One Sketch 354) Madam Butterfly

Pinkerton
What a rotten guy
Left poor Madam M
High and dry.

Today is National Butterfly day - and I absolutely love butterflies. But the thing is they're too important for me to just dash off a quick sketch, so I did this human butterfly insetad.

One Sketch 353 (Weds 13th March) E.H. Shepard's Mr. Toad

What a fool was Mr. Toad!
So K. Grahame's book once showed

Featured artist yesterday on Sketching Every Day was E.H. Shepard I was tempted to do Winnie the Pooh, but in the end plumped for Mr. Toad. Exceptionally busy all day yesterday, but managed to grab 10 minutes with biro and lined paper to produce this.

One Sketch 347) Zygon

Don't say that I'm being too hasty
To say that a zygon is nasty
They make some folk tremble
Although they resemble
A large overbaked Cornish pasty.

The prompt for Sketching Every Day was mythical creature. Well, this maybe isn't mythical but it's fictional and that's close enough for me. I've been a huge Doctor Who fan for decades - in fact I've even written books about the TV show ( available on your kindle now.)

One Sketch 328) Gone With The Wind Movie Poster

Rhett Butler, a lusty old ram,
Did not waste a second's time, ma'am.
He grabbed Scarlett's waist
And kissed her with haste
Cos frankly, he don't give a damn.

Prompt on Sketching Every Day today was movie poster. As I commented when I posted this there, when it comes to movie posters, in fact, when it comes to a lot of things, I'm really old school. I've always liked this poster, so it was a bit of a no brainer to use it.

One Sketch 327) (Friday 15th Feb) Monsieur Orson Peluche

The teddy examines the train
"A mystery here, yet again!"
No driver, no guard
Oh isn't it hard
Such mysteries drive me insane"

I really didn't have time to make anything approaching a proper sketch yesterday. So I started doodling with a red biro on a piece of file paper during lunchtime and ten minutes later this is what I'd come up with. This is Orson Peluche (ours en peluche) the world famous Belgian teddy near detective, in a scene from his most famous case, "Orson Peluche et la Locomotive Abandonee. He has just discovered the abandoned locomotive and suspects foul play!

One Sketch 326) Hearts and Flowers

"Your majesty" he cried
"These blooms aren't dead."
" I do not care one jot
Off with their heads"

Alright, you can't always come up with anything decent to order. Prompt today - hearts and flowers. I'll be honest, I rarely need much encouragement to go back to the Guvnor, John Tenniel. This actually combines details from two separate Alice in Wonderland illustrations.

One Sketch 323) Tintin

A brave and loyal journalist
Adventurous, not showy
Did he ever have a human love?
Or only eyes for Snowy?

I say, that's a bit much. Steady the buffs. Given the prompt of Belgium, I decided on one of the two most famous fictional Belgians (Hercule Poirot being the other). Look, don't expect me to say anything (else) negative about Belgium or Belgians. I visited Ieper in 2016, which is where I became an urban sketcher, and as well as paying my respects to my great grandfather's grave at the war cemetery in Voormezeele, I was absolutely bowled over by how pretty Ieper is.

As for Tintin, well, I was given a GAF stereo viewmaster when I was a little boy(ask your grandparents), and a number of reels for it. My favourites were The Jungle Book, and Tintin Explorers on the Moon., and of the two the Tintin reel was my favourite.

One Sketch 314) Ground Hog Day

I hope that you won't think it's too obscene
When I confess my worship of the bean (you see what I did there?! Geddit!)

Yes, another Sketching Every Day prompt, and one for a great movie, although I do say so.

Oe Sketch 301) Rohan Daniel Eason

I have to be honest,
I can see it would get you down
Waking up halfway
Between a cyberman
And a clown.

Featured artist on Sketching Every Day today is the ultra-brilliant Rohan Daniel Eason. This man is a master of monochrome. This is an inferior copy of an illustration he made for Doctor Who Tales of Terror. All that talent, and he illustrates Doctor Who as well. I'm in total awe of the man.

One Sketch 287) Aeolus statue

What's he got on his head?
Must be often said

This gentleman here is Aeolus. Today's prompt on Sketching Every Day is Wind Chimes. Well, I gotta be honest, that left my boat unfloated and my candle unlit. Still, I did enjoy sketching the statues as part of my stamp design yesterday, so my imagination did start working on how I could combine sketching a statue with the general idea of wind. This was the best I could come up with.

Aeolus is an interesting character. At some times he is depicted as a man and at other times as a deity- at some times a personification of wind, and at others as the keeper of the winds. He's probably most well known for featuring in Homer's Odyssey. In this he is a man, the keeper of the winds. On his way home from the Trojan War, Odysseus stopped off on the isle of Aeolia (in the Lipari - or Aeolian - Islands off the coast of Italy), after his escape from Polyphemus the Cyclops. After being blinded, Polyphemus cursed Odysseus and begged his father Poseidon, the God of the Sea, for revenge. Poseidon was told by Zeus , King of the Gods, that he may not kill Odysseus, but decreed that Odysseus would not be able to return home until all of his companions were dead, and ten years had passed.

Odysseus stayed for a month in Aeolia, at the end of which Aeolus promised him a west wind to carry him home to Ithaca, and tied up all the other winds in a bag which he gave to Odysseus. This is presumably the bag that the statue is holding. After several days they come in sight of Ithaca. Odysseus, who has vigilantly guarded the bag night and day, falls asleep, and the inquisitive crew open the bag thinking it may contain gifts and valuables. The winds let loose blow the ship all the way back to Aeolia. Seeing that Odysseus was obviously not favoured by the Gods, Aeolus refused to provide any further help. Which is all to the good, since the Odyssey would have been a much shorter poem otherwise.

