Bad photo, I know, but there you go. Last night, I met up with some of the guys from Thingbox.com at a fetish shop near Old Street for a life drawing session. It's been ages since I've tried to do this and my drawing from life was never that strong, but I thought I'd share it with you all anyway.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Don't look back.
Tired this morning, and with that came a wave of helplessness and hopelessness. I hate mornings like this. By rights, I've got so much to be pleased about at the moment: I'm enjoying working at the museum;I'm loving the progress I'm making with the pterodactyl book; I'm looking forward to moving to a new place in a couple of months; I'm in a wonderful relationship with a kind and wonderful man. I shouldn't be waking up feeling like this.I think self-doubt's such a horrific thing to go through. I'm very glad it only comes in waves like this. Too many things up in the air at the moment. Don't know what I'll be doing for work after the end of March, so having to look at my options. Scared about surgery in April and still in a lot of pain in the mean time. Very frustrated by delays in accessing mental health services to help with post-traumatic stress and while I'm waiting, the flashbacks are coming in thick and fast.
I'm just stuck, really, and I don't like being made to wait.
Anyway. I need to put together a portfolio for a course I'm applying for - any offers of help or comments about favourite drawings of mine would really help. I'm applying for the MA in Illustration at Camberwell with the hope that it'll help me focus my work a bit better and understand how to maybe one day make a little bit of money out of it. Could really do with some help!
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Global Warming "Underestimated"
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7890988.stm
Not only does it now look like we're past the point of no return with climate change after our global failure to curb the use of fossil fuels, it's also looking far more extreme than could have been predicted
The polar bear is often used as a symbol of how climate change is progressing; their habitat is disappearing from around them, melting away, and they aren't able to adapt fast enough to start to new terrain and diet, even though they're very capable of eating a wide variety of foods, they just don't know yet and while their home is disappearing, grizzly bears and other more adaptable creatures are moving in.
Our emotional attachment to these beautiful creatures shouldn't be the motive for realising the threat we've collectively brought upon ourselves; it should underline instead the seriousness of the situation. If powerful, sturdy creatures are disappearing as quickly as their habitat, then frail, tubby creatures like ourselves who have forgotten how to hunt and farm anything that takes more effort than piercing a film and putting it into the microwave... we're going to find it difficult.
They now predict that the Thames Barrier will fail within a century. We're crippled by the summer's fire and the winter's frost at once. Is it really that wise that the response to the credit crunch is to prop up the banks who hamstrung us with greed and to bail out the industries that are destroying our world. Meanwhile, we're told that changing our lightbulbs will save the world. How many homes would have to recycle, insulate and switch everything off to offset the damage brought about by our industries?
The distance between ice shelf and solid ground is growing. We can't keep treading water and hoping for the best.
The world is a beautiful place with an astonishing ability to sustain life no matter what. If bees and butterflies survived the extinction event at the KT boundary, you can be sure that there'll be plenty of life left in this world once we've messed it up. The question is whether any of it will include our bald, fatty bipedal species.
Updated Contact Details
There are times when I miss the adventure of homelessness. We spent yesterday waiting in the new flat for the British Heart Foundation people to come and take away the furniture. What they didn't say when they agreed to do a house clearance first thing on Saturday morning, was that they'd refuse to take the majority of the stuff and that they'd turn up at 4pm after not answering the phone all day. So, having wasted the day, and facing the prospect of doing the same, only this time not being able to convince a house clearance place to do it with the tempting offer of an only slightly smoke-stained sofa, I started to yearn for the days of yore when I spent a couple of months living on sofas, turning up at someone else's house until they got pissed off with me and then moving on.The nearest I have now is having a lot of profiles on a lot of internet sites. In case you're interested:
Comics
I may have to think about playing with ping.fm to get it all working a bit more efficiently. Until then, do feel free to sofa surf with me.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
In The Firing Line
Does anyone have any good news these days? In the last fortnight, I've heard from about five friends losing their jobs, two long term relationships breaking down, someone died and several of my favourite people in the world are struggling with depression. It's horrible, so many bad things happening to lovely people. I mean, I'm fine with bad things happening to horrible, dull or mediocre people (the fact I'm still here is proof of that), but when nice people get caught in the shitstorm cross-fire, I'm irked.Yeah, sure, I've got stuff going on, too - arm woe, work woe, money woe, woe-headed woe and all that, but there's still plenty to be perky about. Caroline can dance the Ladies' Choice, I'm about to become the nastiest man in a nice area, rather than the other way around and there's people to wind up on Thingbox, so I'll survive the Depression with a big D.
I'm not commenting on the whole lol0clypse that is the Dutch guy visiting the UK or the prospect of the GodHatesFags club coming to Hampshire. I'm not. It's just all too daft.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Polar Bears, Pirates and Thieves.
