An Artistic Response

I attended a march protesting against austerity in Dublin on Saturday the 9^th and the night before me and my partner decided that we would make our own placards to carry with us. We researched imagery and dived into fuller information concerning the protests both in Ireland and abroad and these were the two images that we came up with.

The first is what I chose to compose. A jaded looking face with his mouth taped over representing for me the challenge of finding your own voice in these large issues and how I can both censor my voice through disowning my power and feel censored by larger institutions attempting to take away my power.

The second image was chosen by my partner Sadhbh. It is of a smiling face, a person who can choose how to be, how to feel. It is composed to represent that choice and that, in the face of overwhelming problems, there is a well inside of us that responds to positive action and not to the type of action that the austerity measures represent.

I was pleased with how they turned out and a little self conscious to be out marching on the streets holding up my own work as a statement. They received a good bit of attention and I was even asked to speak to a documentary crew, which was both fun and scary. I managed it as best I could though and didn't feel completely ridiculous afterwards and apparently I have a great voice for recording. New string to add to my bow, I guess.

My friend who dresses up as a bat

I was nine years old when I first met Batman.

We've been friends ever since.

My own little worlds.

Yesterdays post has put me in a reminiscing mood. In writing a little about Turtles and Transformers, I remember the cartoons that hooked me as a kid.

Not just the above mentioned but also He-Man (By the power of Grayskull!), Mask (Crusaders, working all the time!), Defenders of the Earth (Defenders!), Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors (I still have no idea what it was about), Voltron (a first love), (Thunder-Thunder-Thunder) ThunderCats, and can I remember it all without googling; Eyes of the Hawk, Ears of the Wolf, Strength of the Bear, Speed of the Puma…BraveStarr.

I still have my Tex Hex action figure, which reminds me of all the toys I had and still have. Then my mind starts to overflow in a tidal wave of memories like pitting He-Man against a troop of GI-Joes (GO JOE!) in an oversized Action Man tank and…….wait. What am I doing? Where am I? This isn’t 1987?

I was talking about the cartoons, yes, not the toys. I’ll have to come back to them at a later date, definitely. I’m putting my Boglin down now.

For me cartoons weren’t just a reason to get up early on Saturday mornings or most other mornings for that matter. They were also a window into a world of imagination and creativity. In each of these half hour episodes were contained a fully realised world, some more fully realised than others admittedly, but worlds that had been created and maintained as separate, satellites to the real world. Satellite worlds in which unnumbered stories could be told about heroes and villains, robots and aliens, people and places. Limited only, I believed at the time, by the breadth of your imagination. But most of all these worlds were not made by an alien or super-being; they were made by people, just like me. Well adults, and even though I could believe at the time that some of these adults were aliens, I did know that one day, in a galaxy, far, far away, I would be an adult too. I’ve been striving to create my own world ever since.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-wKXHbjeVo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umJMrxuYzDY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9Lalfph7I0

Robotic Crotch Lasers

I have been ‘good’ at drawing from an early age, for as long as I can remember really. What this meant, for me, was that I could put down on paper a cartoon robot that closely resembled the one living in my brain, suggestive crotch laser and all (yes I drew a robot that had what I intended to be a short tail laser but, not quite having a handle on the rules of perspective at the age of nine, said laser looked like mechanical genitalia and yes it did appear in a school yearbook, I blame the editor).

I could copy my favourite Transformers (Optimus Prime, Dinobots, and Ravage) though I did prefer to create my own characters. I remember there was a kid in my class in primary school who could draw really cool Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle stuff and I was so jealous because I’d try to draw them but I’d get distracted and draw something else that popped into my head. Yes I know it’s probably better that I drew my own creations but, let me tell you, he was the popular artist guy for at least a year solid and sometimes you just want to draw really cool Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Raphael, mostly). Bitter? Me? No.

Most importantly though, for me, was that I could look at something; an apple, a leaf, a model aeroplane; and I could draw an accurate representation of it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I was a child prodigy capable of drawing photorealistic pencil studies of anything my gaze surveyed. No, thanks to the lottery of genetics, I found I had a natural talent for drawing from life. I have rested on the laurels of this talent at various times during my artistic progression but I have found that I’m happier and prouder of myself when I push myself to grow this seed that is my talent and challenge and strengthen it with hard work.

What follows is a reconstruction and does not necessarily represent the actual crotch laser drawing. Can you spot it?

The Next Step

It’s been a challenge to start posting regularly again, there are the stresses and strains and wants and needs of life calling and pulling in different directions. But there’s also a hesitancy in me, that has nothing to do with outside influences, which is all my own.

I feel it’s in part down to the break I took from working. I’ve spent the last year focusing on looking after myself and it can be an isolating experience at times as there is a self-involvement that needs to take place in order to admit that; ‘Hey, I’m sick, I need to go easy on myself a bit!’

