fuck it.

I was going to not blog this drawing, 'coz it's gonna be published in the next issue of Kiss Machine, and 'coz it's from my next book and I don't wanna give it all away, and 'coz i already blogged the unfinished drawing a while back so really, is there a point?
But, as per the title of this post, Fuck It. I'm sure the droves of people reading this blog will survive, and I am SMITTEN with this little piece. Check out the before version as well. Together both versions give valuable credence (to me) to the notions of seeing things through, of being excessively neurotic with a pencil, and of cross-hatching cross-hatching cross-hatching. Which is helpful when one sits at one's lonely little drafting table for seven hours straight for the last three or four days. Today I tallied my hours on this book so far and i'm at 85.5 in the last two and a half weeks.
I'm kind of amazed.
And I kind of think I'm certifiable too.

I LOVE this drawing. I Love Love Love it.
Unlike many things in the world at this particular moment.
LOVE. it.

I don't know if it was

that I started watching at 11.30pm after 7 hours straight of drawing, but when I found out at the end of last night's episode that Libby was in the same insane asylum as Hurley, I Frickin' LOST it. HarHar. "Lost" it. I may well have to start attending a support group.

This found when googling 1920 catalog tea service

Go figure.
I'd just like to say that there is NO way that the people who named this toy did it guilelessly. Imagine how much fun it would have been putting this through the marketing department. Sometimes I wonder at the people who were creating entertainment for children from the 70s on back. A special breed, seems like, and a rare and lost treasure at that.

Snarks and Bandersnatches and bureaucracy, oh my!

Myself and a fellow employee have been in cahoots trying to figure out a more accurate (if not amusing) definition(?) for the Castle-esque workplace we frequent, well, him with much frequency, me with a great deal less. Anyhow. Today I was exceedingly please to come up with the following: the Cranium Bandersnatches* Corporation .

The word Bandersnatch is in the OED. (Or my OED, at least). I am Amazed by this and consider it a sizeable (if not personally meritorious) victory for the english language.

:;"#^*) emoticons.

I hate using these fuckers. (I don't have a problem with other people using them, but I reserve the right to be "old-school", and we all have our foibles. I mean some of you out there still believe PCs are better than Macs, ferChrissakes.)
While I do see the need to occasionally clarify a message by adding some indication of one's emotional state whilst emailing, there's something weird and diminutive about trying to relay it through punctuation.
I held out forever, i'll have you all know. Of course, ever surrounded by a world where emoticons and text messaging are becoming more and more the norm, i have recently, as ever, begun being sucked into it. This morning I looked at a thread of emails to noticed i had used a bloody smiley face TWICE in a row. Gross. (BIG SAD FACE WRITTEN OUT IN FULL WORDS FOR PEOPLE TO UNDERSTAND 'COZ COMPUTERS ARE WRITING MEDIUMS)

Well NO MORE, I tell you. That's quite enough of that. I am declaring an official moratorium on my own use of emoticons.

Feye-a

A fellow circus person sent me these, taken at Tuesday's jam. All the other photos i have of me spinning of from the dreadlock-and-significantly-less-tattooed age, which makes me practically a different person. So. These for the sake of posterity if nothing else.
(The last one is particularly cool. I've been trying to learn how to spin off (that is, toss and spin yer stick high enough to shake off excess fuel before actually spinning). It looks to me like I'm standing in between two angels shooting at each other with machine guns.)
(Oh thanks to Ben and his girlfriend for sending these along!)

Monsieur le JP's response to my asking why I should have to wear my helmet inside the theatre.

a bit more process.

I'm actually making an effort to not post my drawings as I finish them 'coz, really, what's the bloody point of putting a book together if you give out all the pages ahead of time? And one must be disciplined with one's petty obsessions.
But. I've had a bad week of clerical errors and waiting on other people and miscellaneous stupid interference interrupting my drawing time a great deal, so managing to conquer two spare hours this morning on a day I thought was lost to other things from the start was particularly fulfilling. One has to START with this stuff, you know. If you save all the drawing 'til after your admin and your design touch-ups and your stupid computer shit is done, well, you're done.
So behold, a quick photo of the fruits (in-progress) of my time. For those of you who have strayed to this blog from god-knows-where, hands are my FAVVVOUURRIITTES.

