V&A Lunchtime Talks

If you work in Central London, you might be interested in the lunchtime talks at the V&A Museum (title link). These are free drop-in events in the Hochhauser Auditorium of the Sackler Centre, from 1.15pm to 2pm. On Wednesday 16 December curator Peta Motture will give an introduction to the new Medieval & Renaissance Galleries. Sounds interesting. I've illustrated this item with another of the Renaissance masterpieces to be found in the new galleries: Giovanni Bologna's Samson Slaying The Philistine (ca 1560).

Capturing Claudia

How do you fancy Claudia Schiffer as a pulp fiction heroine? Harper's Bazaar came up with the idea of Capturing Claudia, which involved artists creating film noir backdrops for her to scream against. Artists Chris Bucklow, Jason Brooks, Gilian Wearing, Keith Tyson, Marc Quinn, Dexter Dalwood and Jake and Dinos Chapman all contributed. If you missed the exhibition at the Colnaghi Gallery in London, click the title link to view the pictures online. There's an interview and more details in the November issue of Harper's Bazaar UK.

Digital Cloud

Here's an artist's impression of the latest nonsense suggested for London, a load of interconnected plastic bubbles on tall mesh towers: Digital Cloud. The design has been submitted for the competition to select a centrepiece for the 2012 Olympic Games, but the team behind the design have got fed up with Mayor Bouncy Boris's dithering and have launched an appeal for subscriptions to build the thing. Looks to me like a nest of barrage balloons to catch low-flying suicide bombers. Let's hope the plastic is strong enough to withstand seagulls' pecks. Click the title link for details.

Armistice Day

Modern Warfare 2

Calling all video games addicts. BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat wants to know if you were one of the wallies who queued last night to get your hands on one of the first copies of Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. (More than 300 stores across the UK opened at midnight to sell the game to fans.) Aunty wants to know "Does the game live up to the hype?" I must say this screenshot from the game looks excellent. It could be a still from a James Bond movie. Click the title link to give Aunty your verdict.

Movie Scenes Taped

The media some artists use is truly amazing. A friend showed me this picture in last week's Metro: a scene from Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound by Mark Khaisman using brown parcel tape. He works directly on a light box, applying up to ten layers of parcel tape to shady areas. Is it worth it? The pictures take him up to a week to create and sell for £6,000.

Bum Of The Month

Yes, it's time for Coxsoft Art's Bum Of The Month Award. Congratulations to US artist Craig Tracy for this beautiful body art depicting a peacock and a sunflower, entitled Toes. (No monetary prize, Craig, just the honour of being chosen.) The Daily Mail and Metro recently published photos of Craig's body art; click the title link for an online gallery. You might have seen his wonderful leopard which completely disguises the model. Craig is a past winner at the annual World Body Painting Festival held in Austria and has also judged at the festival. To visit Craig's website Painted Alive CLICK.

The Gruffalo

The Gruffalo, a children's book by Julia Donaldson with illustrations by Axel Scheffler, has recently been voted the UK's favourite bedtime story. It took a fifth of the 20,000 votes in a BBC Radio 2 poll, knocking Winnie The Pooh and The Very Hungry Caterpillar into second and third place respectively. First published in 1999, The Gruffalo has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. In Spain it is known as El Grufalo. Elitist twits harbour the daft notion that useless articles like Tracey Emin represent British art. Not so. Our book illustrators and many other fine artists do that. Click the title link to visit The Gruffalo's official website. Spooky owl!

Only God Knows I'm Good

I see Tracey Emin is inflicting her rubbish on New Yorkers. Her latest exhibition, with a typically humble title Only God Knows I'm Good, opened at the Lehmann Maupin Gallery in the Lower East Side and continues until 19 December. Here are two of her embarrassingly awful pieces: Why Be Afraid, inspired by her fear of dogs, and Nothing Touches, one of her favourite works. How the heck she has the cheek to call herself an artist I'll never know.

Wallace & Gromit

Google has celebrated the 20th anniversary of Wallace and Gromit with a Google Doodle, presumably by Dennis Hwang, Google's resident doodler. Wow! The lads have really made it to the big time. And Gromit is so unassuming about it all.