One Sketch 273) Alice and the Red Queen

Alice has recently been

Playing at chess in this scene

She can't be ignored

But moves up the board

Promoting herself to a queen

Yeah, I'll be honest, I didn't really fancy the prompt on Sketching Every Day today. Every few days we get a featured artist, and I'm afraid that without wanting to be rude, today's featured artist doesn't do anything for me, and I've no interest in trying to copy her artwork. So when in doubt I return to one of my old faves, the great Sir John Tenniel. This is copied from one of the original illustrations for Alice Through the Looking Glass

One Sketch 265) (Saturday 15th December) Alastair Sim as Scrooge

Ah, the unreformed miser!

Worry not, old misanthrope

The ghosts are on their way.

The prompt yesterday was Holiday Movies. For me Christmas ain't really Christmas if I don't get to see at least one version of A Christmas Carol. The best version of the novel - and one surprisingly fair to the spirit of the story (which is NOT a novel!) is the Muppets' Christmas Carol. But the best portrayal of Scrooge in my opinion is Alastair Sim's.

One Sketch 264 (Friday 14th December) Monkey Magic

Born from an egg on a mountain top

- Pull the other one, mate

It's got bells on.

This one was prompted by the 14th December prompt on Sketching Every Day - Monkey. I wrote - I wonder how many British members are old enough to remember a TV series from the early 1980s called 'Monkey'. It was a Japanese TV series redubbed into English. It concerned the adventures of the Monkey God - seen here - sentenced by Heaven to accompany the monk Tripitaka on his journey to retrieve Buddhist scriptures from India. It was absolutely brilliant - a real cult at the time.

One Sketch 258) Pet Jabberwock

Here's something you shouldn't forget
A jabberwock's not a good pet
It's ravenous jaws
And needle sharp claws
Will leave you a ton of regret

A prompt in Sketching Every Day was pet portrait - real or imaginary. I couldn't resist taking another of John Tenniel's wonderful illustrations from the Alice books - see my previous post for more on this.

One Sketch 257) (Friday 7th December) Alice in Wonderland Rabbit

A rabbit with trumpet and scroll
Found servitude taking its toll
"I don't mind the work,"
He said with a smirk,
"But I don't like the hours, on the whole"

So tired on Friday that I just scrolled through some Victorian cartoon images and illustrations I really liked, and when I came to some originals from "Alice in Wonderland" I knew I'd found something that-
a) I'd like to sketch -
b) I could sketch
c) wasn't going to take forever.

"Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" have exerted a fascination over my imagination for a very, very long time. My grandfather, who died before I was born, bought a set of novels and works of fiction from the Daily Express. My mother had possession of the few novels that remained in the set when I was growing up. I can't remember all of the ones that were there, but they included "David Copperfield", "Pride and Prejudice" "Wuthering Heights" and "The Mill on the Floss" three books which I would love by the time I was studying A Level English Literature, as well as "Jane Eyre", a book I absolutely would not love when studying it for A Level.  However, the only one I was interested in from a very early age was "Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through The Looking Glass". This edition had its own illustrations, not the Tenniel originals, sadly. I didn't discover these until I was quite a bit older.

It's a strange book, isn't it? I was more taken with Looking Glass when I was little - I responded to the fact that it's based on a chess game, and Alice has an ultimate goal- becoming queen. I found Wonderland to be rather sinister - and to be honest I still think that it has something of this quality about it. Sir John Tenniel - just plain John at the time - to me brought out this quality in his illustrations for the book.

One Sketch 254 (Tuesday 4th December) Cookie Monster

You can keep your Honey Monsters
Your teddies and your wookies
Here's the guy who works for me
The one who eats the COOOOKKKIIIEEESSS!

This was inspired by a Sketching Every Day prompt - cookies. I've said this before, I was never the world's biggest muppet/Sesame Street fan, but as a cookie fa myself I always had a soft spot for cookie monster - I even like his rather strngulated use of grammar.

One Sketch 224) The Doctor

Ring out the old doctor
Ring in the new
She is the Doctor
And bloody good too

I sketched this after watching the latest episode of Doctor Who, starring the fabulous Jodie Whitaker. When it was announced that the next actor to play the Doctor would be a woman, I withheld judgement, I'm so glad that I didn't say anything stupid at the time, because she is just brilliant.

One sketch 214) #inktober2018 prompt 25 - Prickly

It make me feel old, and old at heart

For I was already a dad

When Sonic was state of the art

Out of inspiration, and short on time, I sketched a quick Sonic the hedgehog. I remember when the Mega Drive first came out and I bought the original Sonic for my oldest two kids. What a great game. I am not ashamed to admit that I still have a megadrive, and still play the game from time to time. 

One Sketch 208) #inktober2018 Prompt 19 - Scorched

The Doctor is always a hit
Or such in my books have I writ
Perhaps then I ought
Recall when he fought
The fiery fiend from the pit

I was just looking for a different take on scorched, today's prompt, and came up with this beast from the Doctor Who story "The Satan Pit"

One Sketch 206) #inktober2018 prompt 17 Swollen

Telosians have funny old heads

Or so it is quite often said

So large and so lumpy

I bet they get grumpy

When lifting them up from their beds.

Swollen made me think of swollen heads, which made me think of the Telosians from Star Trek's original pilot (subsequently used in Season 1's The Menagerie) . "Wrong thinking will be punished!" They don't make 'em like that any more.