Internet Sketchbook Blog: tribute

Showing posts with label tribute. Show all posts

Wednesday, 15 January 2025

Janey Godley (1961-2024)

Hello everyone. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

I know its late to say this, but I had been busy....

... and not 100%.

2024 turned out to be my least productive year for .... reasons.

Regular readers would know that I usually publish a Christmas card every year. I did think about making one, but ... reasons. When I finally got around to considering making one for 2024 I found some sad news. Comedian Janey Godley had passed away, due to cancer.

Back in 2016 Janey Godley and her daughter Ashley Storrie, chaired a stand-up comedy workshop organized by the National Autistic Society Scotland. The goal of it was to get a group of autistic adult to perform a routine in the Scottish Parliament. I was one of them. It was a great time. I enjoyed every minute of it.

I'm glad I met her (and Ashley).

Some time ago I had an idea for an Inktober challenge to draw comedians, with Janey included on the list. I actually told Ashley (via Facebook) the idea. But it didn't happen.

Its from this dormant idea that I drew this tribute to Janey.

Hope you like it.

Sunday, 7 January 2018

How Was It Done - 50 Years of sparkling skies and a militaristic condiment (and 5 Years of Internet Sketching)

The idea of making a tribute to Sargent Pepper has been one I have had since I realized that its 50^th birthday was coming back sometime in 2016. It was a backburner idea while I muddled with my Pokémon history tribute and my computer book. Then I realized that 2017 was also going to be my fifth year as a blogger (My first post on this blog was posted in November 2012) and the Sargent Pepper cover provided a great way to celebrate that milestone.

I did want to start work on it as soon as 2017 began and planned to have it done by June (when the original album was released in 1967). But life intervened. It wasn’t until November when work on this tribute really began. In the following weeks before Christmas on any free time I had I was busy with a sketchbook and tablet/phone (for reference material). I admit that the drawings were done in a hurry, so its not my best quality.

Long before that, when deciding who to put in my version of the cover, I asked a couple of friends for suggestions. It was one of them who came up with the great idea of putting in every person who was a “Fifth Beatle.” This idea probably filled up one third of the cover. The rest were a mix of friend suggestions, links to trivial facts about the album, and personal choice.

An original plan I had was to have other artists to contribute stuff to it and to have portraits of them as the psychedelic Beatles in the centre of it. But this was scrapped when I decided to place the VW Beetle in the centre of it. I did get two artists to make stuff for it. There was a third I wanted to collaborate with, but he was too busy. I did consider using a piece of work he previously made (and posted online) as his contribution. I found a piece that would be a good addition and I asked him (UNLIKE SOME). He declined to have it used and thanked me for asking.

I did get two unlikely people to make a thing or two for this tribute. One is a student of my drawing classes and another is a friend who only started taking art recently because of my work. Emma drew the Alolan form Exeggutor and Gary drew Alphonse Elric (I asked him to draw him with a cat inside him. He delivered something way better than I imagined.).

It was in the final week before Christmas that the drawing was done and scanned into Photoshop. It was challenge for my old laptop (the same one I have used to post that first post back in 2012 when it was brand new). It took until about 2am on Christmas Eve that the version you saw was complete. I did think about colouring it in, but there was no time for that (and then I thought about the craze for adult colouring books, so I figured that getting you to add the colour would give you a means to explore the piece more closely….)

But for those too lazy to do that, here it is in full techincolor.

Work in progress.
(Posted to show that I am working on it.)

Done

For those wanting a challenge, there is at least one reference to every song in the album in this piece. Can you spot them?

Sunday, 24 December 2017

50 Years of sparkling skies and a militaristic condiment (and 5 Years of Internet Sketching)

50 years ago an Pop Art icon was released to an expecting public - The Beatles eighth studio album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Although the music was a sign of the band's move to psychedelia, leading to many musicologists to suggest that this was the world's earliest concept album, what was more memorable is the cover.

Created by Peter Blake and Jann Haworth from a drawing by Paul McCartney, art-directed by Robert Fraser and photographed by Michael Cooper at an extravagant cost of nearly £3,000, the resulting collage has become (according to author Ian Inglis) "a guidebook to the cultural topography of the decade" that is the 1960s.

