Raven On.

I kneel before your mighty throne, much like Superman kneeled in front of General Zod in Superman 2. But where as Superman knew he was about to royally fuck General Zod right in the chops, I have no such hope. Your very presence makes me tremble, my eyes yearn to turn away from your terrible beauty but I cannot avert my gaze. I want to shout for mercy but instead I yell, “BLOG, MY LATEST BLOG!” Your disdainful look says it all as I am carted back to my dungeon of unrequited love.

Dungeons & love have been praying on my mind of late my friends. I have become immersed in the intoxicating world of Game Of Thrones! I have resisted for too long. But now find myself watching the series & reading the books at the same time. Soon I shall overtake the celluoid version of the tales & be left with the books. I do love books. Sitting on the train to work the world falls away as I am transported to the world of George RR Martin’s creations. I AM OBSESSED!

So anyway, I’d love to stay & chat but I need to get back to my book, Lord Eddard Stark is in terrible danger & who knows what will happen to Tyrion Lannister!

To celebrate my love for this new found fetish I have created a collage on honour of the main families in the books.

Never look a Gifs horse in the mouth

The gibbous moon shines down on me from the night sky, I look up to it’s pock marked & alien surface & can’t help but wonder if you too are pondering the moon on this barmy night. As I study the lunar orb I notice something moving on it’s surface. I whip out my Fisherprice telescope & jam it into my eye socket. Do my eyes deceive me? No it is you! I call your name but you do not hear me, you carry on cavorting with the cheese men of the orb & I fall to my knees, using my latest blog to wipe away the tears of my heart broken interplanetary longings.

How easy it would be to transform the previous paragraph into an animated gif is anyone’s guess. I am thinking it would take 500 monkeys, 25 years just to turn the Apple Mac on & register their copy of Adobe Photoshop just to start the fucking task. But animated gifs have been playing on my mind for some time now. (Since yesterday afternoon). While conducting some research for an illustration project, time & again animated gifs popped up on my screen like Texan strippers covered in BBQ juice. I was at the same moment appalled & wild with lust. What strange beasts these animated gifs are! Like Gizmo in Gremlins or Ludo in Labyrinth, vulnerable creatures with hidden strengths, capable of horrifying acts that would leave you swimming in your on filth & screaming for your scout leader.

With this in mind I set myself to the task of learning how to make these magical creatures. BELOW IS MY FIRST EFFORT. Prepare yourselves for a flood of such animated atrocities over the coming weeks, months & years.

Love Is A Maze

You walk past me in the street, I see you, but you don’t see me. Your powerful scent makes my legs become unsteady. I lean against a wall, my head reeling from the delicious fumes that erupt from the very pores of your body. I try to remember what I was doing but all is lost, so I run home crying into the lining of my tweed blazer. When I arrive back in my cave & look at the inside pocket of my jacket I find this blog, formed from the salty lust of my tears!

Yes my friends, love. LOVE is the theme of this week’s blog. Ok, using the term ‘this week’s blog’ is a stretch of the imagination. I have been busy & neglected you, not blogging for many months. But like a mother cat with many kittens, I welcome you back with open paw to my swollen & lactating nipples. So, love. Why love? Because, & remember you should never start a sentence with ‘because’. BECAUSE, i’m reading a book about Picasso, by Francoise Gilot.

Francoise was old randy Pablo’s muse for many years & mother to two of his children. You’re arty types, you already knew this. It is a fascinating read of the power Picasso had over people in general, I’m only a quarter way through the book & it’s a riveting read. I never knew Pablo had such an obsession with minotaurs! And his sausage story involving Max Jacobs is hilarious! Genius artist & he loved a good practical joke, what more could you ask for? I am now going out to buy a Breton t shirt & to steal someone’s sausage as soon as I finish writing this.

I illustrated a homage to Picasso, his love of minotaurs & the danger of getting lost in a romance with such a legendary figure.

Love is a maze.

It wasn’t a mirage, it was an Oasis.

As I look from the window I see the sun rising over the hills, a shape shifts in front of the heated yellow orb. Do my eyes deceive me is it really you running towards me? Suddenly other shapes join you. WOLVES. I race from the lodge, rifle in hand, running towards you & let rip a thunderous blog from my blunderbuss, the wolves scatter. We embrace as King Wolf turns on the hill, shaking his paw at us he growls, ” I’ll fucking eat you next time!!!”

