MAKING A MARK: Raymond Briggs

Yesterday
Carl Randall
posted his portrait of Raymond Briggs on Facebook to mark the news of his death age 88
on Tuesday.

Last night I watched two programmes about Raymond Briggs on BBC
(links below are to the programmes on iPlayer) – both of which I highly recommend

• The first was
  Raymond Briggs: Snowmen, Bogeymen and Milkmen
  – which was a portrait of his life involving interviews with Raymond Briggs
  and contributions from both friends and admirers (and there’s a lot of
  those)
• The second was
  Ethel and Ernest
  – which was a hand drawn animated film based on his award winning book by
  author and illustrator Raymond Briggs.

This was the point when the background to Carl Randall’s portrait of Raymond
suddenly made sense. It’s the house at 65 Ashen Grove, Wimbledon Park where he
was born and where he lived for the first 23 years of his life – apart from
when he was called up.

Below are stills from the video of Carl painting Raymond and Raymond talking about the house. Carl made back the video in 2016 when he was creating
the London Portrait series.

Plus the video about the series – set up to start at the Raymond Briggs section.

Carl Randall painting Raymond Briggs

Carl Randall painting Raymond Briggs

Author/Illustrator Raymond Briggs chose 65 Ashen Grove as the backdrop of
his portrait because he was born and brought up in the house, and it also
features in his book ‘Ethel and Ernest’.

For more about Raymond Briggs see:

For more about Carl Randall’s