The Not Honking Around Crew

(l-r) portraits by Richard Twose, Thomas Ganter and David John Kassan

The entry's for the 2014 BP Portrait Award rolled into town on Friday. Sunderland, it turns out, is the only English city outside of London that'll be hosting the exhibition, which was rather surprising but also nice. Given that you can't really moan about there being nothing of interest in town and then not bother when something does show up, I had a wander over to the Museum and Winter gardens where it's taking place. Now, I don't know a lot about art, but I know what I like  and what I like is puppy dogs and jelly babies. Sadly, neither of those things were on offer, but the various portraits were very good also. Plus you can totally tell it's proper art because some of the models have got their boobs out. Had a wander around the rest of the museum which in addition to the usual interactive displays and wax dummies dressed as pit yakkers has a couple of pieces by Lowery and a Sikh war turban on loan from the British Museum which, at nearly two foot high, struck me as utterly impractical for fighting in, Well worth an hour or so of anybody's time, so if you find yourself in the area go have a squint.

Juxtaposed against the work of proper artists, my own drawings cannot fail to come across as the daft little cartoons that they are. I managed to finish another page for Rag and Bone that was postpone due to the lurgy. In addition there's the picture to the left, which is from another one of my numerous attempts at novel writing, this one a story for younger readers with the working title Black Hackerty's Windmill.  Given that I'm relatively far along with the writing I routinely tell myself that I should get my finger out me arse and get on with it. Unfortunately things keep on getting in the way and by things I, of course, mean beer. Regardless I've added the first few chapters as a separate page so please feel free to read or ignore as the whim takes you.

The picture on the right is actually an old one that I've only now bothered to colour, dating back from my time working on a banana farm. It's some chick with a dragon bat thingy. I have no idea what led me to draw it. The fact that I was on a banana farm when I drew it has no relevance whatsoever, beyond allowing me to awkwardly segue into the fact that today is the birthday of Bob, my fellow exile in the Atherton tablelands. Happy birthday, man. Peace out and fuck bananas.

This also means that tomorrow is my birthday. I shall celebrate by spending the day eating cookie dough and crying.

Love and Fishes

Dave Denton