Guardian All Ears

Creepy Shining twins survey the traffic flora & fauna...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/feb/27/michael-holdens-all-ears
(Article by Michael Holden)
Three kids-two girls of around five and boy who might have been seven-were sat on the front upstairs seats of a bus. The girls were sitting together and the boy was next to a man with headphones on, who looked too young and disinterested to be their father, and he wasn’t. When their dad did finally tell them to be quiet he did so from the comparative sonic safety of a seat several rows behind them. Those of us sat in between though were subject to full force of his children’s shrill enquiries.
Girl 1 (loudly) “How does hair grow?”
Boy (with complete confidence)“Hair is like magic.”
Girl 1 “How do people grow?”
Boy “People grow at night. If you go to bed early you will grow tall.”
Girl 2 “How do buses grow?”
Boy “Buses are just like buses. They don’t’ grow.”
Girls (in unison, having sensed an opportunity) “How do traffic
lights grow?”
Boy (playing into their hands) “Traffic lights don’t grow.”
Girls (gaining momentum now, and growing sinister-like the twins in
The Shining) “How do taxis grow?”
Boy (banging his head on the seat with each syllable, frustrated with the game which he had partly created) “Taxis-don’t-grow!
Girl 1 “How do people die?”
Girl 2 (straight afterwards) “Why do people have red hair?”
Father (as though having his children unlock two of the great mysteries of existence before a captive audience might be more than the universe could bear.) “That’s enough kids. Shut up now.” •

History for simpletons

All together now...

War! Huh! What is it good for?

(sorry Edwin)

Imaginary medical conditions #2

This sketch got incorporated into the illustration for The Economist in the previous post (Economical tigers - http://stevemaystuff.blogspot.com/2010/02/economical-tigers.html) but is actually illustrating the debilitating effects of 'Brigadier's Syndrome' on a child -

symptoms include -

excessive bellowing, theatrical growth of facial hair, and an alarming affinity for gin & guns.
(Soft toys are liable to be shot, stuffed & mounted.)

(You have been warned!)

Economical tigers

Recent commission for The Economist magazine on the subject of heat re-cycling
- you might have noticed I became slightly more excited about the prospect of drawing tigers which the nice folk at the magazine seemed happy to indulge me with, bless 'em!

Hurray for tigers!

Guardian All Ears 20th February

Decided to run with the dissonance & 'hieroglyphic exclamations' in the text (with a little added dairy product of course)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/feb/20/all-ears-the-guide


(Article by Michael Holden)
On busy trains conversations rise like dissonant music from all
angles, leaving you to bear befuddled and silent witness to the
results. Departing Manchester recently I was regaled by the almost
hieroglyphic exclamations of a Welsh woman in the seat behind me,
themselves punctuated by outbursts from a businessman and his clearly
long-suffering PA to my left-referred to here for reasons of clarity
as Alan and Lynne.

Woman (on the phone) “Did he tick all the boxes?”

Alan: (jabbing at a chart) “He’s lost focus”

Woman “You’re kidding?”
Alan: “He needs to get focused again”

Woman: “You’re (+I)kidding(-I)!”
Lynne: “Here’s the schedule for next month.”

Woman: “I got rid of all my yoghurts”

Alan: “Salesmen will always benefit from focus.”

Woman “Remember he’s on holidays…the slim guy with the glasses and the
army jacket and the long hair…well he told me he was on holiday…you
said it was super. You couldn’t see? Well that’s gutting that
is…that’ll be your last scan now, unless you pay for another…they’re
coming down are they?”

Lynne (nervously watching Alan read something) “It all adds up.”

Alan (dismissive) “There’s no point doing the math.”

Woman: “You’re breaking up. I’m going to a meeting but I feel so
un-meetinglike.”
Alan: (waving the paper angrily) “I can’t read this, cut to the chase!
Where are the bombs in this agenda, where are the bombs, the IEDs?”

Lynne (stifling a scream but still loudly, while snatching back the
documents) “IT’S JUST A LIST OF IDEAS.”

That shut him up, for a while.

The Economist - heat re-cycling

One of a couple of illustrations commissioned for The Economist magazine - complete with virtual rubber duck

Guardian All Ears 13th February

Spot the references...I couldn't resist the pool playing dogs (which don't show up at all in my copy of the paper - ho hum)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/feb/13/all-ears-the-guide


(Article by Michael Holden)
The world is full of strange cycles. Go into a pub to use the toilet,
buy a pint for the sake of protocol and pretty soon you’re back in the
toilet again. I was in one of these loops when I saw that the pub
itself was fixed in a weird judgemental cycle of its own. Two people
were looking at a laptop and pointing out things they didn’t approve
of on the Internet, themselves watched by two workmen who clearly had
no time for them, while next to me two more men talked disapprovingly
about popular art as I listened disapprovingly to them.

Man 1: “Did you see that documentary on the BBC the other night? It
was about that guy, Kit Williams, he did like photo-realism, it was
very popular in the 80’s –horrible pictures-he made a gold rabbit?”

Man 2 (decisively-and in no way confused by the fact that the
aforementioned artist’s most famous work was actually a hare) “No”

Man 1 (pleading) “You must remember the rabbit? Everyone was looking for it.”
Man 2 “I don’t recall. There was another thing though, something to do
with following letters of the alphabet. If you figured out the
sequence you got twenty grand or something. It wasn’t long ago.”

Man 1 “This was the 80’s. He was on Wogan.”

Man 2 “I don’t know him.”
Man 1 “It was a good documentary. But the thing with that stuff is
it’s all about the craft, ‘oh, it really looks like him.’ As if that’s
the most important thing!”
Man 2 “Like that Jack Vettriano. He knows what people who don’t like
art like. They like story.”
Man 1 (looking blankly afraid, as though suddenly alert to all his own
frustrations) “He makes millions.”
Man 2 (looking the same) “Yeah.”