Fiery feather effigies

Big phoney sun

Red car trail

Ghostly image for Photo Friday.

Ahoy

Ocean Pint

Blue sculpture

Lazy cat and plant

A couple of sedate vision-resters after yesterday's eye-popping candy. Might have another go with that hat and produce something more restrained. I'm still a Photoshop rookie really! This cat - got to be inspired by Roobarb and Custard.

Surreal Hat

Glastonbury

Wild Wood

Sheep sculpture

A found object out on a country walk. I like to think some enterprising sheep put this together!

My addition to the large number of entries to this week's Photo Friday challenge: 'Rural'.

Johnnynorms is 40 today!

Rachel has been busy putting this montage of me together. Click on it to get a clearer view of just how silly I have been over the last 40 years. It sort of feels like a surprise birthday party where lots of previous versions of myself all turned up. What a horrendous thought. Which one would be able to out blather the other ones?

It's 3 O'Clock

I predict the next posting will be on Sunday some time, as we're off to Brighton for a couple of days. Giant Sand are playing at Concorde2, and we want to catch a film at the good old Duke of York. If I get anywhere near a computer, I might cave in to blogomania anyway, but I need a break from this machine.

What he read

If you squint you can read the words on this character's paper.

Jumper doodle

This is a proper doodle doodle of me in typical chunky jumper attire.

Ocean in a Cylinder

Airborne Triangle

I wasn't planning another flight drawing for Illustration Friday, but the topic must have stayed around in my mind, because this triangle suddenly sprouted wings and took off! Perhaps it's on the way to Bermuda...

Balloon flight

This weeks Illustration Friday subject is 'flight', so this picture is flight up, and flight from.

I've enjoyed exploring computer colouring again - the weekly theme seems a good impetus to get me trying out new things (new for me that is). Balloons suit my restricted drawing ability! Float not flight I suppose.

Sliver of a man

Splitting Up

Illustration Friday: Sorrow is a theme I seemingly can't draw on the spot, so I have chosen one from my past, drawn at the time with real feeling. I soon cheered up though.

Fools rush in

By popular demand (well one person remembered it) here at last is "Fools rush in". Cousins of the Marx Brothers thrice removed? Or maybe it's me and three friends. I'm quite a wise fool though..

Empty pint and sculpture

Happy Monday morning. Is your glass empty, or is it ready for the next lovely pint?

Papua New Guinea Artist: Mathias Kauage

Made a Sunday visit to the nearby Horniman Museum in West Dulwich, blessed among other things with a massive collection of musical instruments from around the world – what would I give to spend a year or more there just trying them all out.

There was a room of vibrant paintings by Mathias Kauage from Papua New Guinea. His work was full of exuberant folk art, a mixture of village life and his recent adventures abroad. He went to England in 1996 to receive an OBE, and some of his pictures celebrated this event in a witty way. He was apparently too shy to look the Queen in the face, but he develops the meeting in his imagination, until he shows himself relaxed and lighting up a cigarette.

The picture above is "Untitled (Captain Cook's Voyage)" 2000, found on the website of the Alcheringa Gallery, which has a glorious wealth of Contemporary Pacific tribal art within its pages. If you go there to look for Mathias Kauage, you may stay to explore many more artists.

More links to his artwork: Two Helicopters, at the October Gallery; three paintings at Bristol City's Museum & Art Gallery; and a postage stamp design at Philnet; one painting on Papua Kunst Kollektion.

Daybreak Cockerel

Daybreak Cockerel otherwise known as a Sunrise Rooster,
drawn for the Year of the Rooster theme at Illustrated Friday

Tall Camel and Hammock

Drawn by JohnnyNorms, and coloured by Andrew Knowles

Question mushroom

Question mushroom & other assorted gubbins, from the same application-form-angst-ridden bit of paper - see below.

fierce pudding

a drawing from recent application form angst - I sit there gazing at the boredom of another form, and before I realise it, another doodle has come to into being. And this time it's a fierce pudding - sounds like the tile of a Ivor Cutler poem to me. "Be quiet now children, it's a fierce pudding"

Seal vs. Civilisation

One Big Doodle

This is the whole doodle - and below are three details from it. Or find them on the archive page. Click the spiral to jump back to the Spiral Trail, if you're on it!

detail3

detail2

detail1

Aliens want the moon too

Experiment unnamed

Mindwill

Mountain Sunset/Sunrise

Hill

Tamed with a twang

Paper, ink, paint, frame, brush

Greetings to Elbowroom

A big hello to anyone who might be happening to chance by – maybe you’re someone I know already, in which case hello you. I’ve been doodling in the margins, and hiding in the margins, for too long. Now I’m jumping out from there and showing and sharing, and it feels liberating.

I think initially I was going for the purely pictures no blather approach – but look how long that’s lasted. As usual, I’m shy to start with but once I relax a bit, there’ll be no stopping me rambling on. All the same, I want to keep my conversing broadly to a visual arts zone, or centred around notions of creativity. This might drift into musical realms at times, because I’m just as much into making and listening to music, and sometimes I feel the drawings, the music, the words, they’re all sort of interwoven.

Anyway, to keep a short story shorter, this blog is firstly me doing art, secondly me thinking art, thirdly anything else that seems good at the time. Now I’m going away to finish drawing “The Poshest Parabola” (I’m fibbing, there’s no such doodle – I’m off to make the most wonderful cup of tea ever). On with the pictorials.

Intricate Burble

One of those 'difficult' titles...

Scaly Chimneys

Moon on hinges

Illustration Friday: Friendship

This is my first contribution to the weekly theme at Illustration Friday and hopefully not the last... Doing this inspired me to take my first faltering steps into colouring a doodle with the computer; and thankyou I.F. for inspiring this image in the first place!

Alien City Shimmer

tortoise and tea

Oh you lucky pint

Inhabited Hat