Full credit for the letterhead of our quartet Haffsårkestern goes to multi-talent Corinne (top left) who also sing, play the guitar, the kazoo and sometimes the Waldorf flute... (And this link leads you straight to the event.) The pianist/illustrator merely added a little colour to that one, getting quite lost in Photoshop filters before landing here:
I think the idea with the black-and-white portraits (that were to be kept as simple as possible) on some sort of coloured background belonged to Max, who plays even more instruments that I can think of. Guitar, bass, mandolin, accordion? -- can't remember -- banjo for sure... I give up. Studio wizard too. Then we have (last but not least) Cecilia...
...whose fair voice I've also had the joy to have with me on tour in this duet, "Wild Raspberries" (Vildhallon). As usual, I had to make it rather quickly (it's part of the art) but I think it turned out allright nevertheless. Thorns for a bit of wild, hearty rawness. And berries for, well, good fruity folk music et al.
It's fun to draw for music... Vice versa, once I started to write music that was to go with a painting, aeons ago now. But I never got that very far. After a few beats I happened to sell it, and it only made music in my wallet for a while.
Without further ado I give you this Sickbed Meditation on, well, sensing how the rest of the World is enjoying itself, while the rest of the stomach wanted 1) well, not to serve as a stomach at all and 2) aspired to serve as a brain instead, with various sewery thoughts gargarrruuffluffglopping about instead of mentality.
The paper had a crease in it, a severe one, and then you might fight against or go with it. My energy was needed elsewhere. So I went with, as you see, with my usual fraternal sympathy for all things useless and discarded. When this one was done, I needed sleep badly (still do) and it's no good idea to stare at glaring screens then. So it was ballpoint (initially careful) with no possibility of correcting it. You can't correct life. So perhaps this drawing is Life, just a little. Detail:
Yours sincerely has been very tired (being happy to work with music too, had a great little concert yesterday but is now in equally great need of sleep) and is not entirely happy about the thing that he really wanted to show you, not yet... so here we have some light sketchwork, food for thought. I don't think that you've seen this one:
I read that I called it "Postcard from Silicon Valley" -- don't know why. But why not?
This one I called "Sad and Useless Object no. 1". I suppose that I wasn't in any mood really. But it doesn't look entirely sad now... the white bird is smiling, isn't it? Other forms are less definite, and what you see in them might depend on your mood.
So I got the little promotional for my experimental CD finished at last. Voilà.
One normally finds me in the blues/folk corner, but this is where my muses led me, laughing hard. (Now I am happily heading back to the where I belong, writing new songs and planning new adventures with the dear Quartet...) With this over and done, I had to take my little threat of the other week seriously and draw you something monstrous with some misfit materials that I found.
The bestiary:
1) An old but still ordinary pencil (for sketching. Still worked like one)
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2) The piece of chalc-ish. (I'm not sure what it is, strictly materially speaking.) It really brought life to the highlights.
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3) A blue felt pen (too dominant, didn't use much at all)
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4) The thick, fat marker that I made the black mouth with. It is darker than the outlines, which turned out to be a good effect. (Or so I think.)
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5) A marker pen, the kind that you use to make bored highlights in textbooks with. Not what you'd use for art; thus a Must Have.
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6) Wax crayons and classic Crayola's. They didn't seem to like each other too well, and I worked with them as you do with pastels -- you leave a grainy room for the next nuance. The coarse recycled paper (see previous week) worked wonders here. -- A little violence also helped.
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7) Colour pencils, or whatever they are. Very, very shy. The blue you see a little, the yellow ones I felt sorry for.
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8) My trusty ball point pen. Blue outlines aren't as common as black. Nor are brown, cinnamon red or moss green outlines. Why? Food for thought.
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I like the detail with the childish creature. Makes the whole thing all the creepier. This total trust...
Ps. Now if you find this eerie, think of all the things that many grown-ups trust: Leaders, the State -- or even Cure-all Ideas as such... brrrrrrrr-rr-rrrr.
