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Posts tagged ‘Sketch’

Jul 10

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The Daily Sketch ITALIA – Norms in Florence

Next on the Italian tourist trail, the Norms have headed for Florence, for shopping in Milan was deemed inappropriate in the current economic climate. Taking inspiration from the significant artistic and architectural heritage of a city which was at the centre of the thriving artistic Renaissance, producing masterpieces such as Michelangelo’s David, the Giotto frescoes of Santa Croce, Botticelli’s Venus and the vast collections of the Medici tribe, this Norm has turned all artist, setting up his easel on the banks of the River Arno. From there he can enjoy a perfect view of the famous Ponte Vecchio, a street of merchants suspended across the river, and atop of which a secret corridor links the Palazzo Vecchio to the Palazzo Pitti – genius! Patiently, Artist Norm is recreating this magnificent view across the surface of his canvas, while a fellow tourist prefers the medium of photography to capture his impression of Florence, a city which is so beautiful, that it needed to be captured twice, reflected in double form in the waters which run peacefully through its centre.

Norms in Florence (2012 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen and ink on paper)

© Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm, 2001-2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of the material, whether written work, photography or artwork, included within The Daily Norm without express and written permission from The Daily Norm’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Jul 9

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The Daily Sketch ITALIA – Norms in Venice

The Daily Norm’s Italian season has officially kicked off, and as such is just another of the infamous PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain – the woe of the EU) which is getting the whole-hearted support of my blog. And of course, where The Daily Norm goes, so too must the Norms themselves, and this week you can join these little white blobs as they traverse the boot of Italia itself, bouncing from one destination to another, making their own “Grand Tour” through the country’s most famous sights.

It may make sense to go from South up to the North in the hope that as the summer months heat up, the Norms can catch the cooler breezes of Northern Italy as the days of July tick along. But Norms don’t really think logically, and as they don’t have feet, let alone legs, they can hardly be counted upon to understand the best way to navigate Europe’s most famous boot. The Norms therefore have started off in the North of Italy, and where best to commence their tourist trail, than in La Serenissima herself, undoubted Queen of the Adriatic, Venezia.

We join the Norms as they sample, as every well-moneyed tourist should do (I note at this point that I have never been able to afford the great privilege of a gondola ride, although I have used the vaporetto, the London bus equivalent of the stretch limousine), the glory of the Grand Canal by gondola, floating gently along this main watery artery of Venice, under the city’s most famous bridge, the Rialto. Need I say more? Welcome to Venice…

Norms in Venice (2012 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen and ink on paper)

© Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm, 2001-2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of the material, whether written work, photography or artwork, included within The Daily Norm without express and written permission from The Daily Norm’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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Jun 21

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The Daily Sketch: Summer Solstice?

Summer Solstice? Could have fooled me. The calendar may show June 21st, but this year’s longest and lightest day of the year  had something decidedly dark about it, as thick grey clouds lingered over the UK all day, burgeoning upon us a winter’s worth of damp, windy wet weather. And all this on the first day of summer? No wonder then that at Salisbury’s infamous prehistoric monument, Stone Henge, the usual crowd of slightly “buzzing” pagan (“new age”) revelers were somewhat down in numbers, and perhaps a little dizzier than usual as the much promised summer got lost somewhere around mainland Europe, as the skies in Britain unfolded around them, and the solstice sunshine was irreverently blanketed in a thick layer of obstinate, wet cloud. But such is the English summer. The first day brings with it what promises to be another few months of depressing drizzle, with the following inevitable results: rained-off Wimbledon, squidgy Olympic opening ceremony, water-logged open air theatre and an August from the ice age. God bless the Brits – try as we might, life in the Summer outdoors is never quite going to work for us. Still, the weather can never take the strawberries and cream away from us. Even if they are imported from Egypt. Pimm’s anyone?

Norms celebrating “Summer” Solstice, at Stone Henge (2012 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen on paper)

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Jun 5

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National pride in a Diamond Jubilee Spectacular

As the Diamond Jubilee weekend draws to an end, there is a unanimous consensus that London has never looked so good, nor love for the Royal Family reached such an all-time high. Today’s climax of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations brought with it all the spectacular pomp and ceremony for which Britain is famed around the globe, awe-inspiring parades of gold and red, plush uniforms, glittering livery, grandly dressed horses and the stunning uniformity of hundreds of cavalry riding with precision along union jack flapping and crowd-lined streets. At its centre, the Queen and the Royals were a delight to watch, humbled and stunned by the incredible show of public support, as they made their way back to Buckingham Palace which last night played host to an unbeatably brilliant star-stunned concert and fireworks spectacle, and which today brought the celebrations to a glorious climax with the Queen’s balcony appearance and Royal Air Force fly past.

