Work has accelerated on the drawings and paintings for my next display at Croydon Clocktower. The man in charge of the gallery, John, has very kindly let me have an additional hanging space for my cartoons alongside my drawings and paintings, so there will be extra wall to cover, and the display is three short months away. I've done a monochrome watercolour of the vintage car I drew in the Museum of London a while back - the drawing was fine, but every time I scanned it the picture looked awful, with the background in particular looking very patchy, and no amount of photo editing seemed to remedy it. I'm using a slightly thicker type of watercolour paper with less visible texture, and so far there has been less buckling as the paint dries. Hopefully this and the texture will result in less problematic scans of the paintings; the biggest issue I've had with scanning watercolours so far has been visible shadows on the image which require digital airbrushing later.
I've got another trial period with Amazon Prime (having previously believed you were only allowed to have one!) within which I will learn again whether or not I can live without Amazon Prime. So far I've watched some interesting films, including The Red Turtle, which I missed during its brief run in London cinemas a while back. It's a lovely film; visually, it reminded me of the Tintin books, and it really stands out from all the other childrens' animations of the past decade. If nothing else it's nice to see an animated film that isn't being used to sell McDonalds Happy Meal toys.
Amazon Prime have also got Fire and Ice, the Ralph Bakshi cartoon from the early 80s, which I watched as a kid under the mistaken belief that it was a children's film and was shocked by the violence and (PG-rated) raunch. I've watched about the first half hour of it and am really enjoying it; the colouring of the figures is very flat, but the backgrounds are beautifully painted, and the rotoscoped animation is strikingly fluid and lifelike.