Family portrait

Light news from Blogington of late. In fact if Blogington were a real place then it would be seriously struggling to maintain a community. The video store has gone out of business, the post office has let several staff go and the local pub has seen a significant downturn in clientele. I'm not sure where I'm going with this analogy, so I might just end it there, if it's OK with you. Let's face it, you probably stopped reading this after I said "Bloginton".

Anyway my day job on the propostorous posterior show "The Day My Butt Went Psycho!" has been gobbling up all my time over the past year and has been a major drain on my personal creative juices. Sorry that sounds unpleasant.

But then the truth often is.

Still, in that time I managed to eek out enough juice, to put this commissioned piece together. Now, the people involved know how long this took to accomplish and I can only apologise and hope that the end result was worth it.

For the record I'm very happy with the final prints . Hope you like em too.


30 Day Drawing Challenge - Day 4: A famous character had they aged in real time


OK so with the best intentions in the world I began this drawing challenge. What started off as a 30 day challenge is now looking more like a 30 week challenge. But what are you gonna do? Bills have to be paid and fun little distractions like this will always have to take a back seat.

So here then is little Charlie Bucket all grown up. I imagine that shortly after winning Wonka's factory, Charlie began gorging himself silly on chocolate, grossly overcompensating for his meagre and poverty stricken upbringing. 

As time marched relentlessly on, Charlie found himself sinking deeper and deeper into an endless shame spiral. Feeding his guilt with more and more chocolate, until his family and Oompa Loompas abandoned him.

"I wish I never got that $*%^%$*# ticket" sobbed Charlie as he tucked into his 15th Scrumdidlyumptious bar for the day.

30 Day Drawing Challenge - Day 3: Scary Movie


When I was a kid, like a really small kid, my babysitter was watching The Exorcist downstairs. When I came down to see what he was watching, I was confronted with the most terrifying thing I'd ever seen in my life. I'm not sure how long I watched it for, but it scared me for a long long time afterwards.

So I thought for today's challenge I'd combine it with something I loved as a kid (and still do actually), Garbage Pail Kids. Let's call it "therapy".

Tributary 14 - Evil Dead

So I've dropped the ball a bit on this daily drawing idea. Currently I'm being beaten about the brain and body by the busy stick.

As if to rub salt into the wounds this isn't even a new drawing. I drew this for the Oz Comics weekly challenge a while back. But I haven't posted it here yet, so it kind of counts.

Luckily for me it fits the theme, because the Evil Dead movies were the tippity top of my gore lists as a young teen. I was actually quite obsessed with Horror movies as a young'n. So much so, my older brother (and his friends) thought I'd grow up to be a serial killer or some such. Sadly I think they were only half joking.

Of course I'm not a serial killer. But I still like the odd horror flick, stupid and bloody, though they are.To clarify, I've absolutely never killed anyone. Ever.

Looking forward to the new Evil Dead "Re-imagining" too. Groovy!

Tributary 13 - Sonic


The first games console I owned was a Sega Mega Drive. Before that I'd only ever troubled the gaming world with a ZX Spectrum. So owning Mega Drive was like jumping from VHS straight to Blu Ray. Ok well maybe not quite. But the shear speed and colour and ball busting 32bit power of Sonic was like a revelation.

Thanks Sonic. Thonic

Tributary 07 - Garfield


I used to draw Garfield a LOT at Primary School. Apparently I used to teach school friends how to draw him too. I say "apparently", because I don't actually remember doing that (sorry Karen). But then I don't seem to remember much of anything from early childhood (apart from TV and Films of course).

This one's for you then Karen :)

Also thanks to Adele (adelekthomas.blogspot.com.au/) for pointing out that "Fanuary" is actually a charity theme month where Ladies (and Gents) sculpt or colour their pubey regions into interesting designs all in the name of Cancer Research. It's actually all for a good cause so visit here http://www.fanuary.com/.

So out if respect for that and for not wanting to confuse people. I've changed my theme month to "Tributary" which is way more clever anyway and doesn't evoke images off downstairs bits :)

Fanuary 04 - Garbage Pail Kids


I absolutely LOVE the Garbage Pail Kids stickers. LOVE them. When I was a kid I wanted a job creating them, actually I still do. So I took a little extra time with this one, because I wanted it to look like an authentic GPK design. I even tracked down a post from a guy who made his own and very kindly supplied the eps logo and the font for the names. In an extra geeky twist, I put my own face in there and fulfilled another fantasy while I was at it.

Plus, in true GPK style, I created a a "B" named card to keep with tradition. 



It's FANUARY the first!


That's right, I'm declaring a new pun based month project, and I'm calling it "Fanuary". I'm going to attempt to dedicate at least 30mins a day to myself. No client or project work. Just a little bit of time to indulge my own selfish whims.

So I thought I'd share some things that have inspired me over the years.TV, Cartoons, Movies, Music. Basically anything that has impacted on me, from a kid in the late 70s/80s right up till the present day.

Let's start where all things begin. At the beginning. Roger Hargreaves' Mr. Men series was the first thing I ever remember drawing. Really you can't go wrong with Mr. Men. If you could draw a square, a circle, a blob or even a squiggly mess, you could draw a Mr. Men character.

My favourite was Mr Bump, the clumsy little scamp. I seem to remember I had a lot of issues getting the bandages right. Which probably made me cry with frustration, as my hands failed to put down what my brain was telling it.

A habit I haven't appeared to grow out of.

Happy Fanuary everyone!