SO I’m completely loving Musketeers on the BBC at the moment. Much fun, and and and! Those costumes! Absolutely gorgeous. The men in them aren’t bad either, but it says a lot about a show when the first viewing is spent admiring the costumes (“Phwoar! Look at that embossed leather pauldron!”) and you only notice the hot men on repeat viewings (“Phwoar! Santiago Cabrera!”)
Still, they have fun shaped costumes to draw (gotta love those collars) and interesting faces (Tom Burke especially). So this happened:
I’m also reading The Three Musketeers at the moment, which I’m loving and finding a lot funnier than I thought it would be. I read an abridged version when I was an obnoxious little 8 year old inflated with pride that I was able to read the contents of the little bookshelf in the corridor usually reserved for the older age group (I was an insufferable swot) but it was an awfully long time ago. The heading of this post is a quote from the book. The version I bought also has a cover illustrated by Tom Gauld, which makes it about a billion times more fantastic that it already was. Tom Gauld is just a genius.
Because I’m really getting in to this, here’s a group image. I’m sort of in love with the zombie couple, too wrapped up to notice that their ears are falling off and they’re scattering creepy crawlies in their wake.
We’re having a 1920s Speakeasy party this year, a joint Halloween and birthday party for a flatmate. I’m in the middle of an attempt to make horns like the ones in this drawing right now – fetch the papier mache supplies, Jeeves!
In the meantime I’m overcome with the desire to draw an entire Great Gatsby party of vamps, ghouls and demons…
This image began as a quick doodle of a GI with an accordion based on the photograph below, and quickly escalated into a full-blown musical interlude. I particularly like the guy drumming on his buddy’s helmeted-head, he looks like such a yokel, with his bullet-hole-pinked helmet.
I love the idea that this soldiers in the photo below found an accordion in the rubble in some bombed-out Normandy town, and hey, don’t LeBeau play accordion, he’s from down Louisiana way ain’t he?
I don’t know that he’s from Louisiana and I don’t know that his name is LeBeau, that’s just my guess at a Cajun name (that’s what Gambit from X-Men is called, right?). But I DO know that’s a diatonic button accordion (or melodeon) because I have one quite similar that I can barely play. Still, I have a huge affection for accordions of all kinds – I’ve actually collected quite a collection of WW2 Soldiers Playing Accordions images, which I might post someday.
…Except it’s sort of not. I’ve been re-watching series 2 of Sherlock (how utterly perfect is The Reichenbach Fall?) and this sort of popped out in anticipation of series 3, whenever that might be.
Something a little looser and more caricature-ish here. I adore the way Moffat, Gatiss, and of course Benedict Cumberbatch and Andrew Scott have portrayed both Sherlock and Moriarty (and their weird-ass relationship) in the series. Scott is chillingly, shudderingly brilliant as Moriarty – precisely because he’s pretty much the only Moriarty I’ve ever seen who wasn’t a pantomime villain. No moustache twirling here. Young, stylish, a little effete, and utterly, utterly insane. His unpredictability is terrifying (who saw that coming for him at the end of the last episode?). There’s a bit in the series 2 finale when he asks a female police officer to reach into his trouser pocket for some chewing gum and it’s so horrible and the way he stares at her is so….argh, makes me shiver just to think of it. So creepy.
Anyway this came out of nowhere. Enjoy.
(P.S. A very young Andrew Scott, like pretty much every British male actor of a certain age (Fassbender! McAvoy! Pegg!) pops up in Band of Brothers. Very briefly. Very, very briefly. Poor baby Andrew Scott.)
Another WW2 scene, this time from the Siege of Bastogne. Short history lesson: Bastogne is a Belgian town that was completely encircled by the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge of 1944. The US 101st Airborne paratroopers (who were used to being surrounded) along with elements of the 9th and 10th Armoured division held the town until help could reach them. I may be slightly biased because I’m a huge 101st groupie, but all the people involved in this battle were incredibly tough: despite cold weather, little proper winter clothing, food, medical supplies and ammunition, they held fast. These guys were sleeping out in foxholes in the ice and snow, for weeks at a time. The civilian population were also extraordinarily brave – particularly the nurses Renee Lemaire and Augusta Chiwy.
I’m enjoying stretching my drawing muscles by tackling something a little different – I don’t normally draw vehicles or scenes like this. In fact, this and the Spitfire from the other day are probably the first real vehicles that I’ve ever attempted.
I tried really hard to make this ambulance accurate, but typically, I bet I’ve got something wrong (eg. that type of field ambulance was never used in the ETO you fucking idiot!). Please accept preemptive apologies if so.
(Note: The title of this post will make more sense if you read this.)
