I loved drawing as a kid.
I used to draw Hot Wheels cars on graph paper and then colour them in with felt pen.
I also loved to draw Samurai warriors and Kung Fu comic fighters like Shang Shi and Judo Master.
I don't have any Hot Wheels but I do have quite a few Kung Fu pictures somewhere in my loft. I was really chuffed with them at the time, circa 1973. They included a poster for a public Judo exhibition for the local club I was in!
I can also recall drawing old timer cars. I copied outlines from plastic wall plaques that were on the wall in my parents' house. They were flat oblong old timer car plaques, which I sometimes still see at car boot sales.
I also loved to copy jokes and characters from annuals like Beano, Dandy, Beezer and Buster. I did these in biro for some reason and filled sketchbooks with them. Somewhere I still have at least one.
My older brothers and their assorted cool chums all drew stuff from contemporary magazines at the time like MAD, Creepy and Eerie. They were brilliant drawings.
As I got older I drew and painted fantasy LP covers. I copied Yes, Greenslade and Budgie covers, as well as some sci-fi and horror stuff I made up myself.
I didn't do Art O Level at school but fancied a crack at an ONC in Graphic Design in Blackburn when I was 18. I even had a place but bailed at the last minute and opted for a Youth Work course, but alas I ditched this as well in order to work on a fenland nature reserve for a year around 1981.
Wildlife became my new focus for drawing and I've still got lots of the results again bundled up somewhere in the attic. These include some newsletter covers I did for Preston BTCV.
All good fun and to this day I still enjoy drawing but nowadays its mostly doodling in biro or in Paint on the PC. Occasionally I burden blog readers with my digital scratchings.
Did you draw or paint as a kid readers and do you still take up the pencil?
I drew a lot as a kid, Anderson vehicles etc. (The sort of things I make models of now in fact!). I moved on to portraits of my favourite characters from tv shows. I did a bit of airbrush painting too for a while. I keep meaning to go back to art as I don't do any at the moment.
ReplyDeleteDid you do art O level Kev? Youre so talented. I wondered if you did.
DeleteThank you but no I didn't. My exam options were all science.
ReplyDeletescientific and artistic. I wonder if that's a rare trait?
DeleteI'm not in DaVinci's league! Mind you, he never replicated the Spacex range did he?
ReplyDeleteNo but he did invent the tank and the armoured car!
DeletePersonally, I prefer the work of Leonardo De Agostini !
ReplyDeleteMish.
I DID draw as a kid! In fact, I had some of my drawings selected for inclusion on the 'SHADES' back page of TV21 Green Edition 171 and won ten bob for my efforts. Unfortunately this particular issue was fairly unremarkable overall by TV21 standards, and my drawings weren't so hot either, but for a few days I was the 'star' of my school and was invited up onstage by the headmaster to officially receive a 10/- book token. Amazingly, decades later my dream of drawing for TV21 came true (sort of) when editor Alan Fennell contracted me to paint several covers for the 1990s Thunderbirds/Stingray/Scarlet reboot comics.
ReplyDeleteah thats superb Charlie! tanks so much for letting us know. You must have been soooo thrilled to eventually get to work with the great Alan Fennell. Fantastic. Do you still have any of your childhood art and reboot cover art? It would be soo fab to see it and share it on Moonbase! My email is at the bottom of the blog page = Woodsy. Cheers again and what a great childhood dream story!
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