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.

Elvis Looms In the Centre of Things

In this doodle you can kind of discern me trying to combine the sad leopards with the jumping boys.

Also in the middle perhaps you can spot Elvis, who's popped up to give me clues about how man faces and decorative beauty can be combined.





It's mixing things up in the right order that provides half the challenge...

I Have Gone Off My Rocker: Boy Fun

Soon I have an assignment to do a cover for an ‘older children’s fantasy book’. At least one. It’s not an actual commission so I’m not being paid. Don’t be silly! Of course not. It’s to prove to unimaginative book publisher types that I can do this sort of thing. The people who represent me in the commercial world have suggested that I do this thing.

On of the comments I had on one of the previous posts made me think that I want to find fun ways of drawing Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys again.






I used to set myself the challenge of drawing the cover of the album in the time it took to burn a CD.






I’ve got this nutty idea in my head about doing deranged pop culture pictures then making them sparkle and twitch and flogging them to the youth on MySpace.

I probably don’t have the technical skills to follow this through… but it’s an intriguing exercise is purposefulness.

In that vein, I’ve been making studies and doing little thumbnails of Randy and John the heart throb wrestlers, which has taken me to some cutely homoerotic visual places. Slightly unnerving places. This stuff was all knocked up in the past couple of days. It all qualifies as ‘provisional’ and ‘sketches’ and I’m not sure exactly where I’m headed.







All of this is sort of an exercise in trying to follow through the energy and spontaneous fluidity of my biro sketches to something on a slightly more substantial scale.










I’ve been inspired by Katie Rice and the cute energy of her girls and got this crazy idea in my mind that I want to do something deranged, energetic and cute with lumpy yet charismatic gym rat boys. But it’s quite a task.

And I haven’t got a clue if I’m cut out for cartoons exactly… it’s all a work in progress.

I think one of my fake book covers will be a Harry Potter one since I’m cocky enough to think I could do it justice. Hmmm… trying to kill two birds with one stone… is there any way I could subtly cast Brian Wilson as Ron Weasley?

Oh and if anyone in the world owns the game Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and has screenshots of minotaurs they wouldn’t mind emailing to me, I would be jolly grateful. I plan some more ‘damn celestial’ minotaurs (thanks to the clown ninja for that comment, I appreciate the comments) and I’m going to have to get myself back into a more generally celestial mindspace for my book cover project and temporarily put aside the deranged biro scribbled WWE men.

Usually when I’ve depicted women, they’ve ended up kind of wispy and dreamy like this Shirley Temple.