Sunday 15 March 2015

Sunday

Yesterday I cleaned the house - it was mostly just dog hair that invades every crack and corner - and brick dust. I found a pound coin lodged between two floorboards in the bedroom, that cheered me up.

It's turned a bit colder, alarming, as I have just received my electricity bill covering the winter months and it's much higher than I expected. Using the oven more frequently, the dryer and heating one room have taken their toll. There are some old people (my age and above) on the radio talking about something they don't understand (social media) as if they were experts. I had a flash back to my parents trying to engage with me when I was in my early teens and failing, and my irritation with them - history repeating. I have some stuff on Ebay that ends today and I'm putting more on later - I think I have other things I need to do, but I can't remember what they are and I've not worked up the enthusiasm to look at the list in my notebook.

Last night I went to an event at a local arts hub - two very well known London based illustrators, both HORRIBLY fashionable gave one hour each gave presentations about their work. It was a coup for the organisers - there are a lot of illustrators in Hastings and the influx and success of creative practitioners is essential to the growth of this town. I have to be honest, I thought they were both rubbish. Egotistical, deluded and really arrogant. Their work was poor, but fashionable - neither could really draw and both were clearly taking the piss out of the audience. One makes most of his money teaching - the other by selling postcards that abuse people. That's the thing that struck me most - how abusive they were. One has been waging a campaign of abuse against someone who criticised him in print (quite accurately) by embedding his name in much of his work with the legend 'T*** O*** is a cunt' or similar - much to the amusement of the audience. I didn't get the joke.

They were both self-important and critical of editors and designers who 'ruin' their work by actually having to make it work - NOBODY like barcodes - you just have to make the best of it. Best anecdote was when one was asked to do a drawing that would be recreated on a wedding cake for someone who I think they knew and only had £150 left to spare "I JUST DON'T WORK for that kind of money" (bit confused by what work is ) but he agreed to do it only if they let him do what he wanted and didn't complain, so he drew them both as a pair of copulating pigs. How the audience laughed (but not me). What a sniveling little cunt.

I sat next to a woman who is a respected veteran cartoonist and illustrator and in the process of compiling a book for the Cartoonists Association in response to the 'Je Suis Charlie' events - she kept shifting uncomfortably in her seat. it was their contempt for the commissioning process that made me angriest - some of the roughs the sent to designers were shown - I'd have just binned them. I was in conversation with a publisher last week who told me he's tried working with one of them but it was a total waste of time. Soon, I suspect - both of the will find out what it's like to be unfashionable - neither seem to have a skill base to fall back on.

2 comments:

Steerforth said...

Mr Bingo comes across as a bit of a one trick pony.

Grey Area said...

Bingo can draw, as long as you don't ask him to colour anything in - but after 15 years of developing a style - it's very limited, and mostly revolves around putting a penis on everything and ignoring the brief. I think David Shrigley casts a very long shadow.

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