Bat Flash Jesus Ghosts

Well, I said summer blockbuster. Sometimes I think I promise too much, just for the sake of suspense. Do I think I’m Hitchcock? What a fool am I.

I went back to a big old painting.

The painting originally was going to have Janus and Paul Gascgoine (ex England football player famous for crying at the 1990 world cup) and a barn owl and Shirley Temple and Jesus and Andre the Giant. It was quite a scene. I thought I’d sort it out compositionally with my immense virtuosity. I was thinking wishfully.

I’ve done some fresh little studies in order to commit myself to this gazza janus temple project.

Here’s a little pink ink one. It’s alright but the subject is too weird for such lightness of touch, or that’s what I thought when I was looking at it. I want to experiment with layering stuff over the pink. When I planned these dense weird subjects, I always meant for some of the ‘resolution’ to come through the process of painting itself, as pretentious as that might sound.






Here’s the whole monstrous thing as it stands now. I think it’s salvageable. I’m getting good and impatient with it, like Delacroix.




The next one is a more involved study that will become something more like a painting in its own right. Quite drawing-heavy, and incorporating Randy biting Kurt’s arm but simultaneously possessed by an Orc.

Here’s a detail from the big one, a bad photo taken with flash. I put it in because I saw a little face in the bumps on the reflection then drew the little face on photoshop. It makes me remember how excited I can get about the potential of oil painting. I could illusion myself up some shine and have a whole alternative layer of shine universe on the surface, if I was committed to the idea.

Next here’s Randy and John with a friendly bat. This is unfinished of course. I’m trying to grow the fun of my wrestling drawings and not suppress these urges but make them beautiful.





Funnily enough I sent John Cena a myspace message today. He seems a good sort, but I hope he’s not upset by my depictions of him. They don’t tend to be especially pretty.

Next here’s a fragment of yet another version of the Janus monster painting, but bigger and rougher. One of the faces of the two faced god is Shirley Temple. Some of the scribbling and lumpyness felt meaningful at the time.




Lastly here’s some minor self portraiture, in which my eyebrows go on their own merry way. I was hoping to come up with something cute enough for a new avatar, but I’m not sure.




I want to get back into drawing with my isograph pens. But they are a real hassle. I realised today that I wasn’t the only one who experiences this because I read an interview with R Crumb in which he talked about his rapidograph pens (nearly the same thing) and how you have to endlessly coax them and shake them and take them apart and get ink all over yourself and wash them and stroke them and sing to them in lilting tones. But they do make a darned nice line, they handle in a way I like. As much as I love biros, bless their 27 pence socks.

I’m thinking a lot about Hogarth and Gillray and Cruikshank and the history of funny English draftsmanship.

Pink Sugary Inky Mouth Holes

I think I’ll sandwich some dodgy digiphotos of unfinished paintings between some nice new drawings. So here we go.

Here are some attempts at self-portraiture, done in pencil and I am occasionally getting impatient with pencils. But I still feel that I need to satisfy my meticulous urges and I learn from being all pernickety about the pencil drawings.

I was trying to illustrate the lopsidedness of my face. The right side of my face has shrivelled bones. Instead of a jaw joint it has a piece of my rib. It’s a long story.







Now here are some of the paintings in which I have used the ‘X Factor’ palette that I mentioned last time in the comments.

The thing is my digital camera is very cheap and the colours come out crude.





It’s hard to tell from that, but I have worked on this one. Oil paintings like this tend to go through distinct phases. There’s a phase when they’re new and fresh and they look all flushed with the glow of youth and potential and many an art teacher would shout ‘leave it alone’.


But I’m interested in potential so much as I am in trying to make perfect paintings. So often I want a more dense and finished finish, though not necessarily a smooth and polished one, so there are always tensions to resolve. But between the flush of youth stage and the point of ‘perfect finish’ there tends to be an awkward adolescent stage where it’s neither finished nor fresh and just looks a bit ungainly. That’s the stage Kurt’s neckhead’s at, not that you’d be able to tell from that picture.

It takes some concentration to keep the thing alive even with skin-disease-like levels of detail.

