Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather. (John Ruskin).
Bucharest/London/Belfast/Minnesota/Genoa/Cadiz/Tokyp/Ulan Bataar.
Ink, oil pencil, graphite, gouache, charcoal on papers.
This video is from a series of films about materials and tools and how they are used.
In my toolbox I have some items that have been with me forever, and some things that need to be replenished regularly. I have a cheap paintbrush that I have been using since university that never loses its shape, is easy to clean and a real pleasure to paint with. I don’t know what I’d do without this brush. I also have a far more expensive sable brush that I feel the same way about when i’m using it, but day by day it becomes smaller, rattier and it’s only matter of time that it will be best put in the bin.
Summa cum laude: circa. 1990.
So, I’m looking at different items, and seeing how people use them, what they prefer and idiosyncratic observations about them. Stay tuned for more films that will be added as and when.
The first in the series is Knife or Scissors.
Knife or Scissors: what do you prefer?
Thanks to Coralie Bickford-Smith for sending these sightings of this book in TATE Modern bookshops.
Photograph by Coralie Bigfoot-Smith
Photo: CBS
Last week at Hurlingham Prep School we read Marshall Armstrong to two large groups of children in the gymnasium. The students were a terrific audience, asking some fine questions and eager to get involved in the readings by answering questions I had for them about the book.
I also saw the brand new library which puts any library I ever had at school to shame. It even had cushions to sit on.
There was only one difficult moment during the entire visit, when a student raised his hand and asked the question that has no place in any school visit. But unlike any author before me, I chose to answer honestly and truthfully: “I’m thirty-nine in August”.
Thank you to Elena and Georgia for all their help.
What you missed.
I will be visiting Hurlingham Prep School in Putney, London, on November 16th to read Marshall Armstrong is New To Our School to the students as part of Anti-bullying Week.
Starting at a new school isn’t always easy, but Marshall doesn’t seem too bothered by it all. This story came to me from a memory of an American boy who appeared in my class one day at school. He didn’t have a uniform yet, had a strange accent and was fearless. He was just different. The boy was only there for a month and then he just didn’t come back. I always wondered what his story was.
I hope Hurlingham Prep school like me.
Thanks be to Debbie who made and shipped me this adorable plush based on the dog toy from the My Dog, Hen book. It stands 42 inches high and is built like a battleship. I don’t know much about sewing, but that is some fine stitching. The 3D conversion is very satisfying.
Stay tuned: a downloadable pattern for the plush will be available from this website so that you too can make one of your very own. Thanks Deb!
Featuring a Hen dogtoy plush made by Debbie Trollip. Photo by staringintospace.me
Modelled by staringintospace.me
The coalshed door.
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate.
In the cafe is a wall covered in photos of dogs (mostly). Being polaroids there is room for their name written in ink below.
A dog’s name says more about the owner than the animal that bears it. I called the dog in Hen Hen because it was reusing a word commonly used as a noun for something not associated with a dog. Sustainability is a key theme in the book.
Dogs reuse things a lot themselves, like sticks that are no longer a part of a tree. And old tennis balls that were once good for tennis. And shoes which they think their owners no longer need.
Dog photos courtesy of The Little Bread Pedlar (Primrose Hill).
Give a dog a tasty name and eat him. (Chinese Proverb).
Frankfurt Book Fair ist hier… so is this German edition of My Dog, Hen.
“Please send me your last pair of shoes, worn out with dancing as you mentioned in your letter, so that I might have something to press against my heart.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
“Dogs dig old shoes.” – Hen.