Pete.hindle

Fun fact: five year olds don’t care much for antique fairs. Especially when they’re not allowed to touch anything.

You can buy my new book The Listening Agent. I think you’ll enjoy it. If you do like it, tell all your friends, write a review. If you don’t like it, feel free to just keep quiet.

 
I'm sad to report that our parakeet Mr. Kooks has died. At more than 11 years of age, he was rather old for a budgie, but still as cheerful as ever until the end.


He was always glad to leave his cage to sit on my shoulder as I painted, or to hang out on his perch-playground. He starred in my video Parakeet Artist, and often posed for an impromptu portrait, such as the one in oil above.

Concierto de Neil Young en "Les arenes de Nimes"

Catedral y "les arènes de Nimes" después del concierto.

Catedral de Béziers.

Béziers por dentro y por fuera.

Buscando bodegas de vino en las afueras de Béziers. Y el castillo Cátaro de Termes.

La citte de Carcassone.

Catedral de VIena y Naturhistorisches Museum Wein

Naturhistorisches Museum Wein, dinosaurios, el ya clásico Dodo y la venus de Willendorf.

Naturhistorisches Museum Wein y edificios de la Secession.

Café Savoy y Jardin botánico del palacio de Schönbrunn.

Hunterwasserhaus y el café de Kunst Haus.

El beso de G. Klimt y las esculturas de Messerschmidt en el Belvedere

Rathaus y esculturas por la ciudad.

Salzburgo.

Sendlinger Tot y Hofbräuhaus uno de los mas antiguos y grandes bares de Munich

Neues Rathaus de Munich

Alte Rathaus y el Hofbräuhaus por fuera, segunda incursión.

Munich esta lleno de ciclistas, Isartor al fondo..

...where Barnsdall Art Park is located in East Hollywood.  I love it for its views in all directions, especially the view north to my beloved Griffith Observatory that sits above Los Angeles like a crown jewel.  We have a lot of "atmosphere" in Los Angeles, so I get to practice seeing and painting it!

In 1892, Edwin Austin Abbey received a letter from a young artist traveling through England on his way across to Paris. He wanted advice from the famous illustrator. Here was Abbey's response:

"The great trouble," he wrote, "with the vast majority of our artists at home is that they cease to be students too soon. They spend a couple of years—even three or four years— in Paris, or some other place where students congregate, and, bored by the drudgery of the serious atelier and seeing certain easy-going pictures attracting a certain amount of attention and having also a certain amount of merit, they throw over the opportunity (which, mind you,never comes again) to make themselves as perfect as they may be with the aid of all the facilities a far-seeing body of eminent artists have, during many years, accumulated for their benefit, and dash into paint with a confidence bred entirely of ignorance and intolerance of the training that they, at that ill-informed and blind period of their lives, do not see the need of."

Abbey continued: "Go to the Louvre constantly (on Sunday mornings you will have the place to yourself, or nearly so). Look at the designs and drawings by the great masters and reflect that they thought it necessary to take all that pains before they began their painting, and that they did not rely upon genius or talent to carry them through. Remember that you are pretty blind at present. I don't remember ever before having seen an art student of your age absolutely without a sketch-book. You should be sketching always, always. Draw anything. Draw the dishes on the table while you are waiting for your breakfast. Draw the people in the station while you are waiting for your train. Look at everything. It is all part of your world. You are going to be one of a profession to which everything on this earth means something. Keep every faculty you have been blessed with wide awake. The older you get the more full your life will be getting." 

Poor old Stevenage! Nobody likes it. I mean, just nobody. If there is ever a more unloved town in the UK, I have yet to find it.

Growing up, I would read the NME in the school library. The very occasional mention of Stevenage in the reviews section would be a litany of complaints from the reviewer at the awful fate of having to travel there. It’s half an hour from Kings Cross, which is almost the same time it takes to travel from Liverpool Street to Bromley. I mean, what a nightmare. Image the ignominy of travelling half an hour!

