My friend Simon is visiting

I'm delighted to report that my erstwhile friend of many happy years, has via locomotive , made his way down sunny Brighton to the dank, wet, and slug-infested, environs of my very own Tracebridge House estate, here in Somerset/Devon.

Piratical Roughbustification

I do love drawing pirates!

Giant robot terrorises Tracebridge

This terrifying 7' monster crashed around the environs of Ashbrittle, Tracebridge and Appley. Who, what was it?

It's ok it was just Fin, my son.. wearing his fantastic final 3D course exhibition piece.

 

I was right proud of all his hard work and invention, all cleverly constructed from good old cardboard. Best of luck with the result! If you are around Taunton over the next couple of weeks I think the public can have access to the finial year shows at Somerset College of Art and Technology. In the Art Dept.

Really can't concentrate again

Unable to concentrate

 

The other night I couldn't sleep because my head was buzzing so much. I thought watching a film on the Lovefilm streaming service would cool my thoughts and put me in the mood for sleep. It was hopeless, I couldn't concentrate on the film at all, instead I became fascinated by the actors and ended up drawing them. This was only about 20 minutes in, and I never got to see the rest of it.

The Biro drawing is of my son, Fin, from another day.

The horde raise the roundhouse, piece by piece.

I spent the day at the Dumnonni LARP (Live Action Role Play) site of the village of Culhaven. We were dismantling the roundhouse. A dirty but fun job. It was particularly interesting to see the simple but clever construction. The fact that the roof was made of quite slender rafters, but in the circular cone configuration together created a great strength. It's due to be rebuilt a little larger, with higher walls and in a slightly different position.

The first tiles are removed. It's stood for about 9 years with a roof made of 4mm  plywood tiles and a rough thatch top. 

 

Here we are enjoying lunch with just the walls, of wattle and daub still standing. A couple of hours later and they were down too. By 3pm we'd cleared the site entirely.

I found two dead mice on the kitchen floor, an overnight gift from our cat, Dracula. I found the first one easily enough, but the second I discovered by treading on it in bare feet! I wanted to draw them.. and have done one sketch.

I've put them in the fridge so I can have another go at drawing them later today. Just hope no one puts them in the supper by mistake!

Brain Space 2

It doesn't make sense that I can't hold much information in my head, because on looking in the mirror I just see an acreage of forehead. This suggests a huge capacity, or an unusually thick skull.

Brain Space

Big clear out and an attempt at restarting this old blog. It may not last long, but it's worth a try! Shouldn't life be a constant revolution or reinvention, or both?

I was thinking about a problem, or rather difference, I've had all my life, from as young as I can remember. It stems from the fact that I cannot remember the names, or often details of all sorts of things, particularly in history, stories, musics, crikey! Everything. It has always put me at a terrific disadvantage in conversations that rely on this kind of knowledge, in fact shared knowledge. You know when you sit around chatting about a film, for example. I may know the film, but I have trouble joining in, or only at a very superficial level, because I can't remember the names of the actors, when it was made, the director, etc. often the name of the whole film. I just don't retain this information.

With music it has meant that I no longer listen to it, even though I like it. The problem is I can't remember the names of the musicians, pieces, songs I like, all the information you need to enter a record shop, or online store, to buy the music to listen to it. Sometimes I will hear something I like and ask someone who it is by, etc,. but I then forget the information.. even if I write it down I can look at the name, but the link to the piece is lost. The only area where I do retain the information is very, very well known artists and pieces, but only barely.

The upshot is that I often feel unable to join discussion about shared cultural experience. I'm guessing the reason is that my mind is very capable of storing visual information, as you'd expect of an artist. I do know many other artists though who can store both, visual and cultural information. the only conclusion I can come to is that I have rather a small brain.