When you’re a few months late with a birthday present, there’s only one way of saying “I’m sorry but I seriously do love you bunches!”. Now let’s be honest here, what’s better than cupcakes, flowers, gifts and caramel macchiato?
Tag Archives: art
Tour de Froome
After three weeks of amazing scenery (seriously, how great is Corsica?), brave attacks, numerous wheelies, inflatable guitars, a sea of passionate fans, green goatees, badly-parked buses, exhausted hugs, plenty of “wish you’d trip and get run over by a herd of elephants” intrusive spectators, tens of giant flags of countries not represented in the peloton, loyal and caring teammates, nice and sometimes quirky roadside Tour tributes, ridiculously polka-dotted garments, superb light/laser shows on the Champs-Elysees, unfounded “let’s fill the front page with something catchy” accusations, sequined jerseys, a couple of Richie Froome mix-ups, brilliant sunset shots around l’Arc de Triomphe, some unfortunate haircuts, a disappointing lack of fireworks, several bad English accents on Eurosport, a couple of cliche “lions in the bus/around the table/wearing helmets” photos, a lot of pretty flower bouquets that I always wonder who waters, one ‘Oh, no, not Eddie” moment and several “Oh, this guy is brilliant” ones, Paris came sooner than I hoped but with the perfect conclusion I had in mind all along.
Vive Le Tour! 🙂
Flying bulls
Despite the title choice, no, it’s nothing to do with historic aircraft. Maybe ‘nothing’ isn’t entirely true either, it’s still about aerodynamics, skill and a certain drinks company that happens to be particularly good at marketing. Well, trying to get to the point, I’ve been meaning to post this for quite a while, since the Austin GP actually, but didn’t quite get around to doing that so here it is now. Not that it needs much explanation, but I thought that Vettel’s 100th grand prix would be a nice occasion to celebrate with a little doodle (which turned into a couple of different designs, these are my favourite two – click on them for a better view). For those few of you who don’t know what/who I’m talking about, I assume you’re familiar with Google? Use it. The rest just enjoy. Here’s to an entertaining 2013, let’s hope they lovingly grab the bull by the horns once again and stop that horse from prancing! Yeah, that wasn’t my smartest metaphor but hey, I’ve still got 56 days and about 15 hours to come up with a better one. Back to work now (and by work I mean checking out this Chris Horner fanclub page I’ve heard about, that sounds like fun)  🙂
If you can’t ride it, draw it!
A couple of busy weeks went by so I finally took some days off and now that most transfers, resignations and doping scandals have calmed down a bit, I’m starting to feel the cycling off-season blues. Sure, I still have some F1 races with an exciting championship fight and the occasional snooker tournament left to keep my withdrawal symptoms to a minimum. But I can’t just put my peloton fondness on hold until January, so I started to do what I do best when I try to relax and that’s drawing, of course.
After I spent half of Vuelta making a little something to remind me of that magnificent race and of one of my favourite riders, the lovely Chris Froome (which I’ll also post soon enough), I just figured I could do a couple more to decorate my room and remind me of other people I’m rather fond of. The first obvious stop was another Team Sky pretty face, this time one with the loveliest Norwegian name I ever heard, a playful smile and a figure that could easily win him a bib shorts pageant. He seems too cute to be true…umm, too good to be true I mean… and did I mention his skills on a bike? 🙂 Oh well, enough rambling and here’s the drawing…
Snookerbacker Classic part 2 …and 3
Two weeks and another birthday party later, it was time for the Snookerbacker Classic once again. The South West 
Snooker Academy in Gloucester hosted the second and third leg of the event on Friday and Saturday.
Keeping track of the action online, it seemed like great fun and I’m happy to be a small part of this event even if I can’t be there in person to see those talented guys (and girls) fight for a place in the final. I’ll have to settle for watching these lovely photo galleries from Friday and Saturday. Also, you can find a detailed review of both events here. For the ladies reading this, unfortunately, there are less cake photos this time , but there’s a cute kid and several talented young men worth looking at 🙂
Anyway, here are the drawings and some photos of the four qualifiers from this weekend. Don’t know if I mentioned this before but the two drawings of the waistcoats are actually modeled after Mark Selby. Yeah, I’m a bit biased but what’s the point in having an obsession if you can’t enjoy it? 🙂
Just click on the drawings to open the larger, more detailed image.
Wake me up when September ends
As the extended summer is now officially over, I managed to find two final reasons to distract myself from the madness that lies ahead starting this autumn. First there was my birthday; the hottest, most agitated, “can’t feel my legs by the end of it (and not because of all the dancing)” anniversary I remember having. It wasn’t my plan to spend it so far away from home, but I still had lovely people around me to keep me in a good mood and I’m thankful for that 🙂
The following day was just as busy, but as I was enjoying the view above, about 2500 miles away there was something a bit more serious going on. I’m obviously talking about the first leg of the famous Snookerbacker Classic 2013 🙂 Now most of the people reading this probably know what that is and the rest are most certainly aware of my snooker obsession at least so I won’t go into great detail but you can find all the info here. The reason I’m mentioning it is that I had the chance to bring my little contribution to the event by doodling some colourful stuff for the lucky and talented qualifiers. I’ll post some photos of the drawings as soon as each event takes place, so here’s a little something from the first one:
The event seemed like a lot of fun and you can read a bit about it here and here and there’s also a photo gallery (spoiler alert – contains some delicious-looking cakes and one handsome Aussie).