Words alone cannot properly express the full glorious extent of the past weekend, when spirits have run so high, and all the British and millions from Commonwealth countries around the world have joined together in giving shared thanks to the Queen for 60 years in which she has sacrificed herself for the good, the stability and the strengthening of all her peoples. The party which has resulted shows that London knows how to celebrate, even when times are down, and as the Diamond Jubilee has awed across three days of brilliant spectacle, we can only now sit back and look forward in feverish anticipation towards the Olympic festivities which are still to come.

Norms fly the flag for the Diamond Jubilee procession (2012 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen on paper)

Since words are insufficient to express the brilliance with which London erupted into Jubilee carnival this weekend, I have scanned the internet, collecting together a series of photos which show just how incredible London looked as millions celebrated this weekend. But before you take a look at those, cast your eye over this little sketch which I made as the celebrations progressed. For in Norm world, they too have celebrated the Diamond Jubilee, lining the streets, waving the flag, and celebrating 60 fantastic years of their Queen. Long may it continue!

Note: these photos (apart from my sketch above) are from the internet. Appropriate copyright for the images is shown where the source was indicated on the bottom of the photos. Where a source is not indicated, the copyright belongs to either the BBC or the Daily Mail websites. 

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Jun 2

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Diamond Jubilee Weekend: Let the street parties begin!

They’ve strung out the bunting and covered cup cakes and cookies and muffins in red, white and blue. The tables are being set up where cars normally dominate, huge, long white sheets become makeshift tablecloths on a street-long banqueting space, the dishes are assembled, each decorated with a token miniature union jack, and the cars are formally banished, as neighbours gather together for the event of the decade: the Diamond Jubilee Street party is here!

It’s a rather anachronistic tradition, but one which is all the more necessary now that neighbourhoods have become soulless and people who live side by side barely know each other’s names. Back in the middle of the 20th Century, when the street party was a more regular occurrence (notable street parties included celebrations at the close of the Second World War and the Queen’s Coronation itself, in 1953) street parties were probably more of a naturally organised occasion. Neighbours lived in one another’s front rooms, borrowing cups of sugar, nosing into each other’s gossip, and standing around on the street corners, having a chat. But as society has become gradually more transient, with people moving around for career changes, schooling changes, and moves abroad as part of the gradual trend towards globalisation, the idea of neighbourhood has been relegated to soap dramas on TV. In today’s age, with neighbourly relations at an all time low, and english reserve causing a general aptitude towards individual isolation, that the age of the street party is starting to catch on again, as people harp back to the old days, seeking a return to the days of neighbourhood values, when your street was a haven, a place where children played safely, and people felt the support not just of their closer relatives, but of the people living all around them.

The Norms’ Diamond Jubilee Street Party (2012 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown) (Pen and pencil on paper)

What with the Golden Jubilee ten years ago, the Royal Wedding last year, and the Diamond Jubilee now upon us, the street party is on the up, and this weekend will see the union jack go into overdrive, not just in London, but all over the UK. Naturally, the Norms are not likely to miss out on the action, and here in Normville, the Norms have missed none of the Jubilee spirit, stringing out the bunting, decking the tables with cakes, and sandwiches, jellies and bottles of bubbly, as they fly the flag high in honour of a magnificent 60 year reign of our Queen, Elisabeth II. May the jubilee weekend begin!!

The coronation of HRH Queen Elizabeth II

A street party back in 1977 for the Silver Jubilee

London is filled to bursting point with bunting and union jacks

PS For the best jubilee cake ever known to man, check out the award winning cake made by my dearest friend Celia on her blog, Lady Aga.

© Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm, 2001-2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of the material, whether written work or artwork, included within The Daily Norm without express and written permission from The Daily Norm’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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May 31

Deconstructed Norm Sculptures in a Setting (after Henry Moore)

Henry Moore, the British sculptor, is famous the world-over for his semi-abstract rounded bronze figures and organic wood-carved nudes. His indisputable popularity as one of the greatest sculptors of our age is demonstrated by the sheer proliferation of his works on public display in town centres and parks and the gardens of large country estates throughout the UK and around the globe. His organic, satisfying rounded forms do not offend polite society, but instead offer the right about of minimalist abstraction mixed with sentimental femininity and human characterisation. His sculptures often dominate the landscape, while inviting passers by to interact with the various holes and curves intrinsic to Moore’s work. They are like a Picasso abstract come to life, or a Michelangelo mother and child melted into a tender rounded form.

