You want splendid, this will be splendid:

A video game of the day trip to Brighton board game ("BN1") is in the works...

http://fungun.co.uk/news.php

I'd like my copy now please!

A great T design

My youngest, Isabella (9) has made this for a T-shirt design. 

I think it's great, I would like one!

And here's a close up...

Well done Isabella. 

While you're here, you can take a look at another great creation. I'm growing something for charity, take a look here & done a few quid too if you like. http://mobro.co/kevinbramhill

Thank you!

Location of 1934 Ivy Langton naive style painting identified.

My lovely wife & oldest daughter are in Paris at the moment & my wife asked me the name of the street in an Ivy Langton painting. There is a street name in the painting but it had always been hard to read. Today I got the light just right & that lead me to see if I could see what the view is like now.

Here is the view as it is now(ish) cropped from a Google Street View:

Here is the painting (naive style of course) done in circa 1934:

You can read more about Ivy Langton HERE.

Kurt Seligmann painting (probably new to you!).

I've just returned (yesterday) from a holiday with a few stop offs in various location in the North of Britain. This included some nice cultural stuff in Edinburgh and Glasgow. We saw quite a few surreal works here mostly by Picasso. Continuing along the surreal lines...

As you may know, Kurt Seligmann was a Swiss-American Surrealist painter and engraver.

What you may not know is that there is a connection with the English naive artist Ivy Langton. The connections continue but I will leave that aspect of things for another time & place, suffice it to say that it is along these lines that I can show you a Kurt Seligmann painting that has been in the dark for a while which I've been lucky enough to see.

If you like your surreal art and have any comments I would be delighted to hear them.

For now I will simply present this snap shot of the work leaning against some old paper and resting on a sheet (you might want to view it the other way up, you decide!):

Vivobarefoot Ultras vs Neo

I have been running in the VivoBarefoot Neo shoes for quite a while now. Here they are:

I recently went into one of the VivoBarefoot factory outlets and found that they had a "sample" pair of what the shop keeper said were a new Neo shoe. These are apparently the "Neo Mesh", an upgrade or update to the original Neo shoes. I did a quick search and have found no reference to a "mesh" version. Anyway, these sample shoes were in my size and on offer for £10 so I grabbed them. Here are my new bargain "Mesh" Neo shoes:

There is a different texture to the upper of this "Mesh" version. It's LESS mesh like! The rest of the shoe seems the same.

Now it might be just down to the size of the shoe but I prefer this bargain shoe to my original Neo. This is simply because my feet slip forward quite a lot in the original Neo when running downhill. The original was also quite bad (for me) when I was just walking up a hill because the balls of my feet slipped on every step inside the shoe. This aggravated the Mortons Neuroma like sensation that I sometimes get. I found that the mesh version was much better for walking and a little better for running. But this could be just down to slight differences in the cutting of the shoe to size during manufacture.

While in the factory outlet I picked up a pair of the Ultra shoes. I won't go into details about how they look, there's lots of that out there in other reviews. Here are mine:

Above you can see the bootie bit (middle) out of one shoe (top) and in the other shoe (bottom).

What I'm interested in is how the Ultras compare to the Neos (either the old or the "new"). As mentioned, I've done lots of runs in the Neos. I have now done 5 runs short runs in the Ultras (~2 miles per run mildly hilly - on the streets across Brighton). Four of these runs were in the dry and one was when it was raining about as heavily as you'd ever expect in the UK. My feet did not suffer in either condition and the shoe dried ready for the next day with the bootie bits removed. I have done long runs in continuous rain with the Neo and then found it took several days to dry out. Round one to the Ultras.

I do not think that it is necessary to do a big build up here. No further detail is necessary. I can say that I much prefer the Ultra to the Neo.

WHY: It's that bootie thing that the Ultras come with that does the trick I think. Your foot fits snugly in this (and I used thin running socks too anyway). In any running shoe you must have plenty of space around your toes but this can lead to unexpected issues like slipping of your feet inside the shoe. So far so whatever, the Ultra has space around the toes too, big deal. The bit that kills off all that slipping to the extent that it is a big plus is that the bootie thing locks into the outer shell of the shoe. Ground feel seems about the same as with the Neo but the run just feels better by enough to make these my current favourite.

My conclusion; A well fitting Neo is nice to walk in. It's not bad to run in. People may think that you're using "Crocs" but forget that, the Ultra is a better shoe by design than the Neo for running.

New Book: "Running Desperado" - 2nd edition

I released the second edition of my running diary style book today. I've added more caveman running theories and more runs including my soggiest to date plus more! I also changed the cover to include a little bit of my own art but Amazon can't see the difference & show the old image still.

