Monthly Archives: February 2021

Illustration Development.

 Illegal Scottish Highland still drawn with biro pen.
Drawn with a black Bic Biro – the actual artwork is 11cm or 4½” tall. Quite small.

The common Bic Biro, next to the pencil, is one of my favourite drawing tools but if you leave your Bic drawing exposed to the daylight it’ll go brown and eventually fade entirely.

This would have been horrific to many of my students who used to treat all their makings as potential museum quality art. Every piece that flowed from their hand Continue reading Illustration Development.

Whisky Recipe.

smugglers loading a skiff with brandy.“Aye! Weel may ye sing o’ the maut, the meikle black deil, an th’ Exciseman, but…” You can read the rest on Maut/Malt and see the full illustration here: where the boatman speaks on to alert the happy singing smugglers that Exciseman Robert Burns and his dragoons are on their way and mad as hell because the schooner Rosamond fired grapeshot at them.

And he hopes their tide comes in in time.

Also included are the lyrics of Burns’s ballad The Diel’s awa wi the Exciseman.

Illegal Hooch Production.

While working out the caption and illustration for the above word Maut I got carried away with researching how Continue reading Whisky Recipe.