When I thought about this week's Illustration Friday topic I remembered this picture. This is from a while ago - it was a sketch I did to accompany part two of "Children of the Moon," a fantasy story about elves and dragons that I did for Australian manga comic Xuan Xuan.

These elf children were minor characters that only appeared in one scene, but often when I'm working it's nice to do sketches of the other parts of characters' lives, just for fun, and also to extend the underlying feel of the world I'm trying to evoke. I'm not sure about this picture now - the figures look a bit awkward - but I think it still tells its story okay.

Labels: Children of the Moon, Illustration Friday

Mickey the Tiguar has proved to be an elusive beast, even though there is some certainty this cute tiger x jaguar hybrid does actually exist - please see Dr. Karl Shuker's current Blogpost The Wonderful Thing about Tiguars.

And while I'm on the subject of new animals, I'm sorry I haven't kept up my roundup of new discoveries as in the past, though I am still keeping track of them. My posts would be redundant soon anyway, as Dr. Karl's essential new book The Encyclopaedia of New and Rediscovered Animals is due shortly...

Labels: cryptozoology, new animals, new birds, new species

Lately, I'm feeling heartened about what School can actually be, and mean. With J. having just completed VCE at Melbourne Rudolf Steiner School there have been some recent events held commemorating the journey. It's definitely made me appreciate the Steiner ethos more deeply - this being an environment that nurtures young people towards who they want to be.

It's no secret that in the past I've been fairly uncommitted to the "we'll teach you" and "conform to the norm" approach of traditional schooling. We started off homeschooling and I certainly still see the merits of that approach for showing the world as an integrated, living environment, rather than a set of isolated, discrete disciplines. However, the Steiner schools - Ghilgai and MRSS - have done this better than we could ever have hoped to.

This VCE year at MRSS has been inspiring, both the Class and the teachers. Signs of the creative outpourings of the year are clearly evidenced in such wonders as the captivating music of Triple J Unearthed High winners Snakadaktal and Kevyn Stott's fine comic Space Duck, but I expect the world will be positively influenced in many areas, and for many years, by these remarkable young people.

Lately I've neglected this Blog for a bunch of reasons - the distractions of Facebook (which I enjoy reading, more than posting on), not having new work that I want to make public and being busy with life in general.

Also, I'm feeling increasingly wary about posting so much publicly using my real name - it reaches a point where your archives say way too much about you! In the early days of blogging it didn't seem to matter, but the quickfire, disposable nature of Tweets and FB posts apparently seems to work better for people using their real names. I do have a bit of an issue with anonymity though - it's always good to be openly yourself if possible, I think.

This weekend I'm attending a High School reunion, which is going to be weird! It has led to me catching up with a number of people I haven't been in contact with for years, some who will attend, and some not. If you went to High School with me and want to know more (between now and Friday), drop me a line.

One of the reunion co-ordinators has asked for a current and past photo, so I've been searching my files for either, or both, without much success. It makes me realise just how effective my policy of not being photographed has been! In this case too effective, given that even with family photos I'm eternally behind the lense to the point of invisibility. Still, I have a bit of an issue with image appropriation that is unlikely to change. If anyone has a good, recent photo of me, please feel free to email it to me! Unlikely :)

Maybe not being photographed runs contrary to what I was saying about not being anonymous in writing...

Save the Leadbeater's possum from extinction petition
"Victoria's faunal emblem, the critically endangered Leadbeater's possum, is going extinct due to wildfires and pulp logging. Since 1998, the tiny possums population has declined by 80% from 5000 to a meagre 1000 left in the wild today. The Victorian government logs the habitat of the Leadbeater's possum and sells it to Nippon owned Australian Paper to make Reflex office papers."

We, the taxpayers, subsidise this logging here in Victoria. 1000 is an optimistic estimation for surviving Leadbeater's possum numbers - logging the remaining stands of living trees, along with "salvage logging" of burnt forest will ensure their extinction. This possum doesn't move successfully across open spaces and the remaining population is extremely fragmented. There are none currently in captivity. Some way to treat our State emblem!

Labels: extinction, Leadbeater's possum, Logging

Is it just me or are we suddenly being visually assaulted by lack of choice? I can't help thinking that the current Coles and Woolworths big hand campaigns - plastered throughout both stores - are symptomatic not only of a failure of design imagination but an overt statement of the real truth. Why are these campaigns so similar? Maybe we should be giving them both the big finger and shopping at IGA :).

Pictures from: Coles and Woolworths.

Lately I've taken on a new hobby - digitising old recordings from my various bands and projects - I guess for some sort of posterity. If you're not interested in old band musings, you'll want to skip this post!

The first thing that surprised me when listening back, is how well these cassettes have held up! It was never a stellar format to begin with, but the actual recordings are still sounding reasonably okay, albeit replete with tape hiss, even in the studio mixdowns.

Secondly, I was a little surprised by the abundance of material. The initial aim was to just find decent recordings of my own songs, of which there are many, but it's interesting what else turned up, including many band and duo collaborations.

The third thing I found surprising is that live versions, recorded in loungerooms and rehearsal rooms on an Aiwa boombox, often sound better - even to the balance of instruments - than the very worked over studio recordings. The vocals have largely disappeared, of course, but there are still some jewels to be salvaged.

Best of all, I discovered that my original band of the '80s didn't suck: while we definitely sound "of the time", we were actually pretty good, and getting continuously better through the years - until we broke up! What comes through clearly is that we knew how to write songs, arrange complex instrumentation and had excessive vocal talent. The style was kind of alternative pop/rock.

While I usually started off doing vocals on my demos, the aim was always to hand them on to others in the band, because they were all incredible singers, and I was the least in that department :). Again, there are surprises, including the fact that our early drummer had an awesome voice, but all the rest should have - and indeed some did later - fronted their own bands! Essentially, we served as a songwriting collective, with everyone gradually contributing. One song continues to elude me, which is frustrating - I can't believe we didn't ever record this small masterpiece!

When we were a five piece, most of the vocals were by our rhythm guitarist (and sometime bassist), and the sound changed considerably after he left. In a way, the four piece accorded better to the way I wrote songs - musical constructions of interlocking pieces that needed to be right in time to work - so we both gained and lost something with that departure. All in all, we had a great combination of diverse instrumentation, really strong male/female vocals and stacks of material.

Finding and archiving all this stuff is a big project, but it sits nicely alongside my attempts to do likewise with my artwork.

Labels: music