Oh yeah, just some casual sketches I have in my portfolio...

There is such a bloody fuss about sketchbooks...I LOVE sketchbooks...though I do happen to like working on little bits of paper and then losing them later on...much more liberating!
Also, my scanner should be sent out somewhere and shot, it creates the most bizarre colours and makes bad things look worse...

Pop up fun...

We had a workshop on pop up books and paper related...crafts or whatever on Friday and I really, REALLY wish I had spend less time making pop up jokes with Heli and Karen and more time focusing on what I was doing...because I ended up making a total bollix of it altogether. But I'm trying to redeem myself now by practising it at home...
Anyway, this was just a practice piece, which is a very good thing as I ended up sticking the bird on the wrong way and he looked like a little birdy corpse...so the problem was fixed by just sticking another bird on the front of the card...and calling it "Happy bird, Dead Bird", like I DELIBERATELY made it that way!

Smoking KIlls...

...and it's antisocial and is a disgusting habit and it's responsible for the Haiti earthquake and the Twin Towers bombing blahblahblah...yes, I KNOW! But well...I happen to really enjoy it. And I'm thinking to promote my work I might pimp out some little boxes of matches and other smoking paraphernalia.
So I'm just messing around with stuff, seeing what might work...I made some little packets for rolling papers out of patterned paper and then a little accordion book with birds stuck on top the matches...though I have a feeling I might be damning myself a bit with this...but practice is practice!

Cats can be callous and cats can be cruel...

I was thinking about these promotional items we have to make and inspired by that surprisingly enjoyable workshop on pop up books, I was considering some type of paper pop up cage or...something, I don't know what, when I suddenly remembered how I find it really disturbing when people keep birds for pets. It's not so much I have a problem with it, I just don't understand it...like, with dogs you can talk to them and train them to like the same things you do and cats are cool because they're such deep thinkers...but what can you do with a bird besides admire it in its cage? Watch it NOT fly? Then I went off into a dream world and ended up making a little cage and adding a bird with a string so that when you pull the string the bird can escape...this served me no purpose whatsoever, and was a complete waste of time, it only came to exist as I was wondering how it would work...and I really was not going to put photos of it up as it's so shit until I saw Belle attempting to eat the paper bird and I'm wondering are cages maybe such a good thing after all?!
The bird is made of paper and yet Belle still struggled with it...

I really, REALLY should be working on my portfolio...

...but LEGENDS OF THE FALL IS ON!

"It was a good death"

Hunchbacks

I really love how paper silhouettes and cut outs look, but I always get really fed up before I'm even half way through and end up fucking them up. Also, because I'm a lefty,(1 in 4 Apollo astronauts were left-handed!)I find it really tricky to wield the scalpel and I tend to drag it in the wrong direction, blunting the blade and making the paper look ad though I chewed through it with my teeth. But as usual, I'm cold and can't sleep so I'll just upload some pictures to illustrate my point!

These are a couple of pictures from a little book I made last year based on memory and and how untrustworthy it is. Also how misleading and confusing everything is when you're a child and how things are so exaggerated when you think back on them. Well...that's how I sold it, but really it was about all the oddballs my Dad knew and how scared me, Cat and Sue were of them. The one that stands out most was a poor man called Austin who was a hunchback, drove a white van and always brought us oranges. We were terrified the oranges might be infected (hunchback-ism being HIGHLY contagious of course)and would be too afraid to eat them. Also as we were learning the alphabet at the time , became convinced that Austin and Oscar Orange were one and the same and so we always knew him as Oscar Orange. That's how I came to call the book "The Obscure tale of Oscar Orange and the Shadow people". It should really have been called something like "Childhood ignorance"...
I wrote little poems to go with the illustrations and printed them onto tissue paper to try and keep with the whole shadowy feel...I also made the stupid mistake of not considering what paper I used beforehand and drawing the pictures straight onto quite heavy black card. It was quite a disaster and that fucking card nearly broke me! SO MANY DREADFUL MISTAKES!

I could have uploaded a nicer photo of us, but I think this one just sums up our awkwardness and confusion!

I'm not looking at you in a lustful way...

I have never been able to keep a sketchbook as it's jsut pointless...I end up ripping out the pages, so all that's left is a few little sad scraps of paper. But as these stupid bloody interviews approach they all want to see sketchbooks, sketchbooks, sketchbooks...and work sheets...lets not forget the works sheets.
These are some pages I stuck together pretending like I planned it that way all along...kind of like when you spend two hours on your hair and make up in the hopes that people might think that there was no effort involved at all...

I'm well aware that the title of this post has NOTHING whatsoever to do with sketchbooks, but after Kim was told that (in a bid to comfort her!)by a drug pushing fortune teller last week(while Karen and I were told about our Lova's!),I just felt it deserved a special mention!

I wish my brother was as cool as Derek...

I never wished I could swap Jack more than when I saw the most magnificent, entertaining act on the Late Late Show this Friday...Crystal Swing. Comprising of mother Mary, daughter Dervla and son Derek and taking inspiration from the showband era they gave possibly the most entertaining performance I have ever seen. IN.MY. LIFE. The song is also totally inappropriate to be sung between a sister and brother.
Then, just when I thought it couldn't get any better...Derek performed the Brendan Boyer classic...The Hucklebuck. What makes it just so special is the fact that he isn't even playing it for laughs...he's deadly serious. Glorious.
BRING BACK THE SHOWBANDS!

CAN NOT THINK OF A NON-GENERIC STORY IDEA:(

So I'm just listening to some music instead.

I don't care how sad it is...

...there's nothing I love more than watching fan videos for the 1992 film adaptation of Wuthering Heights(one of my favourtie books ever and this is the best film version...mmmn Ralph Fiennes). Though don't get me started on the chernobyl-esque version made last year...they all sounded like something from Chicken Run and I actually wanted to fight Cathy to the death...she was THAT annoying.

Should really go do some work...

...but I can't be bothered, I'm wrecked from Orlas 21st and my hand is still really painful from where I smashed it into the door the other night...*sigh* I should just be put down.
So I'll upload some pictures of my darling little cat Belle...for no reason other than I love her so. Though it's a bit awkward as she hates Max with a firey passion and poor Max is really scared of her...

And yes, that is fish she's watching in the oven.

Thank you Rob!

As some people think they're above Facebook (that's you Michael), I plan to make my dear bloggy, facebook two...and now that the lovely Rob has told me how to upload videos...there's no stopping me!:)

One little two little three little indians...