I’ve not posted here for a while, mostly due to having my hands full with finishing my degree, but also because I haven’t been drawing from life as much, despite the good weather. I do have some plans for drawing projects in the near future though, so will add more things soon. Here are a couple of drawings of the Malian band Tinariwen, who I saw play at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival in early May:
The band has an interesting history as ethnic Tuareg, a nomadic people from the Sahara desert. In between songs the various band members would take turns saying ‘Welcome to the desert’ to us, until it became a bit of a running joke. They also said ‘You OK? You happy?’, to which the typically polite (seated) Cheltenham audience would murmer ‘yes’ in response. My favourite member was this chap, who was positioned closest to me sitting in the front row to the right of the stage. He played a bit of guitar, did a bit of singing, played a bit of tambourine, but mostly he seemed to be the main exotic dancer for the band. He swayed and smiled at us, waved his hands around in circular motions and sashayed from the hips in his golden yellow robes:
a small drawing blog 