Illustration Friday- smoke

Smoke is a hot topic here in France at the moment since there will be changes made in the law to ban public smoking starting next year.

[ Stations , museums, government offices , shops, universities etc will be non smoking areas from February 2007 and restaurants, hotels and bars will have to comply in 2008]

I think its a good thing to make public spaces smoke free and it seems to work really well in Scotland and Ireland and Italy. I initially wondered about doing something to illustrate the smoking ban.

At the weekend we adopted a 5 month old kitten , who is smoke grey , charcoal and white - we are renaming him and the current favourite name is Gandalf- since he is very clever, both grey and white and his markings are remarkably like a long swirly grey cloak.

He has fitted in to the family amazingly well so far - its been 10 years since we last had a cat and it doesn't seem like it at all. So many things have changed in cat culture- there seems to be endless variations on things like litter trays and a multitude of different foods for all stages of cat life.

The litter trays with lids and charcoal filters are amazingly effective -a definite improvemnt on the old style trays -no smell and no litter flicked all over the floor. We were surprised at how quickly Gandalf learned to open the swinging door.

Here he is his debut photo on the blog - no doubt the first of many.
As far as the I Friday topic is concerned, I ended up experimenting with different brushes to try and make a smoke effect.

After a bit of experimentation, I quickly sketched a monster coalescing from smoke. It made me think of some x-rays I had last year , so I added in some vertebrae, with the idea that the monster might be getting more and more substantial as the smoke eddied and drifted around.

In order to give him a tiny bit more context, i thought I'd add in a magician's fire bowl, complete with mysterious coloured flames to help the spell along.

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Photo Friday- Light

Since the topic this week is 'light' , I thought it would be seasonal to post some pictures of turnip lanterns.

In Scotland, its easy to buy large turnips or swedes to make reasonable sized turnip lanterns roughly the size of a soccer ball.
However, here in France, turnips are very small - so it can take a lot of searching around the fruit and veg shops to get turnips [navet] that are large enough to carve and hold even a tea-light candle.

In fact, every year I choose the larger orange-sized turnips on offer [which are still tiny by Scottish standards] , the assistants point out that they not taste as nice as the sweet miniature ones which are about the size of a plum.
They still give off a pretty orange light -especially when grouped -and the smell of gently roasting turnip is one of my main memories of halloween.


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Halloween

Halloween has been very quiet this year. Usually, we have a Halloween party with plenty of kids playing traditional games and dressing up. This year , Halloween seems to have crept up on us without warning.

We have had a lot of visitors this autumn, so maybe that is part of the reason why we have been so unprepared.

Also, the weather is still warm and sunny most of the time , so it doesn't seem like autumn at all.

My kids went out yesterday dressed up to go 'trick or treating' in Antibes after they visited the orthodontist. I'm not sure the orthodontist would have said that collecting bags of sweets is the ideal passtime straight after a dental appointment-but I suppose its a once a year thing, after all.

Halloween has fluctuated in popularity here. When we first came 10 years ago, Halloween was unheard of [except for Horror films]. So we had to persuade people that it was not a horror fest.

After a few years, Halloween became quite popular and shops started buying in Halloween disguises and decorations and lots of towns put on activities and parades for children. Two or 3 years ago things went quiet- there were articles in the French press and opposition from church about bring in foreign festivals.
Now , Halloween seems to be rumbling along quietly with a lot of shops giving out sweets and stickers to disgusied children. [Unlike in Scotland , kids here go from shop to shop rather than from house to house to collect their 'Halloween' bounty]

I had some fun yesterday making some paper dolls/ dress-up teddies for Halloween

Click on the images and either print directly from the browser or save the image and print from a photo manipulation or similar program.



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Paris - deuxième partie

The Eiffel Tower from a distance on a stereotypical Parisan grey day.

I think i'd previously written off the Eiffel tower as huge but odd-looking -however I think I have changed my mind now that I've had time to wander around underneath and really look at how the tower was constructed.

There are actually some interesting decorative ironwork edges and the giant rivets and bolts that hold the tower together make it an almost lacy edged creation . In fact, it reminded me of some of the crocheted and starched doilies and table runners that used to be common in Scotland , when I was a kid.