Henry Moore, Five Figures in a Setting (1937)

Yet it is not his sculptures which attract me. Don’t get me wrong – I love his works. They are satisfyingly curvaceous, with a mixed attraction of sharp edges and smooth polish, a recognisably humanised form with a metaphysical expressionless finish, open to interpretation, and perfectly executed from every angle. But for me, the real stars of any Henry Moore show are his sketches.

Henry Moore, Shelter Sketch Book (1967)

Often he sketched when ideas came into his head. Consequently Moore left us with a great variety of sketches in which we can see Moore exploring the various organic forms which are now famous sculptural manifestations, as well as plenty of rough drawings devoted to the mother and child image that so obsessed him, and paintings in which Moore appears almost to capture his three-dimensional forms, imprisoning them within an eternal two-dimensional abstract landscape. Come the second world war, and Henry Moore was made an official war-artist for Britain, but not as a sculptor. Instead Moore would head down to the packed tube stations, where thousands would huddle, every night, using the dark tunnels and airless platforms of the London underground as make-shift bomb shelters. There he captured moving scenes of humans at one in their vulnerability, trying to sleep through their anxiety, curled up together for moral support.

Henry Moore, Standing Figures and ideas for Sculpture (1948)

Moore’s sketches offer us an invaluable insight into the great sculptor’s mind at times when he would pour his sculptural imaginings straight onto paper, some of which eventually made it into three-dimensional form, but many of which never made it beyond the confines of pen on paper. But these sketches are far more than just studies or ideas. They are works of art in themselves, capturing moments of intense human emotion, with a dark intensity and an often surreal setting. They are artistic masterpieces worthy of as much attention as the finished sculptural articles which have become a staple of British art all over the world.

Ever inspired by the wonderful art around me, I sketched my own Moore-inspired sculptural forms. Taking the humble Norm as the basis for my drawing, I deconstructed my Norm, presenting the customary rounded figure as a body with strings and a hollow inside, a head, two large eyes, the Norm’s characteristic single hand, and a crescent-like structure which I like to think of as an expression of a Norm’s eye-lashes. The result is a sketch full of the abstract surrealism which Moore’s own works promote, but with that hint of Norm playfulness, some strings and a blood-red hollow, all set within a shady landscape leading to nowhere. If only Moore had seen it. The Deconstructed Norm would have been slowly rusting somewhere in a park by now. Unless it was made of metal, in which case it would have been nicked…

Deconstructed Norm Sculptures in a Setting (after Henry Moore) © 2012, Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen, pencil and watercolour on paper

I leave you with a mere handful of some of Moore’s incredible works on paper. Until next time…

Henry Moore, Sculptural Objects (1949)

Henry Moore, Sculptural Ideas, hollow form (1938)

Henry Moore, Mother and Child; Drawing for a sculpture in wood and string (1949)

Henry Moore, Crowd Looking at a Tied-uo Object (1942)

Henry Moore, Four Forms, drawing for a sculpture (1938)

Henry Moore, Ideas for Sculpture in a Setting (1938)

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May 22

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The Daily Sketch: Norms at the Damien Hirst Exhibition

It’s all very well a gallery playing host to these rotting cow heads and life cycles of flies with their maggots and detritus and moving little black bodies, but what if the little scientific show-in-action managed to escape from the careful confines of its Damien Hirst supervised glass tank? Even when we visited Hirst’s room full of butterflies at Tate Modern last weekend, we managed to walk out of the room with part of the exhibit attached to our backs (a butterfly landed on my partner… and was swiftly rescued by a Tate attendant before we walked off with potentially one of the most valuable butterflies in the word unknowingly upon our person). So what if those pesky flies managed to escape too? Sadly in Norm world, this question was not just posed in theory alone. All that rotting caused a flap of the tank to come open (or perhaps it was sabotage?!) and for one poor Norm who took the insects’ peculiar fancy, he found himself the number one lunch attraction for a very hungry group of flies.

Norms at Tate Modern (2012 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen on paper)

And just in case you don’t know which Damien Hirst “artwork” I am talking about, herewith, the offending article… I swear that blood must cause havoc for a gallery’s wooden floors…

Damien Hirst, A Thousand Years (1990)

So let this be a lesson to you all ye who dare to enter Tate Modern’s latest Damien Hirst retrospective. It’s all well enough to stop and stare, but those ghastly flies are but a pane of glass away from a role reversal whereby you become the attraction! Of course while you’re there, be sure to look out for  the Norm in Formaldehyde, which will surely be the highlight of your experience. Here’s a picture of it (one I made earlier).

