Illustration Friday 112406 : Invention

The mother of all does-everything-but-wash-the-dishes inventions - do you really think your mobile/PDA/camera would exist without it?!

Illustration Friday 111006 : Clear

Snow, ice, and slush are facts of life for much of the year in upstate New York, and I spent many, many hours attacking sidewalks with snow shovels in an attempt to clear a footpath around our house. Surprisingly, now that I live in the "balmy" English Midlands, I actually miss it - we've had only one all-out blizzard in the last 16 years, and don't even own a snow shovel!

Illustration Friday 110306 : Smoke

Having grown up in a house with two heavy smokers, I've always found the notion of ingesting any sort of smoke wholly repugnant. But there's something extremely seductive about the scent of (unlit) pipe tobacco...

Illustration Friday 102706 : Wind

When I was in the Third Grade, we were all given "music aptitude" tests to see who would be allowed to learn an instrument the following year. Anyone who scored 90 or better got to join the chosen few, but yours truly only managed an 89. For some now unknown reason, I had my heart set on learning to play the flute, and was bitterly disappointed. So disappointed that my mother actually wrote a letter to the school to ask if there was any possibility of my being given lessons should anyone else drop out of the program. Well, this was in the early '60's, and flexibility was an unknown concept; despite almost half of the "instrumentalists" in my class quitting their lessons by the end of the Fifth Grade, I never got a chance. (Many years later I tried to teach myself to play the tin whistle, but never got very far. Like learning languages, it's just so much easier when you're young, and learning alongside others.)

Anyway, this really isn't a finished illustration - the relative proportions of the head and hands are wrong - but I've run out of time...