THE Queen

The first three Supermen

 Backdated digital stuff from last year. Superman is one of my favourite subjects, the reasons are many. Or 'because of reasons' as teenagers say on the internet.

Sloppy Pale Tiger

I painted a watercolour picture.

I'm not sure either Ruskin or John K would approve of it, but I am sort of excited on my own behalf about watercolour at the moment, and sometimes you have to do things on your own behalf, even if they don't fit with anything else.






It's based on an old postcard I had of an ancient Greek mosaic, which I've always come back to.

Knightmare with a Red Pencil

Knightmare, the British children's role-playing dungeon-based game show that ran from 1987-1994, is one of the more nerdy things that I'm a fan of.



I had a notion that I wanted to do a series of works based on Knightmare, eventually some quite moody watercolours. I don't know if they'd be fan art as such. They sort of are in spirit but it's obscure enough for me to not expect most people to get the references. I just hope to be able to use some of the atmosphere, awkwardness and creepiness to make some nice pictures that have a coherence together. I need to do something technicolour, and something with consistence. I may also attempt some landscapes with similar atmosphere.

Also lately I've gone a bit mental with red col-erase pencils and animation paper.
















little self-portrait next






Notions for future blogs that would scratch itches:

Some topless boymen (I've missed them)
boybands
JLS
Boys of Twilight with their drawn on abs
early Take That
smalltime cage fighters

Drawings of Queen (I'm rather familiar with their shapes from formative years, and I would love to get my hands on Freddie's teeth)

Birds of New Zealand in technicolour

All these things somehow combined in technicolour

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

Fringebangs

Well, things went as they often do.

I had an idea for a kind of themed blog

about 'fringes'

or 'bangs'

Because I have been genuinely in a dither about getting my hair cut.

And I find it quite unnatural to blog about such a feminine self absorbed thing... so I thought it would be a good challenge.

Then I came up with tons of ideas for drawings and narratives.

But I work in a shop a lot of the time.

And I don't have time to make everything perfect and developed...

Especially not 'pointless' blog things.
as much as it pains me.

So what I have is a collection of drawings that does not feel in any way finished with or living up to the ultimate potential of FRINGES as a theme and all the marvellous things it could have been, say, if Marlo had done it. Oh well. it's also probably a document of my mild mental illnesses.

I saw this picture of Penelope Cruz in a magazine, and I thought for a while that I wanted her fringe. I hoped I was too sophisticated to fall into that old trap of thinking you want the woman's hair when actually what you want is her face. But I don't know. I'm not that sophisticated.





I went through this thing where I was transposing fringes onto drawings of myself.

Penelope hair: no.

I was not sure for a long time whether I should get a fringe at all, since my face might be too big and lumpy. When Katie drew me she made me look like someone who shouldn't have a fringe. Like a serious tarty mermaid. I was so happy when I saw this.





When Marlo drew me (Sorry Hannie) she made me look like someone who perhaps should have a fringe but doesn't.





I had some really terrible experiences at hairdressers in the past, that still haunt me. I remember once when it had started to go very wrong in my awkwardest teenage years the lady was trying to make me point to pictures in magazines (so embarrassing) and I pointed to one of an oriental lady... she said 'that's oriental hair, that's different' Oh so stupid! I should have known... best to stay at home and let your hair grow, it's antennas to spiritual awareness anyway isn't it. Never go out.





I've been struggling to return the favour and draw Katie, but I find her tricky, her features are round and cute and they seem to beg for the cartoonyness that I feel out of my depth with... so I've had some right old weird results and I don't think I'm finished.





And Duffy of course... funny old Duffy.

WTF is this and what does it want with me?





Wilful abuse of magic animation pencils





Little Miss transparent nose





The racoon-like gaping monster that my drawings have persisted in turning into for the past ten years... Well, you may spot an actual raccoon in the corner. The middle one is just a piffling personage, perhaps on a par with a Popple.





I actually started drawing models out of magazines... I spend more time in towns now... magazines can become quite alluring when you're daydreaming about things to draw...









Some naked tasteful naff slutty empowered deviantart women wear their fringes quite well.





I had more... I had fully blown theories about forehead shapes and things... unfortunately now I might have lost interest, and confidence in the very foundations of my investigative faculty, I'm sorry.