As well though, and this is coming up for me now because I’m getting back to work and I’m wondering; am I ready to commit to working for other people now? Will I wait another week or do I just send out the emails today? But on top of all these questions is the knowledge that I don’t want to work in the same way I was working before my break. This doesn’t apply to stylistically or creatively really. For me they grow and change organically. I’m talking more about attitude, more about how I approach the doing, the strategising. I was ‘working’ a lot and not getting a lot of work done. Early mornings, late nights and a lot of creative blocks to the point where I think my drawings look pained in themselves, constipated characters.

So here I am again, about to set out to work for the company in England, the agent who wants that finished book, the cool independent project that speaks to my soul, and the little voice in my head that says 5 more minutes, 5 more minutes. And I look at these sketches and doodles and I try to remember to treasure the freedom, the invention, and the brave individual expression that they can represent.

A Doodle Retrospective Part Three

Back to my doodle scraps today. I think of them as messy musings on texture, action and character, I think of them as a lot of different things it seems. Projections of my brain onto a page. The first image has some more spiky haired poses with some facial hair scribbles and a hairy troll like creature with a staff. I remember I was reading the First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant at the time and this was inspired by the hairy troll-like creatures in it whose name I can’t remember right now.

Then we have ‘The Helmet’, I’m not sure where he came from or to which recess of my brain he has gone to since but I do remember wondering if his wearing a fancy helmet was enough to warrant a superhero career or just gave him the power to access any construction site in the world. I’m not sure if the guy on the right was meant to be his mild-mannered alter-ego, let’s say yes.

I really like the lines of action through the figure on the left. I love the shape of the face mask too. He makes me think of a vicious ballet dancer and reminds me of Vega from Street Fighter II, probably my favourite character from the game to look at but not my favourite to play with. I’d have to argue that out with myself and if I got started this post would probably go on forever so I’ll leave it for another time (Ryu, yeah maybe, but what about Sagat, Balrog had his pugilist charms and Dhalsim was fun, stop, stop).

Lots of body poses on these pages, they remind me of the importance of the body in communicating emotion and mood. The stance of a character, be it the tilt of a head or even the flick of a finger, all help to express what is happening in a characters paper and ink mind.

Brown Paper Bag Drawing No.8

The return of the Brown Paper Bag Drawing! All this posting of my doodles has inspired me to take up the brown paper canvas again. They originally started because the shop I used to work in had brown paper bags, which made an ideal canvas on the bus home when I had forgotten a notebook.

This one I call Captain Coalface (alliteration is a wonderful thing). The idea for him came to me last night as I was dumping the ash from our fireplace. The words ‘coal dust’ came in to mind for no apparent reason and I was struck by the thought of how enigmatic they sound. Now it may have been the dust from the ash blocking the oxygen from my brain but just ponder it for a moment. Coal Dust. It conjures a mysterious, dark, character to my mind. Which Captain Coalface is not. And the reason is because my thoughts then turned to the wonderful comic Dial H written by China Mieville. 

If you haven’t read it, it contains a telephone-like device which the protagonists dial to become a superhero. The heroes they can become are totally random with names like; Tree Knight, Cuttlefist, The Planktonian and Daffodil Host (who entrances his enemies in a poetic reverie and has a bunch of daffodils for a head). So my thoughts turned to the slightly odd, slightly campy Captain Coalface with his Pick of Justice to mine out the truth and Coal Grenades to blast the rockface of criminality.

A Doodle Retrospective Part Two

Posting these scribblings for myself helps me to look at them in a new way. I generally leave them living on a shelf somewhere and while searching for something completely unrelated, I can’t resist pulling them out for a look and end up forgetting what I was doing.

First comes nostalgia as they take me back to the where and the when they were set down. Then inspiration and curiosity arrive as I wonder if I could expand on some of the ideas.

And then amusement hits me in the belly as I question what I was thinking when I was drawing some of the stranger doodles and if I’ll have to hand back my artistic license.

I do hesitate to post them though because sometimes I don’t view them as ‘good’ art or display worthy or ‘look at the amazing things I can do with a pencil/pen/crayon/stick of blackened wood’ art. In short art that displays my best side. But then I remember a book I read, ‘Letters to a Young Artist’ by Julia Cameron, an imagined dialogue between an old writer and a young artist. One of the letters is about the importance of making ‘Bad’ art or just art for its own sake, and I am able to get over myself.

So, what do I learn from these scratchings, well:

-I still prefer black biro though red has made a showing (controversial).

-Pointy hair was in.

-As was scowling.

-My girlfriend likes to annotate some of my drawings for humorous effect. 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Letters-To-A-Young-Artist/dp/1844135594/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1355419512&sr=8-1

A Doodle Retrospective Part One

One of the benefits of being an artist is that if you have a pen or marking device of some sort and some paper or similar, you can usually avoid mind numbing boredom. There is a disadvantage though, which I mention now to get it out of the way, in that you could never stop working and eventually your brain will take on the consistency of blended meatballs, swimming in Bolognese sauce. But I could go on and stimulate appetite endlessly.