Nicely framed on the tournament desk
Oliver Lines is the first to qualify for Finals Day
Once upon a time there was a delightful girl…
Once upon a time there was this girl who had a delightful imagination. She was well-behaved and rather quiet, but only because the world in her head was much more alluring than what she saw around her. She never broke the rules. She was charming and never scared, not even of her idealistic thoughts. She was friendly with children because they were the only ones that found it natural to understand her whimsical nature. She collected bubblegum stickers, but only the pretty and colourful ones. She kept them in the lacy jewelry box her grandmother gave her. She loved it, but she didn’t like wearing shiny rings, not even delicate bracelets, she didn’t feel like she needed to impress anyone. She didn’t need it truly, she always made an impression with her winding ruby hair, perfectly fitted pastel dresses and lips as soft as a dragonfly’s wings.
She went to sleep at night hypnothised by the shadows on her on ceiling, thinking about how much better it would be if life were a perfect tale. She couldn’t remember the moment she closed her eyes but as soon as she did, an iridescent sky was spreading above her. She got up from the perfectly groomed grass, knocking over a porcelain tea cup that was sitting precariously close to the edge of a metal garden table with rusty paint. The white surface turned for an instant into a deep purple, just before it pourred off the table and onto her delicate sundress. She felt a passing scent of berries before she realized the lilac stain will prove rather difficult to take out from the silky fabric. She must be dreaming, surely, and this must be barely a footnote in a big dramatic chapter.
She looked up and noticed the winding street, the symetric houses painted in pure pastel colours and the personalized mailboxes that told a perfect story about their owners. It seemed like one of those places with pampered flowering hedges that you’re not allowed to touch, where you can leave the kids’ bicycle in the front yard without any worries and where dogs are too blissful to bark away at squirrels. That must be true enough, it’s a dream after all, isn’t it?
While she passed the freshly painted little white fences she thought these were the kind of people that were always respectul, that helped their neighbours fix their porch, that did their laundry on time and never fought over what cereal to buy or whose family to visit for Christmas. Oh, Christmas, just imagine the sprinkly lights covering every inch of those cozy welcoming walls. As she admired an adorable square house next to a dusty yellow dog house, she noticed a tremendous hot air ballon in the boldest, most hypnotising of colours. She barely noticed that the playground around it was as deserted as the rest of that tiny town. Surely this is meant to lead to the plot of this chapter, right?
She climbed into it without fear, she knew it couldn’t crash anyway. The colossal puffy ballon lifted softly and slowly until she could see how peaceful and perfect everything was from above. Terribly peaceful. While the playful wind made her dress rustle slighly, it became more and more obvious to her that there was genuinely no one down there; she had imagined those perfect strangers around her but there were no friends to throw her birthday parties and then forget the cake, and no family to remind her of that Easter when she ruined her fancy dress by chasing a baby possum or the summer she gave up her favourite doll for a postcard depicting a fairytale cottage lost in colourful wild flowers and a freshly painted little white fence.
Maybe that purple stain wasn’t as bad as she thought.
Back to basics!
Morning! I finally got around to scanning my drawings so here’s a quick collection. Most of them are already published in previous posts so you can find more photos there 🙂
Suit up!
A well-tailored suit is to women what lingerie is to men. Well, after you take off the funky colourful bow tie in this case 🙂
Once upon a time there was this charming girl…
Once upon a time there was this girl who wasn’t afraid of loneliness. She was charming and well-mannered, she always did a little curtsey and men greeted her with a bow. They would occasionally kiss her hand but she disliked it most times. She never turned her back on someone and always assumed the best about people. She hid the way she felt and her words were as pleasant and polished as a porcelain swan but just as plain too. She never dared to say no and always knew the proper thing to do. Her hair was always smooth and tied up in a chignon. She only wore long dresses with delicate lace and small ribbons and never came down to breakfast in pajamas.
She took long walks in her tame garden because it was the place she felt safe in. Her skin was fair, and her cheeks were never rosy. She never liked afternoon teas or balls or dinners and just like every Tuesday night, she was sitting in the grass outside her faithful butler’s window, waiting for him to play the piano. She didn’t know what the song was but he always played it at the same time every Tuesday evening. Every evening until that day; he would never play again.
She never felt pain like that before. Or maybe she had but she never showed it. She spend a gloomy day and a grievous night looking at that grey rusty piano. In the late hours she heard a neigh outside, the one horse she didn’t know it was her job to take to the stable now. She gently walked towards him, while he stepped mercilessly on her fragile iris flowers. She didn’t know how to ride a horse so she just grabbed the harness and went wherever he took her. They walked out of the garden and into the tempestuous wild woods surrounding it.
They walked long hours and never-ending miles, with her holding him tight while the gentle flowery lace on her dress got caught in rough hedges and torn branches. He finally stopped in a wild flower meadow, full of half-faded poppies. She lay down on the ground and watched the stars. They looked different in her garden, the sky didn’t seem endless anymore but the green tree tops seemed to embrace and caress it softly. It might have been the most mesmerizing thing she ever saw, the blinking lights, the rough grass, the faint trill, the intoxicating smell, the fascina…
In the early hours her dress was shredded and stained and her horse wasn’t anywhere in sight but she never felt more safe and affectionate, like in a cherished lucid dream.
The Wednesday Society 