A new book

Well books are art, just of a different kind. Today I put my first book on Amazon for the Kindle. You don't need a Kindle to read the book, you can just download a Kindle "reader" for your PC/MAC/Phone.

If you like fairly detailed things about running or exercise then this could be something that you enjoy:

This is a diary style exploration covering my desperation to get back into running following years with injury! There are also some of my own observations on the running shoe industry along with ideas about how running shoe design might be improved. But the main thing is trying to get back to regular running even if it's not the mega distances most other books offer because I am a mere mortal. Don't expect spotless grammar or spelling, it's running I'm interested in not willie waving about literature.

The last weekend of our open house...

The last weekend of our Open House is about to start. I estimate that by the end of it we will have had around 1000 people to see what we've been up to. I think that's quite a good number of people. If you've not been to see us yet, we open in 25 minutes from now (at 11am, Saturday 26th May 2012).

I do hope that we see you here.

Open House - second weekend.

This weekend we had the sunshine to help us along. I think it probably did bring a few more people to see us.

During a quiet spot at lunch time today I took this wobbly video to give you a (very) rough idea of things...

Well... I tried uploading it here but Blogger keeps moaning about it. You can see the vidoeo on our Open House Facebook page, search for "View at 42".

Come & see the Open House for a better view.

Open House - first weekend

Well, our first open house weekend has been & gone. I estimate that we had around 200 visitors which was nice. This is perhaps a few more than we expected with all the other things going on, that and I gather the first weekend is normally the quietest.

For me it was intriguing seeing the different ways people went around what we had on show. For example; A lot of people seemed to go into the front room & they looked down a lot & seemed to barely (if at all) notice things higher up. We did have some sculpture on the floor and low down, some things like jewellery a little higher up but we also had some painting & other things at around eye level or even slightly higher. I tried not to be too obvious in my observation and it wasn't like I was taking scientific notes, just "noticing" different behaviours. For me, when I go to something on show, I like to at least give everything a glance or more. This observation will lead to a little shimmy around of the layout for this coming weekend I think.

I hope you can make it. I promise I won't scrutinise you too much!

Open House even more nearly ready...

I just had a walk around the house & took a few more snaps on my mobile to give you a flavour (but there is still a little more to do yet)...

There's paintings & pottery...

...pottery & sculptures...

...paintings, engravings, 3D...

sculptures and more...

We have more things to come yet but we are nearly there now... I hope to see you there.

Our Open House is nearly Open!

We have been trying work out in different locations and our guest artists have been placing their work over the last few days too. The opening is tantalisingly close now.

Here you can see mostly engravings (but they're not displayed in the book shelf now):

I hope that we see you at our open house (every weekend in May 2012, 11am - 6pm).

Bird 162 - completed.

At last!
I have completed and framed my "Bird 162" engraving.
It looks great and you can see it HERE.

You can probably tell that I have been a little busy lately. I am now getting everything ready for our Artist Open House. We will be open every weekend in May 2012 11am - 6pm, come & take a look. See where HERE.

"Bird 162" part 2.

"Bird 162" has come along nicely. In this engraving I have use a little blending too. Not everything went quite to plan...

"Bird 162" - a looking good (I thought...)

For some reason I had removed the masking tape before painting which was not in my plan. Obviously I put new tape back on and continued...

"Bird 162" - suffering masking problems.

Now I have removed the second masking tape but it did not quite do the trick. You can see that the pale blue has sneaked under the edge of the mask, mainly at the top so I no longer have a nice crisp edge. Other than this problem I think things have worked out nicely. I will correct the unexpected masking and then I will show you the final piece, soon.

"Bird 162".

There is a list.

This list goes back to the year 1600 AD. 

It is a sad list.

The list has the names on it.

All the names are those of birds.

All of the birds on the list are now extinct.

The subject of my latest work is bird number 162 on the list.

"Bird 162" - stage 1, a fair bit more to do (and my mobile snap is cropped as you can see by the beak).

There is only one known very poor quality photograph (possibly on an early low resolution digital or mobile phone camera) of this bird. A little has been written about this creature such as where it lived and died. There is only one known stylised picture of this bird.

I have taken what we know and will shortly present the only known engraving, "Bird 162".

I'll tell you more soon.

Very early animated graphics timed to music...

You need to drift back in time now. You are drifting far back. Right back to the early 1980s:-

I was toying with ideas when I decided to try to get our "BBC Micro" (computer) to draw animated pictures in time to music. I am not sure but I'd never heard of this being done before then. I simply plugged some wires from a speaker output through a filter into the back of the computer to pick up the bass beat. Next I knocked up some code to let me pick from a number of pre-drawn images that I made or it would generate one in computer code (lots of spinning lines or polygons, stuff like that).

