Thinking Hard Hurts

When he man thinks, he makes wobbly lines.











One must plunder the wealth of wrestler bodies still.

It seems inevitable that my He Men aren't entirely sure what they're about.

Pick of the Pops

My deviantart top 5

Deviantart has a feature where if you 'browse' a gallery and then arrange the items by popularity, I can get a sort of a hit parade of my most popular images according to how many views and favourites and comments they've got. I'm sorta fascinated by which of my pictures end up where in popularity. I never quite would have predicted they would end up in the order they're in. Maybe the Deviantart crowd are a very specific demographic.

Here's the chart rundown from 5 to 1. (Click on the images to get the the corresponding deviantart page including comments.)

5. Gypsy Chaos Goat





-I put up this one and the other goat, and I really always thought the other one 'Softie Goat' was better. But this has only been up for a week and it's already top 5. Maybe it's more rough and rugged than the other one. Or has a more sexy title. It has computer game mage hijinks or something appealing the the WoW addicts of the world.

4.Three Teenage Moons





- I kind of understand why this is top 5. It has detail and it's all emotional and soft and warm.

3. Empathetic Minotaur





- This old chestnut... this is always popular on the internet. The original was tiny. I must have hit on something good with chaotic mix of delicate little mediums. The original was tiny. But the internet isn't fully cognizant of that.

2. Kids in the Forest





- I would not have expected this to be number 2. It must be the cuteness of the theme or the multiracial niceness or something. It's all vague, like some of my stuff of that era was, and quite primitive in its shapes. It was from an obscure movie photo or lobby card or something.

1. (By some distance): Orton Flair Three





- And it's funny because it's not mainly wrestling fans who like it. It's people who don't know who they are. But comments say things like 'moving' . I can't quite put myself in their shoes and see what they see. It is the third version of this image I did, and it's the closest of all my images to straight 'fan art'. I never really thought of it as part of the main flow of my oeuvre. No way! I think in the end a hardwired conservative part of people likes convincing heads and likenesses, but also pretty people and simple things.

The whole of the top twenty on Deviantart are all paintings. You have to go to 21 to get the first drawing. People like colour. It's more real to them or something. My favourite way out drawings tend to be less popular. Or maybe people just don't know what to say about them. Maybe they're less comfortable and more radical in a good way.

Lack of Eyeless Nudes in the Home

I was beginning to think it might be a little while before I can put up some nice finished new drawings that's like a culmination of the things I'm thinking about. So I'm just going to say a bit about the things I'm thinking about and the drawings will be poor and loose not in the good way.

I'm thinking about beardy Zeus gods from the thirty first century.

I'm thinking about Ulysses 31. Perhaps this will be hard to explain in a mere white blog.






I'm thinking about beardy classical blokes with no eyeballs.









I'm trying for now not to fall back on the wrestlers but to really think this thing through. My drawings have become increasingly in the service of bodies and wriggling forms. It's beginning to feel like I could do with full time life models/ naked people living in my house. Otherwise the wrestlers are the best source I have for writhing naked alive bodies. But for now I'm looking at what the statue men have and what I can do with it sans live flesh displays.

Picasso may provide some clues.





Picasso was a good cartoonist (in fact that's quite a sensible way of assessing him) but in his paintings of people he often didn't pay that much attention to specifics and 'genericised' them, whether he was doing these generic beardy pleasure blokes or monkeying with mushes as only he could.

Perhaps in my paintings and drawings of bodies, I don't have to stake so much of the 'fun' on getting a specific likeness or LEARNING a face in some way... as much fun as that is... perhaps I could be more careless like Picasso.

Anyway I explained this concept to Bob as Ulysses getting off his spaceship with his willy out. It's just one concept on my table.





Ulysses of the thirty first century has a distinctive frontal hair do.





Some of my beardy blokes are a bit fat and shy.









We find our minds wandering to chinnal concerns.





Here is a page dense with thinkings





It hurts





The cyclops people are stumped.





This was not a Proper Blog.

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.

I Make Your Ankle Hurt

Randy is more advanced than Kurt, in the sense of being further along the line of my understanding his face.

Kurt looks slightly feminised and slightly baby-like in my pictures. He’s all tender round the edges for the time being.






More dragon.






Primitive Kurt Angle studies. He has some whopping big expressive blue eyes, I do not have a handle on them yet.





There’s a tender little oil painting based on wrestling.

Not feeling too texty tonight. Have a look at my texty blog if you want text. I done plenty.

Bye bye,

Love from Chloe.