Crawlin' Eye Art

Still Life

2011-12-14T07:45:00.004Z

At the moment i'm pushing myself to paint as much as i can, and also trying to reuse old canvases in the process. I'm also trying to emulate (albeit rather badly) some of the artists i admire with each piece, and endeavouring to teach myself the techniques they used to achieve the effects the did....sounds Arty huh?
Anyway, first up is a Still Life i did, after taking a bit of sandpaper to the elderly canvas to try and reduce the impasto, somewhat groping after Peploe. I really like Peploe's work, and feel that he painted some truly fantastic artwork, not only being influenced by The Glasgow Boys but painting in Paris right around the time Braque & Picasso were developing Cubism, so please check him out if you can, it's also surprising how many 'Peploe's' can be found hanging around UK art galleries.

Dweezil Zappa Painting

2011-12-05T08:48:00.004Z

Hello there...how's things? Good? Good! Me too.
The last couple of weeks have been an exciting time for a zappateer like me, Zappa Plays Zappa have been touring the UK and i was lucky enough to catch two of their shows at Edinburgh and Manchester, where i met the charming, witty and handsome Ob from zappateers.
While we were at the Manchester show we decided to go Full Anorak and got VIP tickets, which meant seeing the soundcheck and a meet & greet-type affair afterwards. Why am i telling you this? Well, just think of it as back-story. Exciting huh?
Anyway, during the soundcheck everyone was free to wander about and take photos (with no flash naturally) so Ob decided to take photos of everything. At one point he lent over to show his latest capture, whereupon i immediately thought 'I certainly would like to paint that!' so, yesterday, on the 18th anniversary of FZ's passing with Return Of The Son Of... playing on an extremely loud loop, i did just that.
Normally i'd post the whole process, because it's more interesting than just here's a painting wot i did, but blogger has been a nightmare...so here it is:

Yes, of course i'd like a slice of that humble pie...

2011-11-16T18:59:00.004Z

Well, of course it was going to happen...it always does after you post an acerbic strip. The zappa by us guys did in fact get my Fz cartoon and posted it on their blog the other day. Thanks very much to them. If it wasn't for the fact that it's a collective decision on which artwork to use, i would worry that i'd pressured Fred into doing it.
Once again, please got to the exhibition if you can, and i heard today that there's going to be a book out next May too, which, with artwork and comic strips from all over the world, is sure to be a cracker.

Freak Out in Turnhout

2011-11-15T09:56:00.013Z

All that said, i know there could be any number of reasons why i never got a reply....they could just be very busy, or just being very sweet and trying not to hurt my feelings, or they could just be very impressed, using my cartoon and not got around to telling me yet or they could just being very nepotistic, or even very easily not have received it in the first place...which is fine, but always worth a giggle, and this does look like a great exhibition to go to! So, try and go if you can.

Zombie Pic

2011-11-02T22:58:00.003Z

A little zombie pic i did for this year's Hallowscream...but they didn't use it so here it is for all you luverly folks instead. Pass the salt, please...

The Ignoble Beginning by Thaddeus Witt

2011-10-19T14:28:00.017+01:00

Crawlin' Eye Art presents the fourth collection of poems and other musings by writer, and noted technophobe, Thaddeus Witt.

I really enjoyed working on this book, and love the way not only the artwork but the book as a whole has turned out. Thaddeus and i worked together very closely on it, mainly due to his aversion to owning a pc or the internet, but i think the slow pace we adopted really suited the book.

Please have a look, and maybe even buy a copy because all profits will be plowed into re-issuing his three previous books. These are currently out-of-print so i'd love the opportunity to work on any new editions.

FZ doodle

2011-10-17T10:36:00.007+01:00

I've been trying to get to grips with photoshop, without a tablet, which is a lot of ...erm..Fun. So here's a doodle i did yesterday. I specifically tried to go for that '60s illustration look with bright blocks of colour...not sure how successful it is, but i like it all the same.

Hallowscream

2011-10-16T14:52:00.002+01:00

The latest copy of the Megazine has a great article on the short-lived UK comic Scream, and its spiritual successor Hallowscream, which , along with a site and blog, keeps things erm...undead by having a yearly edition; contributed to by professional, amateur, and fan alike.

For this year's issue Ghastly McNasty is trying to raise enough funds for a print run, the first two issues are free online, so if you're a horror fan or even just a fan of supporting this kind of grass-roots creativity, please them do them a huge favour by helping out (with donations starting at $10/£6.60-ish you don't exactly have to break the bank).

And after that i think we need something suitable ghoulish to look at:

New covers

2011-10-12T22:30:00.005+01:00

Hello there, so after a summer of doing some proper work as a gardener i'm back to my other job as a pretend artist, and judging by the weather we've been having, not a moment too soon.

To get back into the swing of things that nice man Scott Parker decided that he'd re-issue two of his FZ books at the same time, so of course that meant two new covers, which were a lot of fun to do despite all manner of other things needing to be done at the same time (what, you mean that happens to you too?). Anyway, i thought i'd post them in all their glory...

I can say things like glory mainly because digital artist and general all round nice guy Unicrayon, over at zappateers, helped me a lot by tidying both covers up and making them far more presentable than they actually are/were. Thanks again, Uni!

If you fancy actually owning the real thing in book form, which i recommend to any FZ fan, please go here and do your stuff.

Aside from that i'm working on a new book with a friend of mine which will hopefully be out in a couple of months...still thinking of doing another book of my doodles just for fun too...and there's quite a bit of other stuff i need to get on with now that i'm no longer weeding, edging, weeding, lifting tatties, pruning, weeding, ....

