Blogshank - Mike Smith, Illustrator and Diary Blogger » pencil

050115

Mike — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 18:11:17 +0000

Being self-employed

Mike — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 09:42:36 +0000

The Guardian website recently requested some readers’ experiences of being self-employed. I sent them an offering which predictably they didn’t use, so I thought I’d post it here. Maybe they thought it was too trite.

Anyway here is what the Guardian finally put up.

160412

Mike — Tue, 15 May 2012 07:45:41 +0000

Vietnam

Mike — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 13:42:21 +0000

We spent a few days in Hanoi in the north. The original plan was to travel to Ho Chi Minh City in the south — it being the furthest point by rail that we could reach from London — but we realised we would then run out of time to get to Singapore. So we decided to go half way down the country to Dong Ha, where we stopped for a day to visit the amazing Vinh Moc tunnels, then cut across to Laos.

Looking back at my little journal, I thought it was hilarious that I wrote this when we arrived in Hanoi:

Then just three days later, this:

Taiga Forest

Mike — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 09:43:45 +0000

In Tomsk we met someone called Gregory who got together some of his mates with carrier bags full of vodka bottles, and took us into the Taiga Forest to murder us for a barbecue.

Gregory turned out to be the perfect host, guiding us back out of the forest in the small hours.

The trouble with staying in hostels is that you get on a kind of treadmill, meeting only other tourists. (We tried to correct this by using the couchsurfing website.) I wish I’d done more cartoons like the one below, but the trains and buses were too clattery to draw in.

Omsk and Tomsk

Mike — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 08:40:10 +0000

When Caz was little there was a world map their kitchen wall, and she found it hilarious that there was a place called Omsk and a place called Tomsk. Her Dad said they must go there one day, so we took a diversion to Tomsk, which is a small branch line (ie several hours in Russian terms) off the trans-Siberian railway. Caz’s Dad flew in to Moscow and joined us especially for that bit.

“The lady said she knows 3 expressions in English: ‘Thank you,’ ‘I love you,’ and ‘It’s a miracle!’”

London to Singapore

Mike — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 13:14:10 +0000

Posting the sketchbook images from Beijing the other day made me realise it’s exactly four years since Caz and I made the trip from London to Singapore by train. We left on 17th September, arrived on 13th November, then spent 6 weeks in New Zealand. I thought it would be nice to post each page here on the same day four years later.

The text was intended just to jog my memory for writing it all up later, but of course I never did. Some of the drawings are truly awful but because I’m a completeness freak I’m going to scan them all.

Er, including the first one where the pencil got smudged into oblivion. No-one will ever know what we got up to in Minsk.

Dungeness

Mike — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 07:50:07 +0000

While we were on the south coast I did some sketching at Dungeness. It’s got to be one of the best places in the UK to go with a pad and pencil. It’s got everything, including loads of messy telegraph poles, which I particularly love drawing.

Caz’s dad is responsible for the design of part of the nuclear power station, but I can’t remember which bit.

070211

Mike — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 00:21:11 +0000

280909

Mike — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:26:46 +0000