Snap back to today:

I was looking at some old photos when I came across the only image I think I have of this. In it you can see the "hi-fi", a cassette player, and on the right a TV picture with some lines drawn on it. You are going to have to crank up your imagination here...

Just image the (hissy cassette) music, (go on, get into the era). Now, (never having seen it before), on the telly, lines moved. And they changed colour and direction in time to the funky beat! Then the image would change and you had things like cocktail glasses shattering (and re-assembling) to the tune (each frame previously hand drawn on the computer).

I took this photo as we were getting ready for a party (so the computer is set up under the cupboard the TV is on) and we used this throughout the party as a curious musical accompaniment (along with a homemade sound to light unit!). I'd got the music to graphics going a year or so before this but here we are, June or July 1984:

"Far out"

(as it was not cool to say anymore, even back then but I like the expression).

Yes, but was it art?

I like to think so.

The Birds

I decided to do a series of endangered birds for my next artwork. These will be more engravings. I have started them.

Days later...

A strange thing happened! There were a lot of soft sounds like some small soft lumps tumbling down a chimney and landing behind a blocked off fireplace. After a while the sound of falling stopped but then there was another intermittent sound. A faint sound. An unfamiliar sound. Then there was a faint aroma like moist plaster. What could it be?

I thought that perhaps birds had just dislodged some old soot or something along those lines. Nothing to worry about. Nothing of note. Nothing going on here. Move along now.

Later in the day I was in the same room. Now the smell had gone but it sounded like something was scratching around. If I made a sound in the room the scratching stopped. Were the neighbours up to no good?

I decided to investigate and pulled away some dusty books. These had accumulated tiny bits of very old plaster or perhaps cement. Behind these was an air vent. Time to investigate.

I had to move piles of maps, piles of shelving, piles of files to get enough access to the vent. I screwdrivered it off and tried to see inside. Nothing but muck. I was about to put my hand inside when, in the vent opening, a scaly leg was plonked down within my field of view. A black bird perhaps. No, the leg is way too big and I can't imagine that a dainty song bird would need such talons! It must be a crow!

Anticipating mess, I had a black bin bag handy already so I put that against the vent opening. I thought the bird might see the big space and hop in to investigate. Instead, the draft sucked the bag flat against the hole. I need a glove or the crow will start eating me. I propped a book against the bag to keep it there but then the crow started pulling at it. I quickly pulled the bag out again and leant an even bigger book against the hole. I'm a bit worried that the crow will be strong enough to shove the book out of the way. Just imagine the clouds of mess a soot covered crow will make in your house if it gets a chance to flap about. The pale carpets! The white sheets. Nooooo. And then how would I catch it?

A quick move is needed. As luck would have it, my coat is in the same room & I have a thick glove in the pocket. One glove on I reach into the vent hole. The crow is not happy about this. I don't want to hurt it but know I need to be gentle as it might snap a wing or something if pulled too hard. I grab a leg but that's not much good. I grab something else, it's rear end! The crow finds a grip with those claws on the edge of the vent hole. I have to undo its talons but then another one reacquires the grip. I lever it away. One crow bottom & one crow leg out but now one wing looks to be a problem.

I turn the crow a little, one wing out, one flailing pecking occasionally cawing head and now I can remove and gently pull the whole angry bird out taking care not to catch the wing. It is out!

Now I'm trying to keep this livid creature pointing down as I open doors with one hand. It tried to flap about but I manage to not release it in the hall. As it sees the bright sunshine streaming through the house door windows it struggles to get free.

We get outside and I think the bird must think that it is pulling me along & wonders if it will be able to fly with me holding on. In case it has hurt a wing or something I release it over a foot square gate post so it has something to land on. No need, the crow is fine and free. It cawed a thank you (or an insult?).

Sorry, no photo of the actual bird but HERE is a crow I photographed on another occasion! 

I'll show you my engraved birds soon.

Robber Frog (complete)

See how this "Robber Frog" becomes a people mover. Whose are those children it is stealing? It is not really a robber, it is taking large numbers of the family on a trip to a better pool. How fantastic is that?

"Robber Frog" - stage 2, cured engraving.

"Robber Frog" - stage 3 partly "DNA stained".

This piece is part of my endangered creation series. There are something like 40% of amphibians on the critical list. Strangely a lot of these creatures are suffering death by fungus. They kind of go mouldy. How grim. How did this come about?