I guess this time off to think is paying off. Quite apart from making good progress with the pterodactyl story, I've had some thinking time. First, the pterodactyl stuff: I've drawn and inked out about a dozen pages now and the quality is (finally) consistent. You can recognise the characters as the same people on different pages. I'm drawing it out of sequence, by lucky dipping which scene I draw next. Because of this, I don't really want to put too much of it online just yet. Instead, I'm going to wait until it's looking a bit more finished before I start to share it. There's also the factor of looking for a publisher for it, which I can start doing once I've got a solid sequence of about a dozen pages completed. The pages that are done are scattered all through the storyline so there's nothing to show for it yet. I'm hoping that the synopsis and a sample might tempt a publisher to get involved sooner rather than later. I'd hate to finish it only to find out that a publisher loves it but needs it formatted differently.This is a bit of a piecemeal post, so I apologise for that right now. I said I needed some time to sort my head out a bit in terms of priorities and I'm getting it now. We're sorting things out like a house clearance at the flat in Chiswick and have booked in the workman who is going to re-decorate the place so it's ready for us to move in. We had the Brockley flat professionally cleaned and had the carpets cleaned, too. It's pristine, but I'm not sure if I feel like it's home any more now I know that the move is coming in about six weeks. Knowing that we've got that to deal with in the immediate future means that everything else feels like it's floating until that's done and dusted. I don't yet know what I'll be doing for work once this job finishes at the end of March. I'm hoping I can stay on, but am prepared to start looking around at other options. I enjoy it, but it's not my main job after all, and I can't always live like it is.
Something struck me this week, too. I was reading a message board where someone was asking where to download comics from because they weren't sure they wanted to keep buying from Marvel when their output is in a shaky phase. I felt vaguely affronted and suggested they tried looking for small press stuff since there's so much good stuff going on there. Then I realised I was a total hypocrite because there's music that friends have shared with me and it's been a long while since I bought an album. It's impossible for me to push to protect the income of artists by saying that downloading their work without permission is theft when the adage that people who download more music also buy more music just doesn't seem to hold true any more.
It's gone from a try-before you buy mentality to a wholesale plunder, so it's little wonder that we're in a quagmire of X-Factor winners as pop adapts to a new market. It may be that with Diamond's change of tack, I might well wind up needing to look at web distribution of comics or other ways of approaching the whole game, but I'm not giving up on writing and making books and I'm not about to give up on the people who make them, either. If I like something, I'll pay for it from now on. If I want to hear new music for free, I'll listen to the radio. It's hardly like there aren't enough channels to always find something fresh.
Just thought you might want to know.
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Friday, February 06, 2009
It's a bus ad arms race!
A Christian coalition has started 'fighting back' against the atheist bus ad campaign with a slogan of their own claiming that there DEFINITELY is a God. The Guardian story is here and it just sounds like we're in for a whole world of joy as this escalates. The ASA complaints site is here if you feel moved to complain. 1: The use of the word Definitely can't be substantiated in an objective manner. Whether or not there is a God is a moot point at best. The rules for adverts say that if there's significant divided opinion about an issue it can't be portrayed as fact.
2: The advert is clearly plagiarising another campaign in order to subvert it, which is probably a copyright violation.
3: The Christian Party who the campaign invites you to join is requesting that you give them a donation and the default option is to give £200.
4: Other bus campaigns run by Christian organisations imply threats to non-christians, saying that we're doomed to hell or some other similar odd possibility. Doesn't this constitute an attempt to encourage dissent between religious (and non-religious) groups?
5: Religious organisations get tax breaks that are just ridiculous when comparable cults like Paul McKenna's weird hypno-toad cult do not receive that by default.
6: Surely, God wouldn't be impressed - didn't Jesus say that worship was something to do privately and that grand displays of piety, particularly with pecuniary elements, were wrong?
Oh dear, I'm going off on a tangent.
It's such a shame that Christianity is being side-tracked by these kinds of stupid squabbles when really the core values of forgiveness, tolerance and kindness are to be applauded and that most Christians believe in the poetry of the bible above its literal truth. I mean, literal biblical truth has David and Jonathan marrying, Jesus having a boyfriend and the most adorable lesbian wedding I think I've ever heard of, but the Anglican communion is threatened with a schism because of who some people fall in love with.
Similarly, Christianity as an ideal is being horribly sullied by evangelical groups making blasphemous claims of their own divinity - just go along the Old Kent Road and see all the "churches" where you have hoardings showing charismatic leaders depicted holding flaming swords, which is clearly semiotic blasphemy. The financial incentives for the leaders of these organisations is another strand which brings faith into horrible disrepute.
Anyway. I'm off to draw more pictures of dinosaurs. Oh, the irony.
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Monday, February 02, 2009
Working From Home
So, this Extreme Weather Event, right? It seems that the people of South East London heard that and assumed it could mean only one thing:
Go to Greenwich, armed with your ironing board, a tea tray or a Bag For Life from Sainsbury's and fling yourself down the hill from the Observatory.
For me, I heard that, but went to work anyway, only to be told I was silly and that I should immediately leave and throw snowballs and catch up on a report I need to write from home. Mostly, though, I've thrown snowballs!
London: Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow Snow!
Got up early and went for a walk in Hilly Fields. It's awesome. Snow everywhere. I've no idea if I can get to work, but... woo! Snow!
I'm amazed that the Met Office are describing it as an Extreme Weather Event, so I made a facebook event!
Event!
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