Caricature Sketch

2011-05-26T07:52:00.008+01:00

So here i am working away (ahem...honestly) at that Frank Zappa caricature i was talking about and along comes another....
this one, though, was requested at short noticed and only needed 'to be a quick sketch.' So i spent a couple of hours doodling:

I really enjoy doing this kind of stuff and caricatures, along with any comic book-style stuff, tends to bring out the Oor Wullie side of me. I have very fond memories of being enthralled by the boy wi' the bucket when i was kid, along with The Broons of course, i don't even think The Beano got a look in...it was my Gran's copy of The Sunday Post every time.

Speaking of comic strips...i see the boys are back..

Tempus Fugit huh?

2011-05-19T18:08:00.016+01:00

Wow, is that time already? Serves me right for deciding to start landscaping the garden...anyway, i've been meaning to put up some photos Elena Reid was nice enough to send me of the Highland-Russia Connection charity art exhibition in Novokuznetsk way back in Jan/Feb time.
The brief was to do a picture that reminded you of Scotland, no bigger than A3...so i decided to do a pen drawing of a churchyard, near where i grew up, called Kiltearn.

I enjoyed doing the picture and it's a nice feeling not only to help a charity (i'm good like that) but also to know that people so far away are looking at your picture, and thinking 'Hey, I could do that!?'
But enough of my nonsense- enjoy the photos:

Elena says that the exhibition was a success and was featured on local TV and in the local newspapers, which is great to know, it also then moved on for a second showing in Mariinsk. I have no idea yet how that second one went but i hope it was as successful as the first.
Many thanks again to Elena for the photos and setting up the exhibition, it was great to be a part of and i'd do it again at the drop of a hat, remember to visit them over at highland-russia.livejournal.com to find out about current events.

Amidst all the rabid gardening things on the art front haven't been too shabby here either, with the first Strathpeffer Community Centre Art Fair being held over the weekend of 14th/15th May. I really wanted to be a part of this but almost never made it because i missed the entrance date (oops..) fortunately Trish & Clara are not that stuffy, so i was able to squeeze a couple of portraits in at the last minute (Thank you again, ladies!)...it also feels good to know i wasn't the only one...ahem.

I'm really glad this is being set out as an annual event, because the current annual art fair/exhibition which is held at the Strathpeffer Pavilion is far too elitist...and the level of snobbery is ridiculous; hey, i know it's Art and snobbery kind of goes with the territory but people being told they can't enter because they 'haven't been invited'...i mean, how's that for community spirit huh?

Unfortunately, i wasn't able to make the weekend showings but luckily for me they had a preview evening on the Friday night, and very nice it was too. My family went along and met some really nice people and saw some really nice artwork...but i resisted the nice free wine. Normally with these kind of things i get the urge to run screaming from the room after i've seen the artwork but the atmosphere was such that i found myself happily wandering around and around for a couple of hours.

Too many artists to recommend but a great mixture of works and not all for sale (nice to see the art instead of a price) so do yourself a favour and either enter or make an effort to see it next time, you wont regret it.

Right, i'm half way through a commission for a Frank Zappa caricature at the moment so hopefully next time i'll post a making of.

New book

2011-01-21T14:54:00.024Z

Hello there, i'm very proud to say that Pamela Bradley's new book 'Please don't invite me to your house...' is available now over at blurb. The book was a blast to be involved with, not to mention being a great read on so many levels, and i enjoyed the whole process. Pam took a lot of time over the placing of the text and my illustrations, and i think it's paid off tremendously. The book has more of a flow than just your average Text-Picture-Text-Picture type affair...but hey, don't take my word for it-here's a nice lil' widget to play with...

Smart, huh? So now that you've had a look at that, and hopefully gone a bit further on behalf of the starving creators, i bet you're thinking 'Hey, i'd love to see some bigger versions of those illustrations'...you are? Well, i knew you would, so here they are for you luverly people

Pam choose this doodle i'd done ages ago for the cover, which was very cool because as soon as i'd done it i felt like it was worthy of something like that. We just needed to crop the imagine a little to balance it and i think Pam's choice of colour for the cover was spot on too.

The illustrations were so enjoyable because a lot of the time it was a challenge to find out how much i could get away with not doing while still getting the idea across. Thankfully, almost all of the illustrations survived the reduction process too, i think there was maybe one design that got binned for being too muddy.

The 'Clint' illustration goes with one of my favourite pieces in the book. I drew it around A5 size and it didn't look like him to me at all, so i was a little worried as you can imagine...but the minute i reduced it down...bingo, and hello Mr-the-man-with-no-name...

The Jester illustration was drawn after Pam said she envisioned a kind of annoyingly-happy person (you know the type) for a certain piece... i like the slightly deranged look on his face as he hops from one foot to the other...poor guy.

So now that that's done and dusted...i'll have to find something else to do. I'm waiting for the all-clear from Scott parker to do another zappa-related cover, which is always fun, and in the meantime i have a couple of pen drawings on the go. One of which is of the all horrible perspective lines and architecture type i seem to enjoy punishing myself with...i'll maybe post it next time and you can tell me if it was worth it.

The dust blows forward & the dust blows back

2010-12-18T08:50:00.004Z

RIP Don

'The Hook- The Recordings Of FRANK ZAPPA Volume Four 1973-1974' cover

2010-11-18T11:18:00.009Z

Just received a preview from Scott of the new book cover, so i thought i'd post it in all its pre-release-rough-mock-up glory. Personally i think his name should be on the front, somewhere...but he is the boss so it's up to him (I'm sure it'll end up on there in the finalised cover though...well, i hope so anyway).

