Merry Christmas!

I wish the whole animation blogging community a Happy Xmas & New Year. Thank you everyone who checked out my blog this year & all who left comments, my Xmas present to you is a brand new blog dedicated to my favourite British caricaturist GARY. Check it out at garycatures.blogspot.com

Korper welten

Been meaning to post this for a while, since Drazen posted his sketche from the BODYWORLDS exhibition. Here's my version.

Recent sketches

Some sketches from & inspired by the colourful population of London town.

Voutch

My girlfriend took me to a gallery solely dedicated to Voutch which she had found on a street in the north west of the city. It's a small space but they sell many of his original paintings none of which I could afford to buy (they start at 900 euros) but it's great to see them for real. They're quite small too, most no bigger than A4. They also sell his books of course & posters & postcards too. Voutch heaven! The gallery is on Rue Guersant, Metro:Ternes.

Bestiaire Medieval

There seems to be a never ending amount of interesting exhibitions in Paris. Le Bestiaire Medieval at the Bibliotheque Nationale de France is marvellous. Dozens of ancient illuminated volumes from the library's archives are on show focusing on the way animals & mythological creatures were depicted in the middle-ages. The intricate, hand written/illustrated pages are mind-blowing and the way the animals are intepreted is often hilarious.

The Bibliotheque-musee de l'Opera currently stages an exhibition of designs & costumes from past operas curated by Christian Lacroix. The theme here is 'rouge' and Lacroix has basically selected every drawing & costume from the archives that is red.
It's great to see so many different drawings, styles & designs by such varied artists & fashion designers.

December in Paris

A selection of Eurostar travellers & Parisiennes in winter dress.

Sud America

In January this year I went on an expedition to Peru & Argentina with my Dad. I've started a blog dedicated to our trip which details our odyssey through the sketchbook I kept & the photos we took. It can be found here: southamericanjones.blogspot.com

Rousseau

Before life drawing at TATE Modern on Monday I spent the afternoon at the Henri Rousseau exhibition. The first room has an incredible sculpture by Emmanuel Fremiet. 'Gorilla carring off a woman' caused a sensation at the 1889 World Fair with its depiction of bestial savagery. It's a really dynamic piece - like a Frazetta drawing in three dimensions. Fremiet was Master of Drawing at Paris' Natural History Museum where Rousseau would go & draw plants & animals for reference. A google search turns up lots more of his dynamic sculpture. The animal sculptures look like Heinrich Kley's drawings.
The 'Senegal Lion attacking an Antelope' are stuffed animals that Rousseau used as reference for his painting 'The Hungry Lion Throws Itself on The Antelope'.

John Currin

The painting in the background of one of the life-drawings below is HONEYMOON NUDE by John Currin. I came across his work a couple years ago at a show at the Whitney in New York. He's a fine painter & his odd, big-boobed, long necked women look like porn stars painted by Botticelli!

TATE life drawing Pt.11

Last night 3 members (Sean hayden, Boris Heistand et moi) of the European Chapter of the Animation Blogging Community went back to TATE Modern for another session of life drawing in the NUDE/BODY galleries of the collection. Here are my results from the evening.

BATMAN

Over on his blog,Sandwich Bag, Elliot Cowani has recently been exploring a Batman & Penguin theme. Partly inspired by him I present my version. I recently happened upon a blurred image of a 60's BATMAN comic in the background of a photo of 60's model Twiggy which you can see at the bottom of the page. I re-interpreted the imagery in the drawings above it.

Science Fiction

I recently designed & art directed a couple of jobs that both happened to be sci-fi in theme. Here are some colour keys & sketches from those projects.

Trafalgar Square

The fourth plinth of Trafalgar Sq. is currently occupied by Marc Quinn's sculpture of Alison Lapper who was born without arms or legs. She sits up there in all her pregnant glory, supposedly controversial. I think she's majestic.
Quinn once had sculptures of Lapper installed amongst the classical works in the V & A's sculpture room. It worked marvellously. Amongst the ancient, limbless Venus's & Aphrodites they didn't look out of place at all. In fact it makes you reconsider traditional notions of classical beauty & aesthetics.