Okay, so we all know the flyboys are pretty cool, but what about all the others that get the planes up and at ’em? I have a lot of love for the ground-crew and the mechanics. So much that there may well be a follow up to to this image with some bomber ground-crew. Also I like drawing planes.
I’ve tried to get this as accurate as possible but please don’t throw things at me if you’re a Spitfire fantatic (who isn’t?) and something isn’t quite right (ie. a propellor with four blades wasn’t built until after 1940 you fucking idiot!)
EDIT: Since first posting this yesterday I’ve gone back and updated the image too many times to mention, since a few people pointed out inaccuracies and it bothered me so much – I’m sorry. BACK TO SCHOOLING, JEMIMA.
But that’s it. I can’t do it anymore. It’s locked, finished, it is what it is. I promise to do better next time, honest guv’!
In case you didn’t know, this was the poem broadcast on Radio Londres as a code to French Resistance that D-Day was happening.
One of my favourite pastimes is making up phrases that might have been used as codes on the radio:
Jacques’ cow will NOT GIVE MILK.
Marcel has a VERY FINE MOUSTACHE.
The baker has BURNT THE BAGUETTES.
It works for almost anything as long as you shout out the last three words slowly. See? A fun game for long car journeys, or perhaps when speaking to someone really boring.
Coloured version of a quick doodle, your average crummy JDs
Recently I stumbled across this photo by Bruce Davidson, from a collection on 1950s Brooklyn teenage gangs that I first saw a couple of years ago:
And it got me doodling some 50s teenage hoodlums, which in turn made me want to dig out my West Side Story dvd.
I love West Side Story. I mean, I really really love it. People who don’t like musicals tend to get this eyes-glossing-over thing when I mention it, which is sad because, seriously guys, this aint no normal musical. Yes, it takes a while to get used to the fighting-via-dance format of a lot of the film (Quick! He’s using jazz-hands!), but when you do you start to notice, shit, that dancing is pretty physical, and the music is gorgeous, and the lyrics are so, so sad. That chirpy song the kids sing about Officer Krupke is fun, right? It’s also about a bunch of teenagers -when “teenagers” were an entirely new concept- with junkie parents who beat them, a society that’s failing them, and a hopelessly bleak future. Tony and Maria’s Romeo & Juliet love-story isn’t the only tragic thing about the film.
But this is me talking – I love the ’50s and ’60s, I love New York, and I’m hopelessly soppy – so I was always going to love it. But if you get the chance to watch this film, before your eyes gloss over, admire the acrobatic, incredibly physical dancing, listen for the beautifully tremulous strings behind the vocals in “One Hand, One Heart”, try and catch the brilliantly sharp lyrics about the way 1950s USA treated immigrants in “America”, and the heartbreakingly sad little lines: “Why do you kids live like there’s a war on?”
Also, you know that finger-clicking is cool.
West Side doodles
Here’s a collection of images I’ve got stuck in a file on my desktop, some from West Side Story, some by the brilliant Bruce Davidson, a couple of gorgeous illustrations of New York in the ’50s by M.Sasek (one of my favourite illustrators), and a few others thrown in for good measure:
Bruce Davidson
Bruce Davidson
Bruce Davidson
Bruce Davidson.
Bruce Davidson.
Bruce Davidson.
Bruce Davidson
Bruce Davidson (This could be straight out of West Side Story’s “Jet Song”)
Bruce Davidson
Bruce Davidson
Bruce Davidson
Bruce Davidson
Bruce Davidson (“Boy, after a fight that brother of yours is so…healthy.”
Bruce Davidson
Awesome Japanese West Side Story poster.
Paul Newman. Needs no other comment.
Teddy Girls are where it’s at.
Natalie Wood as Maria, West Side Story.
The Jets.
Tony Mordente (Action), behind the scenes on West Side Story. I love me a gobby little Italian-American boy.
David Winter, behind the scenes on West Side Story
The Jets in the prologue, West Side Story
West Side Story title scene, masterminded by the great Saul Bass.
West Side Story title scene, masterminded by the great Saul Bass.
M.Sasek – This Is New York.
The Jets, West Side Story prologue.
Russ Tamblyn as Riff, leader of the Jets.
Finger clicking, behind the scenes on the West Side Story broadway show.
Dance at the gym, West Side Story. The costume colours for the Jets and the Sharks here are beautiful.
Richard Beymer as Tony.
Tony and Maria in the finale.
James Dean. Just being awesome.
M.Sasek – This Is New York.
Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer in rehearsals.
Natalie Wood and Tony Mordente in rehearsals.
Marlon Brando. Just being awesome.
M.Sasek – This Is New York.
Vivian Maier street photography.
Vivian Maier street photography.
The Jets, in the prologue.
Russ Tamblyn as Riff.
And here, the West Side Story prologue in full, because I love you:
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