Carly Raptor Jepson & the Mozzasaurus: Jurassic Sexual Politics

This is my last regular post for the summer. I'm hoping to get back to blogging the results of my experiences in translating the short stories of the French writer, Villiers de l'Isle Adam here.

My obsession with dinosaurs has already featured on this blog. This may be the result of a traumatic experience watching Jurassic Park in 1993 and having to hide under a cardigan with my sister. A sucker for punishment, back in July I went to see Jurassic World with my friend and colleague, Rob Maslen. Rob is a Renaissance man - he started his academic career writing about Elizabethan Prose, but has switched his gaze to fantasy in recent years. Having run a highly popular undergraduate course in this subject he is now offering the first Masters degree in the UK on fantasy.* 

He is also excellent company at the cinema. The image below is a result of our post film chat about the sexual politics of Jurassic World as we worked out the parallels between Bryce Dallas Howard’s character (starts the movie pent-up in stiff white suit, has to be thawed by ultra male, Chris Pratt) and the velociraptors (an all female team, who start the movie pent-up in a cage, until released by ultra male Christ Pratt). Hence my concern about how the velociraptors would feel after such a wild first date:

In comparison, I don't think this picture of a Mozzasaurus needs much explanation: 

* I made this picture for publicity materials to go with the course and am hoping to collaborate with Rob in the near future:

My Dickensian upbringing

One odd thing about my sister's public career is the way that strangers feel able to speculate groundlessly about our family. Wikipedia seems to think that we grew up in a castle with a butler. It is true, however, that we did have a privileged upbringing. As white middle-class children we were privileged as white middle-class children are in our unequal society. An awareness of such inequalities and a desire to do something about them led to my sister's involvement in the Labour party. But we were also very privileged in one particular respect: we had liberal and imaginative parents who encouraged and supported us in what we did. And they still do. 

So, of course, I've drawn silly pictures of them for birthday cards and Christmas presents. These are insufficient reflections of the love and gratitude that both my sister and I feel towards two wonderful people. 

 Proof that our father is a Renaissance man...

Sound and furiosa, siblifyng ...?

It’s hard living in the shadow of a more famous and more talented sibling, but my sister seems to cope. I've written about pictures I've made for her before. From time to time, I still try to keep up her spirits by drawing a picture of her as Boba Fett (this seems to have boggled the Daily Mail)*

or Tank Girl: 

or Imperator Furiosa from the recent Mad Max film:

Apparently she’s been busy over the last few months. Something to do with a deputy?

*Thanks to the Daily Mail, by the way, for totally failing to ask permission to reproduce that image.

You don't need a weatherman...

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

I spotted these rowers whilst watching the brilliant ‘Matt Berry does .. The Boat Race’. 

So I took screen shots and used them for practice in producing caricatural faces.

A couple of years ago, I tried something similar with a page of photos showing headshot of people auditioning to be weather forecasters. Unfortunately my browser reports that the site with these photos now carries malware, but a google search for 'weather forecaster auditionees' brings up the basic images I was working from.

Procreat-ions

A short post this week, as I’ve been on holiday. As I grow older my attention span seems to diminish along with my patience for lengthy administrative meetings. One consequence is a tendency to doodle. This week’s images were put together over the past year ago during various meetings.* I used my iPad and an app called ‘Procreate’. It’s still, as far as I can tell, the fastest and most flexible drawing app that I’ve tried.** I’m afraid the images are not very achieved - I’m still experimenting with the technology.  And I have yet to find a way of taking advantage of the digital features (brushes, layers, textures etc.) that come with the app, rather than trying to reproduce what I would do with a pen or pencil. 

*These images also seem to provide evidence that some of my colleagues get as bored as I do.

**Even if I can't conceive of a worse name for an app ... apart from maybe 'Sexstick'.

Inktober Redux 2 - Jurassic Poets

As an undergraduate I once heard J.H. Prynne lecture on Wordsworth's 'Old Man Travelling' and for some reason, the experience has never left me. So naturally, when I was casting around for Inktober ideas, I decided to place the pursed-lipped Cambridge poet into a famous scene from Jurassic Park. 

Somehow this led to showing the then Oxford Professor of Poetry riding a triceratops over a nemesis (you can tell I never got past The Triumph of Time). 

Then it seemed obvious that Philip Larkin would only ride a diplodocus if Kingsley Amis came with him:

And this is Andrew Motion hiding from a Velociraptor, just because.* 

*If any editor wants to commission the 'Jurassic Poets' coffeetable book (or the colouring-in version for the younger dinophile fan of modern of poetry), do get in touch...

Inktober Redux: Blood on the Goose / Goose on the Tracks

It’s been well over a year since I last updated this blog: my job as a lecturer in English literature and my responsibilities as father to two young children barely leave me time to make drawings, let alone spend time blogging. However, I’m hoping to use the summer to bring this site up to date and put up - in a series of weekly posts - some of the images I’ve made since I last wrote.

A good place to start is with Inktober, since that was also the basis for the last post I managed on here. If you don't know what it is, Inktober is the creation of artist Jake Parker. The idea is that every day in October you make a picture using pen (or brush) and ink, rather than digital means, and then post it to twitter. During 2013, I only managed to participate in this a few times, but last October in 2014, I just about managed to complete one drawing in ink every day. This was exhausting and usually involved putting together something fairly derivative from reference material found via Google.  

Since I was tweeting these images, Twitter also served as a source of inspiration and I also cobbled together versions of photographs posted by individuals such as Richard Coles and Simon Day:

Young Richard Coles / Simon Day dressed up

And then, finally, a picture of Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg and a goose. 

The goose is there because of a long-standing joke with an old friend about the consequences of inserting the word ‘goose’ into Dylan lyrics (Subterrenean Homesick Goose, Goose of Spanish Leather etc.). Let’s just leave it there, shall we?