pounds 59
Posted in General on 23. Jul, 2010
pounds 59.99Clearly aimed at the youth market, with its brightly coloured casing and matching bootlace strap to swing it from your wrist, this travelling version of the clock radio with built-in cassette player appealed to the child in myself and Tim Hunkin. “I would choose this one because it doesn’t disappear into the background like the others,” he said.” It’s cheerful and portable and it has a proper clock face.” In fact, the retro design of the controls made it the only one we were able to set up without reading the instruction manual – most appealing. Too bad the alarm is allowed a hilarious 20-minute margin for error: the manual notes that “the alarm may sound about 10 minutes earlier or later than the preset time”. Perhaps this wouldn’t matter so much if you took it on holiday (there is a very nice drawstring bag to pack it in, with this in mind). Peter Hobday scoffed at sch a notion, commenting that this model was “terribly fiddly” and, indeed, “completely useless”.***MATSUIClock radio; AM/FM wavebands; dial tuning; dual alarm function; 12-hour digital clock; snooze facility; adjustable sleep timer Size: 230×130x45mm.
pounds 9.99The simplest and cheapest of all the models tested, the Matsui scored points with Tim Hunkin because it “seemed very standard and took up little space”, but also because it has old-fashioned dial tuning, with sliding knobs and press buttons for the other functions. “It’s more intuitive to set up,” he said, pointing out that although manufacturers were obliged to improve the quality of radios with the advent of button-tuning (previously, if there was screeching in the background, the user often attributed it to his own lack of sensitivity in turning the dial), “at least all the controls were very different. With more modern designs, you never really know whether you’ve pressed all the buttons in the right order, so you can’t have confidence that the thing will actually work.” I thought the tuning rather crude, but agreed with Peter Hobday that the radio quality was fine. The Matsui even has the popular ajustable sleep-timer function, which means you can doze off to the sound of the radio without the risk of leaving it on all night.
The buzzer is certainly effective; it’s so loud that it got me out of bed in two rude beeps.. I’M SITTING in the garden of the Chelsea Arts Club, sharing a glass or two (as Chelsea folk do) with my art teacher, Stan Smith. We’re talking about the agonising self-consciousness of sketching in public, when the painter Dennis Gilbert joins us: “I’ve had the most humiliating experience,” he says. “I was in St James’s Park, sketching a deck chair under a tree, when a woman came up to see what I was doing. She took one look, went over to the chair, picked it up and walked off with it.”
If established artists are treated with such a lack of respect, my own prognosis doesn’t look good. I can just about cope with Pictionary, but drawing isn’t my forte.
That’s why I’m here with Stan Smith, to find out if what I’ve heard is true – that anyone can do it. Three areas in particular confound me: I’ve never been able to draw bicycles, my horses look like large corgis, and all my vertical lines lean over at five degrees.
Perhaps Stan can help me. He’s one of the best teachers around, and his CV uses a lot of capital letters: Head of Fine Art at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, University of Oxford; Honorary Life President of The London Group; member of the Royal Watercolour Society, Chairman of the Chelsea Arts Club. But can he help me realise my dream: sitting on a harbour front under a vast Norfolk sky, sketching with impunity?What I find most impressive about Stan (apart from his four marriages and 10 children) is that he looks and sounds like a textbook artist. He actually wears a corduroy cap and a russet canvas jacket, and sports a mighty beard.
When he talks, it’s in the sono-rous, theatrical tones of Stephen Fry.In fact, Stan is a textbook artist. His latest book, The Complete Drawing Course (Collins & Brown pounds 17.99), has sold over 250,000 copies. A follow- up, The Complete Watercolour Book, is to be published next spring. He’s also consultant to The Art of Drawing & Painting, an educational part work published by Eaglemoss which draws on the skills of 160 artists.It is at Eaglemoss’s offices that we meet next day for my first drawing lesson. High above the grinding Lon-don traffic, approached by an ancient lift with concertina doors, it is an eyrie of bustling creativity. Half- completed canvases are propped against the walls; desks heave with ammon- ites, fossilised antlers, plaster casts of heads, arrays of dried flowers.I find Stan in a cramped studio, where a photographer with a giant rostrum camera is taking pictures of a half-completed drawing.