Drawing: Iana Salenko, Prima Ballerina

Posted on November 4, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Iana Salenko

I really enjoy drawing dancers.The lines become more energetic and it certainly gives the 4B pencil are good workout. Ballet adds grace to the rendering. My latest sketch is Ukrainian prima ballerina Iana Salenko, Principal with the Staatsballet Berlin and Guest Artist with the Royal Ballet since performing the role of Kitiri in Carlo Acosta’s Don Quixote in 2013. She returns to Covent Garden this month as Juliet in Kenneth MacMillian’s groundbreaking production of Romeo and Juliet. First staged at the Royal Opera House in 1965, it has been at the heart of Royal Ballet’s repertory ever since. On opening night fifty years ago, Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn performed the title roles, receiving a rapturous reception with 43 curtain calls during 40 minutes of applause.

Iana will also join Principal Steven McRae this month in Tchaikovsky Pas de deus and The Nutcracker over the Christmas season. I was very pleased to receive my sketch, signed by Iana after I left it at the Opera House.

Drawing: The All Blacks

Posted on November 3, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

all blacks team sigs
As a proud but nomadic New Zealander living in the UK I couldn’t let this moment go by without some homage to our mighty All Blacks, winning the Rugby World Cup for the third time and the first team to retain the Webb Ellis Cup, beating our noisy neighbours Australia, 34-17 in the final at Twickenham on Saturday.

Since becoming the World Champions in Auckland in 2011, they have only had three loses in 53 matches, holding the Number 1 ranking for the past decade. The world’s media have labelled them the greatest rugby team of all time, some saying the greatest team in the history of sport. “Phenomenal doesn’t do them justice,” one scribe wrote.

Rightly so, they also picked up the Best Team trophy at the annual World Rugby Awards for the sixth successive with legendary playmaker Dan Carter winning Best Player after his mercurial Final and final performance, scoring 19 points with the boot, a fitting end to his unparalleled career.

I drew this image of the Cup with the All Blacks iconic silver fern, leaving space for the team – 31 of them – to hopefully sign… and hopefully the winning team. They arrived at the Tower of London for the official welcome to the tournament six weeks ago. Given the history of the venue, some thought the hosts may have had other ideas.

Knowing the chances of me obtaining the entire team at that event were less than minimal, I delivered it to the AB’s long-time manager Darren Shand, who had helped me in the past with previous requests and as sure as God made little green apples (and the All Blacks) he got the job done, like his team in the World Cup. I just had to mention that again.

Drawing: Number 1, The Plaza at The Soho Theatre

Posted on November 2, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

1 The Plaza

Shit happens… particularly at Number 1, The Plaza, a luxury London apartment and the title of an unconventional 75 minute performance by experimental theatre duo Lucy McCormick and Jennifer Pick which ran at the Soho Theatre this spring. The pair playing narcissistic drama queens let it all hang out. It’s excrement entertainment, literally and metaphorically.

A boundary-pushing, boozy night of cabaret, live art and stand-up, promoted as a “messy musical trash-fest exploring the relationship between the two women.” Jen and Lucy perform numbers from shows such as Wicked and Blood Brothers smeared in human waste and share too much information and other stuff. It gives a whole new meaning to Dirty Dancing.

Their production company is called Getinthebackofthevan. Need I say more. According to director Hester Chillingworth, Number 1 examines the ‘pornification’ of everyday life, a no holds-barred examination of the kind of shit that we do day to day, surrounded in ‘number 2’s. The company are known for occupying and championing the borders of things, sitting at the crossroads between a number of genres.

Critic Emma Brady described it as “a theatre experience like no other.”

For the alarmed, don’t be. The fake faeces is a mixture of gingerbread cake, chocolate and peanut butter. Ask a front row member of their audience. I was just pleased they used a conventional pen to sign my sketch… I think.

Drawing: Diana Rigg as Emma Peel

Posted on October 31, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Diana Rigg

Described as one of the UK’s most cherished actors, Dame Diana Rigg, best known to global TV audiences as Emma Peel, the leather catsuit clad sidekick to secret agent John Steed (played by the lat Patrick Macnee) and unofficial undercover operative that fuelled the fantasies of schoolboys around the world in The Avengers.

Her name is a play on the phrase “Man Appeal” or M. Appeal, one of the required elements of the character. In 2002 she was voted the sexiest TV star ever and Michael Parkinson described her in his 1972 interview as the “most desirable woman he ever met” who “radiated a lustrous beauty”.

Not everyone found her appealing, however. In her book and subsequent stage show, No Turn Unstoned in which she revisits actors worst theatrical reviews, including her own nude appearance in A Belard And Heloise; “Miss Rigg is built like a brick basilica with insufficient flying buttresses”.

She left The Avengers to appear in the James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) playing the Contessa Teresa “Tracy” Draco di Vicenzo Bond, the only 007 girl to marry the commitment-phone spy.

