Well, the clock now lies in a heap, partially abandoned. I don't mind saying it wasn't the most logical way to build a clock, it came in many layers of card so that you had to glue (up to 21!) layers of card together to make one cog! There are about 15 cogs! However, it did give me an idea so I set about making an automaton, after inspiration from this great book:




I decided to do a really simple mechanism based on the Devillish Sweet and Cake Maker, you pull a cord, his mouth opens (you put a sweetie inside) you let go and his mouth closes. After a few minutes of jumping up and down while you wait, you can now open his mouth again and eat the sweet in the firm knowledge that you deserve it!

Below are the original drawing, in progress shots and the final version.









I'm quite happy with the way it turned out, although the photographs aren't great. I need a new camera really. But anyway, it's for sale in my Etsy shop here.

So, for a very long time I have loved mechanical things, but haven't the first idea about the realities of mechanics. Last year, a brief and optimistic period was spent trying to make my own wooden gear clock from scratch. This failed spectacularly! Anyway, after that I just made do with drawing pictures of mechanical things (pure fantasy). Then, after drawing the Devillish sweet and Cake Maker I got all irritable because I actually want to build an automaton based on it!

So, then I started looking around at wooden gear clock kits to try and teach myself - and after some searching found a cardboard version!! Yes, cardboard. For a lot of the parts you have to glue layers of card together, but it's a start. Lord knows how far i'll get but hopefully far enough to work out how to build my own mechanisms!

I've always said if I were a man, I would love to grow a beard. Sculpt it, Wax it, curl it. The lot! Men just aren't really catching on to the beard thing fully. Except for the fellas at worldbeardchampionships .

I am thinking of doing a series of Beard drawings, to fully explore possible beard styles. Or maybe not. Anyway, the photos came in handy when thinking about how the Inventor Baron from The Inventors Notebook would look.

The Inventors Notebook is now complete and in the Shop. Below are some shots of indivdual pages. One thing I learned is that I need to learn to write with good cursive script otherwise a perfectly good drawing can look incredibly scruffy with a bit of haphazard writing. The written pages i've re-written with a script from a book of handwriting fonts. Took ages but the results are worth it.

The great thing about Christmas, for me, is that I get some time off work to finally finish off some projects, or get one under way. The current project is an inventors notebook which grew up out of drawings like the Flutter Fish and Clockwork Fish and watching/reading about the adventures of Baron Munchausen.

A character started to form who is pretty Muchause-e-in but instead of having heroic sporting and adventuring incidents, this one is an inventor of - stuff. Totally random, unusable and illogical stuff. Some in-progress shots - sorry about the quality, lighting was terrible:





































































Some of the inventions so far are:

Clockwork flying fish
This can carry passengers and has 2 pilots. It's powered by an altered form of helium which is only a bit highly flammable.

The Philoshophicare
A portable philosophicating machine which has useful and practical answers for all kinds of people from the very Religious to Atheists - and also an average answer which is very helpful for people who like to hedge their bets.

I have one more to complete and then it will go in the shop. For a while I thought about having prints made of these and having them professionally bound. But I think i'll stick with originals for now.

This is my first post, to explain something about myself and why I am writing this blog. By day, 5 days a week, I work as a Flash designer. By evening, 7 days a week, I try to draw, paint, make things and sell my work on etsy (www.littlerobot.etsy.com). The shop is a bit paltry at the moment, but I am currently working on a sort of 'invention' series with a one-off artists book currently being made.

So this blog is really to keep updates on what i'm working on, but also to keep a record of all the things I come across which are interesting or inspirational. I think and hope that there will be other artists out there who will also find them inspiring.

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