Picturesque, yeah?

[For those with less than owl-vision, please click for the large version] 

This is another part of the push to simplify my approach to work, or at least parts of it. I have a tendency to really overdo things; minimalism and subtlety come to me about as naturally as an inverted bowel movement.

To elaborate further on that theme, sometimes my work ends up looking like ten pounds of shit stuffed into a five pound bag. That’s fine, it’s in my nature. I like aggressive visuals which just sort of lunge wildly at your jugular, which is what I get from comic artists like Robert Crumb or Rory Hayes, in all their neurotic, detailed glory. It’s a great feeling when you come across a picture that makes you double-take. I know I’ve been impressed by something visual if I feel like washing my eyes afterwards. 

But that’s probably the shock value. Being shocking is the oldest way of getting attention. And it’s an amateur thing. Shock isn’t necessarily the same as talent, though I’m not sure where the line in the sand is. You can’t stay that way forever. I appreciate simplicity, but I don’t naturally lean to it. I love demanding, bristling images but I also understand that not everyone does, and for good reason.

I’d be an idiot to stand in the same spot forever. You gotta see what’s outside the sandbox.

And:

The first person to look at this collage said – “I like it, but I’m not sure I get it.”

I don’t want anyone to feel like they need to get anything about my work, like they’re missing out on some hidden message or meaning; some intellectual secret, some statement. There’s no great mystery to it, really.

It’s just aesthetic, and occasionally (if I’m lucky), thought-provoking. What those thoughts are, I couldn’t care less. I don’t usually have an intent. I rarely imply a deliberate message, political or personal. Somebody looks at a piece of my work, and they like the way it looks or they don’t.

That’s it. 

They shouldn’t feel under any pressure to understand anything. I’ve met a hell of a lot of people who feel they’re not smart enough for art, which is ridiculous.

I like Mr Burns’ stance in The Simpsons, when appraising a portrait: “I’m no art critic, but I know what I hate.”

Amen.

Seed of Pan

This was kind of a weird drawing that didn’t have great composition; it was kinda clumsy, and took up too much space to make it worthwhile sketching out a background. But I spent a bit of time fleshing out the character anyway, particularly with the shade tones. I’m pretty lumbering when it comes to colour, and it’s something I’ve been working at improving.

Bird On A Wire

I’m pretty lucky that there are a few bands out there that are good enough to ask me to create artwork for them.

This is a sort of dry-run gig poster I came up with for Trial By Wire, a rock group based out of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Think I’ll be doing a few more for these guys in the near future, so I’ll toss in a couple of links when that stuff hits.

The style wasn’t anything the band asked for; I just need to keep reminding myself that sometime less is more.

Effigy

Here comes that weirdness again…

[click to enlarge]

I like sprawling images. I like symbolism. I like heraldic imagery. I like Eastern murals. I like symmetry, though I’m not great at it.

I like the idea of ‘Mulligan Stew’ (Wikipedia that badboy) – of taking whatever you have to hand and seeing what happens when you smoosh it together, even if the results aren’t always what you’d like. It’s like bad alchemy. It’s like little kids making mud pies. Some dirt, some pebbles, some cat shit; mix it up and scarf it down. Mmmmm.

This thing was cooked up as a piece of art for a group already mentioned a few posts ago, The Male Pattern Band. There was no real instruction to turn out a swami-meets-punk-rock effigy, I just had an urge to mix together a lot of religious and cultural symbols with rock and roll music and toss in a few weird animals for good measure. The sloth’s were Chris’ idea. Good call.

The Auguries of People; and The Vagaries, Too

Some standard colourful graphics to amuse you, and some verbal ramblings below.

In other news, my website provider is in league with the Devil – so the site and the email account is down for now. To be continued….

For whatever reason, I’ve been creatively productive recently (relatively speaking). I find it comes in peaks and troughs, as I’m sure a lot of people do.

