I hope it’s not too late to say “Happy New Year”! It’s only Thirteenth Night, after all. (And I notice people are being a little bit cautious this year …)
Some Recent Nonsense
A pointless saying I woke up with one morning.
Some romantic nonsense. (I’m becoming very interested in small figures adding their ha’porth to the text above them.)
Sketchbook Whippet Drawings
Some drawings from my sketchbook of the whippet I sometimes look after. I think the next challenge in drawing her will be trying to capture all the amazing origami whippets do with their legs when they’re lying down.
The Recluse
Another poem and cartoon about spending a lot of time on your own. (I included the imps for their impish humour.)
a shed of should
Something else I’m exploring at the moment: poems with cartoons.
Nancy
Over the last few months I’ve been drawing a lot of comic strips and have been enjoying drawing them more than anything I’ve done for a long time. I’ll be posting more over the coming weeks. I’m particularly interested in the ways one can use speech bubbles physically in a strip. Here’s one called “Nancy”.
Dog Sitting and Sitting Dogs
I’ve been thinking about and drawing dogs a lot recently so here are some quick sketches I’ve shared on Twitter. (I’ve been looking after a couple of friends’ dogs so have had plenty of doggy company lately.)
I’m also working on a new project about dogs, but more news of that as it develops.
Upcoming: Newts and Victorians
Endangered Animals Trail
This month there’s another opportunity to see my Endangered Animals Trail (originally made for SITSelect festival), this time at the Museum in the Park in Stroud. It runs during half-term, Saturday 15th toSunday 23rd February. There are more details here: https://museuminthepark.org.uk/calendar/2020/2/15/endangered-species-museum-i-spy-trail
More Victorians Coming Soon
Also over the next few months I’ll be performing my Growing Victorians in Your Garden show in a few different places. On March 14th at 11am I’ll be in the Anglican Chapel at Arnos Vale Cemetery in Bristol. More details here.
(Image from www.arnosvale.org.uk)
On Saturday May 30th I’ll be in Bath at the Museum of Bath at Work (the most Victorian venue I can think of in that Regency city – a really fascinating museum!) Time yet to be confirmed.
Then, on Monday 22nd of June, I’ll be doing a short performance in the evening as part of Clerkenwell Artslab at the Betsey Trotwood pub (just don’t bring donkeys!)
More dates will be added and I’ll keep updating the list on the Growing Victorians in Your Garden (Performance) page on this website.
The Last Few Months
Over the last few months I’ve been making a hand-made book (of sixteen pages) to go with the Growing Victorians show and to sell afterwards.
The plan is to keep expanding the material in the book as I perform the show all round the place, until it finally becomes a full-length illustrated book. (This way I am also guaranteed to think about Victorians at every spare minute, which is just fine.)
I also gave my Victorians a little outing on Sunday (9th February) at the Museum in the Park in Stroud. This was part of the “Stroud Snowdrop Celebration” and my modest, potted Victorians with their gentle nodding heads fitted right in, I felt.
More Victorian news to follow (including plans for a pop up show at a local plant nursery).
Lastly, I am back using Instagram @billjonesillustration and will be putting up a lot of drawings and illustrations. So please do follow if you enjoy my work!
Badges, Victorians, Crows
Sweet May is gone, and now must poets croon
The praises of rather stupid June.
(Patrick Kavanagh)
Photo by Deborah Roberts Photography
May has been a busy month. I put my Endangered Animals Trail into shop windows around Stroud town centre for the SITSelect Festival and developed my new Growing Victorians in your Garden performance. There are pictures of both on the website.
I enjoyed doing the Endangered Animals Trail and felt it stretched my drawing abilities (drawing other animals than crows!) in a way that was welcome. It was good also to collaborate with SITSelect’s Lizzi Walton and with Stroud Valleys Project, a local conservation charity who provided useful help and advice. I also enjoyed making badges with my new badge maker and will hopefully be doing a lot more of these.
Over three successive weekends I developed my new Growing Victorians in your Garden performance. I started off with 5 minute and then 10 minute versions to small audiences in a small shed attached to Atelier in Stroud as part of the Site Festival. It was incredibly useful to run this material close up to small audiences of all ages and to see what worked (and for whom). Many thanks to all who crammed into the shed to listen.
For the third weekend at the Stroud Steampunk Weekend I then developed it into a 30 minute performance and was pleased with how it went down with two very awake (and Victorianophile!) audiences. I made a model of Brunel specially for this event and was heartened by the alacrity with which they got the Box Tunnel joke! (It was also interesting to spend a weekend at a Steampunk event, a world with which I am fairly unfamiliar.)
Many thanks to all who came to these performances. I am keen to develop the Victorians show, so if you would like me to come to your venue or garden party, please get in contact.
And what does June hold? A quieter time, I think, but with a lot of crows.
(Apologies to Alexander Pope)
(There’s also a new gallery of CROWS on the website to have a look at, if you so desire.)
Upcoming
At the moment I am busily drawing pictures of endangered animals. This is for the “Discover the Endangered Animal” trail that will take place in Stroud this May (from 8th to 26th of May) as part of the SIT Select Art Trail. My drawings will feature as cardboard cut-outs in shop windows around town, joined together as a trail for children with a free badge at the end of it.
Above is an earlier attempt at a pangolin, who looks far too melancholy to include.
This year will have a particularly Victorian theme as I am developing my “Growing Victorians in Your Garden” book (as featured on this website) as a live performance/illustrated talk.
The first performances of this will be at the Stroud Steampunk Weekend on 25th and 26th of May. On the two weekends prior to this I will be turning the small shed at Atelier Craft Club in Stroud into a potting shed and running various activities related to growing Victorians.
More details to follow. And if you are interested in putting on this illustrated talk, please drop me a line through the Contact page.