Voutch

Another recent discovery is the art books of French cartoonist Voutch. His style looks like Gary Larson painted by Kiraz. Thanks to my belle Raja for the scans.

Another Night Before Christmas

Came across this superb new children's book by Carol Anne Duffy & illustrated by Marc Boutavant. Boutavant's painted pictures are blindingly gorgeous & it can only be a matter of time before an ad or short film is made in his style.

Animation in Magazines

The November 18th issue of Screen International ran a couple articles on animation. The new ASTERIX film made in Denmark & check out the animation writer's views on animation story artists.





The new issue of MODERN PAINTERS not only has a cover feature on American Comic Art but also a piece on Pixar's films. The article also points to an upcoming exhibition of Pixar artwork at MOMA, NYC from December 14th through February 6th. There's more info at www.modernpainters.co.uk

Terrible Tim

At Uli Meyer Animation we recently completed 4 two minute short films for Nickelodeon UK. Terrible Tim is a greedy little boy who has a severe flatulence problem! I designed, directed & storyboarded it. I also did the layout & the background design. Then we had four great Flash animators do an episode each - Michael Schlingmann, Joe Mulligan, Manu Roig & Matt West.
Based on original poems by Brian Boyle, the project was a lot of fun & is on air now.

Rodin

The Musee Rodin is such a pleasant place to sketch in. Beautiful old building & gardens.

Zoo

Drawings made in the Paris Zoo.

Objets d'arts

A few interesting sights spotted around the streets of Paris.

Les toits de Paris

I spent days searching around for that perfect narrow street to draw, like those you see in Searle's Paris sketchbook. I soon realised all I had to do was look UP. The famous roofs of Paris are everywhere & the narrow, 6 storey buildings have such character.

Auvers sur Oise

Auvers sur Oise is a small town north of Paris famous as the last resting place of Vincent Van Gogh. The inn where he lived is still there & you can go up to the dingy little room right at the top where he stayed. All around the area are signs each with a Van Gogh painting. It's truly remarkable to see the real places that he painted. Everything in the town reminds you of Van Gogh; the trees, plants, fields & buildings all seem familiar from his work.

He's buried next to his brother in small, modest graves.

Amongst the great & good

Over on John T. Quinn's blog we've recently been having a discussion about getting banned from drawing in the great art galleries of the world. Ironically TATE Modern recently offered a special opportunity to draw after hours in the NUDE/LIFE section of their gallery which several of us London bloggers took full advantage of. Once we got passed security we managed to run rampant & transform a room full of priceless artwork into a charcoal stained playroom, throwing paper & crayons over our shoulders with gay abandon while the cluless tutor wittered on about 'soaking up the ambience'. I chose to use the Force instead & here are the results.

PICASSO

PICASSO & THE PASSION FOR DRAWING is a show due to finish soon at Musee Picasso. If the museum wasn't inspirational enough, this exhibition has on display half a dozen of his sketchbooks which are so full of images & multiple developments of ideas it was overwhelming. Everytime I go back to the man's work I find something new.

Klimt, Schiele, Moser, Kokoshka : Vienna : 1900

Klimt, Schiele, Moser, Kokoshka : Vienna : 1900 is THE autumn show in Paris. It's a BLOCKBUSTER! There were queues from 10am to 10pm & it took me FOUR attempts to get in ! I've been dazzled by Klimt's work since childhood but to see one of his paintings for real is truly something else. Normally his ouvre his exhibited only on in Vienna & Rome so to see so many of his important pieces in Paris is quite a unique opportunity. But the standout of the show is actually Egon Scheile, the sheer draughtmanship & energy is breathtaking. He died at 28 & achieved so much it shamed me!

Gerald Scarfe

I'm not a particularly huge fan of Scarfe (prefer Ralph Steadman) but there was a great looking piece on him in the Sunday Times Magazine this week. It included some early works that are quite a departure from the style he's been known for over the past 25 years or so.