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Life Drawing
Living as an artist like myself can sometimes be strange. One week you can be skipping down the road sporting a stupid grin, tipping your hat to the old ladies walking their dogs and the next you can be dragging yourself from bed only to collapse in a rainy field of mud and crisp packets because someone who you don't know has sent you a rejection letter saying they don't want to use your work.
"Why?" is the question you ask yourself. The obvious answer being that you are not good enough. The obvious thing to do is to set out and discover an, until now, dormant skill with the likes of some kind of computer program or creative technique. So here you go again - gathering steam and clutching at the idea that you might have something to offer until one day you get another email or whatever telling you your work STILL isn't "suitable at this time".
I am on an art downer at the moment. I thought "RIGHT, I've got to get out of the house and do SOMETHING which I have never done before to get me drawing again". So I went out and did something I'd done before but not for a long time - life drawing. I have to admit, I was quite excited! "Ooh, its so raw man! It'll be like gettin' back to the real roots of drawing again. Who needs computers anyway!"
Yeh well I was bored about fifty minutes into the two hour session. As soon as the model walked in I thought "Ah dammit! A bloke!" which is what I always used to think when a male model walked in. They're pretty boring to draw even when they have age-induced stalactites of flesh draped over their skeletons. Men are far too straight. This model was in better shape than I am and made from fleshy polygons. I thought "Well, I've paid my six quid so I'd better draw him" and got to work.
After the first hour of several poses (and lacklustre drawings) the class referee said this would be the final pose, lasting sixty minutes (one hour). The male in question turned his back to me and positioned his rear end on a horizontal plane with my eyeballs. I could show you the drawing that resulted but it probably isn't worth it because its so boring and half arsed. Imagine 2 long vertical lines with a scrubbily crucifix positioned between them at the bottom half - that's how exciting men are to draw.
So what are we to do in a situation like this? Fifty-eight minutes left to study a bare-backed man and his hairy arse? I frisbee'd my sheet of lines onto the floor and resigned myself to studying the architecture of the place for the remainder of the class. It was pretty nice and I suggest checking out the Pyramid centre in Warrington at some point. So I was looking at some bricks on the wall and a man's hand shoved itself in front of my face with a poised pencil at an angle. I looked up him and noticed he was trying really hard to get his drawing absolutely beautiful. The concentration on his face was intense and in his world, there was nothing other than the model, him, his A2 paper and 4B pencil. "I wish I could have that kind of concentration with something so plain", I thought. I then noticed that I seemed to be the only one in the room who didn't have this level of concentration. Even the Chinese girl here for her first lesson in life drawing was focused on the man. I found this strange as I was the one with an art degree at 24 years old and with everything to live for and yet all these everyday folk of all ages were far more engaged than I was.
They were fascinating to watch. I grabbed my graphite stick and got to work and produced probably some of the best work I've done in ages. I didn't bother with the naked man in the room but instead with the real life models sat around me. I love when I can catch the Brittish public acting as if nobody else is there. Its a rare beast to capture.
The moral of the story is something to do with the fact that it isn't easy for me (and I reckon other people) to do art but once you find it, you really get it. That is, until your next crushing blow is dealt from a stranger in a pair of smart-casual half-sneaker suede shoes and you're back to the muddy crisp dump. See you there in a week.
Legion of Doom
Before you ask - NO! I don’t like wrestling. I can’t stand it. I have no idea why anyone would like it. I do, however, like the way that I coloured this old black-foam-on-cardboard picture of the LEGION OF DOOM (whoever they are) that my auntie gave me. You get a real energy to the piece because of how I’ve coloured it.
I literally just found this and scanned it in. Finding this got me thinking about something I think about quite a lot. Are we born with talent or do we learn how to draw / paint / write / play an instrument? I think I must’ve been about 4-5 years old when I did this picture and I reckon there was a definite knowledge of which colours worked well. Check out the way it was coloured and even the use of blue: pale and patchy at the bottom fading up to more solid blue (not dissimilar to my recent work found in the illustration section). I think this colouring job is better than most adults could do now (yes, including illustrators and designers). I’m pretty sure I was born with it anyway.
I also found evidence on the back of this great piece which hints at my recently diagnosed dyslexia. I seem to have written:
“I bont want to rebe. Rite? NO! I will not bo it!”
I had the old problem of getting “b” and “d” confused. I was a quiet chilb though and must’ve useb pens and pencils to communicate rather than talking. Its funny how much I hateb the written worb dut useb them to convey it.
So, are we born with talent or not? If old drawings of mine are anything to go by, I think so. Of course you can learn to draw, lay stuff out or whatever. But somehow, I reckon I can see through this kind of artwork... at the risk of sounding like an art snob - it just lacks soul! By now I’ve learned to spell and write (just about) but it wasn’t inherent or natural to me. Drawing was! We can all learn to have a “talent” but to be born with it is a great thing and I’m well proud of it.
Black Squirrel Attacks
When I first got to New York City, I was living in the upper west side / Harlem area right by central park. I took a walk to the park to see what all the fuss was about. I can confirm that it is the best park I’ve ever been to. At this time, I truly thought I belonged to this city. This is where I wanted to live and die. What an injustice that me, a talented English gentlemen of grace and beauty, could get booted out of the city I was born to be in. I saw a woman walking her small white poodle. “Lucky bitch” I thought about the dog. “Doesn’t even know how lucky it is to be living in this city, walking through central park.”
I continued walking along, snapping photographs and saw a black flash out of the corner of my eye. It was this BLACK squirrel. It came unto me and sat on a fence. “Woah!” I said to it. “What the Hell are you!?” I took a good amount of photos of the beast before it could get away. This thing was proper black — jet black!
