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.