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.

Sports Entertainers with Garnish

Wrestlers. Hwur! What are they good for?










It was Xmas and I decorated this one with holly.

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!

A tribute to my cats

I was going to post drawings, but I thought I'd stall and post some cats. I wouldn't want to get repetitive with all the wrestlers and the bats and all. Punctuate it a bit.

Maybe it's wet and soppy to talk about my cats. But they are a daily part of my life, for now they are my family in fact, and they are my only company during the day. I feel very close to them and I often worry about what might become of them if Bob and/or I have to move away. It's probably a silly worry. I worry, but I am working on it.

This is Joyce. She is the mother of the other two. She is very neurotic and possibly has cat obsessive compulsive disorder. She washes herself a lot. She's quite a tiny kitty. She likes eating person food, even if it makes little sense. She's upwardly mobile. Last night she chose to eat broccoli instead of corned beef.









Stephen is the favoured son, in that he gets wapped round the face by Joyce less often than his brother. Everyone loves Stephen. He is a massive, humungous barrel chested fat glossy bastard of a cat. He has the softest fur and ears in the world and he's so inky black that he's quite hard to photograph. He is extremely good natured and easy to get along with. He has emotional intelligence and therapeutically tactile stomach flab.









Then there is Hal, who is one of the most singular life-forms I have ever met. He was the runt of the litter, but he's not that much smaller than Stephen, he just has tiny ears and a skinny tail.





Hal spends all the time he can outside in the garden amongst nature, because he finds human things like doors and carpets scary and unpredictable. In the spring he sits and stares at a single flower for six hours at a time. He always knows when we're talking about him, even when we don't mention his name. He lets us know this by giving a unique squeaky staccato miaow. He has a exceptionally varied range of vocal expression, possibly because he doesn't really understand that he's a cat.

In fact, we had a theory at one point that he might not be a cat, he might be an owlbear.

he shakes his paws a lot and walks as though literally walking on eggshells. He has flaky skin and nipple crusts and scaly paws, and is technically a mutant, but may have the prettiest face of all the cats. You can see his soul knocking about inside.





Here's Hal on the left and Stephen on the right:





Here are Joyce and Stephen being affectionate on Bob's lap.

I think Stephen knows when he's being photographed and poses.





We were given the cats to look after when we lived in Brighton, city of posers and assymmetric hair decadence. It was originally going to be a temporary arrangement, so the names were only going to be temporary names. But they were the names that felt right.

I love them and value them a lot. It feels good for my soul to be friends with animals. They are a wonderful part of my life during this stretch of youthful semi-settledness.

Drawings and all that will follow.

P.S. Thank you Eddie for writing about me, and thank you the people who commented, that really made my day.

Escher Cheekbones and Heinous Seepage

I’ve kind of finished the infernal dragon. That’s that out the way.

(Click on any of today’s image for a larger version on Flickr. And you could even leave a comment there if you like. But if push comes to shove, I prefer comments here on blogger.)





In the last stages of this mixed media monstrosity, I used a lot of white lines with a thin brush and this stuff called liquid paper. I wrote a little note that said ‘white lines connected to my mind’. I could feel this an exciting little development that I will carry forward to the pictures wot I care about that have both grappling and nature in them.

I don’t normally do this, but here’s the photoshop mock-up that I used as the basis for the dragon painting, and liberties have been taken with perspective and picture fragments. It’s not much of thing in itself, but it kind of signals a little bit where I want to go with my next paintings, a more playful and hands-on approach to pictorial space.







I had been neglecting my other duties to do that. My last week’s wrestler mushes were sitting there begging to be more understood and stuff. Begging to be taken to the extremes of draftswomanship!





Biro frenzy! Unfortunately it seems that biro tends to seep through even the most opaque applications of acrylic paint. Bum bums! Does anyone know of some kind of biro-esque wonderpen that would refrain from such heinous seepage?





Now in the more recent two bottom drawings above, I used some of the information from the biro frenzy ones but tried to filter a bit of likeness back in. Particularly in Randy’s face I began to think about Escher, about getting some optical mischief in there with the wonky cheekbone adventures. I’ve seen some technically spectacular caricatures that are immaculately constructed, and look like Spitting Image puppets, but part of me thinks… why do it like that, when drawing on a 2D plane gives you so much more freedom, freedom to indulge in a play between illusionism and pure linear kicks. I think the bottom two would almost be more suited to being cleaned up like proper cartoon characters and have the shading and the scribbling beaten out of them. Also I would add that I was trying to make Randy a little bit more smug and bastardy, like he is, and that Kurt has got a bit crude and ugly here. He has features that lend themselves to just getting massive. So I still have work to do.

My latest grey blog is entitled birds do not require punk spirit to experience the urgency of life
, you could read it if you want to boogie some more with my thoughts.