It's inner sleeve art was done by Dutch design collective and band The Fool. Originally The Beatles wanted them to make a psychedelic front cover for the album, but art dealer Robert Fraser persuaded them not to and suggested Peter Blake to do the cover instead. Included with the album were a bonus gift of a cut-out sheet made by Blake and Haworth that features -

a postcard-sized portrait of Sgt. Pepper (based on a statue from Lennon's house that was used on the front cover).
a fake moustache
two sets of sergeant stripes
two lapel badges
and a stand-up cut-out of the band in their uniforms

The album is also noted for what happened on its back. It was the first album to have its songs lyrics written on the back, so you no longer have to guess what John Lennon was saying by placing your ear close to the speaker. (although it made no difference in the task of interpreting them for any meaning what so ever).

It didn't take long for the world to recognise Blake and Haworth's genius. The cover won a Grammy that same year for Best Album Cover, Graphics Art.

Since then the cover has become so iconic it has led to a number of parodies and remakes, including...

Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention's parody inside art on their 1968 We're Only in It for the Money album.
This MAD magazine cover from 2002.
The "heroes and heroines of the 21st century" SLC Pepper mural in Salt Lake City, painted in 2004 by Jann Haworth to address the imbalance of race and gender in the original.
And this one that was made to commemorate the famous people who died in 2016.

Oh, and my tribute to the album's 50th anniversary

(which also happens to be the same year as this blog's 5th anniversary (two birds with one stone)).

Hope you like it. It took ages to make!

The past few months have been .... (I can't find the right words) for me.

I hope next year things get better.

Happy "I survived winter" celebrations everyone.

(I don't want a society that forces me to say "Merry Christmas" to everyone.

Its become boring and its become hatred fuel to a biggest bunch of killjoys of our time.

I want a choice in December.

I don't want a world full of broken robots that say "Merry Christmas"

each time they sense a person walk pass them.

I want variety.

And I think most people (the people who don't bother voting or ranting online) feel the same too.

Don't let those killjoys win their imaginary non-existant "war."

UPDATE - A post about how this tribute was made featuring a list of who's in it can be accessed by clicking ....

HERE

Thursday, 6 June 2013

Haruhi Suzumiya 10th Anniversary Tribute Drawing

On this day ten years ago, a light novel was published in Japan that introduced to the world to a 21st century icon in the world of science fiction. It was the perfect character the genre needed - a head strong woman who can easily command a crew to do anything she wanted who also had some insecurities. She's smart, athletic and attractive, which could nearly make her a dreaded Mary Sue character - except for one fact.... She can control the world she lives in, but she doesn't know that.
Want more clues? She's a high school girl who's good enough to fit in any after school club, but she's disinterested in them. Because of this she starts her own club and rakes in a few students to join it. But, the students she raked in (by chance?) know of her abilities and would do anything to keep her from knowing her true powers.
If you haven't worked out who this is let, this should give you that "click" in your memory banks. The club's aim is to find evidence of time travel, extraterritorial life and psychic abilities (its Sci-Fi after all) and those students who know of her abilities happen to be a time traveller, an alien and an ESPer (and they like to keep those facts secret from her).

Given up? Her name is in the title of the book that was first published 10 years ago from today - The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya by Nagaru Tanigawa (and illustrated by Noizi Ito). Since then, Haruhi and her merry band that is the SOS Brigade have moved from the printed word to manga, an animated series, a few games, and a full-length feature film (which is 2.5hours long (most animated films are around the 90minute mark)) plus a few spin-offs online and on print.
During her first decade she has become a huge star. Don't believe me, type her name into Google, and you'll find the many thousands of fan artwork, fan fictions, AMVs and tributes to, about and featuring her and members of her brigade. It was her popularity (among many other products of Japanese culture) that led the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC) to request that YouTube remove clips claimed to be under the copyright of their members in 2006 (a sign that historians could say indicates when Japan began to realise the true scale of their animation's popularity outside their country).

I can't vandalize her. She's an icon, like the Queen of England or The Beatles. That's why this entry isn't an "Act of Cultural Vandalism." It's an Act of Cultural Respect.

And now the real reason of this entry - my anniversary tribute to Haruhi and the SOS Brigade...