Even the drains looked lacy.
I was surprised to see a grey heron in the pond at the foot of the tower. I think the bird was trying to catch an easy meal as the pond was full of large carp - but I didn't see it actually manage to catch any of the fish while I was there.

I think the heron was a random visitor, since the flock of ducks acted very oddly . When the heron flew off, all of the ducks turned to face the direction the heron flew in and started quacking and pointing into the sky with their beaks - like a bird version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
My motive for visiting Paris was the "Love at First Sight, Love to Draw" SCBWI Illustrators workshop with Tomie dePaola and Martha Rago.

Martha Rago is the Associate Creative Director at HarperCollins Children’s books and she gave a lecture about what sort of things grab her attention when she gets unsolicited submissions. She used some actual examples of submitted book dummies and showed the progress from the dummy and early character sketches to the finished book.

She also said that she really loved getting promo postcards from illustrators. Apparently she pins them to her notice boards and keeps the ones she particularly liked in boxes, which she searches through when looking for an illustrator for a new project.

She also likes to get repeat postcards and feels that getting a succcession of postcards [particularly ones that have some sort of ongoing theme-even if it is just a seasonal theme] helps the artist attract the art directors attention and shows consistency.

There was a promo postcard competition as part of the workshop - my entry is below.

In Tomie dePaola's workshop in the afternoon, we learned a lot about Tomie's career and workstyle- and laughed a lot about the ubiquitous bunny rabbits in the children's book world.

Later, we worked on breaking down two strange sentences into a sequence of three illustrations in a short time [about 20 minutes]

The sentences were "Carrot and Blankey were friends. They had fun together."

It was a really useful excercise, I thought. It was difficult trying to work on something that would work without actually making Carrot a carrot.
I managed to come up with two different ideas for the sentences - Carrot as a rabbit with a favourite comfort blanket was the first
Quite a few other people made Carrot a rabbit - it seemed a good rabbit name to me.
After the 'ordinary' version, I wondered about having the characters as aliens. They appealed to me more than the first version.
I was surprised how many other illustrators made large sized images rather than thumbnail sketches or images slightly bigger than thumbnails- these were half thumb sized.

Thumbnail sketches can really help with brainstorming ideas. They can also be really good for playing with composition and even better they are quick and easy and can be scrapped without investing too much time and energy in the idea.

The workshop day seemed to pass by in a blur -I think a few of us would have liked a 2 day event rather than a single day - I suppose i need to start saving for the next SCBWI workshop.


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Paris

I was in Paris last weekend. It was very chilly in comparison to Nice- 12 degrees C instead of 24.

I stayed in the 15th arrondissement at a little cheap and cheerful hotel, close to Parsons Paris
where the SCBWI Illustration workshop was being held.

The hotel was fairly close to the Eiffel Tower so I spent some time wandering around the foot of the Tower and the Champs-de-mars.

I was in a silly mood, so I made this image of the Eiffel Tower using a few of the photos I took.

This is a bridge over the River Seine just by the Eiffel Tower - Pont d'Iéna. Built between 1806 and 1813 and improved in the 1930s , the bridge links the Champs-de-Mars/Eiffel Tower and the Trocadero.

There are 5 arches ornamented with the Imperial eagle motif, just visible. One of the bateau mouches [fly boats] is just about to go under the bridge.
This is the old école professionnelle et ménagère de jeunes filles across from my hotel . It was originally a school to train young working class girls to become domestic servants or other occupations [eg seamstresses]. Its now an ordinary upper secondary school [lycée] for both boys and girls.


My Gran was a lady's maid for an aristocratic family in London in the the early 20th century, so I've always found social history of the period interesting.

I wish I knew more about my Gran's experiences but she was never too keen on talking about her early life; even though she would have been considered a success- Ladies' maids were very high up in the heirarchy of domestic servants.

She told us about having her hair shingled and being considered very fashionable, taking tea in various fashionable tearooms on her days off, meeting my grandfather [he was in the Scot's Guards] and even seeing the Hilton Twins [who were famous conjoined twins], but kept her experiences as a servant pretty much hidden.


The Artillerie at the bottom of the Champ-de-mars; the Gorgon's head and dragon's were pretty fierce looking.
The Artillerie building is really elaborately decorated. It also seems to have a lot of bullet holes in the walls , maybe from the 2nd world war.
The Eiffel Tower early on an autumn morning; from the bottom of the champs-de-mars. The leaves on the trees were just starting to turn brown.


