Stars are very easy to draw when you know how they are constructed. This little lesson will help you with Christmas scenes and Christmas cards. (Christmas Tree Video coming tomorrow)
You can see this and my other videos in schools and libraries by going to my own video website,www.shoo-tube.com . You can embed the videos in your own blog, or school or library or personal website. Instructions here.
Click the comments button to let me know what you think!
It’s getting very cold around here, but no significant snow. The frost leaves beautiful patterns on plants in the garden. In the same way that snowflakes are different, hoar frost has a different pattern each day, depending on the temperature, wind speed and speed of freezing. Click the thumbnails for bigger pictures.
Last night we went with friends to see a performance of Charlie Rolls, The Musical, written by Colin Tully.
It was performed mostly by his friends and neighbours, but a talented lot they were and a most enjoyable evening with real tunes that you could hum along to a sing! They were mostly of a music hall, English folk and Vaughn Williamsy flavour.
The Love theme was written by Colin’s Daughter, Ailsa, and very pretty it was too, especially sung by Claire Brewster, who has a lovely, smokey folky flavour to her voice that often reminded me of Eliza Carthy.
The setting was the main hall of the Rolls’ family Country House, The Hendre, which is now the Rolls Golf Club.
The Story was about Charlie Rolls of Rolls Royce fame. He was a bit of a daredevil, obsessed with speed, travel and engineering. He went from bicycling at Cambridge to ballooning to setting up the Rolls Royce Company to becoming the first pilot to fly across the channel twice nonstop, just beaten by Bleriot for the first crossing.
He was an all round good chap and just what Mr Cameron wants us all to be again. We had great fun singing along with the rousing parts, waving our union flags and feeling very patriotic! (Actually many people looked quite embarrassed. We don’t really do that sort of thing anymore!)
I felt a strange affinity for the man. When I was five, I became the only border at my school. The Head Teacher was a very gung-ho chap of the old school, who went by the name of Eddy Rosser-Rees. He had an ancient Rolls Royce Silver Ghost. I somehow mixed up Rolls Royce and Rosser-Rees in my childish mind, and thought he must be Mr Rolls Royce too!
The final scene was very moving. Mourners were preparing for Charlie’s funeral – he crashed his plane at the age of 32. The scene was made more poignant when werealised we were sitting in the same room that the mourners would have gathered in, all those years ago.
The ghost of older Charlie came towards the ghost of young Charlie, standing on a chair in the middle of the stage. Older Charlie placed his cap on the younger’s head and handed him a model of a Wright’s flying machine.
Young Charlie adopted the same pose as the statue that stands proudly outside Monmouth Town Hall where, just this week, Students protesting at university fee rises, held a demonstartion and got Charlie on The National News again.
Students protest under the watchful
eye of Charlie Rolls
Well done everyone involved. A Most entertaining night.
Please feel free to embed my videos into your blog and website pages. (Obviously there are some sites I’d rather you didn’t put me on and I think you know which!)
How to do it?Click that little sideways “V” shape on the progress bar at the bottom of the video, then click into and copy all the embed text. Ten, all you need to do is paste it into your website or blog and you are done.
This is really quite easy if you follow the instructions.
You can see this and my other videos in schools and libraries by going to my own video website,www.shoo-tube.com
Click the comments button below to let me know what you think!
Here’s a little video I made tonight at the switching on of Coleford’s Christmas lights. I’m still coming to terms with my new camera. I switched off during all the best bits and filmed all the boring bits! Hey ho! I’ll get it right next year!
It didn’t snow much this afternoon, but I think there’s more on the way. I went for a walk and found quite a bit of colour in the greyness of a November afternoon. Spindleberries, Crab apples and a snow dusted spider’s web.
My YouTube friend, brettlego, asked me to draw a fierce werewolf as the one from Monster Boy is rather too sweet! so here you are. Yow-w-w-w-w-owl!
You can see this and my other videos in schools and libraries by going to my own video website,www.shoo-tube.com
Click the comments button to let me know what you think!
I’ve never given much thought to the Thanksgiving holiday. It doesn’t really show up on the radar here in Britain. But this year has been a bit different.
A few weeks ago I began to get messages asking me what I was planning to do for Thanksgiving drawing lessons. (You may have tried my Turkey, Pilgrim Father and Pilgrim Ladies lessons.)
And today is Thanksgiving, so it’s time to move on and post new videos and think about Christmas, except…
This year I’ve become more aware of what Thanksgiving means to Americans. Thanks to the Pilgrim Fathers’ voyage of the Mayflower – battling dangerous seas, escaping prejudice, starting over in hostile territory – giving thanks has become part of the American Psyche.
We Brits rarely thank anyone. We grumble about the weather a lot and complain about the government and are frequently quite cynical when someone publicly gives true thanks for their good fortune. I think this is one of the major differences in the character of our two nations.
So today, I’ll go against my national stereotype and thank all of those who’ve found and enjoyed my drawing videos this year. Your comments and encouragement have kept me going and still enthuse me to continue to make new lessons and explore this amazing new medium.
I’d like to say thanks to my Publishers for still believing in me, and my editor, Sarah, and all the editors I’ve worked with before, who have encouraged me and drawn my best work out of me. Thanks for letting me do what I enjoy and what I do best. I know how lucky I am and how many others would like to be in my shoes.
Thanks to my family, obviously, for putting up with me and being there when I’ve needed them.
Thanks to everyone who’s bought or read one of my books, to all the schools that read my books and especially those that have invited me to come and tell stories and spread my knowledge and experience, letting me visit parts of the country and the world I would never have believed I would ever get to.
Thanks to all the hard-working and misunderstood librarians, who have supported me along the way and invited me to their libraries.
Thanks to everyone and everything along the way, who have made me who I am. Thanks for the bad times that have let me recognise the good times when I’m having them. Thanks for everything that has been a lesson to me.
Thanks for the beauty of nature that daily gives me moments of pure pleasure – the colour of autumn leaves, brilliant sunsets, a walk in the woods, the first fluffy flakes of snow, cats chasing leaves around the garden.
Thanks for this beautiful world and this extraordinary universe. May it keep supporting me and mine, letting me follow my heart and my dreams.
Amen
Here’s the first of this year’s Christmas themed drawing school lessons. Follow the instructions and you will find that it is really easy to draw snowflakes!
You can see this and my other videos in schools and libraries by going to my own video website,www.shoo-tube.com
Let me know if you like it!
