Finished/ unfinished/ tidied up/ messed up.... it used to be a lot more yellow...

Van Gogh was a heavy advocate of yellow.

Here's an old painting that I started years ago, and sort of finished now. Though I'm not sure it's really finished. It might be called 'some men help Jesus'. It used to have a lot more stuff in it, some of which got painted out. I could always paint some different stuff back in.





And this is its previous appearance on this blog two years ago, 'bat flash jesus ghosts'.

Notes to Self

Truly other-worldly.





Seeing through things.






Mean it, mean it.

Galavanting Pout-pards

It's Frivolity Friday!

Or Experimental Friday or something.

I tried to reinvent the feline... with only medium sized success.

Sugar Walls

More pictures with the grainy little camera... various walls of drawings around the house.

Lions and Spears can be found here.





The Mainly Wrestlers wall... many large elaborate heads.









OrtonCena corner (the Christmas tree lived here).






A small section of Bob's Wall of Shame (not really a fair title):





but there's nothing to be ashamed about... I might post some studies I've done from Durer soon. Also I'm trying to redo the labels or add more so theyr'e actually useable... like the same one appears more than once and is sort of accurate now.

Thundermitt Cenapards!

There you go, plate cats. Munch away!













From a review of the movie 'The Marine' starring John Cena in the role of John Trident (hee hee: John Trident):

'.... exploring John Cena's two facial expressions. Some people might say he only has one, but if you look closely you'll find two. The first is the most obvious, mule-headed stubbornness. The other is more subtle, but I'd describe it as barely constrained confusion. '

From later in that same review:

'....His fingers are like cucumbers, so large they're almost incapable of doing things like grasping. His arms are so muscled they're almost immobile, in battle the guy looks a lot like an angry Tyrannosaurus. '

Now I'd say that's a little unfair. Or confused. Tyrannosauruses have tiny little claw arms.

This review was a bit like prose caricature...

But John does not have hands. Or wrists. He has meatwise embiggened Thundermitts.












I hadn't done anything that satisfied me but I had loads of drawings. So I put them on this blog.







This could go in several directions. Actually it will. So munch on that!

Drawing Equivalent of Salon Hair Clippings

I've done so many loosey McLoose explorational sketches lately that I've accumulated enough oddities for a 'miscellaneous' post, which is what this is.

Here's a man slapping a duck upside its duck head:





And more cemetery reverspective confusions:












Here's a sketch of me in pants. I suppose you could call this self-portraiture of a rather low-key sort. Oh hang on, if you're American, they're not pants. Let's just call them knickers.





The bunnies and minotaurs never quite made it past the bumpy phase of their relationship. Perhaps I ought to take them to couples counselling.





Here's a sort of Mary Mary (Quite Contrary) scenario.... How does my garden grow? Kinda scribbliliy, With Rex Hackelberg beast studies and Randy Orton smugfabulous heads looming out of the bosom of the earth like smug expansively cheekboned cabbages.





This was a little cameo that might still become a painting. I posted it to my old friend Tom on myspace (not MySpace Tom)...





And Tom interpreted it for me (if you click this one, you'll find his space with his music on):





Then there was the time I got fed up with drawing Edge the wrestler and his preying mantis eyes and henceforth decided to put some effort into turning him into a cat. But then what happened was at a certain point I ended up with an entity that was neither Edge nor Cat, but some frightful abomination of a kind no one needs to see.





P.S.

My Cafepress Store still exists!





bye bye!

John Cena is A Bump-Lunk!

Maybe that doesn't quite rhyme with 'erumpent' like I wanted it to... never mind.






I've been suffering for my art... I just said 'Right! If I'm going to draw John Cena, I'm going to do it properly.' I had been floundering in indecision, but now I was going to make the sacrifices necessary to see this task through.

But sifting through the reference material was not always easy on the peepers.



(I also referred to this problem on my wordy blog)

Bless his big flat topped rectangular foam wax head.





With this subject, it was kind of a case of 'You can't spoof a spoof'... I actually found it quite hard to get the drawings funnier or more strikingly extreme-looking than the original.

Or... to capture some aspect of the uniqueness of the original and play on it til the cows come home.

He does look sometimes like his arms are on backwards. And that's not the only feature he has in common with Fred Flintstone.





In the past I compared Cena to Poochie from that Simpsons episode that parodied focus-group thinking. Well, that was a little bit unfair. Even though it was true. Cena's designated wrestling persona did in the past make him into an extremly undignified human vehicle for the most unedifying corporate version of the 'tude' that John K described on his blog recently....

But he's a good stick really, is Cena. Watch him fly!









In real life, he appears to possess no 'tude, no pride, vanity, shame, grace, or feminine characteristics. He's also a walking epitome of 'uglycute'. Well, I say 'walking'... he doesn't appear overly good at activities that involve coordinating more than one limb.










When I do these drawings, I start off comparatively careful, with my observational head on...





But then there comes a stage where I'm suddenly faced with a plethora of possibilities... oh no!









Sometimes when I feel I'm gaining control, it makes me feel drunk with power... other times indecision leaves me befuddled. What is my ultimate aim? Moody intense paintings? Cute lighthearted cartoony designs? Involved, extreme caricature? The ability to draw Cena from memory? A striking image for a myspace comment (that's slightly depressing..)





A lot of the decision seem to boil down to 'mood'. Do I want to do something joyful and silly, or something that caters to all my high faluting serious propensities...

Not that the two things HAVE to mutually exclude each other, it may be like a continuum... or it may be that I have to find a way to be serious while infusing my pictures with joy.





I have said that I find it possible to 'get past' a subject and into my own intent once I learn the subject really, really well.

Well gosh I'm having fun with this for the time being.

P.S. apologies to John C and his friends and family, I didn't mean to be mean or anything. All insults are delivered with affection.

John Cena, drawing, cartoon, caricature, WWE, lunk, uglycute

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.