Another trip to Whipsnade Zoo. As well as being surprised by a one-day-old baby elephant (born a couple of weeks earlier than expected) we also saw a brown bear having a delicious cooling roll in the grass.
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diary
101 comics.
Not just another jazz gig, but Karen’s first proper Jazz Gig at the Half Moon pub in Oxford last night. If you weren’t hip enough to be there, I’m sorry. Peel me a grape, as Dave Frishberg wrote. The gold glittery shoes had to be seen to be believed. Thanks to Trish Elphinstone, Martin Pickett, Tim Richardson and Ng Shu-Ting Esther for helping Karen to make the occasion so musical.
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Trish Elphinstone, Martin Pickett, Tim Richardson and Ng Shu-Ting Esther, with Karen Kay on vocals. Peel Me a Grape!
Two posts in one weekend! We were present at a short (free) concert by Nostos, the choir of the Oxford University Greek Society in the basement of Blackwells bookshop, amongst the philosophies of mind and science. I had a go at sketching the whole choir, but I missed the musical director (she never stopped moving) and the choir kept shuffling, so it was hard to tell who else I missed. After the music we ate pastries on a bench in the sunshine, and then took a cruise along the river to Iffley lock.
Another evening of music, this time the Jazz Jam at Oxford Jazz Kitchen. It was very crowded, so from the back I had a restricted view and had to make up quite a lot to fill the scene. It’s still fairly accurate, I reckon. Karen got up and performed the saucy “Kitchen Man” to an enthusiastically fast drum-beat, but managed to keep her cool and stay in the groove.
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Jazz gig, with tenor sax, guitar, string bass, hippo on bass, bear on drums and giraffe on vocals.
Great performance by Pete Oxley and Nick Meier last night at the Albion Beatnik Bookstore. I prepped my coloured pencils and riffed along with the fluid melodies and oh so tight rapport. I managed to include references to almost every title played, except for Vera Cruz (because I didn’t know what to draw).
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Pete Oxley and Nick Meier "Chasing Tails"
Today Karen and I participated in an event in our local museum of the history of science. We drew pictures of insects seen through a microscope, and then transferred our drawings into monoprint. That’s my* body louse, Pediculus humanus, reproduced above – I forgot to reverse the caption. The event was designed to celebrate the famous work Micrographia, by Robert Hooke.
UPDATE: Got some paint and had a go at home today. This isn’t a print, this is the back-lit acetate block I used to hold the paint after making a print (so it’s a kind of negative). 
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* only borrowed. I wasn’t allowed to keep her.
I went to see the Andy Warhol exhibition today at the Ashmolean. I did try to keep an open mind, but I’m afraid to say the whole anti-art ethos of it completely underwhelmed me. I couldn’t detect even a glimmer of life in anything – just tedious celebrity culture and flat mass-production. The emperor has no clothes, and we can see his arse.
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Nine arses, each with a different colour.
So there I was, pulling New Year crackers at our office party, when out fell a tiny notebook, no bigger than my thumb*. After a little while I noticed it was full of dancing hippos. I spent the rest of the evening on the dance floor with Karen, trying to emulate the funky, cool moves of this smooth dancer. Karen laughed a lot, so I reckon I must have succeeded.
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* casual hyperbole, under section IV of the Artistic Licensing Act 2008. True figure** is 60 (+/-1) x 40 (+/- 1) mm^2.
** for the notebook. The thumb is smaller.
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thumbnail sketches of a hippo having a hippo of a time dancing.
Here’s a picture of a very self-confident and well-fed little character we met on our traditional New Year’s Day walk around Oxford with friends. Wishing you a Happy New Year for 2016 from everyone at invisibules.org – we hope you get as many nuts out of life as he obviously does.
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Cheeky squirrel munching the nut he charmed from us.
Yesterday I took the day off work and we went to London Zoo for a fabulous day of animal treats. Among the treats not pictured were the aye-aye (too dark to see it for long, but it came right up to the glass;) and the baby two-toed sloth, Edward, who is not on public view but we happened to coincide with him as he was being taken home for the evening by his surrogate (human) mother, and stopped for a chat. The baby emperor tamarin twins were very interested in my sketch-book, and had a go at climbing all over it, and trying to see if there was food hidden between the pages. The brown titi monkey was then inspired to do the same.
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making lunch, and travelling on the X90 coach to London.
Western gorilla, 2 weeks old;
tigers;
komodo dragon;
axolotl;
long horned cow fish;
stingray;
okapi;
ring-tailed lemur;
southern tamandua (tree anteater);
piranha;
2 baby emperor tamarin twins, in my sketchbook;
red titi monkey (also in sketchbook);
dinner at Rajdoot;
back to Oxford on the X90 coach..
Western gorilla, 2 weeks old;
tigers;
komodo dragon;
axolotl;
long horned cow fish;
stingray;
okapi;
ring-tailed lemur;
southern tamandua (tree anteater);
piranha;
2 baby emperor tamarin twins, in my sketchbook;
red titi monkey (also in sketchbook);
dinner at Rajdoot;
back to Oxford on the X90 coach..