Category: Art

Peter Ustinov

Peter Ustinov
title page, Dear Me

In 1977, during my lunchbreak, when I taught illustration at Leeds, I walked into Austicks’ Headrow Bookshop and was surprised to see Peter Ustinov at the back of the shop with the manager. The ideal opportunity to get a signed copy of this autobiography, Dear Me, for my Mum’s birthday.

“Who should I sign it to?” he asked.

“That’s a problem, she hates her name, Gladys.”

“That’s just like the Gladyses that I know.”

It wouldn’t look very friendly signed ‘To Mrs Bell’, so we went for:

‘Happy Birthday
to Richard’s Mum’

My Mum finally found a way around this. When she found herself far from home in the West Country, having broken her leg during a holiday she gave the nurse her middle name Joan, as she didn’t want ‘Gladys’ on the notice above her bed, so when she’d recovered enough to be transported by ambulance back to our local hospital, Pinderfields, in Wakefield, she stuck with her new name. From then on her friends called her Joan.

Topkapi

I’ve drawn this, as with previous sketches, from the Radio Times. This week the 1964 comedy heist movie Topkapi gets a showing. Ustinov won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Arthur Simon Simpson, a small-time crook who finds himself out of his depth.

Jonah Hill

Jonah Hill

A man carrying a box: it says something for Jonah Hill’s talents that he can conjure up a character – in fact a little short story – in one expressive pose. In Rupert Goold’s True Story he plays real-life New York Times journalist Michael Finkel acting ‘on well-intentioned-schlub setting’, as Radio Times film critic Andrew Collins puts it in his review (schlub is North American derogatory slang for a ‘talentless, unattractive or boorish person’, so definitely not like Jonah Hill).

Lockdown Birds

We’re delighted to have some of our facilities open for your visit, you’ll notice we’ve made some changes to help keep everyone safe.

RSPB Dearne Valley Old Moor website

We’re looking forward to being allowed to travel again as far as our nearest RSPB reserves, but for the time being we’re limiting ourselves to walks from home. Non-essential shops and hairdressers opened again today.

An earlier version of this homemade birthday card (happy birthday, Paul) suggested that a Masked Booby had turned up at Old Moor, but I don’t think that I’d get that one past the Rarities Committee.

Michael Rosen

Michael Rosen

Good to see Michael Rosen smiling again in last week’s Radio Times. This time last year, he was in an induced coma with a 50-50 chance of surviving Covid-19. In his latest book, Many Different Kinds of Love A story of life, death and the NHS, he recounts his near-death experience, illustrated by Chris Riddell.

this is a beautiful book about love, life and the NHS that celebrates the power of community and the indomitable spirits of the people who keep us well.

Waterstones’ website

Just Right

Just Right cereal boxes

I’ve been reading up on graphic design and typography recently, so I couldn’t help noticing that Kellogg’s recently revamped the carton of their Just Right breakfast cereal.

  • call-outs and badges have gone or have been toned down
  • the outline and drop shadow of the ‘Just Right’ logo have gone
  • the emerald green gradient in the background has been replaced with a solid background of leaf green
  • the product shot has gone from oblique to plan view
  • splash of milk omitted
  • the ‘Kellogg’s’ logo is less legible, as it’s red on the a similar tone of green, but it’s much larger, so much that it gets cropped off the front of the pack

I thought that the shape of the pack had changed too, because its got a calmer, less cluttered look, but it’s exactly the same size. There’s been a similar revamp of some of the other Kellogg’s cereals, so they make a distinctive group on the supermarket shelf. I think they’ve pitched it ‘Just Right’ . . . in the Goldilocks Zone. Although she preferred porridge.

‘Less is more’

Busy cover of one of my walks booklets.

In my book design, I like to pack my pages with illustrations, comic strips and maps but there’s a lot of truth in the phrase ‘sometimes less is more’. If I’m reading through a book, rather than dipping into it for reference, I appreciate calm, clear design.

Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King features in a couple of television documentaries this week, giving me an opportunity to draw him from two small black and white photographs. That rather unusual angle, looking up at his face, might explain why I struggled with proportions in my first attempt.

Eye Test

eye test

All the right ingredients. Latest birthday card for Emma, a food analyst (and I bet that you can’t buy such a job-specific card in the shops, even when they open again next week).

Evan Davis

Evan Davis

“Tonight in The Den: Will a pen-pushing portraitist punter draw a Dragon and persuade ‘his nibs’ Peter Jones to close a deal? Or will he blot his copybook with Deborah Meaden? Will Tej Lalvani ask to see the paperwork or will Touker testily talk about a touch of Tippex? And will TV-marketing guru Sara Davies have an inkling that the portraits would look much better on the radio?”

Published
Categorized as Drawing

Katherine Parkinson

Katherine Parkinson

Katherine Parkinson’s character Mary sits for her portrait in Lights Up: Sitting on BBC4 this evening. Writing the play and acting the single character who appears – we never glimpse the artist – she’s caught the awkwardness of most life class poses in the photograph in this week’s Radio Times.

After six or seven years I gave up on the weekly life class at Wakefield College because, looking back on my drawings, I preferred some of the early ones to my later efforts. The five-minute poses that the tutor used to start off the class livened things up a bit but for a pose that the model had to hold for an hour the possibilities were somewhat limited.

Katherine Parkinson

These days I prefer draw people on location, preferably while I’m sitting outside a coffee shop, which could be a possibility starting next week.