I think that this engraving has really worked out to give a terrific, interesting and lovely piece of art work (with much better colours than shown here via my mobile camera). You can see it completed (and framed) HERE (in better colour representation via my new photography set up).

Salamander (part 2 - complete)

I have finished my "Salamander - Death By Fungus" engraving.

"Salamander - Death By Fungus" - an engraving by Kevin Bramhill

You can see this lovely (framed) engraving HERE.

Spiny Starfish (part 4 - complete)

I have now completed and framed my Spiny Starfish.

Spiny Starfish 1 - an engraving by Kevin Bramhill

You can see them all framed (1) HERE, (2) HERE and (3) HERE. Take a look, they're great.

Salamander (part 1)

Today's creature on the road to oblivion is to the canine world, the sausage dog equivalent in the amphibian world, the humble salamander.

This engraving is a little larger that nearly all those I have done recently so there is room for a little more background detail. I have put my salamander where it might feel comfy, amongst some leaves.

Above, the cured engraving ready to DNA stain.

 

It all looks nice & simple at the moment. Just wait for the colour. It will remain simple, as it should.

Yangtze Sturgeon (part 2 - complete).

Do we mark the passing from life to extinction for the "Yangtze Sturgeon" in my finished engraving?

Checkout the bigger picture in the link below for the best view.

See the bigger picture (and see it framed) and read all about it HERE.

Chinese Paddlefish (part 3 - complete)

Check out my completed "Chinese Paddlefish" engraving which is now finished. Is it a fish? Is it an elephant? Is it a merman? Just what is this thing?

You can see a larger photo (and see it framed) and read all about it HERE.

Syr Darya Sturgeon (part 3 - complete)

The living (?) fossil that is in my "Syr Darya Sturgeon" is now complete.

This thumbnail of "Syr Darya Sturgeon" really won't give you the best idea so checkout the large version in the link below.

You can read all about it and see a larger (plus framed) version HERE.

Tree Lobster (part 2 - complete)

The extremely lucky "Tree Lobster" is now completed on my engraving.

You can read all about it, see a larger version and see it framed HERE.

Lost Plant (part 3 - complete)

My recent lovely "Lost Plant" engraving is complete.

"Lost Plant" engraving by Kevin Bramhill.

You can see a bigger photo of it (and see it framed) HERE.

Family Shoal (part 3 - complete)

My recent engraving, "Family Shoal" is now complete.

You can see a bigger picture of it (and see it framed) HERE.

20 Winks (part 3 - complete)

My "20 Winks" engraving is now complete and framed.

You can see the bigger picure HERE.

Visitors, school holidays & nasty letters from Mr. Tax.

We have had a few groups of visitors over this last week which is always nice. I have managed to finish off a couple of works and framed some others. Of course, when you have people visiting, it's always nice to go & do a few extra trips out so that rather than doing my own work I've been doing other things like a visit to the Hockney exhibition at the Royal Academy. See it if you can. I wish I had the space to make things of such a scale.

We also had a couple of horrible letters from the tax man claiming that we owe insane piles of money. Even though our accountant assures me that this is a mistake it plays away on my mind so that I cannot concentrate on my work. The taxman still contradicts the accountant. I hate this scenario, it completely takes the nice edge off things. I think that someone needs to take more care to get things right because it just ends up costing everyone so much in more ways than just money with each little poorly judged demand. I think I would earn more money not working but instead I have to put up with this re-occurring nightmare.

I hope to have this sorted out quickly so that I can get on with some great new ideas.

Yangtze Sturgeon (part 1).

The "living fossil" that is the Chinese "Yangtze Sturgeon" is strictly protected. This does not seem to have stopped the decline of this 140 million year old line. In 2007, 14 young sturgeon were surveyed near the mouth of Yangtze compared with 600 the year before and that's after 10,000 fry had been release along with some more mature specimens.

"Yangtze Sturgeon" - stage 1.

An extremely ancient life about to go extinct?

Chinese Paddlefish (part 2)

As I am doing a sequence of 3 sturgeon and they are all "slate" on "copper" things will be similar to last time:

"Chinese Paddlefish" - stage 2.

 Next we add the slate background...

"Chinese Paddlefish" - stage 3.

Wait until you see the final stage. These are going to be great!

Chinese Paddlefish (part 1)

The Chinese Paddlefish is another fantastic looking creature. To me it resembles a cross between an elephant and a human or shark. Spectacular.

Not so spectacular is the abundance of this potentially huge fish. As we have improved our ability to extract every living creature from any volume of water so it seems that the largest members of any species will be picked off first. Back in about 1950 there was mention of a 7 metre paddle fish but the reported size of these things has probably diminished with time. They have been over fished.

