I’m not even asking the question if art should engage with current affairs. To me, it’s a given: if art is about self-expression (we can debate that question), then it will end up reflecting the world of the artist. And yes, cartooning is art. It takes considerable skill, especially when it looks easy.

1. “These haunting underwater photos portray climate change in a new way” (CNN, Nov. 4)

Haunting images.The article also describes how the artist worked with the local community to create this project. Here’s the most chilling part of the entire piece, to me:

“Somebody said it was quite post-apocalyptic. And I said, ‘No, it’s pre-apocalyptic.’ Because it hasn’t actually happened to these people yet.”

Nick Brandt, photographer

2. Cartooning that Oxfam report on billionaires

Oxfam published a report on the impact of billionaires on emissions. Part of the problem is their lifestyle, jetting around the globe in their private airplanes and consuming a disproportionate amount of … well, anything, to be honest. Big new angle in this report is the research on the impact of their investments. That shows their impact is far worse than you’d think. With COP28 on the go, this report now has gained traction, so you’ll see lots of stats bandied around. If you’re confused, remember your friendly cartooning and illustrator friends are always ready to bring clarity in complex affairs with a light touch, and First Dog on the Moon is no exception. Head on over to the Guardian and read the full comic!

• choose different paper with a bit more tooth/bite
• track more clearly what pencils I use for which shades
• stick to the same direction throughout for the tiny dark lines (they’re little stripes, not just a line)
• put up a note at the very start “Do not move towel and lighting!” The lights were shifted a bit between second and third session.

I guess I’ll just call it an extensive study before executing the master piece, someday. At least I feel a lot more confident in knowing my way again around a set of pencils (9B-H) and a series of erasers (I used 3 different types). Put the brightness of your screen up to see these pics properly, because the lighting in the studio is anything but conducive to iPhone photography.

Yes, I ended up erasing the bottom part and adjusting the length of the towel: as I got into the details, I realised the proportions were off, and the little squares were not lining up properly. My classmates assured me I didn’t need to do them, but I wanted them for the drawing I saw me complete. That’s where I messed up the paper and could have done with better quality. I didn’t know at the start I’d be going for this kind of work or I’d have chosen (and my teacher would have given me) a better quality paper. Tbh, it still wasn’t perfect when I was done but it was convincing enough that that towel is real and very crisp. Check it out! Click on the image to go to Flickr and zoom in there. I’m still figuring out what the best way is to give you high quality images without crashing my allowance here. Tips welcome!

Ok, that was the nice picture. Next: rant incoming. Warnings:

1. it’s long
2. I tend not to do these online, but perhaps I’ve been inspired after reading a few of Ludicity’s blog posts on the IT world. It seems it’s good to let it rip sometimes, even if I don’t have their online anonymity. So here’s fair warning: stop reading if you’re not into diversity and can’t handle me ranting about what amounts to gatekeeping and institutional/systematic racism.

but :

if I don’t do it, perhaps nobody will?!?

I have no skin in the games the art world plays, I’m just an observer and spare-time artist/illustrator, and I’m white. So for once I can use my privileged position to say what others may want to say, but perhaps can’t if they want to build a career in art after observing what I saw. Here we go!

Who’s it for?

What the heck, people? Have you looked the world and its people recently, and in particular twenty-first Europe? And have you thought about how it’s represented in and through art? If yes, can you explain to me why the visitors, art gallery folks, and the artists on display for ninety percent (and I am being effing generous!) look like a replica of a 500 shades of white paint catalogue? I know I’m one of those printer paper people myself (shade: library white) but blimey! I’m not sure when I’ve recently seen this large a collection of flour fleas in real life, considering I don’t attend anything Flemish nationalist. I think I can count the amount of Black folks I saw there on one hand. Two if I am being generous again. 

I know skin colour of attendees isn’t everything, but the art on display was not particularly diverse either. I know I’m spoiled: I lived close to New York City for a good while, and “they do diversity differently there”. I visited the 2022 Biennale from the Whitney and I was floored by what I saw. Really hard stuff that made me think about the planet, about the fragile moments of peace, the many moments of war and inequality, the anxieties of migrants in a foreign country, the joys of being alive, the strangeness of being alive in a weird universe,… The art itself was sometimes cute, sometimes humourous, some of it I didn’t get until I read the info, but all of it creative enough and technically accomplished that even if I had come up with myself, I couldn’t have executed it that way. 

