These are a few sketches I made today at Piccadilly Train Station in Manchester. They're of some of the buildings that surround the station.
And some more bikes (see my previous post).
Led by
Simone Ridyard, who was the driving force behind the Manchester bid, we got sketching this amazing city.
And my piece of advice for visitors next July; bring an umbrella. And a coat. Maybe some gloves, a scarf, hat. Only joking.
But seriously, bring a coat.
Here's another of my current projects and obsessions. I'm not entirely sure where it came from but it's quickly taken over. Bikes, bikes and more bikes.
It probably really took hold when I visited the
Eroica Britannia festival this year. It's a festival and celebration of cycling. The cyclists ride through the gorgeous Peak District on pre 1987 bikes. So lots of wonderful vintage, classic and iconic bikes to look at and draw.
The thing, I find with bikes is they are not easy to draw. With all their angles and proportions and round wheels and whatnot, they are difficult little blighters. But I love the challenge of something difficult. Once you get to grips with it and start getting it right there's a great feeling of satisfaction.
So, I think that's where this all started. The bike thing. I always remember reading, when I first started drawing, that you've never really got the handle on drawing something until you've drawn it a hundred times. Now I'd probably agree with that.
And so in September I'll be holding an exhibition, with a friend of mine artist Kate Yorke, called 100 Bicycles. Yes, the title pretty much explains it. We'll be exhibiting one hundred bicycle drawings. Sketches mainly.
I really can't stop. I really mustn't stop. And while I'm loving it why stop? I'm adding some of these sketches to my Etsy shop at very reasonable prices (cheap!) so if you're into bicycles grab yourself a bargain
HERE. You'd better hurry though, they're going quick!
PLUS, for this weekend only, anyone who purchases my Andrea Joseph Bumper Pack will get a FREE bicycle sketch. Check that out
HERE.
A few of my bike drawings here. You know when something kind of unintentionally becomes a theme? Well, that. And when a theme comes knocking on my door I do love to go out to play with it.
Watch this space if you like bikes, or art, and specifically bike art.
Special Tour de France Miffys are available!
Tomorrow sees the start of the world’s greatest cycling event, Le Tour de France. This year it’s actually starting in the Dutch city of Utrecht, the hometown of Dick Bruna creator of Miffy (or Nijntje, to give her her original Dutch name), but I’m using today’s Grand Départ as an excuse to bring you some wonderful images from the marvellous, multi-award winning French-Dutch illustrator, Charlotte Dematons.
Dematons specialises in wordless picture books including The Yellow Balloon and Holland which have been published natively for English speaking readers. One of my personal favourites, however, is her celebration of bicycles and the many forms they can take, especially in the Netherlands. Fiets, or for English speakers ‘Bicycle’ (only available second hand, even in the Netherlands), follows a boy who, having been at a fancy dress party, goes looking for his stolen bike.
In this illustration you see something which is ten-a-penny in the Netherlands – folk giving others a lift home on the back of their bike.
In this spread I love the enoooooormous ‘bakfiets’ which is being used to transport eight children.
This spread shows a scene outside a school during “Children’s Book Week”. Can you spot the special tandem, with the child at the front? What about the unicycle? Or the child in a bread basket on the front of his Dad’s bike? I also like the twins, with the same hairstyle as their dad.
You can transport just about anything by bicycle, especially if you have a friend to help! Look out for the laden panniers, the tag-along car, and even the windshield for small children riding up front on a bike. These houses also make me smile – very typical modern Dutch suburban architecture!
This scene I love because of the very Dutch sight – a florist, and also the nod to how multicultural the Netherlands is.
Another classic Dutch sight – fishing out old bicycles from the canals. The book must be set in the South of the Netherlands because you don’t see hills anything like this anywhere else.
In the Netherlands lots of moving house is done by bicycle, especially if you’re a student. Can you see just how much this family has loaded up on their bike? What about the recumbent bike?
