Where is Tate?

Dear friends of Tate and the advent calendars,

I had hoped to do the calendar story again this year, but it’s just not possible for various reasons, including serious computer problems at a critical time. I have sent Tate and Pierre on vacation for some much deserved rest and relaxation - you can see their postcard at catwholaughed.com. I am very sorry to disappoint those who have been counting (so to speak) on the calendar, but I do hope to see you next year! Have a lovely holiday season, and best wishes for 2008.

–Penny

Getting ready for Artweeks again

Yes, it is that time of year again - Oxford Artweeks approaches in May. I am enjoying it already. Well, everything except the awful smell of the vinyl banner sitting in my studio, it must have been fresh from the printers when I picked it up. The proprietor of our neighborhood bakery is demanding more brochures than I gave her this morning. More, we need more! I have fallen behind on my comics project, but have not forgotten it. In fact, I am working on getting my handwriting made into a font to use for the lettering. I just have to work up the nerve to fill out the form - it’s a little daunting to write characters that you’ll have to live with. At the moment I am uploading impossibly large image files to the Giclee printer (a person, not a device) in Southsea so that I have some additional unframed prints available for sale. New, better postcards are (in theory) on their way in the post. I took three prints to the framer in Headington today, and brought along one that he did last year so we could match it exactly. This to me is a sign of getting older - the willingness to take trouble over details because you have personally experienced the many different and exciting ways that things can go wrong. What seemed like unbearable fussiness when I first left school now seems like a good idea that may preserve your sanity. Even if you do find yourself carrying around a framed picture in a blanket like some flat, angular baby.

I should mention, in the Web 2.0 spirit of “what are you doing right now” - I am listening to a song by the 80’s Irish band In Tua Nua. I’m not sure why I have a lingering affection for this group - but I went to quite a bit of trouble to obtain a used copy of their CD “The Long Acre”. Those who are horrified at such retro listening habits - I can only apologize.

Reconfiguring Tate

It’s quite interesting trying to retell this year’s calendar story in comics format. I’ve been using a rectangular animated image with text below it for so long that the thought of working in another way is a bit mind-boggling. What I’m figuring out at the moment is how much information I can convey without any text at all. Also, I realized this evening that I have been using the wrong digital tool. Here I have limitless virtual tools, and still struggle along with something inadequate - doh! - it’s not as if I have to run out to the store to replace it. I was using a very small “2B” and the lines were not satisfactory at all, they looked, in a word, pathetic. I’ve switched to a much thicker 2B now, and it is really fun to use. I’ve uploaded the sketch of panel 1 (click on thumbnail above) so you can see the line quality. I still wrestle with Painter. Case in point: tonight I needed to crop the image to get rid of excess white space. I drew my rectangle with the crop tool, pressed return, and - nothing. I was actually forced to consult Help, and it turns out that once you get the rectangle you want, you *click inside it* to complete the cropping. Like so many aspects of Painter, this seems to come from some other universe of user interface design. Hello? The standard parlance for “Let’s do this thing” is the Enter key. But I do like those lines…

New project

The first post of 2007… and my first as a (gasp) 40 year old. This fact really hit home when I was using my 1966 edition of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and realized that the book was 41 years old. Just one year older than me… I’m currently reading a very enjoyable book by Julia Child that I was given for Christmas, My Life in France. It was written with her husband Paul’s grandnephew and published posthumously. She recounts her move, with Paul, to post-WWII France, and her adventures learning to cook French food in Paris. Perhaps the most appealling aspect is the way she clearly found her true calling - once she got started, she pursued this passion with incredible dedication and gusto (as was obvious in her television appearances). Her account of her sister’s take-no-prisoners approach to the French language and Paris traffic is also hysterical.

For those following the calendar saga, I’ll bring you up to date on my latest idea. Before doing this year’s story, I read some of Scott McCloud’s great writing on “comics”, an increasingly varied and evolving storytelling method. I find it quite fascinating - it seems to sit in a space between video, drawing, storytelling and lots of other things that interest me. I know that “comic books” may not appeal to everyone, and I find the term “graphic novel” too precious for words, but I hope you’ll bear with me while I experiment a bit. Currently, I am trying to retell the JT Agapanthus story in comics format - it may be two or possibly three pages. When it’s done, I plan to upload it as a pdf file so people can download it and see what they think. Watch this space.

Oh - and I’m also trying to set up an art gallery in Second Life. More on that later…

Countdown

Just a brief entry to say that the 2006 online calendar featuring Tate is well underway and will start, as always, on December 1. Finding time to complete all the drawings means less time to blog, so there will probably be a (longer than usual) hiatus here while I buckle down. A Happy (early) Thanksgiving to Americans reading this. I’ve just finished “The Lay of the Land” by Richard Ford which takes place over Thanksgiving, and was privileged to hear him read from it here in Oxford. Between that and watching the Sopranos, I’ve had the strange sensation of virtually inhabiting New Jersey while living in England. Odd, but not unpleasant. I’ve now moved on to a Swedish mystery.

Black cat eyes lunch

This was taken in Dinan, Brittany at the 2004 Fete des Remparts, the bi-annual medieval festival. We’ve just returned from there; this year’s festivities were great fun as usual. I was going through some older photos this evening and couldn’t resist posting this one.