I’m not even going to try and explore the sheer lack of attention this site has been getting from me. Instead — here’s some pictures. The first is a drawing of Josh Holloway from this morning.
And here are some pictures from last year and my adventure back to Parkes, including exploring an abandoned hatch in the ground.
…at South Bank. I turned up as the performer was getting his equipment together to juggle on his cycle. As he got ready he addressed the crowd and apologised for some kids off to the side. There were about five of them, none of them more than nine or ten years old, and they scowled back at him. I’m guessing they’d been harassing him the entire performance. As he apologised one of them — with the most wonderfully petulant, bogan grimace — gave him the finger and the image burned into my mind. It was so horribly hilarious. It’s amazing how tough some kids believe they are; I’m twenty two and I don’t even know where to begin when I comes to toughness.
I don’t think I quite captured the kid’s scowl, try as I might. It was the sort of face made of anger and resentment that only the young can do, apparently sucking all of their baby fat into a controlled black hole somewhere in the vicinity of their nose.
I’ve designed it in the hope of making it into a shirt for myself someday. Hopefully it’s the start of many more.
It’s been a while since I’ve paid you any attention, website. So, like a man returning home from several months of absence with flowers, here I am with some pictures.
These first few are not original by any means—each was referenced from a photo I pulled from the internet and I cannot claim the composition or the subject as my own. Only the messy strokes that complicate things.
For this Donald Duck below the idea was mine but the pose was referenced. The interesting thing is that this is based off the first reference I found because it was literally the pose I imagined in my head.
And finally the pictures below are all my own:
So here I am again. I’m starting another attempt to take one photo a day for a year. And to do one drawing a day for a year.
I didn’t make it particularly far last time (though it did feel like it). Hopefully I’ll do a little better this time around. I won’t be so near as picky this time: if I miss a day, week, or month (or even a year), then so be it – it’s not game over, man, game over! It’s not going to so much rules as guidelines and considering that I hope to do it over a year, I think that’s fine. Yes, there’s something romantic about the notion of performing exactly day in, day out for a year, but I don’t know if it’s any less romantic to do it more casually (it’s certainly more practical), to embrace the fun of it, rather than enforced tedium.
Anyway, to spice things up a bit, I’ll also be attempting to write one thing a day. It doesn’t matter what that one thing is – it could be a story, or it could be a journal entry, or it could be just rambling about the lack of updates re: Breaking Bad’s third season on iTunes. Anything will do, and I think that will give it flavour. Hopefully. It’s certainly an easier undertaking than my one story every two weeks idea I had last year. I don’t think even the first story was completed (though, long afterwards, I did realise how it should be written).
All three of these – the writing, the drawing, the photography – are perhaps things I should be doing anyway, but we humans are strange, strange creatures, and sometimes it takes putting things into a certain context of structure or challenge before we’ll see the value in doing them.
Would it be cheating if I decided this piece would count as my bit of writing for the day? I don’t know. Maybe. But then this is my undertaking, my rules – well, guidelines – so it’s my choice. So we’ll see.
To make things slightly more organised and official, I’ll point out – largely for myself – that the starting day for this whole, crazy endeavour, is Friday, the 9th of July, 2010. It will end on whichever weekday the 9th of July, 2011 finds itself on. I could look it up, but why spoil the (minuscule) surprise? Also, I have a feeling the 9th of July – at least in America – is the release date of a major movie. But I’m not sure which. I could be making things up or I could look it up, but, again, I’m not going to spoil the surprise.
So. Here goes. Starting…now.
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Oh, and here’s a picture I prepared earlier today:
A rough sketch of the Eleventh Doctor, that came about when I realised the head (and hair) I was drawing vaguely resembled Matt Smith.
Alright. Rather than go about uploading each photo and drawing for the day into individual posts I’m just going to go right ahead and post them all in one Uber-Post.
The 17th of August, 2009:
The 18th of August, 2009:
Not content with taking a photo a day, and doing drawing a drawing a day, I’ve decided to start writing one story every two weeks for a bit over a year. This is the beginning – several pages of notes for the first story.
The 19th of August, 2009:
They had this cow metres away from a stall selling steak burgers – I’m not sure how that must’ve affected it, standing there for a couple of days in the wafting scent of its sizzling brethren.
There’s always at least one balloon…
And this marks the point when my mind turned to rating the various exhibits of AgQuip for the zombie killing efficiency. All I saw when I looked at this thing was zombies going under its wheels, unable to reach up to the driver’s cabin.
Another effective tool in the war against the zombie hordes.
The 20th of August, 2009:
The 21st of August, 2009:
The 22nd of August, 2009:
Taking inspiration from Underzo
The 23rd of August, 2009:
The 24th of August, 2009:
And rain it did, only a few minutes after taking the picture.
The 25th of August, 2009:
My favourite non-heartbreaking/heartwarming shot from the Simpsons. It lasts all of one second, and is 100% wonderful.
A little bit of Fry.
Cautiously admiring the Summer weather…in Winter. Last time Winter convinced me I should go outside in Summer clothes I ended up with pneumonia. Tricksy seasons.
The 26th of August, 2009:
The 27th of August, 2009:
This post concerns two updates: an update to the site, and an update to a drawing.
First, the update to the site. Mostly it is still the same. On this page, for instance, there have been no changes. The same could be said for the video, about, and links sections. That leaves the gallery. I’ve added a new section to it – sketches – so that I might display some extra work that otherwise isn’t as polished as the rest of the images in the gallery. Accordingly I’ve uploaded a few images into this section, and rearranged a couple of others so that they’re sorted more appropriately. And that’s it. A minor change, really. Not huge, but worth making a little note of.
Secondly, the updated image. I decided to repaint the background to my Hot Fuzz drawing before uploading it to my gallery, and I thought that it deserved a little front page prominence as well:
I’ll try to get the photos and drawings for the day up to date soon.
I had no idea when I drew this little ravenous caterpillar that I would spend the rest of the day drawing variations of him.
This is a fresh A2(?) calendar sheet underneath the keyboard of the family computer – the previous one was (and is, I’ve saved it) covered in drawings and doodlings from many hours of sitting in front of the computer. Some ideas sprung forth from those idle creations of the previous sheet, and no doubt many more will come from this new one.
There seems to be a structure forming for these posts. For instance, they begin with a drawing:
Sometimes there’s more than one drawing. Not today however.
Then there’s possibly some explanatory text in the middle, as this sentence and the one above attest to.
And then they conclude with a photo (or photos):
Potentially followed with some further text to sum up the contents of the pictures (such as the one above with the bird drying itself off after a dip in the dam) and wrap up the post. Done.
