Alex Hallatt's Arctic Circle

NCSF Announces 2013 Jay Kennedy Scholarship Winner

alex — Fri, 10 May 2013 10:05:25 +0000

More at the National Cartoonists Society website.

Deadline Crazy for Arctic Circle and Cartooning Book

alex — Wed, 08 May 2013 09:41:38 +0000

I’m gearing up for a trip to the US in a couple of weeks (for the National Cartoonist Society shindig in Pittsburg, which also happens to be the boyf’s homecity, as he grew up in Sewickley, up the road). That means I’m still chasing my Arctic Circle deadlines as well as those for the book on cartooning I’m supplying chapters for.

I’m currently working on the chapter on the framework of the cartoons – borders, lettering and balloons. I print off my roughs and a lettering/border line guide in blue and ink over that.

Back From Spain

alex — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 10:15:36 +0000

The boyf and I just spent a couple of weeks in Spain on a bit of a fact-finding trip. We are hoping to live there at some point and get our Spanish to a better level (we used it a lot on the trip, as most of our encounters were with people who didn’t speak any English). Enjoyed driving around the Basque country and La Rioja, eating amazing food and drinking fabulous wine.

San Sebastian: great beaches...

great food (pintxos: the Basque tapas)...

and art - what's not to love?

Getaria - super fresh seafood in this fishing village

I got addicted to the fresh anchovies: a penguin's favourite food!

We decided to visit Vitoria when I found that it was the Basque Green Capital. It was certainly a bicycle-friendly city and one I'd love to live in if it wasn't so far from the sea...

Loved all the preserved goods in this shop in Haro, La Rioja

Farm workers in the Rioja used to take shelter in these in bad weather

We drove into the hills and saw villages cut into the hillsides with terracing for growing vegetables and raising livestock

A highlight of the trip for me was seeing fossilised dinosaur footprints near Encismo

After three weeks away (we drove down through France from the ferry), I’ve got a lot of work to do, so I better get back to the drawing board…

I Don’t Miss Working in an Office

alex — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 08:56:03 +0000

Stunning photography of To The Arctic book and film : TreeHugger

alex — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 09:38:41 +0000

Stunning photography of To The Arctic book and film : TreeHugger.

Cartooning Book Sneak Peek

alex — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 12:25:22 +0000

I’m working on some chapters for a book on cartooning. It’s all a bit hush hush at the mo, but it’s been fun creating some new characters and messing around with them.

Mother’s Day

alex — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 08:02:37 +0000

It’s Mother’s Day here in the UK, so a big shout out to my wonderful Mum (who loves flowers, but not from a petrol station…)

Love Your Coast – Seaton’s Big Clean 2013

alex — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 15:59:21 +0000

Wherever we have lived, we’ve picked up litter, but it is lovely to get involved with a big group of litter pickers every now and again.

We ignored the sign-in, t-shirt hand out and tedious health and safety briefing and got to work on the beach straight away (At high tide, gasp! how dangerous….).
As we worked our way down the beach, we encountered the properly debriefed and high-vis vested litter pickers en masse.
Most of the litter we picked up was plastic, with a distressing amount of discarded fishing line, a lot of bottle tops and dog poo that had been bagged, only to be left on the beach (a pet peeve).

It was good to get involved and nice to see such a great turn out (and that there is a lot less litter here than in St Kilda, Melbourne.).

Penguin Hunter Cartoons

alex — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 09:08:01 +0000

A little bit of silliness.

Be a Womble, Not a Tosser

alex — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 09:50:57 +0000

I can’t stand litter. No matter how much we educate kids, or make dropping litter seem uncool (I particularly like posters like the one below), there will always be a few idiots who drop it. But I figure that if there were enough people like us who not only didn’t drop litter, but also picked up the litter they found (modern Wombles, as it were), then everywhere would look a hell of a lot better and we wouldn’t have the problems associated with plastic getting into our waterways (and ultimately our food chain).