Politics, activism, social memoir, reportage and fashion comics
Some kids are completely mesmerised when they see a screen.
At first, I thought they must come from families where they aren’t allowed as much TV time as our daughter is (against my better judgement, I might say).
But apprently not – it’s just that the screen makes them go like rabbits in headlights. Anyway, the good thing is, they sit so still and you can get some real drawing time in.
Poor Booner. She’s our oldest cat, and has never got over her own nervousness. She was a rescue cat, and we think she must have been badly treated in her previous life. No amount of love and cuddles (slightly too enthusiastic cuddles sometimes, from our daughter, I’m afraid) have allowed her to relax completely.
This week she’s been diagnosed with a hyperactive thyroid. What with £107 worth of blood tests, and medication for the rest of her life, it’s a good job we love her.
In November 2012, I decided to draw the clothes I wore, every day, for a month.
And as if that wasn’t enough of a challenge, I also drew my daughter’s clothes. At the end of the month, a good friend commented that the illustrations would make a great comic.
She said one thing that really struck me: that these clothes may seem pretty ordinary now, but in a few years’ time, the picutres could stand as a historic document.
So I cleaned all the sketches up and started putting them into a printable format. What you see here is me playing about with ideas for the cover.
In my day job, my boss has a penchant for extarordinarily long blog titles – I think that’s influenced my choice of title here.
My summing-up post at the end of the whole project – complete with pie charts! – can be seen here, and clicking here will take you to all the pictures on Flickr.
All right, so this lovely thing happened.
I’ve had this Gudrun Sjoden dress pinned to my wish I could justify that Pinterest board for.. well, for 25 weeks, according to Pinterest itself.
Something about the pattern and the colours really appealed to me, and the cut is one of the few that actually suits my frame.
It had become a benchmark in my mind – I’d see a cheaper dress that I liked, in a shop, and think, ‘yeah, but if I buy two like that, I might as well buy the Cirkus dress, and the Cirkus dress is definitely twice as nice as that, so..’
As we know, it’s quite easy to justify any purchase with this sort of logic eventually. ‘Ooh, I’m so good, I didn’t buy these fourteen things I briefly liked the look of, so now I can definitely reward myself with the thing I really want’.
And that’s the stage I’d reached last week. The Gudrun sale was on, my resolve had weakened, and I was going to buy the dress.
Until… disaster!
Oh, I’m q sad I missed my chance to get the @GudrunSjodenUK Cirkus dress. I was too strict with myself and now it’s gone :(
— Myf Nixon (@mockduck) July 19, 2013
The tweet says it all. The leggings were still available, the tunic was there, but there was no dress to be had. And that’s when the amazing thing happened. Gudrun Sjoden tweeted me to say they’d look out for a dress and send it to me, if I’d draw it here.
Talk about an offer you can’t refuse – why, even if I’d bought it with my own money, you know I’d be sitting down to draw that thing.
Now in the end, they couldn’t actually locate a dress in my size, and they sent me the tunic. I have to say, I wouldn’t have chosen the tunic myself, BUT, now I’ve tried it, I’m sold. It comes with a belt, and you can wear the tunic Robin Hood style, a little bit pulled over the belt, which – rather than emphasise voluminous post-baby tummy, which I suppose was my fear – actually looks rather nice. This tunic is going to be paired with black skinny jeans and boots all autumn long.
It *was* fun to draw – though you’ll note that I didn’t draw the whole pattern. Artistic licence!
To make the whole thing even more special, it came in not only a floral-patterned envelope, but a polka dot tote bag. It’s as if they knew about me and polka dots.
And there you are, my first ever ‘sponsored post’. Almost certainly my last, though, y’know, if Fat Face, Bravissimo, Boden, or *breathes* Marimekko would like me to draw myself in any of these, I am right here, and, evidence shows, fully amenable. :)
We went on a family holiday to St Ives for a week, and I kept a little sketch diary of everything we did. Not having a scanner handy, I was photographing the pages on my phone every night and uploading those images – but you can see a completely cleaned up and much more readable version here.
It’s always very interesting to see how a period of intensive drawing always begins wobbly, and becomes much more assured as the time goes on.
When are the occasions you really don’t have time to sit down and draw?
– Getting married
– Having a baby
– Moving house.
Unfortunately, these are also the times when it would be really nice to send people a hand-illustrated card with your news. I did manage hand-drawn invitations when we got married. I sure as anything didn’t manage a birth announcement, or any kind of drawing for about 6 years after. But here is a picture which I’ll be sending to my friends about our change of address (I’ve removed the street number and name, you know, in case of crazy people, but on the original, the number is in that yellow circle, and the name runs along the street. The map isn’t particularly accurate or to scale).
I wanted to convey a couple of things about the street that we’ve moved to: that it consists of a terrace of little houses that dips comically in the middle; and that it ends at the foot of a towering hill. As it happens, there’s a TV mast at the top of the hill, so it seemed like a nice idea to have that broadcasting our news.
Amazingly, the scanner has started working after the move. I still can’t get the printer component of the same machine to start working though, so getting these printed out and physically sent to people is more of a challenge than it really ought to be.
Myfanwy Tristram