And this is the view that any modern traveller sees upon arrival. Stevenage “leisure park”. It was shiny and new when I left school and did some A-Levels in the town, but now it’s another boring run-down area.

The real centre of Stevenage is just as horrific, and never has any chance of improving thanks to the planning fashions of post-war Britain. Sadly, where other places became admired for their Brutalist architecture, Stevenage will always be this weird carbuncle on the edge of London.

Above, clockwise, we have a donut van that parks in the pedestrian area, some of the flats behind the shops, a bit of a tree, and the men’s toilets outside McDonalds. I should have spent more time painting the people in Stevenage, because it was a hot day and there were so very impressive neck tattoos on display. Maybe next time!

I want to talk about McDonald's, because, when you walk a lot in god forsaken places, you end up eating McDonald's a lot. It's just how it goes. Here are some notes I made whilst sitting in a McDonald's.


I am in a McDonald's at Bow flyover in East London. It is busy. It has just gone midday. The music is very loud. The service is really bad. The staff are extraordinarily ugly.


I'm eating a McFlurry and drinking a coffee. It is disgusting, but I know exactly what it tastes like before I eat it. That is the essence of McDonald's, predictability and ubiquity.


Incidentally, there is a bloke in a pearly king outfit sat at the table opposite me, he is eating a Big Mac meal with a coffee and he looks like he is enjoying it. I swear, this isn't what the East End of London is always like. Honestly.


It is no coincidence that this McDonald's is situated at the confluence of two main roads (The A12 and the A13). McDonald's are always at big roundabouts or junctions. This McDonald's is one of a few that open for 24hrs a day. Even on Christmas day they are open. It isn't the only one in the country to do this, but it is telling that the ones in central London are only open until 3 or 4am, reopening at 6 for breakfast.


The McDonald's at motorway service stations or in railway stations open early for breakfast, to catch early commuters and travellers. But have you noticed how rare it is to find a service station with a McDonald's?


Burger Kings outnumber McDonald's at service stations 6 to 1. And at train stations, often Burger King has the prime spot, the 'OhMyGodI'mGoingToMissMyTrainButI'mSoHungry' spot, while McDonald's is just outside, or maybe on a lower ground floor which takes a few minutes to get to.


There is a reason.

Burger King and McDonald's are both franchises. You apply to set up a franchise, and then agree to the terms and conditions of the franchise in return for a profit split with the advantage of a big name behind you. You have to agree to obvious things like using appropriate merchandising and buying your food from their approved suppliers. The difference between the McDonald's franchises and Burger King franchises is that if you set up a Burger King, you can effectively set your own prices.


This means that you can set up a Burger King in a pricey location (i.e., a service station or a railway station that charges premium rents) and then just charge whatever amount for your food that will still make you a profit.


Mcdonald's tightly controls their prices. Only allowing special dispensation for special 'prime' locations. Leicester Square and Oxford St, for example, have higher prices. But still, the difference is about 50p. Whereas Burger King can charge up to £3 more for their meals. I've been on many a train, staring at my £7.50 Burger King meal in disbelief.


This decision is a conscious strategy by McDonald's – it means that they can advertise nationally on price. But it has also lead to some strange side effects. It means that their natural home is not just the high street, but also strange hinterlands with cheap rent, where other businesses would struggle to turn a profit.


For example the McDonald's nearest my house while I was growing up was opposite the local Leisure Centre, next to a bypass. It was always busy.

So, that's why I'm in a McDonald's next to the Bow flyover, eating food that tastes predictably disgusting. It makes sense as a business strategy. Like I said – McDonald's offers predictability and ubiquity.


It is a modern day coaching inn. That's why it works on a big roundabout. Here is a list of people who eat here.


1. Workmen, in vans, packs of them. Eastern European guys chatting up the staff, people in hi-vis and helmets, people covered in paint. We are near the Olympic site so there are loads of labourers around here.


2. Police, security guards, night-shift Tesco workers. Where the fuck else can you eat at midnight on a Tuesday between Bow and Stratford?


