Me and Modesty part 2

Hi there!

First I must write that the earlier update this week meant quite a lot for me and for this blog, maybe I'm taking it too serious but I think it's very important to be clear about things and why they are as they are. This blog of mine is kind of organic but the maine focus is creativity, and I want to keep it that way! But later on there will be some changes, so stay tuned!

We continue this Modesty Blaise project with an inked drawing of last weeks sketch. Even if the project is quite well defined (in my head) I now know that I will return to Modesty later on. I'm still kind of searching for the character and getting to know her and Willie. I'm trying to be close to Holdaway, but I'm also trying to find my own way. So far it's been quite challenging, to find the character. I stand in aw for the comics artists who do such great work. What I mean is that it's kind of easy to just draw a figure that looks like Modesty, with her clothes and traits, but the real challenge is to draw the character, the person.

Take care!

A learning experience.

This blog of mine really is a learning experience! A couple of weeks ago I posted that I was looking for work. Which is true. But during the last week or so I've given it some more thought and I decided to delete that post. I'm writing about it because I believe in honesty and transparency. When I wrote that post I kind of lost track of what this blog is all about, creativity in a quite broad meaning of the word. My goal with this blog is to have a showcase where I can show what I do, and to keep improving my skills.

I'm not sure if these are the right words to write, but here I go, "I stand corrected".

Please be sure to come back this friday for another drawing of Modesty Blaise!

Take care!

Me and Modesty

I'm trying something new and a slightly bigger project for the upcoming weeks. And the theme for these updates will be Modesty Blaise. One of the coolest comics characters ever! But first there is a story, as always...!

Me and Modesty Blaise don't go that far back. I kind of knew of the character before I read the comic. I can't remember when I read the comic for the first time, but if I'm going to pin point it, it would be somewhere in the 90s, I guess... A funny thing though is that I may have seen the movie from the 60s before I read the comic... Talk about getting not the ultimate introduction to the Modesty universe! Speaking about the movie, I kind of like it in it's 60s camp and groovy way, it's sad though that they couldn't get movie makers that had a feel for the comic. I think that would have made a better movie that way. But back to the comic! So there I was not having giving it a fare chance, not until my nephews wanted to sell books and magazines for christmas 2009. While I was browsing what was on offer, I stumbled upon the "Agent X9 Specialalbum 2009". So during the holidays 2009 I got to read my first Modesty adventures, for real. And since then I've been reading it steadily in the comics magazine Agent X9 here in Sweden. The magazine had fanart from Swedish comics artists for a while and I thought that I would give that a go!

So without further ado I give you my first sketch of Modesty Blaise, it's in pencil, when I scanned it I tried to get it as clean as possible. Here I've just tried to get a feel for the character and trying to get a cool pose. Actually I "borrowed" the pose from one of the posters by Yves Thos for the James Bond movie "On Her Majesty's Secret Service". One of my top three Bond movies! I think it's kind of cool that I borrowed the pose from a Bond movie, when it's a common mistake to take Modesty for an agent, which she is not. She just sometimes helps Tarrant out when he finds himself in a pickle!

Take care!

Self portrait

Hi!

This week I made this self portrait, so I figured it might as well be my update for this week. I've been thinking that the camera can be quite crude in all it's details and portray the object very naturalistically. Which doesn't come as a surprise because that's what cameras do! But do they capture the essence of the object or the person?
I think that depends on who is holding the camera! I find it hard to be a photographer, which you probably have seen here on the blog. I just press the button and hope for the best, that's my philosophy when it comes to photography!
But when I draw a self portrait, I find it easier to find the essence and I don't get as disappointed with the end result as when I've been photographed.
The drawing below is how I found myself this week. It's been my way of portraying myself for a couple of years now, and for you who doesn't know your animation history, it is inspired by the early animation style of the 20s and 30s, like the Fleischer studio. If you are interested in finding more self portraits of me I suggest you go to the earlier updates when I started this blog.

Take care!