What I saw in Cologne left me underwhelmed, by and large. Yes, there was cute, and well-executed, and technically accomplished art. But I am not sure what much of it was supposed to tell me that I haven’t already seen or heard. Nicely executed blocks of oil there, sure. Oooh, nice tesselations. Hm, ok, neat colour combo that I’d like in my dining room. Oh hang on…. I’m in the pre-contemporary section. I like the OLD stuff?? Yeah, I’m a dinosaur. Ok, this explains why a lot of these things are the size of a postcard, framed, and cost and arm and a leg (of an original Louis XIV furniture set at least), because they’re collectors’ items for an artist whose first choice stuff is in the museums/private collections already and not really for sale anymore. So we’re fortunate somebody has gone through their workshop and rescued their scrapbooks, first drafts and thumbnails for every idea they every put to paper with a crayon, stick of charcoal or dry brush. I didn’t quite see anything on the back of an envelope but I swear it’s only a matter of time before somebody comes up with the luminous idea that we need to spend more money on a nicely framed set of postage stamp-sized doodles on the back of an envelop by a famous dead white guy so somebody with more money than sense can say during that expensive dinner that costs more than the GDP of the ten poorest countries on earth combined, after one too many libations with an expensive chateau migraine they didn’t let  properly breathe, that they own an original by [fill out your favourite dead white male artist].

The art is nice and cute (I liked those cows on that postcard, but they were too expensive for the size tbh, and the big blue oval thing wouldn’t fit on the wall even if I had €62,000 going spare. It was a steal at that price, I must admit) but clearly I’m not where the action, where the NOW is at.

I go upstairs to the contemporary section. Aha! This is where it should be happening! Except, I can assure you that it isn’t. I know this is the oldest art fair in the world. And I know that for many old things, it is difficult to change. But babies! Europe has had Black people present here since just about forever: check out the Romans, and have you got any idea how diverse we were in the Middle Ages? So no need to worry that you’re doing something new, you’re just going back to your roots with diversity if you just open up a bit more to a wider spectrum of pixels on the skin colour cards, mkay? I’m pretty sure there are more artists of non-white, non-European background that produce top work than were on show. Don’t tell me it’s because buyers don’t want them. I’m sure you haven’t tried hard enough. It’s about time for a change: show them something new, tell them it’s all the rage up in NYC or LA, and watch them want it. I’m sure it works something like that: make them want it, sell it, sell more. White artists needn’t worry: the table is not only big enough, it’s expandable and we can create extra space for more folks to fit around and get a piece of the extra pies that are coming out of the oven. (How many metaphors shall I mix in here?)

But seriously: Where are the artists among the refugees that came from Syria? Why are they not represented? If we need to stay with Europe-based artists, I’m sure refugees from Africa do interesting art I’d like to see…. About three galleries came from Seoul (or were one location of multiple), but one of them did not show Korean artists – to the point that I double checked I was actually at the right location. Aren’t there exciting Korean artists to bring to the European buyers? My word, there are! I saw them 20 years ago when I studied there for a year, and the country hasn’t magically or mysteriously stopped producing them. Just throw a rock over your shoulder and you’ll hit one, or somebody who knows one. Try it! (Use a small rock, maybe, not encouraging you to injure people). Look, I’ve got you a little list to get you started: art galleries in Seoul. There was a big Ai Weiwei stand right outside entry to the actual fair, but not much from China IIRC. Hm… interesting. I know there are interesting Chinese contemporary artists out there doing amazing stuff that earns them the label of dissident, but maybe galleries don’t want to court controversy with politics? Even if they want to avoid art that is overtly political, there is just a freshness to showing artists from other continents, as I found out on the few occasions I did find it. Proper “frisson running up the spine” moments.

It seems Australian Aboriginal Art has arived: that was the one type that was clearly present in a few galleries, and not only from Oz. It was a breath of fresh air to look at. Two other great moments that stood out were the Shanghai/Hongkong based gallery Pearl Lam, where I immediately spotted a different vibe. Not because of Chinese work, but because they brought artists of African origin. One of them a young lady born well after me who paints with such a vibrant pallet, I wish I had half her wisdom in understanding colour (Check out Deborah Segun), and it exuded a hopefulness that brings a different story we sorely need today. Another was the sole African gallery I found (Whatiftheworld, Capetown), where again there just was a different vibe – even if the artist that drew me in was white (I couldn’t figure it out based on the name), the work just was different, and the whole booth had a different vibe courtesy of the use of metal surfaces. 

There may have been more galleries with non-Western, non-white art, but I feel that at this point in the 21st century at a fair that doesn’t bill it self as Western Art specific I shouldn’t go looking for it like an exoplanet astronomer looking for water in a nearby solar system: with special detection software and purpose-built instruments to alert me to the smallest morsel of possibility of a trace element that something, somewhere near me might be of non-European origin. I am not sure what art is supposed to do for other people, but for me, it is not about being pretty. It’s about making a connection with people, about telling a story even if it’s a still image or abstract “thing”, about inviting thought and contemplation, about forcing you to sit with something. That can be a contemplation of beauty and wonder, and it can be comfort and fun, but I would love to see more of the diversity of humanity representing the myriad of stories we can tell and share, and the many different forms these same basic stories of longing, belonging, loss, and love can take. If it all looks like it came straight from the whites page of the paint catalogue (yes, it’s different from the previous one I linked), we’re missing out on the whole bloody rainbow.