And just in case you want to gaze in closer amazement at the wonderful picture i did here it is:

As i said the last time this was so much fun to do, and to see it in actual book-type-form is going to be a blast. If any of you would like to purchase a copy, or just have any questions on the books, please make your way over to SPB Publishing where the man himself will be happy to help you out. He's very nice that way.

As for the cover i like it so much that i'm thinking, once my site is up and running properly, that i'll maybe offer colour prints of it. Something to ape the colours on those old 50s & 60s monster/horror movie posters, y'know? We'll see what happens...in fact, as little bit of extra fun, i have a spare A3 B&W test print, so i'll give it to the first person to email me with the correct film posters i've referenced in the cover (yes, that's right..referenced...it's an art-term for stolen from, donchaknow).

My 'Scottish view' for the charity Novokuznetsk exhibition was picked up yesterday and it's a nice feeling to have done that and have it safely away. If you fancy helping out please visit Elena at Highland-Russia Connection and say hello (any charity that fosters friendship between cultures has got to be worth your time).

Anyway, i must get back to the drawings for Pam Bradley's book, which is coming along nicely and is an enormous amount of fun to do too.

November time and living is busy...

2010-11-09T08:29:00.007Z

Howdy Folks, how's things? Good i hope.

This past month has indeed been very busy, and i'm very happy about that too! Things have fallen into place very nicely and i find myself in a position that, even in the summer, i could only have hoped for.
The main reason, aside from the work of course, is hooking up with Helene Lister over at Around . She's been a godsend as far as enabling me to get reasonably priced copies and prints of my work...and, working out of Strathpeffer (Nice huh?), she's right on the doorstep too.
So, apart from being incredibly exciting, this has enabled me to do what i've always wanted and develop my own site, with my own Prints and originals *gasp* for Sale!

I did hope to have some snazzy-looking pictures to show you but alas it's not to be, sorry... I will, however, describe them to you...and we can have fun imagining it all (remember that fun thing kids used to do?) ...and it'll be wonderful!

So, after finishing T.G.G. portrait a couple of weeks back, i started on a picture i hoped would be accepted by Elena Reid for the Highland-Russian connection charity exhibition in Novokuznetsk.
The picture is a B&W pen drawing of a local, derelict, church...and i wasn't sure if it was the sort of material she was looking for. Fortunately, it was and i'm delighted to be contributing... and for me - another potential procrastination event averted!
Next up was the cover for Scott Parker's new Book THE HOOK: The Recordings Of FRANK ZAPPA Volume Four 1973-1974 (limited color edition), which is available for pre-order now and was an incredibly insane amount of fun to do. (I mean, FZ & old monster movie posters...what's not to love?)
After that it was the private commission in which i had the pleasure of designing a house sign for a friend of mine. Interesting work indeed, and a nice opportunity to get all those old technical drawing skills out of the cupboard (that's right, no photoshop, i did it the old fashioned way...whataguy, huh?)

Next up for me is another exciting challenge- illustrating a book of poems/writings by Pam Bradley. And before you start, these aren't the normal Cute'n'Fluffy collected poems you're probably expecting...these things have teeth!
We're just getting started at the moment but hopefully it'll go for print and sale at Blurb.com around late December early January time, so i'll keep you posted.

What with all this stuff going on and a proper website looking more and more appealing (and let's face it- more professional), Crawlin Eye Comics has taken a back seat, and my plan for the material contained therein has had to be shelved for a while. I still hope to get a collection of THOuGHTS together though in truth i may just knock the whole thing on the head, as i will with this blog, there's far more interesting stuff out there anyway!

TGG Huge Pencil Portrait... finally gets finished

2010-10-19T09:12:00.013+01:00

Yes, that's right, you heard right...finished, last week in fact, and it only took erm a year or so. Anyway, the last time i did an update on this rather large and intimidating picture (draughtsmanship-wise, of course) was back in January, So, i'm extremely glad to get it done at last, and have it looking so good too...i mean, i'm not even embarrassed to look at it, or anything!

I like 'making-ofs' in general, but i find art ones incredibly interesting..it's also fun to see the glaring mistakes (that took you ages to figure out at the time) standing proud for all to see... so in line with that i thought i'd have a little walk through the life of this monster picture. You can join me if you want, although i understand if you're in a hurry and there are far more important things for you to do..

Ok, so first off was gathering reference photos of Glasgow buildings/architecture my gorgeous girlfriend wanted in the picture...most of them were cribbed from the Internet and printed out on a couple of sheets of A4 to work from:

Except this nice postcard of the University we got from the Hunterian Museum:

Next up was taking a source photo of said Gorgeous Girlfriend, which is more than my life is worth to reproduce here should she see it (i know, they're so touchy that way huh), so i'll chance this A4 print out upon which i decided to sketch a layout based on the reference photos:

I have to say that even though the layout was sketched in a couple of minutes i never strayed from it or considered doing it any other way because once i'd drawn the curve of the Bendy Bridge and the lines of Kelvinbridge i knew it'd look pretty darn cool..if i could pull it off...

Onto the actual drawing:

Looking at this photo makes me think, mainly how stupid i was to even start something this big (i mean, what was i thinking?), but once again that the layout was pretty solid from day one; i don't think i had to redraw any of the buildings, which is cool.

