Teenage Sketchbooks

These are NOT FROM RECENTLY. I did these approx eleven years ago, when I was stupid and uneducated. This is very important to remember. I don't see any... much of anything proper in any of these old drawings, but I do see interesting things in the potential or the ideas I was generating as a youth. Just had no guidance at all.

Preoccupations: I was fascinated by beanie babies briefly in 1998 when there started being magazines about them and some of them were selling for three thousand pounds.





But also Disney princesses and shop windows. I was quite, quite mad.













I wanted to reach out to cartoons, but I didn't know how! I'm still not exactly sure.





I used to make plasticene heads and then draw them from different angles. Bless.





I was curious about the attraction to the piggy eyes of Pitt.





Then I did this Star Wars project... WTF?

















But the beanie babies hadn't gone away.









And then one time I did a painting with mushrooms.





I don't know... I look at some of my old drawings and they seem so lost and sad. But at the same time there's a lot of undirected enthusiasm, if that's a thing. My lines and my shapes left without teaching or proper information, were so boring and formless.





But it's so hard to keep hold of your ears and paws these days.

joy of chalk

Now this is a bit more fun, if not actually less stupid.





I have some pastels now, but most of the colours are a bit full on. They are probably better in the long term in conjunction with more sobre media, but when you have something new, you gotta make a mess with it.

Come to think of it...

I was just having a good old serious talk with wise Bob about my main website (as recklessly promoted in the last post) and I've come to the realisation that I could really do with an entirely new one with new presentation.

The site represents where I was three or four years ago OK, with the little sad rabbit and the rather timid little font... having just emerged from studenthood, blinking and shivering... it's all quite cute and confessional and diary-like, but as a shop, or as the site of a professional artist, it's a bit poo.

I'm always reluctant to take the old stuff down in case someone buys it, which now I think of it, smacks of desperation... and I know google likes the site because of all the obscure text, especially google picture search. But google picture search is not a wealthy patron. It's not an upper middle class breezy art couple with a jewel encrusted handbag.

I've been secretly embarrassed by the site and its some of its aging contents for a while, but I've been denying it to myself.

My pal Frog did a good job with it and it was a vast improvement over what I had previously. No, Frog made me a nice little (actually oversized and needs pruning) site for making friends and making google like me. But now I'd like to frolick with the big boys. I want to be a contender. I'm not criticising your good work Frog! Frog is ace. In fact I'm sure he could be the one to help me improve it or make a new site, but I feel guilty asking him to do any more, as he's busy having a life.

So I may cast about a bit... At least explore this so I can get a handle on what I want... Does anyone know a web designer who deals with kind of thing? Or an artist with a really convincing looking professional site? I need to get onto this. I don't have a lot of money to pay somebody, but that might be because I don't have a website that's very conducive to selling stuff, so we may be talking vicious circles here.

Maybe I could work out something with little wrestle-grunt sound effects when one wobbles the pointer over certain images. Or something futuristic of that nature.

Soon: slightly bent lions invade.