Lana Vanguard

I get excited about materials, but I have rarely discussed it round here.

I've got this new stuff called Lana Vanguard paper





It's not really paper at all, it does not absorb moisture and it is highly space age




You can infinitely wipe it clean





I might change these all around. Cos I can! Also to make them more good.

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.

Sexy Nature Boys

So I'll do like in the early days and post lots of drawings that are mainly based on wrestlers. But this time it's wrestlers Ric and Shawn, oak matured and aromatic.





Ric retired in March of course. Much emotion oozed from faces.









I like desert flowers and their manly shapes, spiky and wiggly simultaneously.





Then there is Shawn the wrestler. He wears a cowboy hat that makes a shadow over his eyes.










Although he kind of has eyes that make a shadow over his eyes.















My next work is likely to be simpler, more cuddly things.

Interrupted Cow Boys

I started drawing brokeback mountain cowboys but I got distracted.





Angel cats landed in my ideas.





Then there were the Colepexies.

EtsyChloe

I'm trying something out... I've put some little paintings and drawings and prints up on Etsy, to see how they'll go on there.

Etsy seems to be all about quirk and cute and girly pretty little slight pretty things. Hairclips on roses and whiskers on crochet dolphins. I don't know how I'll do over there with my intensity and my offputting serious personality and all, but listings only cost twenty cents so that's nice.

The stuff of mine that I'm putting on is a mix of older small paintings and some of the cuter of my new scribbles. Plus some pretty nice prints I have knocking about.

I was probably 18 when I painted that. Oh, acrylics. I miss you.





One of those little paintings that reflected my mood of a moment.

Then a print of good old 'Guitarist'.





Here's the sort of thing that's on Etsy, that other people make. Quirkycute has truly come into its own. And a lot of this stuff is very nice. Some's a tad predictable. I wish I was better able to capitalise on the temperature of the youth culture.

Snufflehogs made of felt.





Crochet pizza.





Someone can always outcute you! Or outquirk you, which is quite painful.

I'm suddenly seeing potential for parody and new drawing themes... hmmm. Perhaps my drawings are too manly. I wish to both join the girly wetness and simultaneously analyse and mock it fearlessly.





Hmmmmm.