The second session (a session normally equals 6-8hrs):

Lots more basic shading,moving between a normal HB and 2B, and the addition of the City Chambers in George Square, One of the fun Bad-Draughtsmanship-things jumps out at me now in shape of the arm of the Statue of the Duke of Wellington outside the GOMA. That sucker is far to small....nice hat though.

And so onto the Xmas stint. Lots more heavy shading and i finally started in on the figure/features (after dancing around them for ages). Drawing someone is always intimidating...mainly because you're not only trying to capture the person correct physically but also capture their personality too. This photo mainly makes me wonder what on earth i was doing to the poor girl's face...it must've been the Bailey's or something...

Shortly after this i took a rubber/eraser and got rid of the face completely in an artistic tantrum that would've made Van Gogh proud.

The picture sat for a long time while we moved house and other stuff generally made it difficult for me to try and get it done before i finally finished it.

Lots of changes, albeit small telling ones, in this last photo. Once i had my Gorgeous Girlfriend's face looking..well, gorgeous.. it still didn't look quite right!? It drove me mad... i measured and checked negative spaces...checked and re-checked, then checked again... before finding out the shoulders and the left leg were just slightly too small therefore making the head seem huge. It constantly amazes me that altering one tiny aspect of something that often seems innocuous can make a picture so much better. Once i'd sorted that out it was all fun; just enjoying making darks darker and tweaking bits here and there etc...

So that's it. I'm very happy with the finished picture and happy that so much of it stayed true right through the whole process...not only in the draughtsmanship but from the start i wanted the buildings to flow into each other in a cubist approach, and although it's not immediately noticeable i think it works well. It's now framed and everything, just waiting for us to find a wall to hang it on.

Excuses, Excuses

2010-09-26T15:03:00.014+01:00

Another month goes by, huh...and what a busy month it's been... although not busy enough art-wise if you ask me. Apart from about 110 pages of proofreading for Scott's new FZ book (Vol 4-The Hook) we've finally finished painting the hall, and it looks just luvverly.

Speaking of Scott, it's a pleasure to announce that his excellent Woodstock Documented book is up for sale on Amazon.com and by all accounts it's selling nicely too. It'll be opening up for a wider distribution this week so it'll be cool to see what kind of exposure the book gets; let's face it though seeing one's picture on a cover on amazon let alone anywhere else is pretty nice i can tell you. So thanks again to Scott.

We managed to see The Illusionist (or L'Illusionniste if you want to sound really suave) at the Eden Court cinema a couple of weeks back and what a fabulous film it is, not just for the animation involved but for its capture of characters, it is just sublime and i really can't recommend the film highly enough so go and see it..or buy it...or even rent it...if people still do that kind of thing nowadays.

So, as you can see, not much happening in the way of artwork but i've been able to keep up with the daily doses needed for Crawlin' Eye Comics and do some other stuff too.

Anyway, onto what i have actually done lately, embarrassingly little though it is. Here's a couple of A5 sketches i did recently while i had five or ten mins to spare and felt in the mood as they say. I had wanted to try and get on with some colour stuff again, hence the first sketch, but it's just not the same without having the time to paint..

This one was a sketch done on a day out to Bonor Bridge...like the fool i am, instead of painting the bridge or view like an other normal artist-type-person would, i chose to sketch the interesting water line...which rapidly disappeared as the minutes went by due to the incoming tide...oops.This one was rendered with a biro pen (nice to sketch with, and kind of reminds me of old lithographs, y'know?) but i never got it done because the tea break was deemed 'over'. Curses!

While my proper art has been suffering i have, however, been enjoying noodling around with comics stuff. This Batman picture started off as a quick doodle, purely to practice Photoshop techniques on, but i think it ended up being quite cool. I'll have to see what i can do with it photoshop now...or whether i should just leave it?

Last time i talked about getting some different comics together for Crawlin' Eye Comics, well here's a little look at one of the rough pencils for a page i've been messing around with...it's a little light but you get the idea, don'tcha?

It's been good fun doing these comics layouts (nice to find out that adding the speech bubbles etc isn't going to be a big deal either) but now i'm starting to wonder whether i should go minimal with the line & shade or not...i'm leaning towards fine line with block shading done using photoshop but we'll see what happens. I may mess about with that Batman picture and hate it!

Aside from that i'm really trying to make an effort to paint, i also have a small commission to do for a friend (designing a house sign for his lovely new eco-house) as well as the two covers for Scott's books and TGG huge Pencil Portrait (i know, i forgot about it too!), and now that i have no distractions and no excuses... i need to be doing more!

Welcome Back.

2010-08-28T18:21:00.032+01:00

Well, after an enjoyable summer of wet weather, killer midge and lingering illness, we're finally getting back on track. The new house is coming along just fine and we're very settled... and i've found that, as is usual when things are all cool, i'm drawing again.

The Official Good News is that Scott's Woodstock Documented book is almost ready to go. He sent me the preview of the cover the other day and it looks fabulous. Well..don't take my word for it..here, have a look..

..cool huh? I reckon it'll be out in the next month so keep an eye on his site for that. Speaking of Mr Parker, he's in the process of writing Vol 4 of his Frank Zappa series as well as a reworking of Supplement one and he's been nice enough to ask me to do the covers for those too. It's always extremely enjoyable to work on, and be a part of, something you're really into (some would use the word 'obsessed'... but not me, Doctor) so i'm really looking forward to doing the covers and reading them too.

