Knickerbocker glory

What’s the most delicious thing you’ve ever eaten?

A knickerbocker glory in the cafe at the top of the Great Orme mountain in Llandudno in Wales.

Why? It’s the only one I ever ate, I was a child, and I was amazed by it.

A tall cold glass with a long spoon, a fan shaped wafer in the top. Vanilla ice cream, fruit (I think cherries and peaches), chocolate and raspberry sauces, and fresh cream…. Well that’s how I remember it! We had gone up on the cable car and it was a real adventure. I think we were staying in Rhyl and had a day trip down the Coast to Llandudno.

I remember deep blue sea and bright blue sky, tall houses and wide, quiet roads. The cable car was scary but fun and the cafe had cool drinks and ice-cream for sale.

I don’t know if I ate the whole knickerbocker glory or if I shared with one of my sisters? It seemed to be huge. I think we chose it because of the picture on the menu? It certainly cooled us down on that hot sunny day. Fifty years later.. I still remember…. Delicious!

Butterfly?

I just drew this… I saw a red admiral butterfly outside and wanted to take a photo of it, but it flew off. I decided to draw something against a dark background to make it stand out more. This was drawn in the Artrage app I use, it gives nice metallic effects, hence the abstract look of this butterfly.

Have you noticed?

Big feet?

I keep seeing cartoons of people with tiny heads, small bodies, long legs and big feet. Why? it’s fashionable I guess, artists and illustrators are as susceptible to that as anyone else. But is it lazy, or is it what clients are demanding? I can imagine a conversation, “we like your work but can you tweak it?”, “how would you like it?” can you exentuate the feet and make the face small? “,” OK “….

I can understand the concept, the viewpoint is low down, a bit like when a child looks up to a parent. It also makes the subject figure appear stronger because it towers over it’s surroundings, like a giant with seven league boots striding over a diminished landscape. But to me? It’s getting boring. There is no nuance, the parts of the figures are like cut out pieces of paper, no real shading.

There are various illustration programmes that allow you to stitch together a figure by dragging and dropping various elements to ‘build’ a figure and it’s environment. Like other AI and tech systems it’s taking over from real artists and real interesting designs. It’s basically safety as opposed to unique ideas. Dumbing down another profession. I appreciate it makes life for clients easier, but where is the innovation?

Floating cat?

I tried to add a pattern underneath my kitty because he carpet he is lying on was dark and you couldn’t make out the outline easily. But I couldn’t finger paint around the cat very easily. Still I did an OK job. I wanted to add a black and white pattern to this photo of one of my black and white cats.

I love cats , they can be good companions and they are not as aloof as they are sometimes portrayed. I used Houndstooth check which seemed like a good choice. I should really try doing this in photoshop but I’m too tired to fire up my PC.

Similar

Great minds think alike?

I drew this this morning but hadn’t published it. I was just going through the reader section of WordPress and found someone else had done a very similar image. I did this digitally, playing with a drawing that I had been altering over the last couple of days. The other person’s art is four different female faces, using a totally different technique. It’s so interesting that artists come up with similar ideas from different beginnings. I like her style and work, good to see the creativity here!