
An ink sketch of fellow travellers on the beach in Oaxaca.
An ink sketch of fellow travellers on the beach in Oaxaca.
A small and delightful project: drawings for the office swap meet (which I’m also organising). My dayjob office is by far the most diverse place I’ve worked, but there are still subcategories of colleague. So I wanted to draw people who’d look like real colleagues… but not exactly like any one colleague. I think one or two (or three) did end up being very close to real individuals. I’ll see if they spot themselves!
Mo tools, mo joy!
The book whose cover I drew, “Mujeres Situdas: Las Parteras Autónomas en México” is out now on Amazon! Go ahead and buy!
More sketches based on people flitting by… a happy man at a ramen restaurant, girls passing the coffee shop in Roma and La Condesa.
Sketches from Calle Pedregal around the corner from the embassy. People glimpsed on the street or in the juice bar, me trying to pay attention to the detail in glimpses, without staring, drawing without them noticing…
Smoking ladies on a tiled bench outside a sex shop.
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Nuorille suunnattu kirja “Jumalan Niskalenkissä“, johon tein värityskuvat, on julkaistu! Lasten Keskuksen ja Kirjapajan 85-sivuinen kirja on toimintapaketti seurakunnille, jossa käsitellään Raamatun “vähemmän tunnettuja” tarinoita pelien, meditaatioiden, keskustelujen, kuunnelmien – ja värityskuvien – kautta.
Tarinat tuodaan ajankohtaiseen nuorten elämään. Verenvuototautinen nainen oli aikanaan syrjitty – kuten koulukiusatut. Antaako oma vanhempi minulle anteeksi – kuten tuhlaajapojalle? Mikä saisi nuoren naisen lähtemään anoppinsa matkaan ja jättämään kaiken tuntemansa – kuten Ruut, ja meidän aikojemme pakolaiset?
Kirjassa on myös mielenkiintoista taustatietoa Raamatun teksteistä toiminnan vetäjille. Nautin sekä värityskuvien keksimisestä ja piirtämisestä että muuhun materiaaliin tutustumisesta. Kannattaa investoida €35!
More ink and nib work: people on the streets of Mexico.
From my sketchbook: some Mexican street images.
One of my back burner projects is a comic about cycling in Dar es Salaam… Here’s a little preview, and meanwhile if you like the subject, you can join UWABA – the Dar cyclists’ association! (with more photos of this heroic organisation here.)
Seven Survivor is a Tanzanian band who play the urban music mchiriku. This is a sketch from a gig of theirs in November 2013. (Another famous mchiriku band is Jagwa Music.) Mchiriku is a frenetic genre based on high-octane staccato drumming. The rest of the instruments and the rapping seem almost secondary to the drumming, which sounds as if the drummer is on speed; or as if he’s anticipating the end of the world any second and is trying to fit in a lifetime of drumming into a few short minutes. The pace and intensity of the drums ebbs and flows but never falls below ‘feverish’. It’s a rhythm that you can only dance to by jumping up and down, but you’d have to do that very quickly – almost vibrating! – to keep pace with the drums. The band also featured a lethargic mini-Casio keyboard player; a rapper (the lyrics are political and worth getting into), another percussionist using sturdy sticks on a small coffee table, and a guy shaking home-made maracas made with nailed-together bottle tops. Here’s a link to one of their gigs. And the main man – the drummer – was in some sort of trance with his head thrown as far back as possible. You’d need to really be at one with the flow to manage to keep that level of intensity going for hours.