The other stuff that i've been noodling around on lately has also been very enjoyable. The Hector MacDonald (or Fighting Mac to his friends) Memorial is very near us and it's fascinated me for years... every time i look at it, it looks ripe for painting. So on the way to doing that i started on a little pen sketch just to get the feel (Don't worry, i know it's nonsense but it sounds so artistic, y'know?)

Over at Crawlin' Eye Comics i'm thinking of doing a Collection of THOuGHTS and, along the same lines as Drawings from before, during & after, another collection of pen drawings. Ostensibly for any persons with exceptionally good taste to buy, but really just because i want another neat lil' collection of my art to stick on my shelf.

Along with all those wondrous plans, which i'll have to now fulfill having opened my big mouth, i've been enjoying the fun over at zappateers; lots of good craic and, of course, lots of good music. Yesterday i started a doodle that ended up being something that Unicrayon says he can use for a cover, he often does wonderful things with photoshop so it's always a pleasure to see what he comes up with. This is the doodle and if something comes of it over in Unicrayon's digital wonderment lab i'll post it too.

So, that's about it on the art front... a disturbing lack of colour i admit, but i hope to be moving in that direction next, and just when you wondered how i was going to dig myself out of that hole with both feet in my mouth, i'm also planning on some different things for Crawlin' Eye Comics along the lines of a web comic. Not necessarily an ongoing one but after the extremely helpful feedback i received a while back from Dave over at Future Quake Press i feel i'm far too set in my ways (or just too darn stubborn) to tread that pathway into comics. It often happens after Hi-EX!- i get the old urge to try and break into comics even though i always get bored of the constraints and the sheer tediousness of trying to prove to someone i can draw when it's all subjective anyway. My instinct in these kind of situations is to do what i feel comfortable doing and everyone else can go hang (this, of course, is why i'm a starving artist). So, i think i'll stick to that working practice when it comes to doing comics too...which i guess means writing and drawing my own strips and just posting them for fun. Besides, the world has changed since i was that geeky 2000ad reading kid, and self-publishing is not the money-eating monster it once was. This approach also gives me the time to enjoy doing the pages and experiment with inking and colouring. I've acquired photoshop recently and i'll do a little research into speech bubbles etc, it's not as if there's a hurry, y'know? I have some ideas to go with and i've got a page or so of pencils to ink on a first story so i think Crawlin' Eye Comics will turn out to be a very eclectic mix of strips, which suits me just fine... i don't mind starving when the other option is to join the line with everyone else.

Moving house

2010-03-31T10:18:00.003+01:00

Well, at last, and unfortunately, i have decent excuse for not posting...... we're moving house and are in the midst of doing all that really fun stuff that one associates with moving house. So lots of painting being done but none of it being the kind i want to be doing... looks like it'll be a while until we're settled too so until then i think i'll be lucky if i get even small sketches done...moan, whinge, i want my dummy, etc..

In amongst all this rabid practicality we did manage to get to see Ross County thump Hibs in the quarter finals of the scottish cup (nice one guys) and also went to HI-EX!3 for the day on Sunday... so life isn't quite all plaster, paint and tile, and once we're in the new house i'll actually have a space to call my own, to work in, and everything... after three years of working wherever i can find space it will be especially gratifying to be able to have that....and art books on shelves instead on in boxes and...

Anyway, must dash..walls to paint dontchaknow, dahling..

John Hicklenton

2010-03-25T15:00:00.005Z

Just found out John Hicklenton passed away on the 19th...this guy was one of the good guys, and i'll never forget the impact his Nemesis The Warlock strips had on me as a kid. Do yourself a favour and go and check him out.

The son of More monochromatic fun!

2010-03-13T11:32:00.009Z

Well, it's been a busy couple of weeks but not on the art-front unfortunately. Although, that said i have been able to work, just like prunes, and keep things regular over at Crawlin' Eye Comics. Other cool stuff since the last post has been managing to pick up a Huge free-standing easel from a closing down sale, for a ridiculously low price... and also picking up some nice pastels and sketchbook to play with them in. If any of them turn out well, i'll see about posting them. Sticking with the monochromatic fun here's a couple of little ditties i did last week:

I liked that one so much i decide to rip myself off, or explore & elaborate on a theme if you prefer dahling, and do a more detailed one for a birthday card i was planning (i know, i know what a cheapskate huh)

Some other great news is word from Scott, over at SPB, that not only will the 'Collecting Woodstock' book be with us soon...but he's asked for another FZ cover! Well, as you can imagine, i'm delighted to be doing another one and i'm already enjoying that feeling of 'excitement plus extreme terror at not doing it justice'... anyway, i'll try and post any sketches/ideas as they happen..just for fun, y'know?
Apart from that i have precious little to show and although i do blame those pesky Zappateers for being so tempting, i have to find some way to focus..although i am getting better...i think..ahem
T.G.G Huge Pencil Portrait has been neglected of late so i must get on with that before i'm beaten to death with a pair of hair straighteners!

More monochromatic fun!

2010-02-24T10:51:00.014Z

Hello there, it has been a while, hasn't it! Not that i haven't been busy you understand, i have, but it's been all crawlin' eye comics and working witha good ol' pen stuff rather than the serious-pretend-artist type of stuff, y'know? It would be nice to get some balance or focus but there you go...it's all part of growing up and being British, dahling.
And so, enough of all that nonsense and onto something vaguely artistic with some doodles i did recently...

This one was done in the local Tesco's cafe, while i wasted time waiting for the bus home over a large black coffee.. the place was chaos..schoolkids being..well..schoolkids all over the place..i'm surprised it doesn't have teenage blood splatter all over it it...rather than being positively serene.

I really love doing this kind of stuff.. it's nice to just draw a couple of lines and then see what happens rather than have any predetermined plan of attack, just having fun seeing what works and what doesn't.

I quite like hearing what other people see in them especially as they are, in the great tradition of automatic drawing, just a load of old... doodles, really.

T.G.G huge pencil portrait is coming along nicely too, hopefully i'll have an update for next time, i'm also sitting staring...well, i should really say deliberately avoiding two canvases whilst i try and figure out what to paint on them. I have to say thanks again to Unicrayon over at Zappateers for turning the FZ triptych into some great covers, seeing the paintings put to such a use in such a worthy cause is especially gratifying.

A very cool thing recently was going to visit J.Mennie at her great lil' studio.. she was a very gracious host and i can't thank her enough for letting me bore her to tears with my dull questions and showing me lots of artwork.... and oh my, what artwork!

I'm looking forward to Hi-EX! this year,and also looking forward to Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland (oh, and speaking of wonderlands - please don't forget to head over to manic doodlings! to see wonderment of a different kind.)..anyway, enough from me... go check them all out!

FZ Triptych & Danny's Landscape

2010-01-31T13:58:00.017Z

Hello there, how's things with you? Good? Good! Me too... it's been a nice couple of weeks and i've managed to get the paintings that have been hanging over my head done.... and done in a way i'm very pleased with too, so i'm a happy guy (even though it's still as cold as a tart's heart and the dog almost clawed my face off last night when i was play-fighting with her... Seriously, i have a cool scar though, so y'know..).

Anyway, the FZ triptych was very enjoyable to paint, but for some reason i painted it in reverse order...not that it matters, it was just ...well, weird. Although i say 'enjoyable' the middle painting had me on the ropes for a while... for some reason i just couldn't get it the way i wanted, in fact it still isn't the way i want it but i figure if i don't stop now i'll ruin it ...or end up eating my paint.

So here they are individually and then as i'll be sticking them on the wall.

By the way, i was stunned by T.G.G. saying she wants them on the Wall.... 'the Wall' being a wall in our house ...i mean, this is high praise indeed! (either that or she's just buttering me up to get me to finish her portrait)

I really wasn't sure to begin with, maybe it was a case of looking at them too much, but now that i've moved onto other stuff i do think the triptych works well, and i'm pleased with how it turned out. Incidentally these paintings i'm doing lately are acrylic on canvas, very fast...and more importantly very forgiving!

Once i was able to sign off the FZ triptych i immediately moved onto the landscape, which is something i'd promised to do, far too long ago, for a family friend. As i said before xmas, this was a weird one for me. It's a long time since i've done any landscape painting, mainly because i'm not interested in photo-realistic landscapes (if i wanted something that looked like a photo, well...i'd take a photo) and haven't felt confident enough to paint one the way i want. The source photo was also a regular-sized postcard so that didn't exactly help. I did, however, have a lot of fun painting it. It's probably the first time i've painted a landscape resembling anything close to what i personally like in landscape painting... and the more it went on the more i could feel myself getting upset at the thought of having to give it to Danny!?

The camera flash has whited-out a lot of the colour but you get the idea. I still want to keep it ... and i reckon i'll do another, more traditional one, and see which Danny prefers.
Secretly, i'm hoping it wont be this one!

Back to it...kind of..

2010-01-12T18:31:00.011Z

Well, that particular holiday lasted a little longer than i expected... i mean, i didn't expect to get much done over the holidays, but really, that was just ridiculous; i spent most of my time digging cars out of snowdrifts...and i don't even drive!?
I did take T.G.G. Huge Pencil Portrait away with me, but between my lovely jaunts in the snow and only having three hours of decent daylight (hey, natural is best, don'cha know that already?) i never got that much done. It must be said that a cosy sofa, an open fire,T.G.G., and a never ending box of chocolates may also have had something to do with the lack of fecundity..and least in the art sense.
Whatever the reason, when i finally got back to it... i had precious little to show bar T.G.G. Huge Pencil Portrait..so here is a (once again very crappy but you get the idea kind of) photo of the state of play so far:

It's going well i think, and now that it's all blocked in i can go about having fun with it! However all that said, i really wanted to make a start on the FZ Triptych i talked about last time. Mainly because i wanted to get stuck into the idea, but also because i didn't want Unicrayon over at Zappateers to think i was yanking his chain about the idea! Thankfully i managed to get started on the first yesterday (which strangely enough is actually the third in the set...erm..don't ask me- i just noticed) and finished it today. I'm very proud of it too!

The canvas is roughly 30cm x 30cm and i'm really looking forward to seeing the finished triptych, hopefully Unicrayon will be able to use them for some nice covers too!

So that's about it... as usual i have far too much i want to do and too many things i have to do. Speaking of which, there's also more work to be done for Crawlin' Eye Comics, and if you like your blogs to be all pictures...then go and see! (Oh go on... you never know.. you may even smirk a little... maybe..)

Bah Humbug, indeed!

2009-12-20T15:09:00.010Z

Well, another couple of weeks by and the frustrating thing is that, although i have stuff to post sitting there in the sketchbook and on the board, i can't get near a scanner or a camera (hey, you may have all that stuff but i'm one of those poor artists the ones who have to use the library scanner or his sister's scanner and camera).. it's also snowed here like i haven't seen in years...i mean, snow? At this time of year? What in the world is that about?.. and that coupled with the annual madness hasn't helped any.