It’s an odd thing, for sure. I know from experience that some days, no matter how much I push for it, I can’t seem to draw even a straight line; and that’s not modesty or self-criticism, it’s just a damn fact. Some days, I turn out pure shit – and I ain’t the only one. Plenty of friends I know have more or less the same experience when it comes to creativity. Call it a block, whatever. I can live without naming it.

At times it’s like some secret code, like a lock on a vault where everything needs top be in place exactly for it to work. I’m full of analogies today, so try this sucker on for size: it’s like one of those hidden images you need to stare at for a while, before the real picture materialises through the haze. But some days no amount of effort or hard work or staring blankly is going to save you. Some days you’re simply doomed; as if, to quote John Hallam, “it’s the wrong day; the planet’s aren’t in line, the entrails are not favourable!“

Does this happen to, say, carpenters??? The drain? Do they ever wake up one day unable to cut a dovetail joint? Do they have to sit it out for the duration?

Or are we darn pansy artistic types just wishy washy as hell?

I don’t like to think about this sort of thing too much. I mean, I don’t like to overthink it. There’s no point in taking something like this too seriously.

Sometimes I just wonder, that’s all.

“The news said it’s raining in New York…”

Bellum omnium contra omnes,

 

Oh!

Say it ain’t so!

 

Hell Out For Noon

Some pictures are not about…well, anything.

Sometimes it’s like flexing your muscles. Sometimes you need to feel the bare bones of something, just so remember what it’s like. It’s artistic stretches.

Star jumps.

A warm-up.

Collage is sort of like the low road at times. It’s easy for collage to confuse people. I’m sure that’s why the Dadaist’s used the damn thing.

I Do Not Play No Rock And Roll

Howdy, folks.

I recently began to work up some graphics for The Male Pattern Band, musical love-child of Chris McCrory; musician, production geek, wunderkind. The group’s fairly new on “the scene”, and not yet released anything officially, but I’ve gone ahead and started to produce some illustrations they might be using for posters and such in the future.  There’s some early demo’s worth checkin’ out HERE.

Running with the theme of pattern baldness, I picked out Communist whackjob Mao Tse-Tung and his incredible toilet bowl hairdo that still adorns many a wall in the Orient today. I’ve used the classic Red Propaganda-style portrait of Mao that hangs outside the Forbidden City for a couple of different images, and here’s one of ‘em.

I was just playing with a kind of silhouette portrait and then realised it had a lot in common with the now famous Obama “Yes We Can” portrait used in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign. I already had an idea for the colour palette (unusual for me, colour ignorant as I am) and it’s sort of ended up like a cross between a Scooby Doo villain and those old animated Peter Lorre caricatures used in Warner Bros cartoons.

It turned out okay, I guess.

Influential Beards Throughout History

Due to an unnerving amount of interest recently in a piece of work I did sometime last year, I decided to post it here on the ol’ blogapollooza, too.

This was just my vaguely odd sense of humour taking control of my pen like some gibbering phantom limb, but it’s real nice to see people responding so positively to it!!! It’s a mix of literary greats, political stalwarts and other riffraff who couldn’t be bothered to shave. I also drew a partner for it, documenting the heroic moustaches of the ages – check ‘er out HERE.

Due to overwhelming demand (well, it’s not that overhelming…we are talking single digits here, folks), I’ve decided to list a few poster-sized copies of this beardy-weirdy image  for sale in my new Etsy shop.

Oh, and there’ll be new work coming this way in the next few days, not just more badly-honed sales pitch….

Moneyspender’s Blues

Just a quick post to let everyone know I’m now also selling a few canvas prints of my work over at my Etsy shop HERE.

Need shit for your bare walls??? Can’t find that poster of the tennis girl scratching her arse anywhere? Like art? It’s your lucky day!

Well…eh…I’m not so good at the ol’ sales pitch, so I’ll just let you take a look and decide for yourselves.

Here are the two prints currently available…