Nico's Journal

Posting about The Hobbit (and why, LJ, have comments there collapsed when there are fewer than 50?) reminded me of Peter Jackson's planned Dambusters. So here are two funny Dambusters-related ads for Carling Black Label.
German goal-keeper on a dam
British thwarting of German tourists (who are known for reserving deck chairs with towels)

And now some Martin Freeman links.

Blake's Junction 7, which has him as Vila (in one of Avon's old outfits) is on YouTube!
Part 1
Part 2
Behind the scenes

Check out this clever Sherlock cut-paper art.
Study in Paper #1: Sherlock and John at the door of 221B
Study in Paper #2: Sherlock playing the violin
Study in Paper #3: John in his cabled jersey

I haven't posted for a while, I see. This is because the most interesting thing I've done recently is join a "mall fitness" group where we meet at Sylvia Park Mall and walk as fast as we can through it, up and down stairs, onto the roof, and round the outside (depending on weather), then have coffee together afterwards. There are stretching exercises and push-outs against walls etc so it's a pretty good workout and I enjoy the kaffee und klatschen.

But today I did something new. Last week I ran into artist Tony Roche in another mall where he was selling some small paintings and advertising his classes. I signed up for one which I went to today and did a sort of impressionist oil painting of poppies. This was fun and involved some interesting techniques using not just different types of brushes but fingers, cotton buds, and rags. I took several photos during the process, and afterwards Tony's partner took one of me and another student with our paintings to put in his class scrapbook which he shows to potential students. The painting will take at least a week to dry, and I'll get it matted and simply framed and whack it up on a wall somewhere. I'm going back to another class in two weeks to do a landscape: beach, sea, pohutukawa tree, and Rangitoto (island) in the distance which will require quite different techniques. There are advanced classes too if I want to go further.

( 5 photos )

OK, that took up some of my afternoon, with two breaks to supervise Jasmin in her explorations of the garden. Bear in mind I did not spend ages on these.

There will, BTW, be kitten and cat picspam sometime, probably tomorrow.

( Knitting needles with a Doctor Who scarf )

In a Mad Men episode we saw last week, a client referred disparagingly to some four-colour posters as outdated WPA. I was interested enough to look it up and it stands for Works Progress Administration, a New Deal agency employing a lot of people during the depression, including artists who did posters, some examples of which can be seen here. I couldn't resist making icons out of some of them. Want, take, credit.

( WPA retro icons )

These are for kalinda001 who had no pictures of her original characters to display with the canon ones in her PGP series. She described them to me so I could have a go at drawing them. Kalinda, I hope they're not too far off what you had in mind. Ignore them if they are; they didn't take me that long once I got round to it.

( Argus, Reya, and Sester )

Happy Birthday, Kalypso_v!

Since I've been drawing B7 cartoons today, here's Jarriere at the crease. :-)

Apparently there are fanart memes, and vandonovan (whose answers are here) tagged me to do this B7 one. I decided to do it all in cartoons because it's easier. :-)

( My answers )

b7fanart

I suddenly realised it's my sister's birthday next weekend and that I needed to make up the necklace and earrings I've had the bits for since months ago.

( Necklace and earrings for my sister )

Molesworth and Heroes fans (few though there may be of you) - the talented redscharlach has drawn Peter and Hiro in Molesworth style.

Bwahahaha! mistraltoes said she'd like to see me and Vila dancing together. A bit too Mary-Sue for me, but I accepted the challenge of doing a couple; after all, it distracted me from my exasperation at Greg only recording half of the Heroes pilot double ep.

And it worked!

I present: the Vila and Soolin pas de deux! It worked out even better than I'd hoped and I think it's more effective and funnier than a solo. :-D

OK, that's the last one two. Promise.

[Edit] I lied. Here's Stark for astrogirl2.

All right, I couldn't help myself. I had to do some more dancing Vilas once I found out how to change the dimensions of the canvas.

Season 1 Vila is a happy little guy.
PGP survivor Vila dances in sheer relief, done in answer to entropy_house's S4 Avon.

I'm getting better at this: his joints are in the right place now. :-)

Hey, they're a nice way of taking my mind off things like cats that won't eat because their meds put their noses out of joint, losing at cricket yet again, and not being able to get holiday accommodation where we want to go till autumn because of 1) booking late and 2) having to work in one of the only two weeks they did have in March. Feh.

There is new season TV to watch though. Heroes tonight, I think.

Ahhh, how could I resist? Vila dances!

[Edit] And yeah, I had to do me. It's pretty much my dancing style too. :-P

I have added my Blake's 7 cartoons to my site -

Simpsons-style B7
Molesworth-style B7

I went over to Pakuranga (another Auckland suburb) today to collect a painting a relative did for me a few weeks ago. One of the neighbours in her street has ... an inflated Santa, trembling in the wind. I was delighted that I had my camera.
( Blow-up Santa )

I finally completed the B7 Simpsons set.

( Simpsons-style Soolin )