stare You Out.

 

Withnail, sitting down to enjoy his holiday, and Danny, expressing the foolishness of Withnail's words.

Charcoal on A2 cartridge paper.

It'll Really Tie His Room Together.

A rather late Christmas present for my brother-in-law.

Not a Whole Lot of Rosie.

Rosetta Stone. Work nominally in 'progress.' Hm. 
Pages 1, 2 and time passing on page 3.

Morning Becomes Elytra.

The unfortunate Gregor Samsa. Original fountain pen sketch below.

Going to Work on the Tube.

'The Caretaker.' Pencil on paper.

There he is:

Ash Dieback.

M.R. James, The Ash Tree.

It's not my favourite of the James pieces I've done but it's the one where I've managed to give myself the creeps.

All Mouth.

More M.R. James. Poor afflicted Mr Dunning passes an unsettled night.

"The obvious course was to find a match, and also to consult his watch: he might as well know how many hours of discomfort awaited him. So he put his hand into the well-known nook under the pillow: only, it did not get so far. What he touched was, according to his account, a mouth, with teeth, and with hair about it, and, he declares, not the mouth of a human being."

 

Now, if you want to extrapolate any sort of Freudian interpretation of the fear of a mouth with teeth and hair all about it, that is of course your prerogative as an independent reader.

Building.

Started this with some extravagant ideas in mind of filling in under Mr Waits with portraits of characters - Edna Million in a drop-dead suit, Jack the Cutter and the Pockmark Kid, Birdy Joe Hoaks and the like, but it stalled before I finished his hat. 

Lord Bunn then posted some beautifully ornate lettering work in progress on Twitter, and the lights went on again. 

Pencil, all pencil. A3 paper.

Lunch Break

When they built the highest building yet, they found odd things up there. Odd but friendly.

Lunch Break, pencil on paper, 16cm x 20cm, on A3.

Whole Lotta Glove

In June the Forbidden Planet blog organised a riposte to an assertion made in a national newspaper that there weren't any good illustrators any more, illustrators who could actually draw stuff that looked like the stuff they were drawing. The challenge was to draw a cover for either 'Catcher in the Rye' or 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist.' 

I opted for 'Catcher' and read it through again. I was a long way down the moody-kid-in-red-check-cap road before it occurred to me that it wasn't all that imaginative a response.

In the end I picked up on the root of Holden's 'catcher' image, his brother Allie's catching mitt, which had poems written on it in green ink.

I don't know what happened to the competition, it was supposed to be whittled down to a shortlist in July, and then August and now it's December in a couple of days, so although we were asked not to publicise our own work, I'm assuming it's all got lost down the back of a drawer somewhere.

So, this is what I did.

I made it by drawing the glove and experimenting with green ink in a dip nib to get an authentically handwritten effect, then scanning in glove and writing separately and combining them in layers.