46. Family

SUNDAY:

Hooray, 6 Post-It notes and three posts later and we've finally reached Sunday's! It's the first in what seems like a long time to be done on the day it was actually supposed to be done on. I went for more American comedy, though this time it's Modern Family. I've been watching it fairly obsessively for the past few days (I think I managed to get through the first two seasons in about half a week) and I love it; my flatmate, Sani, lent it to me ages ago and I only got round to watching it recently, in a dramatically staged coup of friend-enabled American sitcom marathon viewing. This is based on one of the promotional DVD images for the second season and includes all of the key characters, though the accuracy is a bit off in some cases: Luke (bottom right), despite being about 10, has the body of a large 50 year old man, while Manny (middle right) looks a bit like a mob boss, and you can barely make out Haley's (top right) face. Phil's (lying down at the front) hair started to look a little too much like Elvis' (the King), but I sorted that out - I initially wasn't sure how much I liked him but he's really grown on me and I didn't want him to look wildly unlike his charming, charismatic self!

45. Illusion

SATURDAY:

This one was fun to do - a lot of measuring and straight lines. I think I frustrated my art teacher in Sixth Form at school with my tendency to be very restrained and precise in my work, but there is something in it, although I'm also drawn to freer, more spontaneous styles too. This optical illusion is incredibly clever: I found out while looking for a reference picture that it's created by means of a distorted room called an Ames room, though from photographs you'd never be able to tell that there's anything odd about the space just by the way it appears when empty.    

This one was also fun to do, though for a different reason! When the new season of Arrested Development came out recently it seemed like almost everyone I know was excited, while Tom and I knew almost nothing about it. So our friend Caroline lent us the first season on DVD and, though it took me a little while to get into it, now I'm hooked! I particularly like Gob with all his swagger, and he's got some of the best lines. 

Michael: So this is the magic trick, huh? 
Gob: Illusion, Michael. A trick is something a whore does for money... 
[sees children watching his magic] 
Gob: ...or cocaine! 

Thanks, IMDb, for the quote magic! 

44. Two Roads

FRIDAY:

This was another tough one. Tom and I had trouble coming up with possible road names, but I'm happy with the implied contrast between 'Long Road to Ruin' and 'Yellow Brick Road', though that doesn't look much like Oz and now I can't stop thinking about that Foo Fighters song. 

I was trying to think more outside the box with this one, and decided to try drawing Harvey Dent/Two-Face on the coin he uses in The Dark Knight to decide his actions (I've never read any of the comics or graphic novels, and most of my knowledge of Batman comes from Christopher Nolan's filmic vision of him). The idea was to capture the two possible outcomes and their attendant morality, but I'm not sure it came across that well because of the design of the coin and its burn pattern. I was also too lazy to look up an appropriate reference picture to check the appearance of the coin and Dent/Two-Face in the film. In this case artistic license definitely doesn't do justice to the original - another good lesson for me to learn.

43. Dying

I mentioned in my previous post that I've been making up for missed entries, and the volume of those has been high recently: it's now Monday and these Post-It notes were supposed to be for last Thursday. However, though I am writing up the comments today, yesterday was actually the busier day in terms of Post-It productivity, since I had to catch up on the entries for Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. That's right: 7 Post-It notes in one day. A whole week's worth. It was a lot of fun, and I had a great time with my boyfriend keeping me company, but it was a lot of work too! Still, though I'm not proud that I let them pile up like that, I am happy that I managed to get them all uploaded last night, even if at 3am I decided to postpone the writing until now. So, here goes:

THURSDAY: 

The theme for this one was a tough one - I didn't want to do anything too sad or trite. In the end, I decided to go with a wilting flower. Flowers have such short lifespans, but even when they die they're so beautiful, and they return to the ground so quickly and start the cycle anew. Trite, you say? Maybe, but it's still true. 

In another attempt to take a positive approach, I decided to draw Daniel Jackson from Stargate SG-1. ***Spoiler alert:*** it apparently became such a significant running joke that the character died or got killed so often (even on a show where all of the main characters had been killed off multiple times in various parallel universes, alternate realities, virtual realities, dreams, simulations etc.), that it was actually meta-referenced in a later episode of the series. Daniel was maybe my favourite character* so it was sad watching him die in the series, but it was also uplifting to think that there might be something more to death in its various guises and that he might still be out there. The reference photo is here: I think I could definitely have taken much more care over the initial groundwork in order to capture the likeness more, but doing this brought back to me just how much I loved the series, and now I'm stoked to watch it all again!


*He's a talented, multilingual, awkward, nerdy, enthusiastic, occasionally sarcastic anthropologist with a quizzical stare and twitchy eyebrows, who seems to attract bad (and good) women and enemy fire in equal measure, but still manages to emerge the hero. What's not to love? (Though admittedly playing favourites is a hard call on a show that good.) Also, he's so cute. Also, and big surprise here, his arms. Did not see that coming. I'm going to stop now - there are too many pictures and I am as shallow as a very small puddle on very flat ground after not very much rain.

42. Standing Still

This post is one of a string, right up to number 46, which were all very delayed, hence the high concentration of double image posts coming up. This one was supposed to be last Wednesday's, I posted it on Saturday, and I'm writing this on Monday. There's no good excuse: I just lost all motivation over the past week, not just for this, but for a load of stuff. It took a weekend of beautiful weather, boating, ice cream in coffee, and excellent friends to b*tchslap me out of being in a constant grump, so thank you for everyone who pitched in and lent a hand - you're all the best.

This sketch is based on a game I used to play that involved one person walking to a designated goal while being stalked by their 'friends', whose goal was ostensibly to tag them and stop them from getting there (all very sinister - prelude to abduction, anyone?); whenever they turned around their tormentors had to freeze - any sign of movement and game over for them. I may have got some of the details wrong, but it seemed pretty fun at the time, kind of like Sticky Toffee, though with less potentially compromising getting-caught-crawling-through-somebody-else's-legs action. 

My forfeit Post-It note is of a scene from the most recent Indiana Jones movie, where Indy gets caught in some quicksand while on the run from the Soviets. I don't know how effective it is to stay still when you're caught in quicksand - probably a lot more than thrashing around trying to get free - but I hope I never find out. I would rather face the snakes I think. Though not spiders. Spiders terrify me. Reference photo here: http://www.unc.edu/~ruerin/indiana%20jones%20quicksand.jpg

41. Teamwork

I don't think I've ever actually been involved in a successful human pyramid, but I'd imagine it does take a great deal of teamwork. What I'm slightly worried about is that, while an apple is a worthy goal for this sort of endeavour, 1/6 an apple is only 1/30 of your five a day. These kids' work is far from over. Incidentally, my sister was once part of a bona fide human pyramid, of which there is photographic evidence. It was much smaller, but everybody in it was wearing a fake mustache, and that's got to count for something.

40. Rated

This one was actually done on the right day, which seems like a rare occurrence recently. I went with 'X-rated' - you can decide what you think that says about me!