2 of my better drawings from late last year

Superman, lion with a rose. I prefer my drawings when they look like they have more depth than just line form skill excercises type things.

Lion Amazing Stupid

Oh, Lions. We have not seen the last of you roary maney bastards.

How do Lions get in there?

This is Sleep Lion of the Graveyard.

Long Term Praying Lion

Here's another painting that I finally finished... the praying lion.

I really tussled about with this one and was quite hard on it for a while. But he's not such a bad old lion.

Maybe one day he'll be in an exhibition and other people can think stuff about him.

Simpleton Crusty

Here is part of a painting I've been painting. It is a simpleton lion.





What I've sort of realised is that my paintings might serve a completely different purpose to my drawings. In fact I suspect that the same people who are predisposed to dig my drawings might not really dig the paintings, and that's alright.

I'll elaborate on this issue in another time and place.





Having said that, following on from slow crusty layered paintings like this one, I might also do some faster fresher paintings which have more in common with my fast swishy cocky drawings.

There's a continuum going on here or light to heavy, or fun to serious. I'm trying to be aware of where my respective things sit on that continuum, or slide up and down it.

Secret Codes and ye olde melancholic faces

Here are some more tentative lion type men in some attitude of emotional twistitude:









Can you decipher my little 'composition sketches'? I suspect they're effectively in a secret shorthand drawing code that only I can read:





Look at all the little bits of pencil detritus... but eventually they will re congeal into paintings look atable by human beans.









imbecile babycats:





Who's this handsome devil? Why it's the Heart Break Kid, Shawn Michaels.

























Oh and before I forget... I've listed a couple more paintings on ebay. The 'plush brush mush' lady from this blog last month, and an old weird student years one with a big mopey Sarah Michelle Gellar face and a little gnome woman with a club. Things were... different then.





or, you could have a squizz at all my auctions!.

I should be going to Hampshire tomorrow to meet a young chap who's made a film about wrestling. I might be doing some artwork for that.

And my sister Hannah has a new website for her illustration work... She's doing nicely!

www.hannahillustration.com


Bye bye!

Trying to make a man and a lion cohabit in the same nostrils

Well... I was going to do a blog with all my recent drawings on it. Then I realised I had precisely thirty-one recent drawings. So I must embark on the brain hurting task of dividing them up into logical groups. Gahhh! Well... I suppose dividing it into two groups of ten and one of eleven makes sense.

So here are ten drawings that I recently did.

Some of them are crap.

They are all drawings with painting in mind. This is subtly different to the kind of cartoony/pure human caricature drawing I was moving toward in 'John Cena is a Bump-Lunk'. That kind of drawing I find more pleasing for its own sake. And part of me itches to learn how to be a good cartoonist with no other distractions. But these drawings think not of themselves, for they serve another master. I'm a painter now.

1. John Cena is a naked mole rat lion with mouse anuses for eyes!





2.





3.





4.





5.




6.





I've just realised that even though I have thirty-one drawings, that not all of them are good drawings. Some of them are more thought-farts than drawings really. So I can probably mathematically justify having just seven in this blog. So here's the seventh:

7.





End of sequence.

Oh, according to technorati this blog is worth seven thousand and something dollars. I don't think that means anyone is going to give me seven thousand and something dollars. But Still, I remember Marlo's used to be worth thirty-five thousand dollars and I'm close enough to that to feel it's respectable.

My blog is worth $7,339.02.
How much is your blog worth?

Oh, two of my paintings are up to their reserve prices on ebay! The naked lady and the Beach Boys. Of course. It's not too late!

Lion Voyage

I'm trying to focus my attention on how I am going to do paintings that feel like they do justice to all I've learned lately. This has led me to draw in slightly odd, fluffy bluffy ways. This is drawing towards painting more than drawing for its own sake. Whatever that might mean. I'm veering a little further away from 'cartoony' again, if you want to picture that continuum. Also I wasn't quite comfortable leaving up the last blog full of noncommittal wrestler scrawlings for days when that's not really where my head is at.





These oddballs I drew whilst watching Now Voyager:





These are just really experiments and doodles. I was looking at strange anthropomorphic lion statues and at well designed cartoon lions and just seeing whether I could hybridise them, what that might look like, and whether this whole nutty process might help me figure out what my painted lions will be up to.





