Tag Archives: creativity

Making a scene

My secondary school, which I attended from 1976 to 1980, had a particularly well-stocked library. Being the nerd that I am, I was drawn to the 20th century history section, avidly reading all kinds of works on the Second World War. It was in this library that my lifetime obsession with the Battle of Britain was born. But, there was also another book that caught my attention.

All these years later, I cannot recall the title, author or publisher. Occasionally, I try to search the internet for likely volumes, but to no avail. All I remember is it was hardback, printed in full colour throughout, and consisted of wonderful photos. The thing was, the photos were all of scale model aircraft, set in detailed realistic dioramas. It was utterly fascinating.

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Inspiring my marks

I completely forgot, writing yesterday’s post about scribbling, to mention those proper artists that inspired me to a great extent when I was a child.

Obviously, copyright precludes me from posting any of their actual work here, but if you want to see it you can usually find stuff by clicking through or searching for their names in the usual way.

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Making my mark

When I was a kid, no plain piece of paper or cardboard was safe. Give me a ball-point pen, pencil, crayon, paint, you name it, and I’d be making some kind of mark with it.

A masterpiece of crayon on grey cartridge paper. I was probably five years old. I can happily state that the human figure has always eluded me when drawing.

I just loved drawing. I seemed to prefer various modes of transport as my subject, but I just drew loads of stuff all the time. This continued, sometimes well, mostly not, into my 20s.

Then it just sort of stopped.

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Sparse

This blogging is hard. I’ve got a list of topics that I would hope might prompt me to write something interesting. I would like to post something at least once a week.

Writing is hard, though. I may have the idea, but then I need to do some research to verify facts, work out if I need some illustration or other, then actually sit down and wrangle the words into shape. The muse has to be present, but will often wander off during the preliminary stages. The project stalls.

My apologies to the handful of you that read my drivel, then. A longer form post should arrive in time. Patience, they tell me, is a virtue.