- and first sketches of 2024

Being as I’m still on holiday from my day job as a teacher until Monday I’ve been continuing to use my sketchbook, making at least 1 drawing a day. Here’s the latest:-

Yes, it’s another based on a Victorian/Edwardian photo. Or rather, a photo trying to look like it was from those times. Looking at the quality of the original photo I think that these may well be re-enactors, but what the hell, they’ve captured the scene pretty much spot on as far as I can see it. Mary Poppins has a lot to answer for when it comes to chimney sweeps. It was a great film, with wonderful songs and state of the art (at the time) sequences that married live action and animation, but it romanticised what was a pretty bleak and unrewarding occupation.

This one I drew in response to a prompt on Facebook’s Sketching Every Day – Happy New Year for cats. I don’t always follow the prompts when I contribute, and even when I do follow the prompts I’ll sometimes look for an alternative take on the prompt. So this is based on an exhibit in the world famous La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, showing Smilodon, aka the Sabretooth Cat. When I was growing up in the 60s and 70s Smilodon was usually called the Sabretooth Tiger, but that’s gone out of fashion for the not unreasonable reason that it’s not a species of tiger, or of any other modern big cat either. Smilodon has always been one of my favourite extinct mammals – for the record it’s up there with Megatherium (Giant Ground Sloth), Woolly Mammoth and Indricothere (gigantic hornless rhinoceros far bigger than a modern African Elephant). Hey, it’s my blog and I can pick what I like.

I wanted to draw a bird of prey. I’ve always had a liking for owls, and would have picked this species, the Eurasian Eagle-owl, for its latin name Bubo Bubo if nothing else. But I really like its Dennis Healey-esque eyebrows. (There will now be a short break for UK readers to go and ask their grandparents who Dennis Healey was) The scanner just would not do the whole picture in one go, hence the photograph as well.

The latest returns to machinery, and formula 1 grand prix cars. There were Grand Prix motor races long before there was a formula 1 world championship. That didn’t begin until 1950, and the reference photo on which this one is based was taken during a pit stop in the very first grand prix of that very first season, which took place at Silverstone in the UK – yay!