The previous edition of the Kick-About featured a rather precarious vision of a civilisation held together by threads. I won’t labour this analogy any further, but suffice to say civilsation feels a good deal more secure this week! I feel a bit of a celebration coming on. Anyone fancy a boogie?
Jan Blake
“Just a couple of small painting ideas relating to Boogie-Doodle I had various thoughts in my mind as with the American election this week making it tense and electric, the idea of a Boogie of delight became more evident.
So my initial little strip shows the exuberance I felt for the emerging outcome informed at the same time as watching a crow returning to its nest, with what appeared to be a mission of house-clearing, as it proceeded to kick about and turn out the shower of leaves that had landed in his nest. Maybe they were all soggy and he was preparing for the next season? There has been no sign of him sinceโฆ
The second thought led on from this thinking of the masses of birds that collect on the telephone wires, flying off jumping on one another shuffling for space and almost performing a sort of ritual dance as they collect to migrate. So the second strip shows a Birdy Boogie-Doodle on an Asafo flag as some of the birds will be flying to Africa to entertain them there.”
Marion Raper
“This was such a fun, joyous and uplifting cartoon and I have tried to keep the same theme going, by working some ‘crazy patchwork’. (This is a wonderful way to use up all your odd material scraps etc). I tried to find pieces that had similar colours, shapes and patterns on them and then added a bit of hand embroidery and applique as enhancement. Have to say was all very enjoyable!”
Emily Clarkson
“‘Salsa Doodle’ was a lot of fun to do. It’s not polished, but maybe that adds a bit of charm! You justย haveย to wiggle to that music! I can’t help but imagine fruit punch, wildly swinging, tasselled skirts and sequins!“
instagram.com/eclarkson2012ย /ย twitter.com/eclarkson2012ย /ย linkedin.com/in/emily-clarkson
Charly Skilling
“Boogie Doodle is fun and frivolous, and so is my response. Ladies and gentelmen of the Kick-About, I present, ‘A Woolly-Doodle’, also known as ‘The Yarny Doodle Dangle’. Enjoy!”
Phil Gomm
“I have a small leather notebook with thick creamy pages that is home to my daily ‘to-do’ lists, which is my very low tech way of trying to give some structure to these strange indistinct times of ours. This same book is also where I doodle absently when I’m on Zoom calls. Given the instinctive ‘straight-ahead’ method of animation on display in Norman Maclaren’s Boogie Doodle, I decided to liberate some of my own doodles from the various corners of my notebook and release them into the Kick-About for a runaround of their own!”
One of the Zoom doodles in its original habitat!
Phil Cooper
“I loved the energy and the immediacy of the Norman McLaren film. In response, I knew I wanted to make something quite quickly and without thinking too much to keep some of the spirit of the animation. Iโve spent most of this year in the city in Berlin, but this week Iโm by the sea in the U.K. for a few days so itโs been a welcome change to use some found materials from the beach for this prompt. Here are some creatures, โbeach doodlesโ, put together from the flotsam and jetsam found along the seashore.”
instagram.com/philcoops / hedgecrows.wordpress.com / phil-cooper.com
Graeme Daly
โI absolutely loved this Kick-About! It put a smile on my face, made my shoulders shake and my head bop! I enjoyed learning about Norman Maclaren and the music that accompanies Boogie Woogie by Albert Ammons, which all inspired the visuals for this animation. Injecting so much colour with this Kick-About has been a joy to work on and I am looking forward to playing about with it some more!โ
@graemedalyartย /ย vimeo.com/graemedalyย /ย linkedin.com/in/graeme-dalyย /ย twitter.com/Graeme_Dalyย /ย gentlegiant.blog
Kerfe Roig
“Boogie Doodle really reminded me of Matisse’s Jazz collages. I focused on the figures in his series and drew some of my own in a similar style from photos I found online of jazz dancers. Using primary colors with black and white to duplicate the shadow effect in the video, I cut out the figures and dots to complement them. Then I arranged them all on an abstract primary ground. For the poem I wanted to use music and musical sound words. It was much harder than I anticipated, but I like the idea of a poem composed mostly of sounds, and may visit it again. And I also now have a set of dancing shadow figures and dots that can be revisited for different arrangements as well.“
swing stroll slide
be
bop shout
rhythm blues
eight to the bar
oompah oompah groove
boogie-woogie back beat
jingle jangle jive talkin
double time front line howl growl whine
interlude solidtude riff raff boom
whistle whomp wha wah zoomba zoomba zoom
kblog.blog / methodtwomadness.wordpress.com
We have Phil Cooper to thank for our next creative prompt, which he introduces for us here:
“In 1938, with World War 2 looming on the horizon, Country Life published a book called โHigh Streetโ. It included a text by J. M. Richards and 24 lithographs by Eric Ravilious of typical high street scenes and shop fronts from the time. Just a few years later, Ravilious would be killed in the war, the high street changed forever, and even the lithographic plates for the book destroyed in a bombing raid during the Blitz. Thankfully, many of the original copies of High Street have survived, though, and Raviliousโ illustrations have become some of the most highly regarded lithographs from the period.”
I just wanted to say a very warm welcome to our newest kick-abouter, Jan Blake (who contributed some belated work to the Ersilia edition, which you can see here), and extend the invite for a run-around with the rest of us to anyone else who might be looking on and thinking ‘I’m up for some doodling too.’ You’ll find the next submission deadline in the presentation below.
Red's Kingdom 
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