Tindaisies

Left: Original drawing and Right: Pancake doll based on drawing

Harold Wideman

Harold is prototype number 2 in my pancake doll project. The first was Alice O’Grady.  Harold is the father in  The Widemans vs the Narrowsmiths (link this) story that I drew three years ago.

Harold went together easier than Alice.  Reasons for this include a rudimentary pattern was already made and a procedure had been established – and the Jeff Beck CD didn’t seem to hurt, either.  =D

Front

Back

The biggest change I made with Harold was opting to embroider his facial features (and the hairy chest) rather than using permanent marker.

I really like the effect of the outlining stitches, they seem more “definite” and appropriate for a sewn object. The lenses in his glasses are painted on the cloth with acrylic paint. I also elected to not sew the limbs at the elbows and knees because that seemed to stiffen them which was opposite to the effect I’d wished for.

The hair was sewn directly into the seam where the front of the head joins the back, exactly like Alice’s hair only much shorter.

Solomon Grundy

Where does the time go? Why does it seem the older we get, the faster time flies? The weeks zip by in a blink. I design a quarterly publication, three months pass by and before I know it, I am in meetings again.  I had my first meeting for the summer issue, today. As if that’s not enough, I’m staring at another approaching birthday in the upcoming week, in fact, I know a number of people whose birthdays are in April, but now I’m prattling – just practicing for my old age (which is how many quarterlies away)?

Solomon Grundy’s  entire life blows by in one short week.  The verse is  a 19th century nursery rhyme and each day represents the Seven Ages of Man. I admit, I like the Sesame Street version better:  poor Solomon Grundy washes a part of his left side each day and at the end of the week, only half of him is clean.

Solomon Grundy,
Born on a Monday,
Christened on Tuesday,
Married on Wednesday,
Took ill on Thursday,
Grew worse on Friday,
Died on Saturday,
Buried on Sunday.
That was the end
Of Solomon Grundy

This is my entry for this week’s Illustration Friday prompt “Fleeting”

See the web gallery of all the souls here

Willow charcoal and graphite pencil on BFK Rives paper

I’ve been enjoying the effect that graphite pencil has on top of charcoal.  Charcoal goes on paper as flat black whereas graphite has a contrasting shimmer.

This series of drawings began as a very controlled experiment:

There are only 4 elements to each drawing that can be altered:

• hands
• face
• the silhouette
• and the folds in the robe

There was a predefined process for drawing each image:

• Each sheet of paper was precut to 4 3/8″ X  5″
• hands and faces were drawn on frisket film and cut out with scissors
• hands and face films were applied to the paper
• silhouette was drawn on the paper and filled in with willow charcoal
• film was removed, face and hand detail drawn with graphite pencil
• folds were drawn in graphite over the robe

The most exciting part of drawing these figures is what happened despite my controlled approach.  Slight variations in head shape, facial features, hand gestures and the shape of the silhoutettes all combined to make very unique, individual “portraits.” It surprised me as each personality took form.

I would like to draw many more of these. I’d be interested to see if a natural shift in the drawings would evolve from the process of repetition, or if recurring types of personality would happen, like human evolution and heredity, or on a smaller scale the party game “telephone” where someone whispers something in another’s ear and around the circle the whipser goes until it has morphed into something different.

If these souls look familiar, they are the small figures in the jars that Lucy Spratch plays with in the ongoing Spratch series

Then one morning, there was a curious advertisement in the newspaper.

Mrs Spratch took her baby and the sock monkeys to 70 Prince Albert Road. She paused before climbing the stairs to apartment 19A. Strange exotic drawings had been scribbled on the walls and the building hinted of previous splendour.

Whoever L. Enza was, Mrs Spratch was steadfast in her resolve to find a cure for her baby’s Melancholy

This is another Spratch drawing,  you can see the other drawings in this series here.

Although Lucy Spratch wasn’t the happiest or most carefree child, her worries were few. Her mother often let Lucy do as she pleased and did not interfere by nagging if she had brushed her teeth or that she shouldn’t engage in activities such as walking under ladders, stepping on cracks or drifting about the neighbourhood on her own.

This is another Spratch drawing, once again you can see the other drawings in this series here

When Lucy Spratch grew older, she discovered numerous sealed jars with small figures enclosed in them, hidden in the backyard shed. She pretended they were her friends. As she played, she discovered that instinctively she knew their names.

This is part of the series of Mrs Spratch drawings that I began a year ago. You can see the rest of the drawings HERE

In this drawing, Lucy Spratch is the inordinately heavy baby grown into a young child.

They visited doctors, researchers and scientists but all were of similar opinion. Baby Spratch’s affliction was intriguing from a professional standpoint, but they could do nothing to help the child.

This is another Spratch drawing,  you can see the other drawings in this series here.

One morning, Mrs. Spratch warmly bundled Baby Spratch in the inky black wool blanket that seemed to be the only thing that settled down the poor little scrap.  She called for the sock monkeys and together they set off to see the first in a lengthy line of medical professionals.

This is another Spratch drawing, once again you can see the other drawings in this series here

The baby didn’t care for her toys, not even her teddy bear. All she was happy wearing was an inky black wool blanket. As hard as she tried, Mrs Spratch discovered that solace could not be found. Mrs Spratch was at her wits’ end.

This is another Spratch drawing, once again you can see the other drawings in this series here

If the crying didn’t cease, it would radiate across whole housing complex, creating a morose blanket that draped itself over every sidewalk, alleyway, tree and shrub. The only way to escape it was to close one’s windows and wait for silence.

Mrs Spratch knew that something must be done to purge the gloom from her baby.