The Physical Possibility of a Norm in Formaldehyde (after Damien Hirst) (2011 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen on paper)

© Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm, 2001-2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of the material, whether written work or artwork, included within The Daily Norm without express and written permission from The Daily Norm’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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May 18

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The Daily Sketch: Norms on the Underground

We pay hundreds per month for the “convenience” of travelling by Tube into London. There are some of us who travel to the heart of the great city to speak lawyer talk about human rights. Yet surely the most fundamental of all human rights are in breach when, having paid your earnings away to Transport for London, you then find yourself packed so inexorably like a tin of 50% extra free sardines into the coffin-like surrounds of person squeezed upon person, that the right  to move, read, sit, stand untouched, even breathe is placed in serious jeopardy.

I’ve tried travelling on the tube at all different times, going in earlier, later and in the middle of the rush, just to avoid the humiliating cattle herding onto a train from which i emerge with fresh shirt crumpled, drenched in sweat (both mine and, undoubtedly that of the bloke squeezed in uncomfortably close next to me), gasping to take in air having tried, almost to the point of suffocation, to avoid breathing while enjoying a close encounter with the armpit of a freakishly tall passenger (which always appears to find itself cupping the space around my nose). I’ve even travelled backwards just to come forwards again. But no, it’s the same every day. We are crammed onto these compact capsules, within an inch of our life. Just when you think no one could possibly squeeze into the carriage, another ten push their way into the crowd, like crowd surfers, incongruous to the consequences for the people they slam their bodies into, so long as they get to work on time.

Tube Norms (2012, © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen on paper)

It’s the same in Norm world of course. Except for them things get even worse. The more their round forms squish together, the more their bodies give way to yet more Norms entering the tube carriage until, unavoidably, the crowd of Norms merge into one, unmoving mass of gelatinous substance, so immovably merged together that when the train eventually reaches it’s destination, they can barely move themselves away from the interlocked mass in order to leave.

Hmm, now I come to think of it, not worse at all. Welcome to London 2012, home of the olympics. And oh, how I look forward to that.

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Apr 13

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The Daily Sketch – Birth of Venus

After the success of my wonderful Rachel Khoo inspired madeleines (and thank you so much Rachel for your kind compliment on twitter – the great chef herself has complimented the “perfect gold crisp crust” on my efforts, woo!!) I’ve been feeling all shell inspired. Not so inspired that I have redecked my city pad in shells and shabby-chic battered wood installations. No, my shell thoughts have been drifting further afield, to the long lofty corridors of Firenze’s ubiquitous Uffizi gallery, home to surely the most famous artistic depiction of a shell in all the world, not to mention the picture perfect Venus rising from it’s pearly-smooth contours. I am of course talking about Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, a work full of allegory, beauty, flowing locks and scattered rose petals. What more could you want on a Spring afternoon as you sit down with a cup of tea and a madeleine. And just in case you can’t make it all the way to Florence to see the original, why not gaze upon this Norm take of Botticelli’s masterpiece, breasts, flowing locks and all.

The Birth of Norm Venus (after Botticelli) (2012 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen on paper)

© Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm, 2005-2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of the material, whether written work or artwork, included within The Daily Norm without express and written permission from The Daily Norm’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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Apr 4

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The Daily Sketch – Norms do Semana Santa

It’s Holy week around the world, and very much Semana Santa week here on The Daily Norm as myself and the Norms celebrate the lavish spectacle that are the Spanish Easter festivities. From photos and paintings, to sketches, today the Norms put in their two pennies worth indulging in their very own Semana Santa celebration. Thus a great body of costaleros share the burden of the vast tronos upon which a canopy contains a statue of a weeping Mary, surrounded by candles, lanterns and flowers. Here too, a group of Norms dress in the capriotes of the nazareños, carrying the typically opulent accessories of the procession – ornamental lamps, candles sticks and a magnificent crucifix. In the meantime, a group of female Norms adopt the black laced mantilla and accompanying black laced outfit worn by female participants of the parades.

Tronos Norms (2012 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen on paper)

Nazareños Norms (2012 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen on paper)

Norms wearing the mantilla (2012 © Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, pen on paper)

See you tomorrow for yet more Easter-themed ramblings and artwork.

© Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm, 2005-2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of the material, whether written work or artwork, included within The Daily Norm without express and written permission from The Daily Norm’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nicholas de Lacy-Brown and The Daily Norm with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

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