My second repair of the violin

Since my last update was the tootiest, ever! It feels great to go back to what this blog is all about, namely creativity! This week I finished my second repair work on a violin that's been in my family for some years. And as always there is a story, but you know that by now, eh!

When I spoke to my father yesterday he told me that the violin was his fathers (my grand father) and that he got it from my fathers grand father, that would be my great grand father on my fathers side. He was a farmer outside of Lidköping. But if he bought it or built it or got it some other way, we don't know. We estimate that it might have been built in the beginning of the 20th century, maybe in the 1910s or 1920s. But we don't know, it might be older... It's a good thing I didn't know that! I thought that it was built much later, maybe in the 50s or 60s! We don't know who has built it, there is no note inside it. Since it doesn't have that, you might come to the conclusion that it's an amateur that built it. But since the sound is so great, one might think that it is professional builder. My violin teacher loved this violin, and he would know!

So it was in my grand fathers care, and then my father got it, I think my big brother played on it as well, and since some time I have it in my care. Funny thing is that I don't really play the violin, I know the scales, and how to set it up and tune it. Every know and then I pick it up and tune it and play some scales and that's it! But all along the years when I have moved to new places I have always brought this violin.

So what was this repair about? In short:

I mended a crack in the belly.
Glued the belly back on to the ribs.
The end rest was loose, so I glued it back.
Put another purfling where the old had loosened.
Exchanged a tuning peg, and cut the ends of the pegs.
Repositioned the sound post.
Exchanged the tail gut.
I also took away three fine tuning devices.

I got great help from Nisse who is the go-to-guy when I build violins! He knows it all!

I've taken photos along the repair to show you what I have done.

Here it is in all it's glory, before the work begun.

Here you see the old tail gut.

The four fine tuning devices.

Here I've taken away the chin rest. And as you see the purfling was loose and also the end rest. And the belly was loose from the ribs.

 Here we've glued it all in to place. In mending the crack I took away the old glue that the former repairer put in to the crack. I think that was how they repaired it, they just put glue in the crack. To put it together as tightly as possible I loosened the belly from the ribs all along the crack, and then we glued it together. And after that we glued the belly on to the ribs. In taking away the old glue one has to put water on it and when it solves, you take it away, but since you don't want water all over the violin, you have to apply it one water drop at a time!

 In looking at this part of the instrument I think the back has loosened from the ribs, but I'm going to examine this further... I noticed this today, when I'm writing this update...

 As you see here it's quite easy to tell the old and new purfling from one another... Well quite frankly I just took the purfling that we had at the violin club. But it has the right width so it fits like a glove, even if it's a bit funny on the eyes... I don't even know if you can buy purfling like the old one.
Just to state the obvious, if this instrument had belonged to someone else I would've gotten the right looking purfling! But since I'm the owner of this instrument I don't mind that it looks mended, it just shows that it's an old instrument that's been around for some time.

Here you see how much the new purfling shows when you have the chin rest on! Here I thought I was done, but I wasn't...

 ...because one can't have tuning pegs that looks like this! I had to exchange the upper one because it's gotten to short, and I also cut the end of the pegs.

Much nicer pegs!

 The mended crack, and less fine tuning devices.

The new tail gut and the new purfling. I must say that the new tail gut looks much better than the old one!

When I was done with it, I tuned it and played some scales...

And that's it for now, later today I'm going to put the fifth coat of varnish on the violin that I'm varnishing.

I must say that I've enjoyed the repair work so far, I really like to mend the instruments and put them back to their glory, without hurting it further! I don't know when I'm going to get to mend another instrument, but I hope it won't take too long.
Maybe I'm over thinking this but I like the fact that I get to work with an instrument that a craftsman has put together way back in history. Maybe it's the craft of it all that's gotten a hold of me, I don't think I can really explain what I mean. When I can, I will post it here! Or maybe it's just something you are not meant to explain... And with that philosophy in mind, I leave you for now.

Take care!