I'm still taking lines and rhythms from wrestler sketches.





Here's a slightly creepy night sky type sleeping foetal lion. I'm not sure how satisfying it is as a drawing but I have a feeling I can take it forward. This is kind of what I was saying about 'drawing for painting'. It actually isn't a process I've blogged about much. It's quite elusive. Quite slippery. Etherial. Wraith-like. Eelish.





Of course there's no real reason to abandon 'cartoony' in paintings. Secretly I want to achieve everything all in the same place. But sometimes, I realise I have to concentrate on doing one thing in one place whilst doing the other thing properly in a completely different place. Like, some of the detail of my caricature observation has to have its own stage to evolve for its own sake, it can't just all be subsumed to a larger floaty lion oil painting artsy fartsy cause. See it's really not very simple at all. I have a lot of time on my hands you see.

In case it passed you by, here's that leopard and flower combo I sketch-painted recently... it might give the vaguest whiffs about where my painting is headed.

Funtime mechanical Monkeyboys: Epic

I've been casting around for a while in the depths of a deep manscribble chasm, in search of some pertinent shapes that I will, I hope, condense into colour.

UPDATE:

Well, I've had bugger all comments so I'll switch things about a bit!






If that drawing was confusing, it was partly influenced by this ancient chinses lion sculpture:





And this lion too:





I collected toogether a fair few images of sculpted lionhood in order to better construct my own lions, eventually.

It's all looking a bit chaotic at the moment but I assure you, bloggies, there is method to the madness etc etc.






Sometimes I draw quite fastly:






Some men are less prone to do fun things with their faces but they look a bit like aliens so that's something I can potentially work with:









These two had comically contrasting cheekbone and eyeball configurations (at the bottom is a retarded flat doodle cat):






2 scrappy headlocks:





Randy and John with bulge:

Josh's comment on this next one when I posted it on myspace: 'I love Cena's dumpling arms in that top one. It belies the monkey I see in him but it's nice seeing a radically different representation.'

My response to him at the time:

'Cena does have simian qualities, but counter to that he has short arms and legs. One of my theories about his success as a wrestler is that his physique is very immediately recogniseable in sillhouette, which is one of the requirements for a great cartoon character. It's partly recogniseable because by normal standards it's quite peculiar and if one is feeling unkind, ugly, but Vince doesn't mind that because he doesn't understand the power of male beauty and is a shameful visual-manqualities-aesthetic-autistic. Grrr!'







just two of those:





falling men:





cena face with writing:

Some of the writing from this page, which was essentially instructions to myself:

REPETITION IS BAD: make it WORTH drawing the same people a lot...

As much as a I want to get the construction right, I don't want to fall into a formula... I SEE MORE each time after all...

experiment with space, perpective, geometry... Randy's face as a contrast to Cena, emphasise nose bridge lighting that makes it look classical... + sensual top lip all curvy + full... emphasise geometry of pout... Randy is a pout-elf in comparison... some of my studies are technical but I aim to see cute...

(On John Cena) could play with perspective of his peculiar planes of slab ear jaw face... effectively cheekbones are tiny narrow little triangular things that jaw hangs off like big lollopy cartoon custard... nose somehow has to be 'right'; more intricate than you'd think.... possibly shape of cheekbone part of face is more important to do intricately and tight, the rest (bottom) can be loose and extreme and rubbery...

Idea: big tongue variations?





Cena Randy blue writing page:

Intermission

By the way... I used to paint soft sad lady lumps. And slightly different sorts of fat faces. I did this giantess based on Sarah Michelle Gellar for my degree show and now she's available at cafepress:





Now back to rumpent erumpency:

blue lean thumbnails (one man leaning on another man's rump):






more falling kitty/s:





pink kitty/ kittyboy collection:





Lion Cena:






fatface headlock randy colour thumbnails:

Bye this stage I was frustrated at my self-imposed exile from the land of colour. So it creeps in in sketchy ways. Coloured pencils are a nice bridge between drawing and painting techniques... they can cover both.











very jaggedy sketchy cats and heads:










This next one was on a very loose evening page of drawings. Only afterwards I realised that I had channelled my ingrained memory of the scene in Powdered Toast Man where he rescues the kitten.





silly blue heads:





Rainbow fun time mechanical monkey boys: