Escher Cheekbones and Heinous Seepage

I’ve kind of finished the infernal dragon. That’s that out the way.

(Click on any of today’s image for a larger version on Flickr. And you could even leave a comment there if you like. But if push comes to shove, I prefer comments here on blogger.)





In the last stages of this mixed media monstrosity, I used a lot of white lines with a thin brush and this stuff called liquid paper. I wrote a little note that said ‘white lines connected to my mind’. I could feel this an exciting little development that I will carry forward to the pictures wot I care about that have both grappling and nature in them.

I don’t normally do this, but here’s the photoshop mock-up that I used as the basis for the dragon painting, and liberties have been taken with perspective and picture fragments. It’s not much of thing in itself, but it kind of signals a little bit where I want to go with my next paintings, a more playful and hands-on approach to pictorial space.







I had been neglecting my other duties to do that. My last week’s wrestler mushes were sitting there begging to be more understood and stuff. Begging to be taken to the extremes of draftswomanship!





Biro frenzy! Unfortunately it seems that biro tends to seep through even the most opaque applications of acrylic paint. Bum bums! Does anyone know of some kind of biro-esque wonderpen that would refrain from such heinous seepage?





Now in the more recent two bottom drawings above, I used some of the information from the biro frenzy ones but tried to filter a bit of likeness back in. Particularly in Randy’s face I began to think about Escher, about getting some optical mischief in there with the wonky cheekbone adventures. I’ve seen some technically spectacular caricatures that are immaculately constructed, and look like Spitting Image puppets, but part of me thinks… why do it like that, when drawing on a 2D plane gives you so much more freedom, freedom to indulge in a play between illusionism and pure linear kicks. I think the bottom two would almost be more suited to being cleaned up like proper cartoon characters and have the shading and the scribbling beaten out of them. Also I would add that I was trying to make Randy a little bit more smug and bastardy, like he is, and that Kurt has got a bit crude and ugly here. He has features that lend themselves to just getting massive. So I still have work to do.

My latest grey blog is entitled birds do not require punk spirit to experience the urgency of life
, you could read it if you want to boogie some more with my thoughts.