3. Really tired parents with children in cars on the way to or from somewhere else. It is raining, it is night time, your Tom Tom has broken and you don't know where you are. You see a McDonald's sign, you are safe.


4. Drunk people. You got the wrong bus, then you fell asleep on the bus. You sort of know where you are but the next bus isn't coming for like an hour.


5. Me. I really like McDonald's. I like how the guy next to me is talking to himself, well, actually it is totally freaking me out, but it's alright, because we both came in here to be safe and to hide from the real world and eat food that was totally predictable and that we knew we could afford so I'm pretty certain that he isn't going to give me any trouble.


McDonald's is sort of like a sober Wetherspoons, which I also really like, for similar reasons. What large scale capitalism does well is provide a haven for travellers. Part of McDonald's identity is that it is predictable, they even have an advert based on that very premise.


The advert goes like this: a guy is on his first day at work, everything is new and scary – this picture is him being shown how to use the photocopier or something. So then at lunch he rushes off to McDonald's


which makes him feel really secure and great. This picture is him being really comfortable in McDonald's, and then he eats a Big Mac and everything is ok again, and why is that? Why is it so comforting?


It's because the Big Mac is just as predictably shit as he expects it to be.

–

I walk in some pretty grim places. Recently I walked with Mathilda Fowler and Colin Dilnot all the way along the Northern Outfall Sewer, ending at a place called Beckton Sewage treatment works.


After a long day of walking in the snow and rain, we just wanted to have a coffee and a sit down, and the only place we could find was a McDonald's at Gallions Reach Retail Park.


Gallions Reach Retail Park is right next to the sewage treatment works, and consequently, the whole place smells of shit. It's on the wind. Maybe the day we were there was particularly bad, but who ever designed the plans for the retail park must have been out of their minds. Or just completely unaware of the smell because they never visited the site before approving the plans.

The only other option for eating in Gallions Reach was an outdoor hotdog stand. I couldn't think of anything worse than standing in the freezing cold, eating a hotdog and breathing in tiny particles of human shit. At least McDonald's was inside.

Maybe that should be their new catchphrase

“McDonald's – its better than inhaling the stench of human waste”

As a break from sketching around Slussen in the cold, I met with a few fellow sketchers at Moderna Museet (Museum of Modern Art) in Stockholm today. We had a great day, chatting away while both drawing the view out the restaurant windows and sketching people in the lobby.

Check out the results of the other sketchers too: Anna, David and Marie.

13 x 13,5 cm, top image: Namiki Falcon with Platinum Carbon ink and watercolours, bottom image: same pen plus pencil. Both on HandBook page.

 The above is a link to my comic adaptation of The Three Snake Leaves, one of my favourite fairy tales. This was made over the last couple of weeks while I was running a comics assignment at Emily Carr University (I figured since I was having all these students make some web comics, I should probably do one too). It ended up being a sort of vacation from my regular comics work, a short project to clear my head and get back into the swing of working loose and intuitively. I tried some things that I hadn't tried before, but would like to experiment with more in the future (don't want to give anything away), so I hope you enjoy it.

ADDITIONALLY: I'm going to be at EMERALD CITY COMIC CON in Seattle this weekend! As in, tomorrow through Sunday. I'll be wandering around here and there, but my home base will be the Benign Kingdom table (check out that link for map & signing info if you're so inclined). I'll have copies of my new art book to sell, and will be happy to do some little drawings and say hello if you'd like to stop by. :)

They sure don’t make them like they used to, for better and for worse. The innovation and sheer people-power at the start of the industry is mind-melting, and along with Disney, Fleischer Studios was at the forefront. Who doesn’t love a good process video, and who doesn’t love a good Popeye cartoon?

(video link)

New Zealand part 4 (Abel Tasman, Blackball)

2012’s Best of Ordinary Batman Adventures!

(Top 6 are based on note count.) View all the Ordinary Batman Adventures here!