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Photo Friday- Innocence

I've been off gallivanting in Paris and then recovering this week so I have a backlog of things to blog about but felt I should get Photo Friday out of the way first.

After searching through hundreds of photos I couldn't come up with anything better, so I have to go with a fairly clichéd photo - my baby cousin sleeping during his dedication ceremony.


I have missed a few appropriate photos over the years. I wish I had managed to take a photo of our old cat who would catch butterflies and then sit trying to look innocent while the tell tale fragments of wing poked from his mouth.


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Menton

We've had quite a few vistors over the last few weeks, which has meant a bit less time for everyday stuff, like blogging, but also tends to mean we do more exploring of the Cote d'Azur.

There are a lot of places on the 'need to visit' list and until recently, Menton was one of these.

Menton has been described as the most beautiful town on the cote d'Azur or 'La perle de la France' [France's pearl]. I think we visited on the wrong day to really appreciate Menton as you can see from the heavy clouds covering the mountains.

Menton has a very mild climate and became a popular winter resort for wealthy British people in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The large white building in front of the mountains is the Winter Palace - originally a luxury hotel but now converted into apartments.

Menton is famous for citrus fruits and has a Lemon festival [Fête du Citron] in each year. It's similar to a carnival but all the floats and creations are made of oranges and lemons.


The tower hidden behind the tall houses is Saint Michael's basilica [Basilique Saint Michael ]
This is a view from the other side - looking up from the beach with a view of the houses of Old Town in front of the church
A very narrow alleyway leading to the seafront.


I took a few photos of houses decorated with painted friezes and trompe d'oiel . Some were obviously old and faded but some had been repainted.


This is the Bastion de Saint Antoine - a small fortress intended to defend Menton from sea attacks. Work started in the early 17th century -its quite an attractive building -it looked very much like a child's toy castle.

The bastion is now the Musée Jean Cocteau - you can just see some of Cocteau's pebble mosaics under the arches. Unfortunately, it was raining quite heavily and we were heading back to the station to catch the train when we came across the museum/Bastion.

Apparently Jean Cocteau was working in Menton at age 70 and painted the murals for the 'salle des mariages' [wedding room] in the Menton townhall

I will probably go back to see the Cocteau exhibits at some point.




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Photo Friday- Thin

By chance i took a photo of a jenny long legs the other day. It was quite a large one , with its spindly legs all stretched out and seemed like an ideal photo for the photo friday topic.

It seemd that my kids couldn't remember ever seeing one before, which surprised me. My son thought the jenny was a huge mosquito at first.

I had to spend some time expalining that Jenny long legs [scottish name] , daddy long legs, crane fly and lollygaggers are different names for the same insect.

They have very fragile thin legs that break off easily if someone or something tries to catch them, which is probably a survival mechanism.

Many people are scared of jenny long legs becuase they share a lot of spider attributes with a buzzy bumbly erratic flight -and bang against walls and windows in a peculiar manner.




A closer view of the Halteres- a pair of modified wings which are used to balance the insect in flight.


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Dawn

Now that la rentrée has passed and my kids are back into a school routine, I up and around early enough to observe the autumn sunrises [and take photos if something particularly appeals].

People going to their work between 6.30 am and 7 am do give me some strange looks if i whip a camera put of my bag. I think most people are in 'rush around' mode and don't notice the sky, even when it is a wash of pink and purple and orange and gold. Even on rainy mornings, when the sky is dull with thick cloud cover , there is often an interesting pattern of whites and greys that looks like the water used to clean gouache from paintbrushes.

I took these photos on Friday morning- the sky was glorious, especially against the dark branches of trees.
A single palm tree in the dawn light.


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Photo Friday- Anger

I wasn't sure i had anything fitting the topic, Anger. I think I tend to avoid topics like that, on the whole.

Then I remembered a photo I'd taken of a crabby swan pecking at a juvenile swan. Swans are usually very serene looking birds but when they are angry, they can be very agressive.

During nesting season, they will sometimes drive away other birds, animals and even people. Some swans will attack canoes, rowing boats and jet skis if they intrude on the swan's territory.

Their large wingspan and considerable weight [15 kilos, over 30lbs] makes them quite formidable if they are in a bad mood.

