Deeply Stupid Leopards

I wanted to get the expression my cat Joyce gets when she's in the middle of washing and suddenly looks like she thinks she's remembered something important. Also, this is what a monkeycat looks like if you haven't seen one before.





Some of these drawings I am reproducing tiny as I think they're a bit rubbish but for some reason don't want to leave them out completely.





Since I've been working in a shop, I try to make quick things count more. It feels like it matters to maintain a flow. It's partly to try to overcome my procrastination.





I'd like to do some proper leopardish paintings soon. That involve acrylic and even gouache. And even colours.

Leopards

I return, rubbishly, to clouded leopards. Remember my last leopard phase?





Now, perhaps a 'natural' part of me wants to draw fairly solid 'real' leopards, just with subtle grunewald twists, supple subtle and elegant.

But I'm fighting with myself to make something simpler. Whether I can make anything simpler that has any point to it, is funny, or inventive, or joyful, or the basis for something else, I don't know.

Remember Cenapards? I quite liked them the first time.





I often feel like my drawing is a very private experiment. I don't always come up with results that have that perfect alchemy that I'd want all my drawings to have, but sometimes I'm sufficiently interested by the results to blog them anyway... I probably shouldn't. I should probably only blog 100% safe completed masterpieces once every six years.





Perhaps with some of these I'm fighting to put some things together that haven't quite come together, but they will eventually.





However it shouldn't always have to be a struggle, so maybe I should embed myself in a comfort zone next time.





Though there is a little bit of trying to figure out the essence of the leopard attraction here.

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.

How do Lions get in there?

This is Sleep Lion of the Graveyard.

Are these paintings finished?

Are these finished? Bear in mind, unfinished things look better on blogs than they do in real life.

I think this one is going to have to be finished, because it's so small and I don't want to drown its little mousey light.





This one would not be finished if it was left to me. But I painted it sort of with a commission in mind, and a different sensibility. You can see the brush strokes and that. The colour is chaotic.

The forms at the bottom are not clear or readable, which makes me uncomfortable. But my patron might like a bit of that.





This one is manic... I'm not sure quite where to go with him. The colours are dangerous on these. Less neutral than the last lot. He's a bit Vince McMahon, a bit pagan papier mache mask.





It's from when WWE were doing the 'Vince is crazy' bit just before the 'Vince explodes' bit, which they had to drop because of the real life Benoit tragedy. But Vince does have wonderful , wonderful facial expressions.





This next one is the left half of a painting that's been lying unfinished for a while. it's set in that graveyard I spoke of a few months ago. It has this big squish faced sleeping leopard thing swooping down draped in a tree.





Part of the thing is deciding whether the painting will be a fast fresh painting or a slow rembrandty crusty painting... not every way of painting is always compatible. And I'm not always good at decisions.





There there's this old thing, with Kurt who's now a bit bonkers himself. I always planned to do more to this, but now it doesn't seem necessary.





Which ones are finished? it's very hard to know all by myself.