This was none other than a new species of squirrel! Even better, it was me that discovered it in central park!! I knew I’d have to get on the phone to the government or whoever to make sure they knew what was going on with this thing in New York. I didn’t know how these things had come into existence though... Red squirrels breeding with Grey ones? That might make sense because the red from the red squirrels might hit the grey and create a darker colour, like a really dark red which looks pretty much black. You get people with really really dark ginger hair that they can almost get away with having black hair. I dunno though. This thing really had totally black hair.
So the only explanation is that the squirrels must’ve bred with rats. There’s loads of rats in New York and they’re pretty much the same kind of animal anyway. Vermin. This is pretty alarming as I’m sure you’ll agree! As we all know, rats are rapidly evolving to not be affected by the plug-in sonic noise emitters that were all the rage 6 months ago. This must have something to do with their genetics changing so they can now breed with the common squirrel.
I was pretty concerned. I know seeing a single rat-squirrel might not seem like a big deal but it really is. This new creature now has the potential, I thought, to breed with another squirrel or rat and creating scores of these monstrosities of nature. So I made haste as the creature ran up a big tree. Not five minutes later did I see another one! A totally black squirrel... My God! Its already happening! Then I saw another, then another - they’d already started to multiply. Only a matter of time before they evolved to a point where humans couldn’t control them. Huge rat-squirrels would be scaling the empire state building, munching on New York’s first-born children and leaving droppings the size of tanks all over the city.
I thought I’d better tell someone but then just thought “Never mind. I’m leaving the country anyway. Let ‘em fry for not letting me stay.”
Christmas Complainers
This blog is gonna take a serious tone with this one I’m afraid. Not too many of you spend Christmas day away from your family. It is a weird feeling for me because in 23 years I have now spent 23 Christmas’s with the parents instead of 24. I suppose for a lot of people that have to spend it away from their families, or those that don’t have families, its a lonely time.
I’m an old fashioned Christmas fan. I still like the idea that it is a good time where people take care of one another. I like the music, snow and opening presents on Christmas morning with a can of lager. It is great! I understand why SOME people don’t like it but can’t get my head around why others insist on telling everyone how much they hate it all. Why do spoilt rich-kids keep having to let me know every five minutes that they “hate” Christmas and everything it stands for? Are they just too spoilt? Angry? Maybe they think I’ll be impressed by them trying so hard. Who cares!!
It annoys me that something which basically does stand for something GOOD can be mis-interpreted as standing for something BAD because of human intervention like religious organisations, merchandising or something as stupid as not liking the cold. It is the same with the Bible or any religious book. The book itself is not the cause of the world’sproblems that it is often credited with - it’s people! The same people that kinda miss the point that BECAUSE it is Christmas, we should all be pulling our socks up and MAKING it what it should be! We should be aiming for that perfect feeling of warmth and good-will to all men that we hear so much about. We won’t get there by complaining about stuff and doing nothing.
I got thinking about all this because I was almost bedless for the last stint of my New York escapades and facing having to sleep on a friends wooden floor. I was really touched though when a girl I met only once and liked very much offered me an extremely comfortable bed (from which I write this) while she was away. I couldn’t believe it! The kindness that this girl has, whilst it kinda seems like something small, is actually a big deal to me!
Times like this give me faith in you folks out there. I’ve decided I need to be more trusting of people and so should you! If you see a guy who’s cold on the street, don’t just do nothing. If someone is desperate, give them the benifit of the doubt. If a stranger is lonely at Christmas, give them a break! I reckon trusting someone else to be a good human being means we can trust ourself to be the same.
Riding dinosaurs avec sub-machine guns
Here’s a fantasy of mine to kick this blog off. I think it’d be really fun to have a half-bred dinosaur as a pet. My own choice would of course be a mix of a Tyrannosaurus Rex and a Velociraptor. I think they’d make great pets. Better than dogs.
They’re pretty big though so you’d have to watch out - about in the middle of the two dinos so they can grow upto 2 metres tall! Maybe twice the height of a horse. You need quite a lot of room to keep one of these. Remember at this time of year especially, these beasts are not just for Christmas but for life!
I wouldn’t be surprised if there end up being kennels for the creatures! It is bound to happen. No doubt about that. We’re really careless when it comes to stuff like this. I remember when I was a kid in Warrington UK, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were all the rage and so parents bought their kids millions of terrapins for Christmas. Little did we know they would grow from 5cm to about 8 feet in length and when they bite they never let go. So, everyone took them down to the local park or chucked them down the toilet (just like in the film!) and they started to terrorize people who were going for a walk by the pond. Small children were eaten and the council had to pay the military to “take care” of the giant terrapin infestation. Let this be a lesson to us all! Just remember the terrapins and what havok they caused when they became unwanted presents. A dinosaur may look cute when you see it in the pet shop but they tend to grow bigger so make sure you can afford it and have the time to take care of it. No use just locking it up in an empty house all day while you’re working in the call centre.
Having said this, I can’t deny that it would be BLOODY AMAZING if the Velociraptor-Rex’s were to run loose in the city. They’re really clever y’see so it would be more interesting to see what would happen rather than the usual stupid T-Rex on the rampage.
My drawing above shows me riding on the back of one of these magnificent creatures shooting dual uzi machine guns in the air.
I'm gonna blog
Yeah that’s right! I’ve decided to start a bloggage page. I now think that I’m obviously THAT interesting that what I have to say must have some kind of meaning... maybe not.
Anyway, I’m going to put up some illys, have a few thoughts behind them. Maybe upload some music and videos at some point? Who knows where it will all go but remember this, I’ll try to be entertaining, fun and maybe even thought provoking. It’ll capture a certain thought or feeling I have at the time of writing and be as spontaneous as I can.
I don’t have a rule for what this’ll end up as but I hope you enjoy this very much.
