Thursday, April 27, 2006

I Have Gone Off My Rocker: Boy Fun

Soon I have an assignment to do a cover for an ‘older children’s fantasy book’. At least one. It’s not an actual commission so I’m not being paid. Don’t be silly! Of course not. It’s to prove to unimaginative book publisher types that I can do this sort of thing. The people who represent me in the commercial world have suggested that I do this thing.

On of the comments I had on one of the previous posts made me think that I want to find fun ways of drawing Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys again.






I used to set myself the challenge of drawing the cover of the album in the time it took to burn a CD.






I’ve got this nutty idea in my head about doing deranged pop culture pictures then making them sparkle and twitch and flogging them to the youth on MySpace.

I probably don’t have the technical skills to follow this through… but it’s an intriguing exercise is purposefulness.

In that vein, I’ve been making studies and doing little thumbnails of Randy and John the heart throb wrestlers, which has taken me to some cutely homoerotic visual places. Slightly unnerving places. This stuff was all knocked up in the past couple of days. It all qualifies as ‘provisional’ and ‘sketches’ and I’m not sure exactly where I’m headed.

Cena face studies

repressed deranged

biro legs

All of this is sort of an exercise in trying to follow through the energy and spontaneous fluidity of my biro sketches to something on a slightly more substantial scale.

pinocchio cena

pencil cena orton






I’ve been inspired by Katie Rice and the cute energy of her girls and got this crazy idea in my mind that I want to do something deranged, energetic and cute with lumpy yet charismatic gym rat boys. But it’s quite a task.

And I haven’t got a clue if I’m cut out for cartoons exactly… it’s all a work in progress.

I think one of my fake book covers will be a Harry Potter one since I’m cocky enough to think I could do it justice. Hmmm… trying to kill two birds with one stone… is there any way I could subtly cast Brian Wilson as Ron Weasley?

Oh and if anyone in the world owns the game Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and has screenshots of minotaurs they wouldn’t mind emailing to me, I would be jolly grateful. I plan some more ‘damn celestial’ minotaurs (thanks to the clown ninja for that comment, I appreciate the comments) and I’m going to have to get myself back into a more generally celestial mindspace for my book cover project and temporarily put aside the deranged biro scribbled WWE men.

Usually when I’ve depicted women, they’ve ended up kind of wispy and dreamy like this Shirley Temple.

Shirley Temple golden skin

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I pursued your web site, Wow, incredible stuff and such a prodigious output of paintings and drawings!
I am curious about the wrestling interest? On this side of the pond women detest wrestling, as do most men. In the USA wrestling is seen as a red neck interest? I wonder what it means out of the context of this insane country.

Chloe Cumming said...

Thank you S.G.A.! I do really like your drawings.

I think out of the context of that insane country, the particular trashy insanity of wrestling, esp. WWE is kind of so removed from our reality as to be exotic and not personally offensive to people. It’s also not so uncomfortably connected to class divisions.

That’s one explanation. I’m sure there are more. Also, I have my own little deal going on. My creative intellect is stimulated by a motley selection of crap.

I have talked at length about all the intricate reasons why I still love wrestling, it often comes up on my other blog. But I still don't especially need anyone else to sympathise with me about it.

Actually there are a lot of artists over the years who have taken an interest in wrestling, including Sir Peter Blake and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, and recently a lady called Inka Essenhigh.

Hmm… maybe I should do a little bit more of a concise bit by bit explanation of the wrestling thing over here just to make sure people aren’t baffled to death. I’m aware I’m posting quite a diverse range of stuff that might seem sort of random and unrelated.

Gabriel said...

I tried my hand on sketching people, at first I wanted to emulate your pencil stuff but it just turned out different. Hmph.

Chloe Cumming said...

Oh! I'm so tickled that someone wants to emulate my drawing!

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