inktober: October 2024
These are my lllustrations for the Inktober daily drawing challenge throughout the month of October 2024. This year I chose Oxford as my theme as I live here I wanted to make some prints of my home city. I enjoyed trying to include some fictional characters into the illustrations where I could, Oxford has a rich history of imaginative fiction. 
DAY 1: BACKPACK This is the rucksack (backpack) that I have had since 1987 when I was at art college. We have had many adventures together and I was wearing it when I first arrived in Oxford.
DAY 2: DISCOVER This is what the penicillin bacteria looks like down the wrong end of a spyglass. The penicillin bacteria was discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928. A research team let by Howard Florey and Ernst Chain at Oxford University, isolated a purified penicillin compound in 1940.
DAY 3: BOOTS I have been attending Gloucester Green Outdoor market with my artistic wares. I have become quite attached to the pigeons of Gloucester Green. You see all sorts of characters passing through when you are there and who should stroll by, looking at some vintage magazines but Captain Hook, having a day out to visit his Alma mater, Balliol College.
DAY 4: EXOTIC These giant water lily pads are most definitely exotic. They are house in the waterlily glasshouse in the Oxford Botanic Garden. It’s been a busy day, nice to do a bit of slightly looser drawing after the precision of the last 3 days. But whose cat is that?
DAY 5: BINOCULARS I have never found the need to use theatre binoculars/opera glasses on the many occasions I have watched the wonderful pantomime at the Oxford Playhouse. But then, I am not a giant rodent who is more used to the outdoor life. Robin Hood was the perfect panto for him and his chivalric tendencies.
DAY 6: TREK Many a trek has been made all over to world to obtain the treasures which lay within the Oxford University Museum of Natural History (or is that unnatural history?) If you do make the trek yourself, be aware that the last admission is at 4.45pm, 15 mins before closing.
DAY 7: PASSPORT This drawing is based on the actual Passport photo booth in Oxford train station. However, some details may have been changed: if anyone goes on a pilgrimage to see the real booth, they won’t see a knitted post box cosy I am afraid.
DAY 8: HIKE These two fictional characters both have something to say about journeys. The unwary internet explorer could be sucked into believing that Gandalf’s speech ’Not all who are lost….’ was said by both characters but it is actually from the pen of J.R.R. Tolkien alone. The Cheshire cat's text is paraphrased from the book, I like what they both have to say.
DAY 9: SUN During my internet wanderings, I came across this amazing pillar sundial in the main quadrangle of Corpus Christi College. It is as old as the college, has a Pelican on top, (it’s the college symbol, and stands for peace) and there are one or two familiar avian characters: a meeting of the inanimate and the imaginary.
DAY 10: NOMADIC The nomadic rabbit, who took off in a balloon from my Inktober castle a year ago, has finally touched ground, and made her way into the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford to deposit the Castle key in one of the splendid cabinets of keys in the lower gallery. She has her reasons, but what they are, I cannot say.
DAY 11: SNACKS Keeping up with my theme: ‘One two! One two! And through! it’s a Snickers snack.
DAY 12: REMOTE The source of the Thames is remote from Oxford. I did a lot of research and there is some debate where the true source is, but it is a 54 mile walk from the Thames Head at Kemble to Oxford. I have drawn this in a small concertina sketchbook and I will fill with the rest of the Thames at some point, adding things I find interesting, some personal details and lots of fictional characters. They get everywhere!
DAY 13: HORIZON This is one of my favourite Oxford Locations, Farmer Reservoir, where I have spent many hours paddleboarding. I especially love it when I have been at my desk or stuck inside for too long, it’s just great to see a horizon and there is also the added benefit of the wonderful wildlife you can see there.
DAY 14: ROAM Portmeadow is a flood meadow along the east bank of The Thames in Oxford. It is an ancient area of grazing land: there is a freeman’s collective right to graze animals which is mentioned in the Domesday book of 1086. There are usually horses and cattle to be seen but they aren’t around in this picture for some reason.
DAY 15: GUIDEBOOK Here is a handy guide where you can find out everything you ever wanted to know about portals in the city of Oxford. Some of them have not been discovered yet, many not even invented since this is the edition that was printed in 8024! That bookmark looks familiar, I am sure that has appeared here somewhere in the last couple of weeks….
DAY 16: GRUNGY When I first came to Oxford in 1995 the music venue on Cowley Road was called the Zodiac (it is now the O2 Academy). It was a great grungy palace, and I have many happy memories of it. I realise that I have missed one of the Zodiac signs out: oops. Nik Kershaw can be an honorary goat.