Little Sister

I painted another lady. Well she's sort of the same lady as I have painted before. She is a little sister. A little red doll sister.





The big sister one was more assymmetric in the face. This one has a different palette. Which one do you like better, comment friends?

Incidentally, the way those little amazon links work is that if you buy something on amazon after getting there through my link, I get a little bit of the money, even if you don't buy the things I've displayed. Hey that Randy Orton figure isn't even available! I just like the the cut of his little jib, dammit.

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.

the Era of Too Many Rich Reds

Well since I seem to have quite a lot of pictures to show you, I might do the paintings first, pace myself a bit.

There’s a palette I’ve used for a lot of paintings over the past year or so. I’ve been trying to finish them so I can finish up this era.

‘The passionate controversies of one era are viewed as sterile preoccupations by another, for knowledge alters what we seek as well as what we find.’ -
Freda Adler

Lately I’ve been finding these colours problematically bright and sweetie-like. There are too many of them. (Though this also presents an interesting challenge…) In the paintings I’m planning, the colours will be more ‘limited’, one way or another. At least limited enough that I feel in control of the colour and that it doesn’t dominate the other formal aspects of the picture. And so that it doesn’t look horrible and make me want to be sick.

Let’s be thorough about this. Here are the colours I’m lumbered with:


Michael Harding Phthalocyanine Blue and Zinc White





Grumbacher Pre-Tested Oil Quinacridone Red





Grumbacher Pre-Tested Oil Cadmium Barium Yellow Deep





(I think I made the yellow big because yellows are tricky bastards.)

Grumbacher Ultramarine Violet





Old Holland Flesh Ochre





Mussini Burnt Umber



Later, when I came back to the palette and it all seemed a bit too warm and cosy, and I had just bought a MASSIVE tube of raw umber, I added that to the mix too.

It’s the size of the big tube here in front of the little tubes:





Only it’s this colour:





Wikipedia has this useful piece of info about Raw Umber:

Raw Umber is a color that resembles raw umber.

I have a brain that doesn’t like wastage. So when I have a great big tube of a colour, I mind less about using it liberally.

Some of the artist grade oil colours are very expensive, so I become quite… aware…of this when I use them.

The thing is, at the moment I’m veering more toward using acrylic and other waterbased media UNDERNEATH a final layer of oil glazes, rather than using oils alone.

This is because acrylic dries fast and flat, is pleasingly opaque and allows for a more dynamic ‘drawing’ process in which changes and adjustments can be made spontaneously. The combination of acrylic/ the other plethora (plethora!) of media compatible with acrylic/ and finally the richness of oil colour gives quite a lot of scope for intricate other-worldly finishes, and quite a lot of scope for the painting to develop a strong sense of purpose along the way.

So this is Shelby, she’s a lady I painted with just oils, and taking advantage of the blobs and crags that inevitably appear. Using the above palette, I should add. I don’t think she’s finished.





Here’s her face in closeup so you can better see the texture. She’s painted on a ceramic tile:





in contrast, here’s a tiny painting from a while back painted in this palette but with a drawn/ mixed media underpainting and quite a lot more sensitive detail. Of course, it all depends on how much you like sensitive things….





Now a peculiar half-breed… a painting that was getting on quite well being shiny and plasticky, but which has had a decisive opaque oil makeover in recent times. It’s another startled giraffe:









That’s all in the same palette. But I have been subduing it more, painting in flatter swathes with tertiary kind of mixtures, rather than being dictated to by the bossy primaries.






Now… this one’s got really weird. Bob said to me it’s funny that I should turn on a particular picture and call it weird when I’m always painting weird dog explosions and minotaur tantrums. But I’m finding this one tricky. It’s based on some of those old drawings, but it needs to evolve its own authority, it might need a radical change.

I think maybe it’s a transitional type of thing where I’m figuring out HOW I’m going to paint and using wilfully obscure combinations of subject matter and atmosphere.





And Kurt’s developed a bit of a tan.




Here’s another old one in the same palette. This one’s all in oils, but with the texture worked up to a fair old level of detail and teeny tiny brushstrokes and flourishes. There are lots of ways I like to paint, but I think this isn’t quite the way that’s right for Right Now.






I have more painted stuff to show, but I will save it for an imminent follow-up, since it’s all in different colours and generally it’s got a lot more to do with bats. Then there will be some drawings too.