Dame Diana was at the BFI last Sunday to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Emma Peel phenomenon with a discussion after the screening of The Avengers’ episode entitled The House That Jack Built. She signed my sketch of her in her “Peel” days.

Drawing: Bus King Theatre

Posted on October 30, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

bus king theatre

Travelling home on the Tube the other day, amilessly flicking through the Evening Standard I was captivated by an article entitled Fare Play-Husband and Wife Team Turn Rusting Double Decker Bus Into Puppet Theatre. Puppeters are very cool and Cesare and Athena Maschi looked like the coolist. I have always been fascinated with puppertry, especially marionettes, growing up on a diet of Gerry Anderson’s ‘Supermarionation’ TV shows such as Thunderbirds and Stingray. Some therapists call it ‘Pinocchio envy.’ The Bus King Theatre is stationed this week at the Spitalfields Market near London’s Liverpool Station for the school half-term break. They are performing three shows a day in the ‘lovingly re-purposed’ Routemaster bus, with the lower deck converted into a theatre for 25-30 people and the upper for puppetry workshops. The Maschi’s spent three years looking for the ‘perfect’ bus, which they eventually found in a friend’s field. ‘I love buses and had this romantic idea of owning one and when you go inside it is a theatre,” Athena told the reporter. I had always threatened to draw puppeters before, but it was a theatrical art that had escaped the visual interrogation of my 4B pencil. I was struck by a sudden urge of ‘superspontanioussketching’ and quicky drew this based on the pics that accompioned the article, then hiked it to Spitalfields for the sig-nification.

As I imagined Cesare and Athena were supercool. It’s not everyday someone just rocks up asking you to sign their scribble, but they took it in their stride. Marionettist’s are like that. This sketch is now signed by the hands that pull the strings, giving life to so many puppet persons. Check them out at http://www.buskingtheatre.London, or go see them live when the bus stops near you.

Drawing: Daniel Craig in A Steady Rain

Posted on October 29, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Daniel craig

Becoming the sixth actor to play Ian Fleming’s fictional British secret agent James Bond has made him a household name, but Daniel Craig actually started his career ‘treading the boards’, after graduating from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1991. His first film role was in fact 007 in the 2006 instalment, Casino Royale.He returned to the stage in 2009, debuting on Broadway in A Steady Rain alongside fellow A-Lister Hugh Jackman at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre or Theater as they like to spell it. The 12 week engagement about two Chicago policemen who inadvertently return a Vietnamese boy to a cannibalistic serial killer believing him to be his uncle was a critical and commercial success. TIME magazine placed the production in it’s Top 10 plays of that year, ranking it second. He is due to play Iago in Othello next year.

On a somewhat bigger stage was the World Premiere of the latest Bond movie, Spectre, at London’s Royal Albert Hall, attended by all the cast, creatives and their HRH’s Wills, Kate and Harry. As perms go this is about as big as it gets. Daniel would be attending naturally, so it presented a chance for me to get this sketch of him and Hugh in A Steady Rain graphed. The event was on Sunday evening. I was in the area the day before and found out that they were making a list for the wristbands. I put my name on it in the 34th position…not a good one if you’re a Formula One driver, but excellent for taking front row at a premiere. However…there’s always an ‘however’ at these things, when I returned the next day, an hour before I was told to, the bands had all been dispensed, including my number 34. I won’t go into the ‘discussions’ that followed. In the end I was given number 0500…not a number that filled me with confidence to get 007’s sig on my sketch. As you can imagine the red carpet for this was very long. The situation did eliminate the dilemma of where to stand. I got told where to go. I managed to secure a place second row on the grid near the paps. Daniel has always thought of his portrayal of Bond as an ‘anti-hero’. “Am I a good guy,or just a bad guy who works for a good side?” he once said. I guess most assassins face this question all the time. However, on a mild Autumnal night he was definitely a good guy and on the right side..the side I was on! Actually he did both sides as you would expect a spy to do. I asked him if he could dedicate it ‘to Mark’ for me, and he penned,’M’, which as Bond specialists know is the also the code name for his boss in MI16. After Daniel signed he suddenly realised and said, “Oh sorry that’s over Hugh” I assured him it was fine, Hugh will do the same over you, one day. Not a bad outcome in the end for 0500.

Drawing: Monica Bellucci

Posted on October 27, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Monica Bellucci

“I’m not a Bond girl, I am a Bond woman,” said Monica Bellucci. The 51 year-old Italian actress who became the oldest ‘love interest’ in the James Bond franchise with her role as Lucia Sciarra in the 24th and latest instalment, Spectre. It’s been quite a topic of conversation in the media as the World Premiere was held at the Royal Albert Hall in London last night. Fittingly Monica took the honour from Honor Blackman who played the character with the most sensational name, Pussy Galore opposite Sean Connery in Goldfinger at the age of 38. She thinks we should stop using the term ‘Bond girl’. “Age is just a number like 007,” she said. Even Bond himself, Daniel Craig, who is only three years younger, weighed in, when asked in a recent interview about ‘succumbing to charms of an older woman,’ he replied, “I think you mean the charms of a woman his own age.” He continued by saying that if someone like that wants to be a ‘Bond girl’, you count yourself lucky. I did Monica’s quote when asked ‘why?’ to her comment that “Bond is an amazing man.” She simply said, ” Because he doesn’t exist.”

