......I guess it was.
I've looked at the blog a few times and thought...'I really should update that sometime'..and that is as far as it has got - a well intentioned thought rather like I must put the bin out or I must get around to cutting the grass or I really must find and dispose of that half eaten sandwich that fell under the passenger seat in the car 3 months ago... until today. Well obviously I haven't done all of those things today; cutting the grass would disturb the small Pygmy tribe that now dwells in the garden and I would need some serious protection to locate and remove that sandwich as I think it has evolved into a life form all of its own.
Doodling has also been suffering from the same good intentions. It has even been the subject of some contention. 'You haven't drawn anything for ages'. 'I know'. 'Why not?' 'Because I haven't'. 'Why not?' 'Because'. 'Well you should'. 'Well I don't wan't to'. 'Why not?' 'Because'. 'You could paint something for me'. 'I could find that sandwich, but I'm not going to...'.
However here I am. And just to enter with a big splash it isn't even something of my own creation. Nope, just some quick doodles copied out of someone else's book from someone else's illustrations. Now that was worth reading all of this for wasn't it.
Anyway..to business.
I am a big fan of the Edge Chronicles written by Paul Stewart and illustrated by Chris Riddell. I love the bizarre worlds they create and as I have no talent what so ever for such creativity of writing or for the creation of such wonderful illustrations I sat there today flicking through another Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell creation 'Muddle Earth' scribbling little copies of some of the incidental illustrations down onto a pad. I think it was in a vain hope that by doing so one day a character of my very own will pop into my head and maybe also that when that character arrives I will have some idea of how to pose the character however I want. I don't envy people, but if I did, it would be guys like these that can create a complete world and characters such as these with such humour and then create illustrations that suit so well.
A more adult variant I guess would be the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett, another favourite of mine, and with my love of line illustrations I wish that they were illustrated. The cover illustrations by Josh Kirby although superb are just not enough! I want more!
On a slightly different tangent I have become hooked of late on a number of old radio series. As I have mentioned before as well a being somewhat of a book worm I also listen to a lot of spoken word Cd's; book readings, dramatisations etc. It helps while away those long business trips and it is so much more involving that watching films or TV. You can also do other things at the same time - like sketch, well or not sketch as the case may have been recently. The old radio series in question here are; the classic 1950's 'Journey into Space, Earthsearch and the 'Paul Temple' crime thrillers. I don't know what it is that is so appealing about these old radio dramatisations but I am hooked on them. They are most definitely 'low tec', the dialogue is often quite stilted, the characters parodies of parodies, the Paul Temple cases quite repetitively formulaic, but they are wonderful! They don't have the depth of other BBC radio dramatisations such as the Lord of the Rings as they were I guess written solely for radio by script writers rather than authors and then dramatised because of their appeal, but they are still addictive. I have found myself recently feverishly heading over to the spoken work shelves of book shops on the off chance of finding another Paul Temple case.
All quite sad I am sure....and as I can hear 'Paul Temple Intervenes' calling me I shall exit leaving the scribbled copies of Chris Riddells originals just so there is some kind of doodling content to this post. Just to reiterate the point...these are not my creations, they are idly scribbled poor copies for fun of the excellent illustrations of Chris Ridell and I would highly recommend The Edge Chronicles published by Random House and Muddle Earth written by Paul Stewart and illustrated by Chris Riddell.
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