Emergency Post Switch-around - Artwork - Marvin

Hello there

EDIT: This post was scheduled for Thursday, and Loopholes was to be today.  However, on the AGREED recording day of Tuesday, Kate messaged to say she was stuck in Finland.  Apparently Ryan Air don't know how to count so just kept selling seats...

There she is stuck at the airport, after - I presume - filming a remake of Robert Palmer's Addicted To Love video (ask your Dad). She has just informed me that a plane is now available, so she should be all good to Zoom Loopholes today (Weds) and it can come out tomorrow.

Although this is the plane...

I know...it looks like the end of Die Hard 2.  Should the plane drop off radars I'll do an autoharp special or something.  It's what she would have wanted.

Back to the post...

A bit of drawing for you today, which flew in the face of everything I've been saying about doing art recently.

The reason I selected this subject (besides him being brilliant) is I had been wondering about how easy/difficult it would be to make a replica of him.  This is Marvin, from the Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy TV series, and he looks to be a relatively simplistic design.  So I figured that I'd need to have a proper good look at it, to see if it was plausible, and to kill two birds with one stone I may as well draw what I'm looking at.

Well, first up, not a chance I'm making a replica of this.  Having now scrutinised it, I wouldn't have a clue how to go about it.  I've also nowhere to put it, which was true before I'd even begun, but it was nice to be let off the hook for an idea that I just couldn't do.  I'd hate to be saying in a year "And I'm still going to make that Marvin replica...".

Secondly, and a bit more alarmingly, I really hated doing this drawing.

All my usual contentions about it being relaxing and zen and all of those things were right out of the window.  I found it so boring, and got really agitated at several points.

Now, this might be because I was ultimately doing it just for this post and felt a degree of having to tick something off my to-do list, or it could be that it's a relatively line-heavy drawing rather than texturing and features, but I didn't get my usual kick from it.  Didn't feel any sense of pride in the outcome, just relief. I just felt glad I didn't have to do any more dots.

Maybe that drawn-out Yoda process has burnt me out a bit on the drawing front.  I reckon it might be an idea for me to work in another format rather than pen till I stop scowling.  So expect to see me throwing pots of paint in frustration within the next month or so and declaring I am rubbish at art.

Yep, I think that was an excellent intro to these progress and completion pics.  You know how it is sometimes with these things. It could just be that it was so cold.

I mean, this pouting is completely apt given that the subject matter of the drawing is a renowned sullen fatalist.

Shall we?

Well I'm going to anyway...

"You won't enjoy it"

If you squint this looks like technical drawing.  Without a ruler.  I hated technical drawing.  And of course I've got this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side...

It doesn't seem half as laborious when you see the progress pics like that.

Here's what prompted me to mutter "thank God for that..."

It's like one of the Star Wars figure portraits.  Like IG-88 filled out.

Speaking of which, it's utterly bonkers that there's never been a replica figure/statue of this design.  You couldn't move for replicas of the large head effort from the movie version, but this one is just fan builds.  I bet it's a legal thing. Either way , I'm not building it.

Hope you are having the most wonderful of weeks 

Sending lots of love your way

xxxxxxxxxx