So this blog will be short and sweet...and unfortunately art-free....sorry. However, enough of the whining... The huge T.G.G. pencil portrait is going well, and although i'm still spending a lot of time in Zappaland i've also managed to get a lot of strips done for Crawlin' Eye Comics, which i guess may have to wait and it's a shame because i enjoy being able to post there regularly. I do have a USB stick of Heaven & Hell strips that will tide me over, so that's something i guess!

I've sorted out source photos for a triptych of FZ portraits that i hope to get to soon, primarily for myself but also for Unicrayon's CD covers over at Zappateers. I also have a landscape commission to do for a friend, which is an interesting prospect considering i hardly ever do landscapes...urban landscapes yeah baby, but this country boy stopped doing all that 'here's a tree and a hill, with a stream or a waterfall just over there and a nice imaginary sky' stuff years ago...so i'm looking forward to giving it a shot.

As you can see i'm stuck in the same boat as everyone else; i have lots of stuff i want to do but it just grinds to a halt at this time of year. Part of me is glad of the break and looking forward to it but i have another part who just wants to put on loud music and do something.

Anyway,soon it'll be 2010 and i can get back to procrastination!
Take care of yourselves and have a Happy Xmas and New Year!

News Smews

2009-12-06T16:09:00.007Z

Well, there's not really that much to talk about on the art front considering i've just spend the last couple of weeks on holiday in Zappaland! And what a lovely place it is too.

You can blame the Zappateers for that, and Wildfisherman in particular for giving me more shows than i know what to do with... ohhhhh baby (thank you, thank you). So as you can see this is the reason i haven't been drawing or painting! Anyway, in the midst of all that Fetishism i did manage to get some more basics done to T.G.G. huge pencil portrait that i talked about last time:

Seems to be going along fine and i'm really enjoying it too, once i drag myself away from those damn...fine, amazing, intriguing, enticing, wonderful [ahem] FZ shows. Once again it's a pretty awful picture but you get the idea, Don'tcha?

Speaking of FZ shows, Unicrayon (he of the Zappateers) has once again been using his magic to convert another boring FZ pen sketch of mine into three fabulous covers for the 9th Nov '74 Boston shows. He had the nice idea of having the same cover for each of the day's shows but with a different colour wash, again he really made my day with them and they do look great. So many thanks to him!

..and that's about it, apart from doing Crawlin' Eye Comics stuff of course (which is always good fun). There has been murmurings on Mr Parker's Woodstock book, which i talked about right at the end of the first post i did; hopefully it'll be out soon but i think some not to be ignored additional info turned up so it put the book back a little. I did some proof-reading for it (I know! What a guy, huh?) and i really enjoyed what i read, so i think it's going to be a nice wee book. Can't wait.

Painting, FZ & TGG

2009-11-22T14:57:00.004Z

So here we are.. another week, another sausage... but this week's been good to me! Normally i may do one or two things that make me happy ('things' y'know? oh dahling, it's a technical term for artwork, dontchaknow) ...however the things that have happened this week have made me deliriously happy within my little self (which is what it's all about huh!)
The first thing was getting this painting done...

..after two years of me trying avoid its blocked out gaze. I think i felt intimidated by the thought of some parts but it went along fine and i'm happy as fu..well, i'm very happy with it, let's just say that.
The next thing i got deliriously happy over (stupidly so, in fact) was that Unicrayon, an administrator over at the Zappateers site, converted one of the FZ drawings i talked about here into a CD cover for one of FZ's '74 shows.
Oh, i know... anyone can make them up and it's not like it's official or anything but i still think it's fantastic&brilliant&amazing and.. i'm very grateful to Mr Unicrayon for doing it!
(It's the perfect excuse to draw or paint more FZ pictures... hopefully i can do some more!)

And so, at last on to The Gorgeous Girlfriend huge pencil drawing... another good one was finally getting a photo of the pic as it is after the first session. I'm really doing this for me (so you can ignore this bit if you want) because i like to see those 'works in progress' thingys...and this is my own low-rent version! So here it is:

T.G.G. picture has come about because i (somewhat rashly i admit) said to her that i wanted a..[ahem] challenge...so you get what you ask for i guess. T.G.G. proceeded to commission this huge pencil picture with a collage of Glasgow in the background....

..i may be some time.

Stuff & Nonsense

2009-11-17T13:25:00.006Z

For some reason this past week feels like it's been a bit of a write-off (there seems to be ill offspring underfoot everywhere at the moment) but when i look at the amount of stuff i've done i could hardly justify calling it that.

Admittedly, the majority of the stuff has been for Crawlin' Eye Comics because every time i sit down to do something long & serious i end up doing something quick & stupid (one could make a suitably fatuous remark about one's sex life... but one must refrain from doing so, Dahling)

The weird thing about doing the Crawlin' Eye strips is that i have this horrible feeling all the time that, after years and years of reading comics & cartoons, i've absorbed the ideas osmosis-like and i'm just redrawing them all! Hmmm..

So, in amongst all those Crawlin' Eye strips i did a couple of pen drawings

I also did a couple of passable portraits, and i'm working again on a painting which i originally started two years ago (talk about long & serious) but has sat in its 'blocked out' phase for all that time - hopefully i'll get that done this week and get it posted, and of course, the ubiquitous The Gorgeous Girlfriend Huge Pencil Drawing, which i hope to post the first stage of soon...or at least before i complete the last stage...

Music of the week has been various shows from FZ's 75/76 tours; Mike Keneally (on RadioKeneally...still waiting for Scambot1) and Bryan Beller (with MK but i got his debut Cd 'View' and it's excellent- get a copy today!)