We were told as kids that an angry swan could break someones arm , though I don't know of anyone that ever happened to. I suppose it was intended to make us back away if a swan ever started hissing at us.


The same swans in a more relaxed mood.


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A variety of bugs

This bee [Bombus hortorum , Small Garden Bumblebee think] has a bald patch on its thorax. This type of bee has a very long tongue which means it can choose flowers with more complex arrangements of petals which other bees can't harvest from , but it also means they lose hairs in the process.Greenbottles, Phaenicia sericata are my favourite blow flies , if its possible to have a favourite blowfly without being Renfield from Bram Stoker's book, Dracula.

However, I just like their metallic green bodies and how well they reflect their surroundings, I don't actually eat them.

One of the greenbottle's brethern but taken from underneath the leaf. I was impressed with how well the silhouette showed through, with even the wing outlines visible.
A small, slightly faded looking Painted Lady butterfly Vanessa cardui
Some of these butterflies hibernate in the 'south' during the winter - I'm not sure if we are far enough south though.
This is probably a mallow skipper Carcharodus alceae-it seemed to prefer being in awkward shady places between plants, which wasn't helpful from my point of view.
This is not an indistinct bird but snatched photo of a Hummingbird hawk moth Macroglossum stellarum.
It is hovering beside the flowerheads and feeding on nectar using its long tongue. It looks uncannily like a hummingbird [which are not native to Europe]

They fly mainly by day in bright sunlight. Their hovering wingbeats make a thrumming noise that reminded me of a toy windmill whierring in the wind [I think these are called pinwheels in the US] . Apparently hummingbird hawk moths have been studied extensively and found have a good memory and the ability to learn to distinguish colours.

They are supposed to be abundant in the Mediterranean region but I don't recall ever seeing one before - and they are quite large and distinctive so I think I would have noticed.

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Photo Friday- Girl

As soon as the topic, 'girl' came into my inbox, I knew exactly which photo to post.
A couple of months back, I saw this little girl looking wistfully into the water at Marineland . The colour of the water, the rail and wire fence and the stripes of her outfit just seemed to make a perfect photo.


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Photo Friday- Bright

I took this photo in January while sitting at a table outside Antibes train station. The sun came up from behind Antibes old town and marina and was at just the right angle to be blindingly bright. I think it was the most startling sunrise I've seen or photographed.


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Architectural bits and pieces

At the moment in Nice , there are a lot of roads dug up and diverted in order to put in the new tramway and I wish I had taken photos of the progress. I didn't think of that till I saw the shiny new rails being positioned.
I have been trying to find some photos of the original Tramway from 1900 but not had a great deal of success. There is a wikipedia article with one photo - I like to compare old photos with the modern urban scenery so I will have to look harder.

Nice has many impressive buildings -many are ornately decorated with carved stonework, plasterwork, mosaic and complex ironwork.

I've been trying to collect photos of some bits and pieces that appeal to me when i see them but its quite easy to just go from A to B without noticing the interesting details.

I liked this building- it reminded me of a Rapunzel tower so I suspect i might use it as an illustratioin refernce in the future.A lot of buildings here fit into very strange footprints this building is basically triangular with this turret end at the sharp end.

I liked this lion sculpture that was highlighted with a reflected rainbow. I wasn't sure what was creating the rainbow at first but it turned out to be a reflective streetsign that was catching the sun at just the right angle.

A different lion- this one has more of a foliate masklook to it.

There are lots of mythological or semi mythological statues and friezes. Some are related to the name of the building but others seem to be random decoration.

I liked this dancing drummer girl and lyre playing youth. I'm not sure who the woman/Goddess holding the birds is meant to be.

Quite an imposing statue of Athena, complete with winged Victory and shield and spear. It stands outside an Art Deco appartment block. There were some coiled snakes at here feet based on snakes found near the Acropolis in Athens but they didn't photograph well so I will need to go back and take photos of them another time.This is one of the lanterns outside the Opera House in Old Nice. I'm not a fan of opera but the building is stunning.

Some chestnut leaves and chestnuts immortalised in ironwork.

Some window bars decorated with elephants - really nice patina on this, and a change from plain 'utility' ones.
This is one of my favourites- I liked the idea of having heroic bats as decoration under the house eaves. I wonder if the original house owner asked for the bats specifically or if they were added by the architect.

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