Josh

Approachable





Yet sinister

Deeply Stupid Leopards

I wanted to get the expression my cat Joyce gets when she's in the middle of washing and suddenly looks like she thinks she's remembered something important. Also, this is what a monkeycat looks like if you haven't seen one before.





Some of these drawings I am reproducing tiny as I think they're a bit rubbish but for some reason don't want to leave them out completely.





Since I've been working in a shop, I try to make quick things count more. It feels like it matters to maintain a flow. It's partly to try to overcome my procrastination.





I'd like to do some proper leopardish paintings soon. That involve acrylic and even gouache. And even colours.

Hello There Mixed Martial Arts

My friends Scott and John are obsessed with Fedor Emelianenko. So I thought it time I tried to see what the fuss was about.





My concentrating on Fedor has also made my leopards relax, now they appear only in peripheral vision... it suits them quite well.









As for Fedor himself, not sure I've totally grasped him. Have no printer and have been working a lot from my own quick sketches from youtube, not always having access to the obvious details but more the clumsy forms and my own misconceptions.





Things have too many limbs and bits and bobs to make into nice pictures... lately half things have been easier to cope with. Who says things have to have all their limbs in a drawing. It's a free country.





Fedor is calm and has a soft pink mouth. He has slight eye wonkyness in his bright blue eyes that I need to come to terms with.

















My paper is wrinkly and has cat mud on it.

Pardaddendum

No wonder the last post felt small... I forgot these two stunning additions to the 'pard canon.

Leopards

I return, rubbishly, to clouded leopards. Remember my last leopard phase?





Now, perhaps a 'natural' part of me wants to draw fairly solid 'real' leopards, just with subtle grunewald twists, supple subtle and elegant.

But I'm fighting with myself to make something simpler. Whether I can make anything simpler that has any point to it, is funny, or inventive, or joyful, or the basis for something else, I don't know.

Remember Cenapards? I quite liked them the first time.





I often feel like my drawing is a very private experiment. I don't always come up with results that have that perfect alchemy that I'd want all my drawings to have, but sometimes I'm sufficiently interested by the results to blog them anyway... I probably shouldn't. I should probably only blog 100% safe completed masterpieces once every six years.





Perhaps with some of these I'm fighting to put some things together that haven't quite come together, but they will eventually.





However it shouldn't always have to be a struggle, so maybe I should embed myself in a comfort zone next time.





Though there is a little bit of trying to figure out the essence of the leopard attraction here.