I decided this morning...

...that I was going to make up four books for my grandchildren using some clown pictures I had drawn from some source material over 10 years ago. There are 39 pictures of clowns.

I found them where I had stuffed the sketchbook in the garage. They have been closed, shut in that sketch book for over ten years. What is the point? I am not going to use them for anything. They were just a project I did for myself.

I never liked clowns as a child. They were a big part of the circus when I was a child in the 50’s. They scared me then. I recall going in the tents at the back after the circus and the wild animals were in trailers with bars on them. There were bars on the tiger cage/trailer which was barely big enough for that majestic beast, and you could easily put your hands through the bars. How I still have a pair of hands I shall never know...

Anyway I am digressing...

As I said, I was scared of clowns when I was a child. I can’t tell you specifically why. But clowns always seemed to be sad to me, full of tragedy. There was always one clown in the ring that the others seemed to make fun of. But I didn’t feel sympathy for that clown, I just felt further and further removed from the clowns as the show went on.

All I wanted to do after the show was go and see the big wild cats in the caged trailers, look into their eyes, and touch the tiger...


So, fast forward well over half a century and I decide I want to draw clowns with whatever it is I see behind their faces now. I see sadness, tragedy, alcoholism, failed relationships and more. After the first couple of attempts which looked a bit pretty pretty, I started feeling the person behind the face.

I used Caran D’ache coloured pencils. But that was over ten years ago, I cannot hold those crayons now to do this kind of work because of my arthritis. No point in hanging on to this work any more. So created four sketchbooks for the grandchildren, did a bit of gel print work to make labels to go in the sketchbooks I am giving the grandchildren with these pictures I did of the clowns pasted in. They will all have different ones.

I started cutting them out of the sketchbook and trimming them, then I stopped...I suddenly got a bit precious about my work...

Then I thought shall I keep one or two and put them on the walls...but no...the pictures of clowns still scare and disturb me, there is a dark side to them.

Then I thought am I going to be scaring the living daylights out of my grandchildren? I think they will survive. I was going to print out a history of clowns...but what I found was a bit adult and scary...even the write ups of clowns for children...

Knowing me I will get up at midnight and work on this again for the grandchildren...and I might get take photos of some of my drawings of clowns.

Sort of had one of those days. Well two days actually. I won’t go into it....except to say it is a NFH....this morning I stood up to him...I wouldn’t descend to his level of verbal attack and inflammatory words, but just politely stated my case and then I walked away....

And no I wasn’t upset after, I wasn’t going to let a moron like that upset my day. But I will be a bit wary of him just in case...

Take care, and thanks for the comments and love x