I feel like i have to say something about it.

I guess it's expectations, but The Dark Knight, well...not as well written as I had hoped it would be. Christopher Nolan, you too, smited by toy-budget excess into careless editing and such. Well, maybe not careless, but it was just a whole lotta the same thing, felt like. Didn't dig too deep below the surface like Batman begins. And all the Two-Face stuff just kindda arrived on the scene and then blew up in the last 20 minutes, which was kind of lame. Anyhow. It was good (if not superlative), the evening was the event I had anticipated, complete with motor(bike)-chauffeuring and an excess of popcorn'n'chocolate, alll gooodd....i blame "expectations". Hideous, life ruining "expectations". If me and "expectations" ever meet in a dark alley, well, i'll give'em WhatFor, i tell you.
To end on a better note though, Heath Ledger, who I normally could care less about as an actor... HO.LY.FUCK.

Barely for the benefit of my other reader(s): on my very own reflection, for art's sake.

I was taking reference pictures of my reflection in a mirror yesterday (to draw from), staring into a mirror at something in the reflection behind me. I was interested to find out how small things in the background look when reflected in a mirror, and also where someone's (mine, in this case) gaze would have to be focused if they were looking in said mirror to see said background.)

I know.
This is my so-called life.

But I couldn't figure out how to do it sans camera, that is, so i would just see my reflection but not myself taking the actual picture. After much fiddling, I realized I just need put the camera where the mirror was, and look into the bloody camera lens of course.
THEN i did it (put the camera between me and the mirror) and what do i see in the mirror? A reflection of the digital preview screen of the camera. WITH the subject of the photo in it of course. Me!
It was all very scientific and fascinating.
Of course the results of the drawing of all of this remain to be seen.

Lost.

As unfinished pages stare morosely at me from beneath my drafting table on a Monday night, all i have to say is this: I blame you, Shannon Gerard. Episode 18. No Joke. There is no hope for me.

ICAN'TFUCKIN'BELIEVESAWYERDRANKWITHJACK'SFATHER! HOLYTOESOFCHRIST!!

Nocturnal fantasies fulfilled with a quick google.

Last night i dreamt i was taking a road trip on my ("my") vintage red Norton, and i had to stop at a gas station to inflate the tires, and one of my friends was sitting in a nearby diner and I went in and sat with him and he read me poetry.
The only interesting ("interesting") thing about this dream might perhaps be its vague insight into my cultural schizophrenia. But. BUT. I woke up this morning and googled "vintage red norton"...just 'coz...and found THE BIKE OF MY DREAMS. THIS IS IT. THIS IS THE GREATEST MOTORCYCLE EVER. SWEET FUCKING CHRIST.

I haven't been able to focus all day.

Igor Busted!

Last week i stopped at a red light (if you can believe that) at Dufferin and Queen and saw the above words in orange marker on a photocopy of a news article. The infamous Igor Kenk, the fucker, has been busted at last. 1,500 bikes recovered so far, from Kenk's den of sin that is Toronto's bike theft central.
I went home and googled and googled, but couldn't find specifics, until, from afar into my inbox came the critical link.
GLEE!

("Kenk's den of sin" I need a t-shirt. "Narrow escapee of Kenk's den of sin")

on neurobiophysicist gifts and graffitti Gurus.

I have been hosting a couchsurfer for the last two nights, a neurobiophysician (!), who came to my door with a small token of thanks which is perhaps one of the Greatest Books Now Residing on my bookshelves. "Wall and Piece" it's called, about a London graffitti artist named Banksy who's a Genius. A Complete Genius.
This is him.