DAY 17: JOURNAL Well, someone’s not happy! This is what happens when you start messing about with portals and mythological characters, they start thinking they’ve got a say! They’ll be forming a union next…
DAY 18: DRIVE Driving back from London to Oxford along the M40, I always look at the windy tree which is silhouetted on the skyline for a short while as you pass. It is in the Aston Rowant Nature Reserve, and is visible just as you are leaving the Stokenchurch gap. In this scene, there is one car, a Jaguar Mk II, travelling away from Oxford, possibly on important police business.
DAY 19: RIDGE (I changed it to BRIDGE!) These two portraits in stone can be found on either side of Magdalen Bridge which crosses the River Cherwell by Magdalen College. It is believed to be Thamesis, who faces downstream to where the Thames is, and Isis who faces upstream. I have done quite some research and can find nothing to disprove this, but also, nothing to quite prove it either.
DAY 20: UNCHARTED The tree is a lovely old oak tree in the small playground in Rose Hill School. I have done research and can’t find any photos of this part of Rose Hill before the estate was built but I would love to see what it looked like with just the tree and none of the surrounding houses and school. More research led to the discovery that Oxford was not mapped until 1578. This drawing is in a similar style to the early maps.
DAY 21: RHINOCEROS Back inside my favourite museum: The University of Oxford Museum of Natural History, some old friends are having an after-hours chin wag. Maybe Mr Beaver is telling the Rhinocerous and Irish elk skeletons to get off their platforms and have a run around like the others. It was very handy that this had happened as it meant that I didn’t have to draw them all!
DAY 22: CAMP Aslan’s back! This is a very fanciful/impossible scene: Aslan is using my old Go Outdoors discount card as a magic carpet to carry his new campaign tent back to Narnia. This is just impossible, something that can never happen as our Go Outdoors branch in Oxford was shut down last December, so he will have to Go Elsewhere to buy his camping equipment.
DAY 23: RUST There is a pub in East Oxford called the Rusty Bicycle, it is owned by the Dodo Pub co. It's a very nice pub.
DAY 24: EXPEDITION Sir Walter Raleigh attended Oxford University, Oriel College for two years but left without earning a degree to study law in London. Six years later he was off on his first expedition. He is credited with bringing the potato to England, but it is a matter of debate: they were already known from Spanish explorers who had brought some back to Europe. I wonder which one of them would have liked to take the credit for the invention of the potato waffle?
DAY 25: SCARECROW The scarecrow is in a field near to Wittenham Clumps which is near to Oxford. According to the Wikipedia, Crows and blackbirds are scared of these sort of things, though they get used to it after a while. Surprisingly, they don’t work on pigeons or seagulls!
DAY 26: CAMERA The Radcliffe Camera is a working library, part of the Bodleian Library complex. It is framed here, on the right by the edge of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin and on the left, by a decorative corbel in the form of a faun. Now, this door in St Mary’s Passage is said to have inspired C.S.Lewis and along with t a lamppost in the same area which could also have been inspiration for the one in the wardrobe where Lucy meets Mr Tumnus.
DAY 27: ROAD The Ultimate Picture Palace is Oxford’s only independent cinema. Founded in 1911 and community-owned since 2022. It is on Jeune Street, on the corner of Cowley Road, a vibrant thoroughfare in East Oxford with many multi-cultural cafe’s, takeaways and restaurants.
DAY 28: JUMBO This elephant weather vane sits on top of a pole above a dome on the building on the corner of Holywell Street and Catte Street in the centre of Oxford. The building used to be the Indian Institute, part of Oxford University. It has an interesting history, which you can read about on the websit of the Martin school which occupies it now.
DAY 29: NAVIGATOR The view in this illustration is the famous Oxford skyline viewed north from South Park with a timelapse effect of the stars moving around Polaris in the night sky. The Nocturnal in the illustration is in The History of Science Museum in Broad Street, Oxford. On a visit to see what they had in the museum regarding sundials for an earlier prompt, I was directed to this wonderful ‘Nocturnal’ by which you can tell the time at night
DAY 30: VIOLIN I went to the Dorset Museum in Dorchester this week and I took some photos of Thomas Hardy’s childhood violin. I realised that this would be excellent for this prompt as his novel ‘Jude the Obscure’ was set in a fictionalised town called Christminster which was based on Oxford. It’s not a happy tale, it’s a tragedy, but there is a pub in the Jericho region of the city where better times can be enjoyed.
DAY 31: LANDMARK This is Didcot Power station which no longer exists, but it was a real landmark when coming back from the South coast up the A34, a bit like the windy tree on the M40 and the Seacourt Tower when you come down the A34 from the north. Didcot power station was decommissioned and the towers were exploded in 2 phases, the last being in 2019.