aaaand this is a drawing i started in australia and finished in canada. It was inspired by a library book about magic and alchemy in art. I was amazed at how certain mythologies and attributes of our natural world persist and change through time. But for me, it's not so much about consistant symbolism as the underlying human/nature relations.

Somehow I came up with the idea of people going a little bit against the natural order. This is a woman peeing upwards at the moon. She's gigantic like some kind of superhuman, and her urine actually reaches the personified moon. It's playful, and I thought it made sense that the moon is often a symbol of feminity. And I think it's like a myth... "and she grew so large, and peed so strongly, that her piss totally soaked the moon in the face, and dripped down to earth, creating the lake of Moon Piss."

For me, the concepts that inspire a drawing should stay at the beginning stage of the art-creation. My ideas about this work's "meaning" only serve as the motivation to create an image that is, in itself, interesting to look at. So I know that people are going to interpret the spraying fluid as a gigantic orgasm, or lemon juice, or whatever. I don't like to make art that is like a cryptic code, which you can decipher using your artworld knowledge to come up with the meaning and say "oh, I see what you did there."

And that's okay, because when I look at old medieval, renaissance, or surrealist imagery, I don't always need to know what the symbols mean in order to be interested. I just want it to look cool and provoke a bit of thought.

Failure of Text in images

I haven't been posting while I was in Australia. While I was there, I made these two drawings:

There was text in the speech balloons, but when I scanned these images, I photoshopped them out, because they just didn't work in context.

The words were based on a conversation I overheard, from the party in the yard next door while I was drawing. A European visitor had had too much beer, and was talking loudly about all sorts of things, mostly comparing Australia to his home. He sounded homesick. Eventually he started saying, "I don't feel like I should BE in Australia, as a white person. White people don't belong here, they aren't welcome because they are foreign invaders. Everywhere else i've travelled, I've met someone from that local culture who made me feel like I was accepted as a visitor, but not here in Australia." He sounded pretty distressed.

I paraphrased his words and made the topless woman say them. She was a picture from an "Australia is Beautiful" naked postcard, and I just added the rest of the decor randomly.

The second image had text based on the reply to this issue made by a housemate's friend when I told him the overheard conversation. He basically said, "Well the British weren't the worst colonizers in the world. Sure, they did terrible things, but not as bad as some other nations. And at least they did things to improve the countries they took over, like building railroads, instead of just pillaging."

I'm fairly interested in discussions of colonialism, so I used these two points of view, in a collage spirit. I figured that just as I was taking figures from postcards and re-drawing them, I might as well do the same with text.

But in the end I didn't find that I could show these pictures to anybody, without adding a big disclaimer of, "This is not really my opinion, this is a conversation I overheard." I guess words are just that strong, more loaded than images in this case. I mean a topless chick with pointy boobs is a topless chick with pointy boobs - whatever - but the words seem more likely to be interpreted as the artist's personal viewpoint.

I think in the end, the problem is that I feel so ambivalent about judging these viewpoints. I'm using the words without putting forward my own viewpoint. It ends up being really wishy-washy and confusing.

So, I used the clone stamp tool to just make it blank.

blue and brownish crystalzes

this is the latest - I think I'm improving at this technique every time I do it -

1970s illustration

I went to the library and read a book about illustration in the 1970a. I stole these images. A lot of them are by Philippe Corentin or Alain le Saux - I can't really find much information about them on the internet, but I really like these pictures.

I'd like to develop that skill of thinking up smart, metaphorical imagery that brutally communicates an idea, in such a poetic way.

I was asked to design a layout and cool banner for Mountain Madness Mondays, a blog about an apres-ski (snowboarding?) night. This is what i came up with - it might be tweaked a bit yet. I managed to fight down my tendency to have every single colour in the artwork, and keep it down to a few ones that look good together.

http://www.mountainmadnessmondays.blogspot.com/

fireball

Another one in my "series" of little watercolours of rocks. This one is different in that it has black lines, and I tried to keep the colours more subdued and earthy (to a point, obviously).

Watercolours look so fantastic when the paint's wet, but are often pretty dull in comparison once they dry. It really depends on the particular brand and colour you're using, I think. Maybe one day in the future I'll try to use oil or acrylics again, for that shiny, wet look.

Pigments are an interesting thing... they can have such amazing qualities. I guess a computer screen isn't really the same way - we can get pretty much any hue on command with a computer, but there's always going to be something compelling about a limited choice, about the idea that some colours are more expensive than others. The history of pigments is fascinating (especially when some strange material had to be got from mummies or some weird, particular source. So romantic!).

words and pictures

I'm trying to develop my narrative tendencies, by coming up with A Story. It's going pretty well, I guess - except for the fact that the story sucks, and is lame, boring and not pertinent to anything significant. I wouldn't want to put it on a wall and have anyone I know see it. Is this something I should keep working on, and improve it in terms of those negative aspects, or just abandon it completely?

It's very, VERY rare to find any one person who is equally good at drawing a story, and writing it - in terms of the plot, the characters, the choice of language, and all that. Most good comics have either a compelling, well-told story combined with simple drawings, or beautiful drawings and pointless words. Actually, maybe it's not an exact balance - a comic with a shitty, lame, saccharine plot and nice drawings isn't usually worth reading. I would actually say that the story is more important - but I think the key is that the images should be appropriate to the story. As in, the artist should know his or her limitations and stick within them, rather than trying to draw in a more complicated style than he or she can.

But what I really want to talk about is: why do we expect one person to be able to do both? What happens if we combine a great storyteller with a great artist? Maybe this is what happens the vast majority of the time - the comics I read are mostly webcomics, where it's all about the self-publishing and such, whereas in a traditional published comic, it's made by several people.

I think I'm all for abandoing the stereotype of the artist as an individualistic genius who does it all himself or herself. On the other hand, maybe there is something lost if you have two people working on both sides of the story: not because it taints the purity of the individualistic genius artist, but maybe because a story with great words and great pictures isn't as interesting as one that is a little imperfect on one side of the equation.

I think there's still something charming about reaching for a certain mark, and falling a little short of it.

Or it could be that the real important thing is the way the words and pictures work together, to tell a story. An image isn't just there to embellish the words (most of the time). And words aren't just there to explain the picture. Striking a balance is probably key.

Maybe instead of coming up with words to tell a story, I should realise that pictures can tell a story on their own, since that's what I'm better at.