It has taken a whole lot of effort to not scan most to all the pages in this book to post, but I'm going to post one of his manifestos, which brought me to tears, (as always, click on images for full size)


and HIGHLY recommend visiting his site, particularly the films section, under museums, where someone has recorded his ventures into the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate, and god knows where else, where he installed his own paintings next to the residential wall hangings. some of which have lasted up to 12 days before being discovered and removed by the "authorities".

I'm also going to quote a few clever things he said, just 'coz:

"All artists are prepared to suffer for their work, but why are so few prepared to learn to draw?"

"Nothing in the world is more common than unsuccessful people with talent, leave the house before you find something worth staying in for"

"Imagine a city where graffiti wasn't illegal, a city where everybody could draw wherever they liked. Where every street was awash with a million colours and little phrases. Where standing at a bus stop was never boring. A city that felt like a party where everyone was invited, not just the estate agents and barons of big business. Imagine a city like that and stop leaning against the wall—it's wet."

And this quote, THIS QUOTE!:

"Art is not like other culture because its success is not made by its audience. The public fill concert halls and cinemas every day, we read novels by the millions and buy records by the billions. We the people, affect the making and the quality of most of our culture, but not our art.
The Art (sic) we look at is made by only a select few. A small group create, promote, purchase, exhibit, and decide the success of Art. Only a few hundred people in the world have any real say. When you go to an Art gallery you are simply a tourist looking at the trophy cabinet of a few millionaires."

The Canadian North doesn't really exist in my mind's landscape; it's just not really in my personal geography. Last night, however, I had been ruminating on a recently read essay about the North and metaphor, the latter of which very much is in my geography, before I went to bed.
So one of my dreams, funnily enough, was this: i was reading a love story, where the actual goings-on of said entanglement (of which i remember nothing) were interspersed* with the story of an Arctic hunter who was obsessed with figuring out the most painless way possible to kill birds. It drove him progressively mad throughout the book, and when the story finally ended (the love story? the hunter's story? both?) there was a final page, which was a full spread of a drawing of thousands of fish beneath the water's surface swirling around each other, with a spear-fisher's hole on the ice's surface above them.

* just for the record, i do not like the word interspersed, but i'm too lazy to find a synonym right now. It is a badly constructed word, not pleasing at all.

foolin' around, for reference' sake

meta(for) metaphor

I need to draw an old dead guy for the second last page of this new booklet.
(sorry to give that away, but really, you have no idea who he is, do you? I mean, there was no old guy in the last one, was there? haha!)
Having a semi-conscious belief in hypersigils (tip of the hat to you, Grant Morrison) I have been feeling a bit hesitant to use any reference photos i have of my very accomodating friends playing dead to draw with. It seems inaccurate, and a just a bit too weird.

So a while back i decided I would use a picture of my father.
'Coz he's an old dead guy.
Of course I don't have any photos of him. So i googled him, and found a painting some lady did of him for some reason, and have been using that.

BUT HERE IS THE CRUX OF IT: I'm presently reconstructing the person who fathered me, in pencil, from a (female) stranger's portrait in oils that i found on the internet, and he's not even alive anymore.
To create a work of fiction.

It somehow feels like the most meta of metaphors.

(and not so far divorced from notions on a certain painting of the North I have just been reading about, Coco, oh, how it all falls into place!)

an astute observer this evening

pointed out to me that babies write themselves, while books do not. I thought this a very clever insight into the difference between my life and that of many others.

Shan's blog

Today, in a momentary fit of procrastination, i made my way to Little Dog Monday, realizing with melancholic self-disdain just how long it had been since my last visit, when the URL i had was wrong.
You should go there. It is very pretty. It was pretty before but it's prettier now. The link i've embedded is the prettiest (and the most flattering compliment to boot. EVER. All hail other peoples' drawings over my own) And, dear reader(s) there are DREADLOCKS. THUMPA THUMPA!

Although, might i say, dear Miz Gerard, I'm waiting for the hoochy!!!! Where are they?!?!

a public service announcment

from lenk enterprises. stef lenk (that's me) makes THE BEST GUACAMOLE ON THIS PLANET.
There is no hyperbole (surprisingly) in this statement. It is the DieHardTruth.