I remember distinctly my friend whispering to me at Maryland Sheep and Wool in 2015 “Yes, it’s really nice, but where are all the Black people?” Queue 2019 with the big reveal in the yarn and knitting world that gasp it was racist AF and now, in 2023 there are a lot of improvements, with a lot more space for Black, Brown, Indigenous, and other people of colour taking part as dyers, designers, vendors, and consumers. They are part of the conversation, and the knitting world I know is better, more fun, and more exciting because of it, and there is still room for more.

Art world, I’m waiting for you. When is your wake up call?

• PSL
• Spooky things and Hallowe’en
• rainy days and/or cosy autumn/fall days with crunchy leaves underfoot
• days getting shorter and an increase in comments like “It’s getting dark early now” or “I can’t believe it’s still dark at 8am”

(If you’re in the southern hemisphere, those last 2 don’t apply, and possibly the first two neither. I never visited the southern hemisphere!)

But if you peek inside the world of art and illustration, you’ll find that we have our own equivalent of #Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month), just a month early so the very creative types among us can do both. All it means is that every day, you do an illustration with ink, and at the end of the month you have 31 illustrations, or several large ones, and you’ll have improved your craft significantly.

I took part last year, and it was a significant time commitment to come up with ideas and execute them. You can scroll back in my instagram feed to the copies I made from Tang dynasty tomb mural paintings. I lasted about 20 days and then I couldn’t keep up.

This year I didn’t even try, and I only got two inky drawings.

Use the slide to see how my drawing compares to the original photo. The uploaded formats didn’t quite match, and neither did my drawing. JuxtaposeJS is still a nifty tool from Knight Lab!

My second inked up drawing was an assignment in art class: pick some stuff from your pencil case and draw!

Slide and compare, pls! Photo and drawing don’t quite align because I took the picture on the first day and then had to re-create the scene on the second day. I know there is something wrong with my roll of tape. Still not too bad for a quick sketch.

How was your #Inktober?

Fun fact: Apple’s Photos recognised this as art alright, and promptly suggested it might be James Ensor’s Chinoiserie: A Chinese Demon Nice to have the robots confuse me with a big artist like that. Maybe I should start sitting in museums and draw statues there after all, seems they think it’s time to drop my training wheels and call myself a fully-fledged artist, eh?

I’ve just read Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, and it’s been a hot minute since my secondary school days with Greek and Latin when read long sections of the original Illiad and Oddysey (yep, in ancient Greek, good fun!) I also need to make some time to (belatedly!) dive into Patrick Lateur’s Dutch translation Illias: Wrok in Troje. (After he spent 2 years acquainting us with the finer points of Greek and Roman literature and culture, I owe him that much!) It feels a bit like coming home after a long detour into Chinese history, to be back with the ancient Greeks. Here’s some work from my own “Antiquity” era when I spent time copying images from my textbooks. More next week!

I am struck by how I forgot to outline his feet in ink, and I must have been fascinated by the little lightbulb that hung over the altar because it is rather prominent…

What’s your oldest drawing you’re prepared to share with the world? I think I have one older still, but I need to dig it out! Be patient, check back for another Throwback Thursday and you may be lucky yet!

• Teacher: Hm, I see. You started filling it in.
• Me: Yeah, I put all the leaves’ outlines in [as she had suggested I do first].
• Teacher: You smudged it.
• Me: I what? Where?
• Teacher: Right there, at the top. You smoothened it. On purpose.
• Me: I don’t even own a tortillon. Never knew how to use the things.
• Teacher: You did it with your finger, didn’t you?
• Me: No, just verrrry gentle shading with an F and H pencil first…

Gentle reader, I acknowledge that I have a decent starting base, and that my powers of shading are coming back and it feels pretty darn good but… I also need to show this close-up that shows upon closer inspection and in harsher light, I am really just shading like anybody else with lots of lines, and clumsily too! Just as well this is a 7 year program

Curious to hear if you’re taking classes and what you’re learning! Share in the comments! I will share my progress here on the blog, stay tuned for more fun exchanges with my teachers!

I’m with Squirrel…but for different reasons. (I mainly worry about falling off the treadmill). I really do NOT like those hamster wheels for humans, and unlike other people I routinely run slower and less far on them than I do outside. In June I was forced onto one due to the Lehigh Valley reaching the unenviable status of “most polluted air in the world”, when the smoke from the wildfires blew our way and made me wear a face mask outside when I had to go out briefly. I still wanted to get a run in, but not in this pea soup (Youtube video). Hamster wheel in the gym it was… I returned to running outside as soon as the Air Quality Index returned below 100 and it feels much better to be outside!

Do you like running on a hamster wheel or are you with Squirrel and me? Let me know in the comments!

The portraits are based on real portraits from the Gallery – my original drawing is small so I couldn’t squeeze in a lot of info for you to guess which ones, and they’re not to scale. I selected them from the 1820s decade if you want to go hunting them down. Post your guesses in the comments!