Inking about

I recently was very inspired by Jillian Tamaki's post on inks, and her ink abilities in general, and I wanted to try a little out myself since I'd been ignoring them and favouring watercolours recently. She had painted crocodiles and since I'm partial to them myself I followed suit.

The idea of a friendly crocodile comes from a children's rhyme or story I heard when I was younger. I can't really remember it but I'm pretty sure the moral ended with the friendly crocodile eating a few children that got swayed by its charms. For this reason I think it was written by Roald Dahl. Who had several kids, and even some adults, meet their end down the gullets of giants, rhinos and other menacing creatures.

For this reason I wanted my crocodile to appear very debonair and affable and a contestant for least likely to swallow and digest anyone. So when it ever did come to devouring it would come as a complete surprise.

Sugar Cafe

(close up)

This is a lovely little cafe just a hop, skip and a step away from bar bici (the bike cafe) I drew a while ago. I've been wanting to go there for ages and it was worth the wait. Such a picturesque little coffee and cake shop.

The tiny place is only manned by two people and only open till 3pm. But the staff was really nice and chilled and they let me stay half and hour after closing time to finish my drawing. Never harassed me, (that said I include over friendliness as harassment) and even gave me a free muffin because it was the last one for the day.

Coffee there was okay, but at the end of the day free muffin plus nice atmosphere I give it the thumbs up:

here's the address for anyone curious,

2B Nelson Street

Bondi Junction

NSW 2022

bear in bumper car

More Blasting from the Pasting! ... wait what?

These are excepts from my Oxford's visual dictionary of nearly everything. It is lacking in some aspects when it comes to living up to it's title, but it makes it up in unintended humor and gorgeous illustrations. It's great fun to see what the norms of clothing, hair and technology were back in the day.

But it's much better fun to find all the strange compositions they came up with when trying to describe ordinary tasks.

Such as above, where one scuba diver is just about to assault the other. In this underwater attack surprise is everything, which is probably why he has decided to beat his fellow diver to a watery grave with an appropriately themed conch shell instead of using the handy knife he is wielding.

See fig. 8

Tip your barista

Close up

This image started off as a pretty sharp uptight drawing, which can be seen from the close up, but then I got distracted by the vibrating butterfly of a barista. She was getting orders, warming cakes, mixing salads, dishing sandwiches, making coffee and giving change. In the end I couldn't get a single full image of her but settled for several little snippets of her job behind the counter. I think she adds a very necessary amount of life into an otherwise slightly dry image.

Westfields

Ran out of places to go the other day, as cafes and shops started closing around 4 or so, and I had no time to sit and draw to contentment. So I opted for the Westfields' food court. The nice one. I got coffee from the coffee, tea and all cakes known to man store. Not from Chili & Spice, which would be a lovely name for a cafe, but is instead a Indian restaurant. And which, I just noticed, I misspelt as Chill & Spice, which would still be a fairly nice name for a cafe.

The coffee nonetheless was enjoyable. However be warned. The giant oatmeal, raisin, nut cookies are not as delicious as they seem. If you are in the mood head down to the luxe cafe instead and you will be rewarded. Their cupcakes are also better. (And you can see my mural!)

Also if you are in a baklava mood do not purchase from the kebab store! The baklava is expensive, dry and not syrupy enough. It is a long walk but there is a wonderful little nuts and everything shop near the coles supermarket. They are floating in the center of the mall and have $1.50 baklava pieces that taste amazing but don't make you feel ill afterwards.

If you have any recommendations for me, for coffee or cake, please pass on the love!

Blast from the Past

While going through my stack of 'inspirationals', which amounts to a giant pile of photocopies, clippings and things I pick off the street, I stumbled across these wonderful educational children's magazines. They follow the alphabet in a general encyclopedia method and are littered with old school photographs and illustrations. How did this little gem of the 1970s find its way into my possession?

Well a few years ago one of my friend's decided to clear up her room and redecorate. In the usual high school girl fashion we all got very excited and came over sleep over style to help out. Some point during this little event, the magazines changed hands. I'm pretty sure the original owner was Jess Whiting, who's up in Brisbane now working in the management and curation side of the Arts. She had brought them over collage materials, but in the end they were spared the scissors and I convinced her to give them to me.

There are several other excerpts and delightful covers but instead of making an annoying giant post I just decided to put the rest in my flickr account. You can find them, and other scavenged, stolen and found images, here