Girls Aloud Melt my Brain

I wanted to draw lady pop stars, and the pull of Girls Aloud is just TOO MUCH TO HANDLE

































My brain has been totally bunged up. Just so you know, here's one of my current lists of future blogs/ projects:

Brett Anderson's nosebleeds in watercolour

Indie Meets Wrestling

Slightly Caricatured Silly Symphonies Special

Barney Bear Redux

Self as Preggo: Observed and Cartooned

Misc Unblogged Straight laced Cartoon Studies

90s wrestling in oil pastel EXPLOSION

Kitties in Style of Blinky Bill/ Wilfred/ Durer/ Peake

Vanguard Paper Britpop

Maps and Plans for Schemes and Lands

Breasts Movement Study Communication

Biro to pencil to biro MMA fighters

Ideal Men

I used to have dreams about sketchbooks with variations of the same image on every page. I sometimes try to have the perseverance to be this 'boring' and very slowly evolve things... perhaps it could end up as one of those arty animations that channel 4 used to show and no one watched and you had to get a government arts grant because there's no money in it and it's a bit like being a sort of art charity of fake worthiness.





'They're looking for external markers of temporality', I said to myself.





Here are some rather scribbly Michelangelo studies. He's good for if you want twisty man bits, that's for sure.





Sometimes I think John Cena has got a bit of a bum deal off me. Still it probably doesn't bother him in the bigger scheme of things.





Here are some 'ideal men'.

Not quite soft focus pinup dreamboys

Am I incapable of flattery?

Well, the possibility, probability even, has cropped up that some of the wrestlers I draw will see the drawings and paintings I've done. Within reason. They'll see them because Mick Foley is my friend now. Which made me think that I ought to do a blog entry called 'John Cena is a handsome and talented man' with pictures to match that sentiment.

But it didn't quite work. At least not this time.





Then I thought about totemic booby monkeys.





This is sort of a remake of one of the earlier primitive images from this blog. One day I will be able to make things be cute.





And I'm not quite ready to do a blog without a picture of Stephen in it. Stephen and Bob the day a dog chased Stephen up a tree this spring.

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

Composing Overlapping Chins

I'm sorry I haven't been especially erumpent lately, or that I haven't appeared to be. I think I felt that I didn't want to just pump out stuff to fill a blog, I wanted something a bit coherent, and I didn't want to get too repetitive.

Having said that, here are some wrestlers and bats. This time in technicolour!





Oh manly boys, how they love to frolick in the undergrowth!

I am in a truly transitional period in that I'm evolving new ways to paint, quicker and fresher ways. That one was a bit of an awkward hybrid and a bit fussier and bittier than I want to be.

I'm working on a bigger version of that, which is becoming problematic, but I'm rying to give the colour in particular a new level of sensitive attention. Because I was having trouble with the John Cena in the big painting, (The one with the big head), I did some sketches today to try and make his design less stiff and symmetrical, more fluid and interesting.

he is stiff and graceless in real life, but it's my duty to find pretty ways of interpreting that. He's also childlike and inexplicably endearing, so those are the qualities I think I ought to channel.

In the first sketch I was only just waking up. You can almost taste the dullness of my brain in this one.





Then the head began to expand even further as a standalone object, dwarfing his ever more chubby cherubic boyman boyfriend. But it was getting more fluid.





Then I reintroduced some attention-seeking nipples to the scenario, for balance.





I never used to like drawing on bobbly paper, but I got quite into it today. I was using a 9B pencil too! Smudgy.

I have oil paintings, that are just not quite finished to my satisfaction, and there's not much point posting them until they are. But I can post little cropped details. You've seen these before in previous states of uncouth crudity.





Oh, and dear old Kurt.

My oil paintings take a long time, but I'm sneakily developing techniques that don't take as long, and that get to the point without dilly-dallying.





I keep feeling a strong urge to remake ALL of my old paintings in a bouncy happy dynamic cartoony style, chase away all pretension and confusion... which I'm sure is easier said than done. In real life I could probably only do that with some. But it's a stimulating thought.

I'm pretty sure I'm being directly influenced by John K and the purity of his vision for 'entertainment', and the purposefulness of entertainment. And increasingly I'm fatally turned off by the pretensions around all the things that call themselves fine art and the people who call themselves artists.

It may be time for me to learn new ways of drawing bunnies.

Did you spot the deliberate mistake? There weren't any bats! Ha ha!

More soon I promise!

Dreamboats and portals

Time for some actual new bits.

That was one.

Not finished.



Well I told the wrestler Gregory Helms I was going to draw him. Then he seemed quite keen on the idea, so I thought… OK I’d better make it look a little bit like a MySpace profile picture.

But that might mean it needs to be a bit boring and flattering…

He proved tricky because he looks more like a real human being than the lumpen hypergrapplers I normally favour doodling.





I wanted to do like an otter with Gregory’s face to accessorise him, never quite got round to it…

Could make his likeness more weird and interesting if I found the energy…

Maybe I’ll work on it before sending any of this crap his way.

Here’s Gregory and his wooden brother, but which is which?






I’m not quite sure what to say about this next one….








But my favourite’s still the endlessly lovely Randy.

Now there’s a face with funlumps.

I took it upon myself the other week to begin the process of cross breeding him with some holly.

Here’s how we began:




I saw the potential for holly-derived lines in Randy’s facial contours. I picked some actual holly on my way back from the gym, and found the actual leaves were a right old pain in the bottom to draw… I dispensed temporarily with the actual leaves, but retained some of their prickly influence.





Randy moves his smug boyman face in an artfully loathsome fashion.

I love drawing him… his face seems like some kind of portal to way-outness.





Sigh… isn’t he dreamy?

Now… remember this old chestnut?






It’s still not finished. But I seem to be making a tradition out of posting its progress.


There’ll be more to say or more to see soon…

I want to return to one of the original stated purposes of this blog, and condense some of my big thoughts into digestible form here.

When I was talking to Marlo about blogs and blog performance anxiety, I theorised to her that it’s good to update regularly because it helps people to feel like they’re in touch with you (more relevant to her since she actually has fans)… but I need to take my own advice.

Cartoon people teach me lessons about eloquent & concise little lumps of communication…

So stay tuned while I redefine my purpose in front of your very eyes!