All these types of bike really are every day sights in the Netherlands. If they’ve piqued your interest, there is a specialist UK supplier who can help you find the bike of your dreams – http://practicalcycles.com/. I’ve never used them, but I love what they have to offer. I’m hoping one day to get a bike like this to use as a mobile pop-up bookshop or library, having been inspired by this bike which belongs to the Belgian bookshop Letters & Co.
You’ve seen the illustrations, now see the bikes in real life!
4 Stars Chasing Watermelons Kevin White Rex White 32 Pages Ages: 3 to 6 ……………… Press Release: When Duck opens a crate of watermelons for a watermelon feast, they begin to roll. Duck chases after them. One by one, Duck invites Goat, Pig, Chicken, and Cow to join the chase by promising, “If you help, [...]
5 Stars “Mr. John Slack, the keeper of the tavern beside a rutted dirt road in the early 1800s, thought things were just fine the way they were. So did Lucious Stockyon, who ran the National Road Stage Company in the mid-1800s. So too, the owners of the railroads when the first Model-T appeared in [...]
Ammon Shea 
recently spent a year of his life reading the OED from start to finish. Over the next few months he will be posting weekly blogs about the insights, gems, and thoughts on language that came from this experience. His book, Reading the OED, has been published by Perigee, so go check it out in your local bookstore. In the post below Ammon reflects on his trip to Oxford.
I always find it bemusing to travel to a new place, and the things I find most striking are not the overt and major differences between where I’m traveling and where I’m from. I tend to focus on the things that remind me of home, but which are slightly different – and somehow the similarities make it all feel even more foreign, as though I’ve stepped into an altered version of where I’m from.
Oxford is a city full of bicycles and old bars. We have cyclists and bars in New York City, but not in the same way. When exiting the train station in Oxford the first thing I noticed was not the splendid old buildings, or the difference in light, or the cars driving on the other side of the road; the first thing I noticed was the sea of hundreds and hundreds of bicycles parked in a lot next to the street. The only time I’ve ever seen such a profusion of bicycles here was last year, when I saw some news footage of a man in a nearby town who had been stealing bicycles for years, and had managed to accumulate a similar number.
The cyclists in Oxford seem to have much of the casual disregard for safety as do those of my hometown, weaving in and about the cars and pedestrians. But they also signal when they are planning on turning, giving a curious chopping motion of the arm. This never happens in New York, and it took me a day or two before I realized that this arm chop presaged a turn, and was not a widespread neurological disorder that afflicted English velocipedists.
And while there is no shortage of bars in New York, I found it almost unnerving to walk into a drinking establishment that was established several hundred years before the government of the country that I come from. The students lounging about on a Saturday evening looked not so different from those of New York, but the fact that the wall that they were boozily leaning against had held up inebriated youth for five hundred years made it feel markedly askew.
It’s the differences within the similarities that make Oxford feel like such a foreign place to me. Although I should confess that there were occasions this foreign-ness was also made obvious by something which bore absolutely no similarity to what I am used to in America. Such as when I picked up the paper one morning and saw that William Hague had attacked Gordon Brown for what he termed his “hubristic and irresponsible claims”. I am trying to remember the last time I heard a national politician here use a word such as “hubristic” without fear of being tarred with the elitist brush, and I cannot think of when that might be. This is a depressing thought, and I suppose that is why I spend my travels looking at bicycles and bars.
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It was a great challenge to learn to ride together and trust my man up front! ha!
It was a great challenge to learn to ride together and trust my man up front! ha!
Very nice, doing things together is almost always fun.
I want to see a picture with BOTH of you on it, riding through the roses!
yep, Gary is a keeper. :0) We’ve been riding bicycles for nearly 40 years.
I will have to figure out how to do that one. :0)
Today was an awesome day for a ride around town, Leslie! Hope you didn’t get caught in the rain like my daughter and me.
We took our Saturday bike ride early. We stayed dry. Wasn’t it a lovely weekend!