She certainly didn’t look her age in the flesh, so to speak at the World Prem. The PAs zig-zag the cast and creatives up the wide and long runway which creates a bit of a lottery, but I was fortunate enough to on the zag or more likely the zig for sig where she signed and dedicated my sketch. A fleeting bonding with, like Daniel, a woman my own age.

Drawing: Charlotte Church

Posted on October 26, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

Charlotte Church

It’s Sunday, Church time… Charlotte that is. Her debut film Under Milk Wood was having it’s London premiere at the bohemian Rio Cinema in Hackney. The Kevin Allen helmed adaption of Dylan Thomas’s 1954 radio play and presumably a ‘remodelling’ of the 1972 Burton-Taylor film marked the Welsh singer’s first foray into film acting and she was scheduled to appear along with the lead, fellow Welsh person Rhys Ifans. It’s a peculiar story (a bit like this one) about a day in the life of a small, Welsh fishing village called Llareggub (read it backwards).

I drew this sketch of Charlotte, so had a pretty good idea of what she looks like. Loitering with intent outside the theatre, which had no barriers or carpet, security or even people of like-mind. I waited for her to arrive. What I didn’t know was that on Friday she had dyed her hair purple and appeared on a UK TV show saying it was her ‘mermaid’ look for a couple of days until it washed out. I was not looking for purple locks and it was only when I checked with one of the leaving paps who showed me his pics that I realised I had missed her.

The film started, so I thought I would ask a friendly person who looked like someone who would know if Charlotte was staying for the entire film. He didn’t know. “Are you a friend?” he asked. “Not yet,” I quipped. “Where are you from?” he continued. Now there are various ways of answering that. I simply gave him my country of origin, then said I would come back when the movie ended, to which he indicated that they would have no time as he had to rush her away. He did inquire about my purpose. A fair and reasonable question.

Now this is a genetic flaw in my make up – my denial that I am an ‘autograph collector’. It’s difficult admitting that, so the question went unanswered. Clearly I was not making a good impression. I then stationed myself outside the cinema. He and some of the others, who obviously had something to do with the evening’s event left for a local restaurant. The film finished and everyone exited, including Charlotte and her purple hair. No sign of my interrogator. Bonus… so I moved my way through the leaving patrons and asked Charlotte if she wouldn’t mind signing my sketch. She was really nice and liked the drawing. While she was signing it, I asked her about the film. She simply said “It’s cooooool”, like her really.

Drawing: Frances Barber

Posted on October 24, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

francis barber

Picasso had his ‘Blue’ period, I had my ‘black Bic biro’ one. The fine point version is very versatile, building up layers with cross-hatching, or in my case ‘scribble-hatching’. This drawing of the alluring English actress Frances Barber and her enticing evening gloves is an example. However, the medium is not always ideal for rendering certain textures such as black latex with it defining ‘shimmers’, so it turned into more of a doodling exercise emptying the ink of one ballpoint overworking the gloves. It worked for her hair though. Actually I found out that Frances’s most treasured possession is a piece of artwork, a painting of her adored bulldog Smack, who she had for 11 years. While not in the same revered class, she didn’t mind mind signing my sketch of the doodled-fur gloves for me during her run in Les Parents Terribles at London’s Trafalgar Studios in 2010.

Drawing: Ed Sheeran

Posted on October 23, 2015 by Mark Winter / Chicane

ed sheeran

My daughter Andrea is a huge Ed Sheeran fan. She said to me that a signed drawing would be very cool. She lives in New Zealand and got to go to his gig there. I live in London, so she figured I might have a better chance to fulfil her request. Now I have to confess, I’m not an Ed disciple, but I did this very quick profile sketch one day last year because there was a chance to get it signed at an event in London. That passed without success.

Ed’s early career was spent sleeping on friends’ sofas and dreaming of playing the Shepherd’s Bush Empire. He is now one of the most streamed singers on the internet and selling out Wembley Stadium for three nights during his X Tour earlier this year. His debut concert film, Jumpers for Goalposts has just been released, documenting his meteoric rise to fame. The World Premiere was held last night at London’s Odeon Cinema in Leicester Square, with Ed attending and playing. This presented me with my second chance and this time lucky. He was great with all the fans… and me, doing the whole line, mostly posing for selfies and the occasional sig which he scribed on the sketch. While waiting, I listened to his music and I have to say it wasn’t half bad. My daughter has taste and now a signed drawing, Royal Mail willing.