Crawlin' Eye Comics

2009-11-08T22:40:00.006Z

Well, i managed to get my act together and post the first strips over at Crawlin' Eye Comics. It's cool to see them up there and, although there are many better strips to be found out there, i like Lil' Monkey Boy just fine. I'm looking forward seeing what else will fall out of my head and make a mess on the page.

Anyway....so apart from doing the first seven or so Monkey Boy strips, in the last week i've also done a couple more pen drawings, or sketches, or doodles or whatever you prefer to call them:

('Clockwork Spider Eats Stars' was a line that just appeared in my head one day so with a title like that how could i not draw it... and i'm glad i did too, i like it very much.)

I'm hoping to get back to the huge pencil sketch of The Gorgeous Girlfriend this coming week too (hey, i can hope can't i?).

Oh, and i also found out, via those nice guys at Moosemart, that Mike Keneally's new cd has been shipped and is on the way! Excellent creative sounds to be creative to!

Happy Halloween everybody...

2009-10-31T21:29:00.016Z

Had a great week for sketches, seem to be hitting a rich vein....i like to think it's the music, because i always work better with FZ's music (you too? Weird huh!)....hmm, anyway, i've been getting an incredible amount of Zappa music through the Zappateers vines this last week or so, and it's been..erm..well... incredible!

However, i digress...i thought i'd post a couple of the newer sketches ..

(I'm pleased with the way the fish pictures came out , i've had the idea in my head for ages, which is not a safe place for them to be, so it's a relief to have them down on paper).

....and a couple of older paintings that i love too.
I love them, naturally because they're of my girlfriend (aww i know, sweet innit), but also because they were the first oils to come out looking like i wanted (and not like some kind of horrible B-movie horror experiment...or *gasp* a Turner prize nominee Arrrrrrgh, scream, cry etc etc).

So, hopefully if i keep going at this rate i'll have enough sketches for another lil' low-rent book, for people to not buy (i'm kidding..really.. i am, honestly, i know you guys are as skint as me). I never did get a decent photo of the BIG picture i'm doing (that i talked about last time)...but i will for next time...maybe

erm..Catch up time

2009-10-22T12:07:00.016+01:00

Some cool things have been happening, with regards to my artwork [ahem], in the last year.

The first (and for me without doubt the best) thing was getting the opportunity to do the cover for Scott Parker's third Volume of The Recordings of Frank Zappa-Blessed Relief:

I had sent him these others..

...and although i love the way they all came out i think he chose the best one.

I have to say that getting the chance to do this cover was pretty much a dream come true for this pathetically obsessive Frank Zappa freak, and i shall be eternally grateful to Scott...i can die happy now.

---

So if that wasn't enough i found out, through a long and convoluted series of events, about a site called Blurb.com which gives us poor folks the opportunity to create books of artwork or photos. Well, i know, i know..forgive me for being slow, but this was indeed news to me. So i rushed in there to make my own little low-rent book!

This was a particularly nice thing to finally excise from the realms of procrastination; since my first year in college i'd kept a little sketchbook that i'd just fill with whatever doodles came into my head at the time, and i often talked about how i wanted to make a little booklet up of them.

The fact that i was drawing in pen meant no rubbing-out & starting again, so it helped me go for it and just draw any old rubbish, whether it was a set of curtains or a guy with flames instead of hair - often pictures formed out of mistakes or just random lines. It's good fun and i recommend it to pretend-artists everywhere.

I'm glad i found out about that site because now i can just keep making up little 40 page booklets of those sketchbooks, primarily just for me (hey, you can buy one if you really want to) because it's much better to have a crummy Proper Book to flick through rather than a crummy sketchbook. All professional-like, y'know?
--

About the same time as getting the book together i got a commission from my best mate, who wanted a picture for his office wall...the 'office' being a Taxi office...which meant the picture being screwed to the wall just in case a drunk person saw 'picture' and thought 'weapon'. It turned out to be a really good job, albeit a huge one (A3+)!?

And all in pencil too....hmm

Crap photo i know, but you get the idea. I really enjoyed doing this picture though, mainly because he had such a clear view of what he wanted (right down tiniest detail), so it was great to be able to reproduce on paper what he had in his head.

I did suggest it may send the wrong message to customers...but he just laughed at me...

---

So the latest thing i've done really is the cover (hopefully...he may change his mind!?) of Scott's new book. Hopefully (again) it'll be out next month and it's on the existing recordings of woodstock '69. This was another really enjoyable job to do; Scott wanted a drawing of the Infamous Abbie Hoffman incident, which is great on one hand (because there's no extant footage or photos of the incident) but a nightmare on the other (because there's no extant footage or photos of the incident)... so, with no visual source material of the moment itself, i couldn't think of a decent way to do it until the following image jumped into my head:

The cartoon idea seemed to hit the spot with Scott too so after he gave me the go ahead i ...well...i went right ahead, and was chuffed with the end product:

Actually, as i was doing the cartoon cover i couldn't get another image out of my head. So when i'd finished with the one above i decided to do the other idea and give Scott another option:

I'm very proud of both pictures, and again i have to say a big thank you to Scott for giving me the opportunity (unless of course he doesn't use them then it's a case of 'hey, eat chain!').

---

Currently i'm working on another huge pencil drawing, this time of my girlfriend for my girlfriend, and i'll get a photo of that online as soon as i can. I like seeing works in progress so i'm going to try and do that for the craic.