This is quite a long video in which I show you all sorts of things related to drawing and designing a book, with lots of bits of advice along the way.
I’m currently making my “How to Draw Ancient Greek Stuff Real Easy” book – almost there – and will be launching it on Kickstarter quite soon.
Watch as I design the character of Greek Good Pan and then work out how best to split him up into easy to draw stages. Then I clean up the artwork in Photoshop and paste the book page up in Adobe inDesign.
Finally I make a PDF of the work, which you can download for free on my Patreon page here https://www.patreon.com/posts/16579452 You can also have a look at what I do on Patreon while you are there.
Is World Book Day is out of control? I know some schools think so and are not going along with it anymore. Certainly parents are driven to distraction by it. The getting of costumes is now a regular joke in TV sitcoms.
World Book Day is supposed to promote literacy, but the costumes are often far removed from books. Supermarkets pile up costumes for WBD, knowing that frazzled parents will buy them to stop the kids nagging and not to lose face at the school gate. Never mind that the costume probably promotes a movie, sport or computer game.
When I’m asked to judge a fancy dress at a school, I immediately eliminate anything that has come from ASDA. The kids with amazing, shop-bought costumes look confused when I choose some kid wrapped up in bin bags and granny’s old hat. That’s what I call dressing up.
Image from the Birmingham Mail web post. Great Trump costume, but what is the book the child is celebrating – Fire and Fury or The Art of the Deal? Not Primary school books either way!
World Book Day is supposed to be about celebrating books and promoting literacy. Many children come dressed as footballers, superheroes, princesses in bridesmaid dresses or other famous movie or computer game characters, in off-the-shelf costumes. I’m always asking them, “Yes, but what book are you supposed to be?”
Schools – It’s okay to NOT dress up on World Book Day.
Leave dressing up to a special end of term dressing-up day or Halloween, when it doesn’t really matter what anyone dresses up as or how.
Celebrate the book on World Book Day, not football or Disney.
I saw this amazing machine at an auction yesterday. It had a drawing table attached to the top of a pendulum and a pen attached to the top of an other pendulum. when they were set swinging, the pen would draw indicate patterns similar to the old spirograph toy.
The pendulums could be raise and lowered to alter the period of swing and both pendular were independent and could be swung in any direction or in circular motions. Great fun and I thought you would like to see it.
Here are a couple of other pendulum drawing videos if you are excited by this.
