"Here In My Car, I Feel Safest As All.."

Totally knackered today as I didn't get much sleep so I took a day's holiday. Because it was impromptu, I was a bit worried about wasting it so I made sure I did some drawing.

Some of these are from Flickr photos, the rest are my first return to Posemaniacs.com for months and months. Quite pleased with them though, as I usually set the timer to 60 seconds or more but these were all only 30.

"JAMES BROWN! JAMES BROWN! JAMES BROWN!"

Put my 360 away and got on with a little bit of work, easing myself in slowly.

Had an amazing time up in the Lake District with some friends, best holiday ever.

Did a lot of drinking, walking, eating and reading and a bit of drawing. Read 'New York Trilogy' By Paul Auster and 'Drawn To Life', a brilliant book on Disney animation. Loads of really useful tips, the most important being:

SQUASH AND STRETCH!

Most of the drawing was notes from that so I'm not posting them.

Also watched some ace films - 'Soul Power' - a documentary about the music festival that accompanied the 'Rumble In The Jungle'. James Brown is amazing in it.

Watched Withnail & I (for only the second time), a bit of 'Fishing with John', (must borrow that off Mart), 'Return to Oz' and the sublime Band in 'The Last Waltz'.

Just finished watching another great film (everything I watch and read tends to be great simply because I don't leave anything to chance, I just look up what's supposed to be the best and watch that. Too many good things out there to bother with the dross.) called 'The Face of Another'. Must buy this. Every scene is thoughtfully composed and reinforces the story. The aesthetics do not compromise the story but enforce it. Thought this was very important for comics, so when I was stuck at starting the 'Love Letter Vampire' comic I started copying scenes and notes and that's what I'm posting.

Bed.

"Our Band Could Be Your Life"

Been lazy/busy. Had a really busy (not necessarily blog busy) and productive year last year, first (basic) comic produced, lots of well-received gigs with Raised On Replicas and a really feel-good xmas gig as Cannibal Gymnastics. Then I took a well-deserved lazy game break over xmas (Batman: Arkham Asylum and Fallout 3 being particularly fine), but unfortunately it's spilled over a little too much into this year. Oh well, it's only January.

Going to do some work this weekend, not sure what, but I quite fancy some painting, but I should start on comics again, though I find the idea a little daunting. Also have the problem that I had to format my PC, lost photoshop and my scanner doesn't seem to want to work anymore.

I've been rediscovering my love of art recently by re-reading Matthew Colling's 'This is Modern Art' - Basquiat, Chris Ofili, Gary Hume, Joseph Beuys, Picasso, Cindy Sherman. Really easy to read, almost a sing-song style. I must get a book about Fluxus when I can, as I loved discovering that in college. Led me nicely onto John Cage and experimental music. Silence is another book I should get and re-read.

Also read 'Our Band Could Be Your Life', very inspiring book about underground bands in the eighties - really enjoying the Minutemen at the moment with Mike Watt's awesome bass.

Some great comics as well, some Daredevil comics just after Frank Millers famous run in the 80s and early 90s Batman when Norm Breyfogle and a new Robin entered the scene.

Once again, re-evaluating what's important but too lazy to do anything about it. Hopefully next week's holiday will re-charge my batteries.

Aims this year: Produce at least two, more realised comics and do some more recording with Raised On Replicas and Cannibal Gymnastics, hopefully put a couple of albums out even if it's only digitally in a kind of vanity project type thing and really develop my slide guitar playing, I've hit a wall with it at the moment and not sure how to progress. My idea is to just play it on as many songs as I can to get away from the blues cliches (much as I love them).

"I Wish It Was Xmas Today"

"And You've Got The Face On"

http://www.hundreddays.net/

Doing this, managed it (barely) so far, but I've been too busy to post anything up. I'm doing a 'comic panel every day'. I thought inspiration would just come to me day by day and produce a mind-blowing twist filled comic subject to my whim.

That's not been the case. Instead I've done

• A terrible page one of 'My Helly Face' , a comic I've been putting off for..ooh..probably four years now
  
• A totally shit abstract panel that was the case of "totally forgot! I've got 4 minutes to go before midnight, quick, get SOMETHING done!". I've got an idea for it though
  
• A random comic panel, again, badly done. I took a bit of dialogue from my Marvel Essential Horror book and drew a panel for it.
  

None of it makes sense, hopefully I can rescue the project somehow! I think the best way is to just draw rough outlines of whole pages so I can mess about with the story and layouts and then fill them in later. Really don't want to quit though, so I'm willing to do any piece of crap to stay in the game!

Off to ATP soon, so I'll post up the results when I get back. Going to work on stuff while I'm there -I'm always up about three hours before anyone else anyway. Then I'll send the links to the 100 days Facebook.

"Blaze of Glory"

Cool, got one of my stories on the six word stories page. Only just found out when I was googling to see if my gig details were up, which they are. 

http://www.sixwordstories.net/2009/07/escher’s-famous-staircase-confounds-carpet-fitters/

Here's the gig details by the way - it's called the Sanctuary Café and it's basically in the downstairs bit. 


http://www.sanctuarycafe.co.uk/Sanctuary/Events.html


Thurs 17th Dec-Unicorn Power - "Pointy cone horse skewered pop by

humans" www.myspace.com/weareunicornpower

Cannibal Gymnastics - "Lo-fi stumblebee pop, with a stinger in its

heart and a honeycombed brain" www.myspace.com/cannibalgymnastics

Boy in the Cupboard - "Spanish guitar and double-bass indie

bitterness" www.myspace.com/boyinthecupboard

£2 8pm

"I'm a King Bee"

Still busy writing and arranging for the gig, honestly! Will put up some new stuff sometime after the 17th Dec.