Check it

I recently came across some really great sites, so I've decided to create a new section on this here blog, for all sorts of niceties I might come across whilst meandering through the electronic meadow. It;s called "Chew on this" and will hopefully be mediated on a regular basis. Have a look to your right please...down, down, little more.. there you go!

redsilas

Came across an illustrator in the march/apr 2006 issue of print magazine who's work I really admire. I'm a sucker for this style of illustration.

His name is Cristopher Silas Neal ( click here to go to his website )

The Hound, the Cat and Sir Toad went for a walk

Ok, ok , I know I'm supposed to be working but dammit my brain's still in holiday mode. More illustrations inspired by the artwork contained in the booklet of Smashing Pumpkin's "Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness".

Man in the moon

Hey, back from holiday. Hope everybody got a neat present or at least laid/drunk/religion.. etc.
So paged again through the booklet of Smashing Pumpkins' "Mellon Collie" and the illustrations are just amazing. Old nineteen twenties style collage and line drawings ( some might remember the video of "Tonight Tonight ( click here to watch on youtube)" with people going into space in a zeppelin, walking on a strange planet with these flat landscapes in their swallow tail coats and top hats. Really beautiful grading and treatment. Herewith thus , inspired by aforementioned, a little sketch of how I think the man in the moon looks like

horse play

This is a concept for a painting. Taken from an old picture of some children playing cowboys and crooks. The wooden horse has been added later. The idea is that the black wooden horse has risen in protest to being subjugated to the little boy's exploits.

planes, trains and automobiles

For a good part of this year I was always busy drawing some or other kind of car, bus, train, fire-engine, motorcycle or plane. This was by enlarge due to my son's persistence ( he's two and a half , and machines are his life - the more noise, wheels, or moving parts the better) . It turned out to be an amazing excersize in that I learnt how to draw again without constraint or hesitation. In part this is what this blog is dedicated to - a free space to explore those mediums and ideas that maybe got left behind along the ever constraining and definitive path towards creative "maturity". Crayons, clay, chalkboard, fingerpaint - all these , when re-applied, seems to liberate suppressed naivety. It's as if the body remembers how it feels to create without rules. It was an immensely valuable lesson to learn.

deer john

This is a illustration of a deer that came to me while I was staring at the dining room table. It was looking at me from within the woodgrain (ok , so those hallucinogenic field trips at college might have had some residual effects).