You know what they say about fighting for peace, it’s like fucking for virginity. Well…
Putin on the hits
Reply
Drawing: Graham Gooch
Yesterday I posted a caricature of English cricketer and prolific batsman Allan Lamb which he signed for me at the Basin Reserve in Wellington during the third test against New Zealand in February 1992. The captain of the England team on that very successful tour was the enigmatic Graham Gooch, the most prolific top-class run scorer of all time with 67,059 of them in a career that started as a 19 year-old in 1973 for county side Essex until he retired in 1997.
Journalist Matthew Engel described him as the most “uninhibited belter of the cricket ball” in his ESPN Cricinfo bio. He book-ended his test-playing career with matches against the old Ashes foe, Australia-the first in Birmingham in the summer of 1975, the last in Perth twenty years later. In that time he played 118 tests, scoring 8,900 runs notching up twenty centuries with a top score of 333 against India at Lords in 1990.
For good measure he belted a second innings 123 for a total of 456 in the match. In 125 ODI’s he scored 4,290 runs including eight 100’s. For three years in the 1980’s he was banned from playing for England for leading the first rebel tour to South Africa, so imagine what his international run tally could have been.
I drew this caricature of ‘Goochie’ in my signature 80’s cross-hatching style and he obliged with his signature in between ball-belting at the Basin.
Drawing: Allan Lamb
One of the most dominant batsman during the 1980’s was England cricketer Allan Lamb. He was also one of my favourite players. Born in South Africa to British parents, Allan joined the county side Northamptonshire in order to play test cricket for England because his native country was banned from playing International cricket due to the apartheid regime.
He made his debut against India in 1982 becoming cap number 492 and ended his 79 test-playing career against Pakistan exactly 10 years later, almost to the day. In that decade he scored 14 centuries and 18 half-centuries, amassing 4,656 runs at an average of 36.09. He also played 122 ODI’s scoring over 4000 runs with four centuries and 26 half-centuries. His last test ton was his highest, scoring 142 against New Zealand at the Basin Reserve in Wellington in February 1992, where he signed this caricature for me. During that time I used to draw caricatures with a black fine line pen and a technique that I have loosely labelled my ’80’s cross-hatch period’, combining minimal horizontal and vertical lines to define the white highlights and for the hair I rendered a much tighter, ‘frenzied’ hatch for textual contrast.
Unlike Allan, I had mixed results with the hatching, but this is an example one that I was not unhappy with.
Drawing: Rachel Muldoon
British dancer and actress Rachel Muldoon made her West End debut in 2007 as part of the GREASE ensemble at the Piccadilly Theatre, before joining WICKED at the Apollo Victoria as the Witch’s Mother and then onto CHICAGO at the Cambridge Theatre in 2010. She initially trained at the Royal Ballet School before studying at the Laine Theatre Arts in Surrey. While performing the Announcer Go-To-Hell Kitty in CHICAGO, she also understudied the lead role Roxie Hart, which critic Mark Stenton saw and wrote, “Particular revaluation at CHICAGO this afternoon, Rachel Muldoon, understudying Roxie, gave one of the best performances I’ve ever seen in the role.”
For a limited run earlier this year, Rachel played Dahlia in the Drew Mc Onie’s reimagined dance thriller of Robert Louis Stevenson’s sinister classic JEKYLL AND HYDE at the Old Vic, where she signed this sketch.
Not for turning
Image
Rude health
Image
Brexit Season
Image
Drawing: Alexander Zverev
After a stellar junior career, 19 year-old German tennis prodigy Alexander Zverev’s rise up the senior rankings is attracting attention. While growing up he was a huge Roger Federer fan and many are predicting he will emulate his idol. Rafael Nadal said, “He is a clear possible future No.1. He has all the shots.” Tennis is in his blood. His father Alexander Snr was a professional player, representing Russia in the Davis Cup before emigrating to Hamburg, where Alex Jnr, known on the tour as ‘Sascha’ was born. Both his father and mother are now tennis coaches and his brother Mischa is also a professional player.
Alexander won the ATP Star of Tomorrow Award and is the youngest player inside the top 50 with a current ranking of 28. On the ATP website his bio describes his playing style as “punchy ground strokes, a booming serve and sauntering athleticism” The 6′ 6″ Sascha can follow up a 130 mph first serve with a 120mph second. At the pre-Wimbledon Boodles Tennis event in June this year he beat world No.1 Novak Djokovic in straight sets and signed my sketch.
Drawing: Annapurna Sriram in The Spoils
In May this year, Jesse Eisenberg’s dark comedy THE SPOILS transferred from its New York premiere run to London’s Trafalgar Studios for a three month season. Not all the original cast ventured to the West End, but joining Jesse and THE BIG BANG THEORY’s Kunal Nayyar was Annapurna Sriram who played Reshma, Kunal’s pushy medical student girlfriend. Annapurna, or Anna or AP as she is often called, explained the reason for reprising her role. “Reshma is something I am really proud of – that’s my role, my baby. I didn’t like the idea of someone else doing it.” It’s her second visit to London, having spent time at The Globe studying Shakespeare after competing her Arts Degree from Rutgers University.
She came to prominence in the 2015 supernatural horror series SOUTH OF HELL and more recently as Tara Mohr, the hard-partying employee of US Attorney Chuck Rhodes played by Paul Giamatti in the Showtime hit TV series BILLIONS.
Brooklyn-based Annapurna is Indian-American, which she said has helped her acting career. “We’re in a day and age where being ethnically ambiguous – which is what I am – is a commodity”. I meet the very amiable Anna at the Trafalgar Studio’s stage door a couple of weeks before the play finished in mid-August, where she took a photo of my drawing then signed it for me.
Drawing: Carole King
Carole King is one of the most influential songwriters of our time. Her second of 25 solo albums,’Tapestry’ is one of the best selling records of all time with over 25 million copies sold worldwide. It won four Grammy Awards in 1972, including Album of the Year. Carole became the first solo female artist to win Song of the Year (‘You’ve Got A Friend’) and Record of the Year (‘It’s Too Late’). It remained on the Billboard Charts for 313 weeks, second only to Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon”. Carole has been named the most successful songwriter for the period 1955-1999, writing or co-writing 118 Billboard Chart Hits. She has also taken the same honour in the UK with 61 hits between 1952-2005.
I drew this sketch of Carole last year and hoped to get it signed when she attended the opening of BEAUTIFUL – THE CAROLE KING MUSICAL at the Aldwych Theatre in London in February 2015, but didn’t manage to get there. Carole also played Hyde Park this summer, but it’s a difficult venue to get graphs and stalking hotels is not part of my MO. So I did the old fashioned thing and sent it to her at her production studio in California and it came back signed and dedicated in next to no time.
ChicanePictures 