The last confirmed sighting of a live paddlefish was in 2003. Over a staggeringly long 3 year search for the paddlefish from 2006 not a single one was found. In 2007 one was illegally caught, probably the last one to have actually been seen alive.

"Chinese Paddlefish" - stage 1.

Appearing, for just one last time, "Chinese Paddlefish". Exit stage left, soon to be followed by most of those in your restaurant or chip shop menu. Select your next dish with care.

Syr Darya Sturgeon (part 2)

Take a look, this is even better now that the paste has cured. I think it brings out that hint of (imagined) crocodile nicely!

"Syr Darya Sturgeon" - stage 2.

You can see the copper background and it is going to look great with a slate foreground so here we go.

"Syr Darya Sturgeon" - stage 3.

The mobile camera really struggles with the increase in dark so you will just have to wait for everything to be complete and I will show you the finished piece.

Syr Darya Sturgeon (part 1)

I have a more detailed and specific subject for my work today. I also want to have a border on the canvas so, after painting in a copper background I have masked out the edges. It will be interesting to see how removal of the mask works with the cured paste on it.

My subject today is the Syr Darya Sturgeon. It looks a bit like the missing link in an early stage of crocodile evolution (although I'm sure it isn't). Syr Darya is a fish that lives in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. As is the case with most of my current engraving subjects at the moment, the plight of Syr Darya puts it on the critically endangered list. This is a shame in all cases but just look at poor Syr Darya, I mean the living thing looks like a fossil already without us helping it to go extinct.

"Syr Darya Sturgeon" - stage 1.

See you again soon.

Family Shoal (part 2)

Everything went smoothly with my great little "Family Shoal" picture until I thought that I'd finished. Something was not right. Let's see how it pans out.

"Family Shoal" - stage 2.

 OK, so far, so good. For some reason I decide to do the background first. I then do the fish but some heavy blotting is needed as some of these lines are so fine. That means that the blotting takes some background with it too. I rework the background and touch things up and things are now as required. I have imagined a pink-ish sandstone and here it is. But I'm not happy, it does not look right with the DNA stain for my fish.

"Family Shoal"- end take 1.

I decide to use a lemon colour blended with a hint of purple to allow it to take up its setting comfortably.

"Family Shoal" - end take 2.

Now we are subject to my mobile phone camera here so it is frequently hard to know one colour from another. I will post a new image with better colour when I have my next camera session.

Family Shoal (part 1)

This will be the last of my mini engravings for the time being. Again, there is no research involved, it's just an interesting image I have in my mind that I am going to engrave.

"Family Shoal" - stage 1.

As you can see, I am imagining a small shoal of fish as a family, gripped forever in death at the point of some unknown demise. Did their oasis dry out? Were they poisoned by some toxic under-sea fumeral to wash up dead on a pre-historic shore? We will never know but here they are to forever tease your mind with questions.

"How?"

"Why?"

"Where?"

Lost Plant (part 2)

This very simple design has turned out very nicely.

"Lost Plant" - stage 2.

Above we have what looks like an engraving where things have sealed up again. The contrast on my mobile is not so hot & you cannot make out all the detail in the leaves yet (but it is there).

"Lost Plant" - stage 3.

Now I have used the metallic purple background for my rock colour again. In the above photo you can make out more of the detail that was lost in the previous mobile phone snap.

"Lost Plant" - stage 4.

Here we are, a bit further along the way to finishing. I seem to have it in for my mobile phone camera today. I do not think that the camera is able to cope with metallic purple & it is trying to re-arrange colours or something so, although you get the gist of things, it is not quite right.

You will have to wait for the completed picture when I hope that you will be able to appreciate the correct colours.

20 Winks (part 2)

I managed nearer my full quota of kip last night. That feels so much better.

"20 Winks" - stage 2.

 Above we have the cured engraving. Following this I have applied a metallic purple background. That is not an obvious rock colour choice but I think it fits in well with the state of mind I was in when I started this picture, surreal.

"20 Winks" - stage 3.

Above, I have added the "DNA stain" to each item.

"20 Winks" - stage 4.

Above, I have touched things in here & there. Almost done.

Spiny Starfish (part 3)

 Here is how the Spiny Starfish looked this morning:
 

"Spiny Starfish" - stage 2.

The spiny starfish seem to come in a whole host of different colours. Here they are following the first background layer, the foreground "DNA stain" and just after blotting.

"Spiny Starfish" - stage 3.

"Spiny Starfish" stage 4.

Here I have touched up the background following blotting and we're almost done.