Ronald Searle, Les Très Riches Heures de Mrs Mole
47 jewel-like drawings by Ronald Searle made for his wife, Monica, each time she underwent chemotherapy. On New Year’s Eve 1969, Monica Searle was diagnosed with a rare and virulent form of breast cancer. Each time she underwent treatment, Ronald produced a Mrs Mole drawing ‘to cheer every dreaded chemotherapy session and evoke the blissful future ahead’. Filled with light and illuminated in glowing colours, the drawings speak of love, optimism and hope. Like the mediaeval illuminated manuscripts such as the 15th-century Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, to which the title of this book refers, the 47 drawings are on an intimate scale and were never intended for publication.
When asked about the drawings, Searle said, “I have only my talent for drawing, so I drew.” Here’s a little more about them:
Prior to the cancer shock the couple had bought a decrepit house in the south of France and, despite her illness, Monica continued to devote her time making this house a home.
Devastated with his wife’s diagnosis Ronald did the only thing he knew how to do to cheer her up. .. draw.
Before every chemotherapy session he gave his wife a painting. Monica was depicted as a mole, a very happy mole celebrating life in their new home. (The Mole idea came after their discovery of a large celler that they made into a cosy room)
‘Everything about them had to be romantic and perfect,’ says Ronald. ‘I drew them originally for no one’s eyes except Mo’s, so she would look at them propped up against her bedside lamp and think: “When I’m better, everything will be beautiful.”
(Images via bluedoorbooks)
— The incomparable Winsor McCay, quoted in a Los Angeles Times blog post that points out that this is the 100th anniversary of McCay’s short film Little Nemo. If you’ve never seen his animated shorts — they’re among the first examples of the medium, and yet still technically brilliant — you should hit up the YouTube and get started with Nemo…
Awesome thing that I didn’t realize I had on my bookshelf: the Tom Lehrer sheet music songbook I’ve had since I was a kid was illustrated by cartoonist Ronald Searle. I must have been unfamiliar with Searle the last time I looked through this book — his scratchy style complements Lehrer’s acerbic wit nicely.
The whole book, “Too Many Songs By Tom Lehrer with not enough drawings by Ronald Searle”, is available for perusal on Scribd, in case you’re the sort that enjoys songs about masochism, the periodic table, bull fighting, nuclear annihilation, and Ivy League snobbery…
(Source: adamnorwood.com)
Tangible Interaction’s Tangible Graffiti Wall. Rear projection drawing screens with IR “spraycan” interface. The cherry on top is the ability to use virtual stencils while painting — clever.
(Via Make)
Nifty HTML5 <canvas> procedural/generative drawing demo (similar to drawing in real time with Processing or The Scribbler)
“I don’t carry a sketchbook to do pretty drawings in it.”
Storyboard artist and animation historian Mark Kennedy on keeping a sketchbook:
I’ve seen artists on the Internet question the necessity for this, saying that you can’t really learn anything about drawing by carrying a sketchbook, and that the drawings you do in a sketchbook are always dashed off, careless and sloppy. […]
The real reason I carry a sketchbook is so that I can record and remember details that I observe. Drawing from real life is the best way to teach yourself how people look, act and move in a naturalistic way (and help you remember it later). Life drawing and studying the work of other artists and animators are great learning experiences, but those things aren’t the same as studying real life. A great life drawing is an amazing feat and you can learn a lot about drawing and anatomy by going to life drawing. But very few life drawings give you a lot of information about the model’s personality and what kind of human being they are. You’re never going to create an original story or character based on a life drawing model you saw.
A stylistically interesting medical drawing from the excellent Otis Historical Archives of the Walter Reed hospital: “Drawing. Life cycle of Balantidiasis”, part of a small set of other cartoons available on their Flickr stream. Gotta watch out for those protozoa.
Animators of note Bill Plympton and Patrick Smith have started a new blog where they can argue about animation, story telling, illustration, and whatever. An immediate add to my news reader!
This is a weird peanuts panel — notice how Linus is way in the foreground, as if he’s talking directly to us, but the speech balloon is actually behind Charlie Brown. The rest of the strip is executed like you’d expect, with the two walking along, the same “depth” from the reader. Weird.
Maybe it’s representative of Linus’ impending delerium tremens and lack of visual acuity caused by his blanket withdrawal. Or maybe he too needs to be treated for the poor depth perception caused by amblyopia ex anopsia, just like Charlie’s sister Sally!
Excellent advice.
A letter from Dr. Seuss to a 13-year-old aspiring artistA letter like this can make all the difference. I know from experience.
Pellet Gunn by Tim Beckhardt. Not 100% sure that I get the full story, but it’s great in a non sequitur, underground comix sort of way. His line work and hand-filled blacks are nicely composed, and the animation is fun. Extra points for the Philip Guston painting in the background.
“Harriot regularly corresponded with friends who were also trying out telescopes. One wrote to him saying that the full moon ‘appears like a tarte that my cooke made me the last week’.”
— A note from the “Cosmos and Culture: how astronomy has shaped our world” exhibit at London’s Science Museum, describing this first-ever drawing through a telescope, created circa 1610 by English mathematician Thomas Harriot.
Note to Austinites: the excellent Harry Ransom Center at UT will soon be opening their exhibit “Other Worlds: Rare Astronomical Works”, featuring some beautiful drawings by the likes of Cassini, Kepler, and Brahe. Can’t wait.
Rhonda. It’s a nifty 3D drawing/sketching app that’s been making the rounds for a few years, and now the video of its creator sketching with it has finally been posted on the web. Even better: it’s been ported to openFrameworks and is being actively maintained on a number of platforms.
Revolver, a brilliant series of short looping animations by Jonas Odell (codirected with Stig Bergkvist, Marti Ekstrand & Lars Olsson). I loved these when they ran serialized in the early days of Hotwired.com’s Renaissance 2.0 / Kino section, circa 1995, and hastily squirreled away all of the QuickTime .mov’s from the site for archiving. Benefit of having the .mov’s? You could have all of them open and playing simultaneously!