Click on the next little square to see Shelby, the unfinished internet pinup lady. She is holding her breasts.





Here’s some kind of sentimental angel:





This next (older) one might be my favourite of my uses of that palette. It’s different though, it’s oil glazes over layers of other media, in miniature:





Now here’s a fairly unedifying sketchbook page in which you can see my brain at work, also I was thinking through next oil palette options.

(You have to click on the tiny square to see the whole thing)







Now how could I let an entry pass without some great big sweaty wrestler faces.

This time Randy became an eggtomato, and as for Kurt, I think that because I felt so guilty for making him into Slimer I went overboard and made the most megacutesy sugar overload babyfaced kurts in the universe.

It did make me want to draw more in pink ink though. Like splatter it all over the place.





The pink Kurt looks like a fountain, he looks like water ought to start spurting out of his mouth hole.

Next time I might have begun to tackle my epicness epic painting desires. It’s time for something more like a summer blockbuster.

Everybody loves me! I'm freakin' adorable

This week I have been intent on capturing the wrestlery thumb-like pink cuteness of Kurt Angle the wrestler.... with varying degrees of success. (The title of this post is something he once said.) I think I’m building to something. I like doing at least two people on a page. Peoples’ faces are so gorgeous and so ridiculous. It’s nice to have two in order to milk the comedic and miscellaneous chemistry that occurs between a pair of mushes.

I’m also still a beginner at this caricature business, and I haven’t quite figured out what I ultimately want from it, apart from the obvious cheap thrills. Now let’s see….




The above page was my breakthrough page. I think a key factor is the regrowth of Kurt’s eyebrows (in real life) after several months of overzealous silly plucking. They add a lot to the expressiveness of his face, and it was his distinct expressions that helped my Kurtify my Kurts in this instance.

The big one on the top left ended up looking more than somewhat like Slimer from the Real Ghostbusters. I regret this a bit because Kurt is cute. But he does have a big rounded intense manface.

The demonic gargoyle biro one in the middle at the bottom looks nothing like him really, but I liked the way the process was taking on its own momentum and getting towards some way out places.






Then I noticed that the problem is a cartoony Kurt gets a little bit Disney. Like a cute Disney goblin sidekick. That didn’t interest me.






Nope, still in loveable babyman territory…

I felt I almost had to go wilfully nuts at this point, or try to see him anew. To get a bit bad at drawing or a bit very good. I got a little somewhere.







I wanted to try to get across some of the startling bigness of his eyes without them getting too… obvious.

It helps to include the bod.








Kurt’s big pink wide eyed neckhead has even found its way into pre-existing oil paintings. He looks like he’s just fallen in love! (This isn’t finished.)






Next time: Stuff that’s not Kurt!

Here’s a bit of a preview of something else. It’s a very poor blurry photograph of a hermaphrodite Ric Flair Britney Janus Wind God detail from a nearly finished epic landscape painting.






I love all your comments and interest and stuff.

Spooky goat man variations and cartoonlessness

Here’s a little watercolour study of Kurt Angle done in the spirit of Turner. This one is FINISHED, I think. It’s teeny tiny.

But it turns out he’s really hard to draw. Here are some frustrated little studies. I will understand the shape of your head Kurt, one day.

Now here are a couple that have been nearly finished for a long time. (See my current grey blog entry for more on my nervous twitchy issues around finishing stuff.) These are still not finished, but on a screen that has less meaning. One is a softer more diffuse supernatural Randy Orton goat man (he needs more electricity though).

You might have noticed that I draw Randy Orton a lot. This would be difficult to deny.

One’s a slightly more rugged fluorescent Randy Orton goat man. I used a lot of white lines on him.

I was trying to incorporate some zeitgeisty graphical lighting inflections from game screenshots. Spell effects from RPGs and things. It seemed a wholesome way to attempt to be zeitgeisty.

Those are the at the spookier end of my idiom I reckon. Very dense and peculiar layering of materials going on here.

It’s nice to do two of something. It allows you to explore subtly divergent variations on an atmosphere.

I’ve got nothing very cartoony this week. It’s a shame. It’s one of the most challenging things to do well. Soon though. Soon it will come together.