What's deceased and what's alive...

Everything you see here has come straight from my mind. The inaccuracies, the bad perspective, the anguish...yes, I claim them all! I think we've all felt like this; the thing we want more than anything, forever outside of our reach. I hope I've captured something of that feeling and also the physical sense of animate vs inanimate; here but not really; vital parts missing...I park my dark in these crosshatched shadows and laugh a lot in real life as a result. It keeps me on the straight and narrow (most of the time). Finding somewhere to keep your melancholy doesn't mean you have to hide it or hide from it. Throw it out there...it works. 

Hope you're happy too...

One from the archives...Since I'm drawing either very slowly or not at all at the moment I thought I'd share this little ballpoint drawing from a few years back. It was for a (now disbanded) local band that my brother drummed for called J.A.R.S (hence the jar) to promote an EP they made called (you guessed it) My Friend Hope. They were quite specific about what they wanted but luckily at the time I had a bit of a thing for drawing glass jars and bottles. I toyed with the idea of putting something in the jar, I can't remember now what sort of things passed through my thought clouds but in the end it seemed that the title suggested emptiness waiting to be filled so it was left as it was. The typography is a bit dodgy and the perspective isn't right but the lads were quite happy with it...it's all subjective isn't it? 

From my window to yours...

I can't say much about this really, it is what it is. A little festive ballpoint illustration to bring some joy (no irony in the voice or anything...) I'm not going to say I like it because I'm not so sure...it's colour again. In paradox to the real world version of me, the planet inside my head where the drawings live is a monochrome place. When I get the inks or the coloured biro's out, it's never quite the same. I think they lose something of the original idea and then it's too late. 

If you're interested, here it is before I coloured it (I feel much better now).

Anyway, I'd like to wish anyone who actually reads this stream of consciousness a very happy festive season. If Christmas isn't your bag, I hope you're able enjoy some peace anyway. A lot is going on in the world, good and bad. Everyone is trying to get somewhere and everyone has lost something precious. Think on. Merry Christmas. 

Like drinking poison, like eating glass...

A bit ago I went through a phase of drawing glass jars and bottles. No, I'm not strange, weird, off, nor crazy, my reality is just different from yours (thanks Lewis Carroll). This one was a request for an Alice in Wonderland inspired drawing and because that's another done to death theme, I really wanted to put my own stamp on it. So it got the Holly treatment and became Alice's "Drink Me" bottle, in biro as standard. If I was to go back and add to this I'd make the bottle look more like it had liquid in it but at the time, in my head, it was more of a whirlwind thing going on. I think I must have got my wires crossed between Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Also, because I didn't have a great deal of time, I had to keep it quite small so drawing the tiny objects and animals inside was pretty delicate work. For a bull in a china shop, that isn't easy. For me, it's even worse.