lenoir wrote:I spent some time studying Gordon Lupson's article.
Constipated again lenoir?
Tony wrote:
I am glad to hear that someone is looking at this article........And no, in case you are wondering, he doesn't have a computer so he is not reading this!
I won't comment. He may well visit an internet cafe!
I received Journal 32 recently and read it straight away, but am a little late in posting comments (as usual). Anyway, I thought it was brilliant, and my particular fave was David Cook's Five Find-Outers and Dog article -- only the first part, too, so more to come on what is my favorite Blyton series.
Not trying to be picky, but I'm sure Tony would like know about typos so he can correct his original in case it's ever reprinted -- there are always going to be one or two dotted about, but on Page 19 there are three in the third and fourth paragraphs:
"on he Berkshire bank"
"wonderful perion piece"
"this are of Buckinghamshire"
I'm always interested in artwork, and I've always thought that Joseph Abbey's illustrations are/were scratchy and messy, not very appealing to me at all, with an over-reliance on heavy shading. Treyer Evans was cleaner and simpler, although still "right" for me (and I laughed at the illustration of Wilfred looking "camp" -- teehee!!) but Lillian Buchanan, for me, was the best. That image of Eunice and Fatty, with Eunice's father, is an excellent example, just my kind of thing.
But Joseph Abbey's depiction of the inside of a bus on the way to Sheepsale... it's awful!! Now that David Cook's got me looking at it, just try following the straight lines of the bus fixtures and see how they end abruptly in weird places. Look at those oval shapes at the top -- I presume they're lamps or something, but the one on the right is higher and only half formed (the pole in the foreground seems to cut it off prematurely -- in fact, it looks more like a strap attached to the pole, but it looks so similar to the oval shape to its left...). Those two "hand rails" (?) attached to the ceiling extend to the rear of the bus, but the perspective suggests they hang down or go off to the side. The windows look like picture frames. The seats are all misaligned and make no sense -- look at the front two in the picture and see if you can work out whether that's one long seat or two with no aisle between them! The child at bottom left (whoever it's supposed to be) is abnormally small, like a ventriloquist puppet. And even the poles seem to be planted any old place, and are of varying thickness (all drawn the same width but with no allowance for perspective). There's so much wrong with this illustration that I think Abbey must have had a late night when he worked on that one; I'm amazed he put his name to it!
On the flip-side, the cover art for this Journal is wonderful. Why is it that so much artwork goes uncredited? Don't the artists get a say in the matter? Hrrumph!
Anyway, an interesting read throughout -- I can't imagine how much time Tony must put into these Journals, just on the layout alone, and trying to fit it all into 60 pages each time. Smazing!
I have to hold my hand up to the typos - David Cook is one of our computerless scribes and he always hands me pages of handwritten articles that I have to type out, sometimes hurriedly. Worse still is that I am a proofreader, but whilst it is easy to spot other people's errors, you don't tend to notice your own as you read what you meant to put in the first place and not necessarily what is there. Still, no excuses - I shall have to visit Dame Slap.
You remark on the cover Keith, but I did make a major blunder there and I didn't notice it until we added it to the Journal Catalogue. I scanned this from a proof and I immediately phoned the printers, but unfortunately the cover was the one thing they had already done! On all other Journals the title is in upper case, but because I was being a bit fancy on this one I put it lower case by mistake - another visit to Dame Slap!!
Yes, I know exactly what you mean about proofing your own work and missing errors that others would spot a mile off! But no big deal, I only mentioned them at all because I know you're the sort of person who'd like to know. I got a strange phone call yesterday -- a lady who rang just to tell me I had a typo on my business site home page. Nothing else. I still can't make it out. But anyway, I was pleased to be told of my gaff.
I didn't notice the difference in the cover title though!
