Voice of the Sun

Here’s a portrait of Karen Carpenter I made about a year ago, based on a photato of her recording her ‘unreleasable’ solo album. It’s a great snapshot of the experience, showing Karen in the zone, free of any Carpenters baggage and really feeling the music. The drawing was meant to appear as part of a publication, but it appears this fell through as I heard no more about that. Ah well. Here she is again, anyway. In my haste (explained later), I took what was just a straight drawing and ‘sunnied’ it up rather a lot, duplicating layers, blurring them and overlaying gradients.

I think Karen’s vocals certainly had a sunny quality, juxtaposing the somewhat more prolific – especially in hindsight – mystery and darkness. Sunrise, sunset. There are many layers to her readings and, even now, I can’t help but think her skills are underappreciated (and I could say the same for her brother, too). But maybe that’s just me being overprotective of a woman I never knew.

Why am I haplessly hacking together a sunshine analogy, you ask? Well, firstly it’s very generous of you to even call it an analogy. But, you see, it’s because I was recently nominated for the Sunshine Blogger Award! Get in there, gowon my sun.

Thank you to Camilla at My Freddie Mercury for this honour. One of the very first people to ever follow me on here, now almost half a decade ago, I do admire Camilla for still putting up with my nonsense and supporting me to this day. Her blog is a must-visit for any Freddie fan.

Here are the nominations for the coveted Sunshine Blogger Award. Good luck everyone!

• The Anxious Gardener
• brushpark-watercolours
• Danielaprende
• Edoardo Dispenza
• Gardens for Goldens
• Jill’s Art Journal
• Make Art Magic Happens
• OutsideAuthority
• Richard Broom Photography
• Susan Feniak Art
• The Vintage Toy Advertiser

Congrats to all of our winners this evening! Do mingle and meet each other and make beautiful bloggy sunny music together. I did try to pick eleven fresh faces, so please don’t hate me if you’ve missed out this time.

I am now duty-bound to answer the following questions, pitched by Camilla herself.

ROCK or OPERA?
Rock, somewhat of a contest.

FREDDIE MERCURY or CELINE DEON?
Freddie Mercury, absolutely no contest.

COFFEE or TEA?
Tea, also no contest.

WINTER or SUMMER?
Now there’s a tough one. I’ve always loved the cosiness of winter, however, I also love the long summer nights. I think winter would edge it, because of snow and the fact that it’s the snowmen who are melting, not me (although I do come close when I step into a shop who have felt the need to whack their heating up to ‘inferno’. Wear a jumper, man!)

READ BOOK or WATCH MOVIE?
My terrible reading record has been dredged up before in these little exposés, and you’ll be disappointed to discover that nothing much has changed. I would definitely watch a movie, although honestly I don’t even do that very often. I’m such a fun, cultured person.

QUEEN or BEATLES?
Queen, most definitely.

QUIET HOUSE or PARTY HOUSE?
Quiet house. Again, life and soul of the party, me – so much so that I don’t even need to throw one. I live next door to a family who keep what you might call a ‘party house’ and it’s not ideal.

TRAVEL or SIT AT HOME?
I would love to travel but it’s not realistic at the moment. Looks like I’ll be sitting at home then. At least Norfolk is nice for mooching about.

LIVE ALONE or WITH WIFE AND CHILDREN?
Ha ha, well a wife certainly isn’t going to happen. I don’t know about children – he might turn out like me and nobody deserves that. I don’t mind being alone.

SPEND YOUR LIFE WITH FREDDIE or WIN THE £100M JACKPOT?
I’ll take the money, thanks Jeremy. Freddie would be entertaining I’m sure, but I doubt he’d want me hanging around, and think of all the positive things you could do with that much cash.

LOVE MY QUESTIONS or NOT?
Love them!!!!!

I believe I’m supposed to offer up eleven new questions for my nominees, but as I’m such a rebel I won’t do that. I shall relay Camilla’s questions to you. The rules dictate that nominees should go ahead and answer those, and choose eleven of their own favourites to award, but it’s really up to you whether you want to do it or not.

That’s it! After all that Christmas grub, I’m dashing off to get out of this tight-fitting tuxedo. There’s some nightmare fuel for you – and me! Well, we’ve time to recover, as I probably won’t be posting for some time, sadly – Christmas is all but over and my workload just skyrocketed, which means several projects have to go on the shelf for now. That’s why I’m putting this out quite quickly; I thought it was a nice way to break. I shall depart with a Happy New Year to all of you, and I look forward to catching up with you, some other time.

• Art
• award
• carpenters
• drawing
• karen carpenter
• portrait
• sunshine blogger award