Nice things on Etsy

I don't often post stuff I like on Etsy, but I spend a hell of a lot of time on there and have a lot of favourites and freinds.

Louise Black's beautiful clothing:


Portrait of a hare by one of the best artists on Etsy (I think)

It seems like i'm not the only person with a moustache addiction. 'Somethings hiding in here' are now making these brilliant Moustache kits:


And this, possibly the best jewellery for my tastes ever, Margaux Lang's beautiful wares:


Aside from perusing beautiful things on Etsy, i've developed a very severe Facebook addiction. It's been great finding old freinds, catching up and also the fact that you know what your mates are doing 24/7. A revolution!

The devil rides again

I've been trying to incorporate music into an automata of some variety. I originally found a hand cranked music box (Cylinder type) which played John Lennons 'Imagine'. I pulled that apart to see if I could cause it to turn in some other way, and promptly lost a bunch of parts and ended up with nowt but a spiky cylinder. Then I found Deans Group who produce mechanical music in every possible variety, see post below. So I purchased a 20 note battery powered music box, and!!!!, you also get musical strips you can perforate yourself!

So far i've done a scale and a bizarre piece of music which tries to use every musical note. In the obviously deluded idea that if you've got 20 notes to play with, you want to make the most of your music box and play every single one.

Anyway, the Lennon machine is temporarily postponed because I cannot get my head around how it's going to work. I had some flaws in my original gears and now it's all propped up in the corner. So i've been drawing up an alternative and it involves the devil again. The thing is I am not religious in that way but I think the devil is a good character to draw. Not only is it widely believed he's behind good music but he is also portrayed in modern times as nothing more than a bit of a naughty bugger. Also, you can really do things with horns and a moustache in a drawing.

Anyway, to that end I put on the Barons Bow Tie and started inventing. The original drawings and studies are for the machine you would build if you could... so it's complete nonsense. The next set of drawings will actually be plans for the real-world verision.


I've also done some pages of studies for musical instruments and will probably do studies of musicians who are clearly producing 'that kind of music'.

The frontispiece (The devil drawing) has an overlay, a transparentish piece of parchment which i've drawn over and then labelled and secribed the different parts of the machine. It looks pretty good I think but i'd need to photograph it in-situ and my camera is out of battery. Will do so soon and post.

General update and ramble

So, this morning I get up with horrendous hangover - I should really not let myself get talked into going out for 'a drink' on a wednesday night. I think I may be too old for white wine heh :) Anyway, a quick update. The last few weeks i've been going back to try and understand oil painting a bit better, using underpainting and then glazes to try and model an image. It's going ok, but it does take an age and a lot of patience to wait for a layer to dry. Will post pictures in progress soon.

Other than that I am still attempting to get music into an automaton and to that end have found this great site:http://www.deangroup.co.uk/
Where I am amazed by the sheer quantity of musical movements, one of which will find it's way into something I build i'm sure. But, seperately, they have this great site for organs http://www.deanorgans.com...did you ever see anything like it in your life?