Why do I write this? Well, because the images I’m posting today are doodles, I’ll resist saying oodles of and instead say shedloads of doodles. I have no recent work I can show so I thought I’d go back to my distant past and admit to my dirty little secret, I’m a scribbler.

I like to scribble. These images come from a notebook into which my loving partner taped any stray scraps of receipts, bags or notepads which I had marked with my scrawl. They would usually be found stuffed in my pockets or marking my book or crumpled in my bag. These date back to eight or nine years ago. It makes me think of what they say about the me that I was back then.

That I liked black biro? Definitely, only one appearance of blue so far. And strange shaped heads. And Batman. And I think they say I had a lot of scrap paper in my life then and a lot of time in the form of five minute boredoms in which to turn said scrap paper into mini pressure valves.

More next time.

Of aliens, colliders and a free comic

The history with this post goes back to the summer 2010. A friend was doing a placement in a production company, CR Entertainment/BeActive, and she let me know that they were looking for artists to illustrate a comic tie-in as part of a multi-platform science-fiction project.

So I got a meeting with them and did this sample page based on an outline they gave me of the project. The project included a feature length film as well as webisodes so they were anxious that the characters look liked the actors, but at the time the film had not been cast nor had the aliens that were a part of the story been designed. So I was free to just imagine and draw.

I based the human in the image on actors of the same nationality as the characters, reference gleaned online. As for the alien, I was in a 1950’s kind of B-movie, schlock sci-fi mood crossed with the desire to be a little bit grotesque. The head is based on the head of a fruit bat and with the body I went for a rangy feel, like the alien could grab you no matter how far away you were.

I had fun with the page but I’d probably make some different decisions now. The inking and colour choices make it look a bit muddy to my eye now.

I’m pleased to say I got the job. The writer was the very good Mike Garley and the story, titled Collider, was to take place in the present and the future, one to be illustrated by myself (the future) and the other to be illustrated by the very talented R.H.Stewart. It was a really interesting and well written script to work from and you can see the result in a link to a free download of issue one below.

I was originally slated to illustrate the future segments of all six issues but unfortunately I had to pull out after finishing issue one due to ill health. I would have loved to have been able to continue but, sadly, I couldn’t. I will take this opportunity to thank CR Entertainment/BeActive and everyone I worked with for their understanding at the time and encourage you to check out the entirety of Collider World.

Find comic here: http://colliderworld.com/collider_n1_peter_web.pdf

http://colliderworld.com/

http://mikegarley.com/

Okay, I know it’s been a long break.

I last posted over a year ago now, at first I was too busy to post and then, unfortunately, I was too unwell to post. I chose to stop working about a year ago to look after myself properly. Now I’m trying to healthily make my way back to the drawing board. So, inspired by my talented partner’s new blog, toofolktobecool.blogspot.com, I’ve caught the itch to start posting on this here blog of mine again.

First up the completion of the Scarboy pages, this was my last post. These pages were a commission from a father for his young son, the true Scarboy. I remember being nervous about taking on the responsibility of telling his story but I realised it was also a great opportunity to do something special for a very deserving young man as well.

I committed to doing the preparation as diligently as possible, it was important for me to be able to capture the essence of the real people I was portraying, not so much Photorealism but those identifying marks and mannerisms that would allow me to pose them freely.

It was a blast to design the Scarboy costume from the ground up. I make a cameo in the bottom left panel of page two, that’s me holding up his costume. I couldn’t resist the symbolic gesture of me handing it over to him.

I could recognise for myself that my pencilling was further along than my inking so this was the first sequential project where I resolved to get my pencils as tight as possible to leave me with no confusion when inking. I was free to concentrate on the rendering decisions, whereas in former work I found at the inking stage that I’d left myself with some decisions that should have been made with a pencil.

I used brush and pen to ink the pages. Since the time my drawing moved on from stick figures I’ve had a tendency to see blocks of shadows as entities in their own right, so I enjoyed working the high contrast nature of some of the panels.

I was very happy and remain very happy with the finished pages. I was also, of course, nervous about how they would go down with the Scarboy concerned and I’m happy, and honoured, to say that the four A3 boards are framed and hanging in his room. This artwork is my contribution to acknowledging what a special guy he is and that I’m glad I got the chance to know him and his story better.

On a different note, I’d like to shout a thank you to David O’Leary over at Irish Comic News for posting a link to my previous Scarboy post. Irish Comic News is a great site that shines a spotlight on the many talented Irish creators working today as well as reviews etc. I thoroughly recommend you to check it out, you could go there when you’re finished here maybe, there’s a link at the bottom. David O’Leary was also the first person to review my work, for Formation 7. Again link at the bottom.

http://toofolktobecool.blogspot.ie/
http://www.irishcomicnews.com/tag/gary-gowran/
http://comicrelated.com/news/7706/formation-seven

Scarboy the Beginning