I laugh up towards the heavens as we hold each other tightly & reply to our would be furry assailants, ” WILL YOU FUCK, YOU SHOWER OF BASTARDS.”

But back to the blog that saved our heroic lives, sometimes life hands you an opportunity which should be grasped. Yesterday I walked past Noel Gallagher in the street, if I had not gone to Boots the chemist & then to another shop where I ended up discussing the merits of online shopping with the store manager, I would never have walked past Noel at that EXACT moment.

Now, as one of the original Oasis fans from way back when this was an earth shaking experience for me. To see one of your idols walk past you in the street makes you question the space time continuum. I turned to look for Al from Quantum Leap so I could demand the odds from Ziggy on the chances of this event occurring. Alas he wasn’t there as he isn’t real.

The experience was ruined though as Mr Gallagher was on his phone & I thought it would be rude to interrupt him mid conversation, incurring his & his burly minder’s wrath. I watched them disappear down the street, ready to give chase should the king of Brit pop finish his conversation. But alas it wasn’t to be. OH WHAT COULD OF BEEN!

In a parallel universe Noel & I would chat & he would then invite me for a drink as he thought I was such a double mad for it top laugh. He would then employ me as his Svengali & I would change my name to Rudy Tiptop. Eventually I would become Prime minister due to my wise words & ability to avert a crisis with a hilarious pun. When I finally took my place as king of the world, riding a genetically engineered cross between a silver back gorilla & a stallion, I would look back on that fateful moment when I bumped into Noel Gallagher & think what a tragic turn my life COULD have taken had I not. I would then kick my trusty steed in the sides & gallop off to survey my next kingdom. HUZZAH!

Below is a sketch of the fateful moment went it all went fucking tits up.

Bar fight with the Thin White Duke.

I can see you, but you can’t see me. I have cut a hole in my newspaper & I sit with the world’s current affairs dripping down my face as I gawp at your beauty through my spy hole of love. Like a monkey drunk on the fermented fruit of the forest floor I am intoxicated with lust for your beautiful head & the face that sits on it’s noble & all conquering chin piece. But alas I have to turn away before I am engulfed in the flames of your extravagant exquisiteness & return to my blog before I digress into bed I will never rise from.

For as long as I can remember I have wanted to draw for a living. I was especially reminded of this when clearing out under the stairs at my mother’s house (this is not a euphemism). I found an old letter I had written to Marvel Comics UK. The letter oozed hopes & dreams of a future involving fast cars & GIRLS, I imagined myself sipping cream sodas with Stan Lee in New York, while we discussed the future of Spiderman & the Marvel Universe in general. We would then hit Studio 54 & get into a drug fuelled punch up with David Bowie & recalcitrant rock god Freddie Mercury. Life would be one long mad ride until I crashed & burned, retiring to Beverley Hills to live with the Fresh Prince’s Uncle Phil in his palatial mansion, a torrid affair with Aunt Vivian would take place, but I’d blame it on Jazzy Jeff.

The only problem to this dream was I can’t draw to a level that a comic artist would even deem laughable. Say the word ‘perspective’ or ‘anatomically correct’ to me & I break out in a cold sweat, froth erupts from my mouth & I try & kiss you on the lips to distract you from the question you just asked me, this would normally work. But it would only detract from the elephant in the room, which incidentally I could draw side on, but not as a bird’s eye view or with any depth.

But this hasn’t stopped me my friends. NO NO NO! I continue to battle on with the pen & the ink. Much like Sean Connery, I never say never again. I have decided to send a new letter to Marvel Comics now that I have honed my skills. I have been training for YEARS, much like a really slow version of Ralph Macchio in the Karate Kid. Obviously they couldn’t have drawn out Ralph’s training in the film over a period of years as it would have been properly boring & the film would have been called the Karate Man, which has straight to VHS written all over it. My submission to Marvel will be the life story of Harry Nilsson, below is a sneak peak at part of the graphic novel. New York beckons…

Ghost Seal

I slip a crusty dollar bill in-between your beautiful teeth & you continue to dance, oblivious to the filthy lucre clenched among your pearly whites, you are taken by the music, nothing can stop the ancient rhythm coursing through your exotic veins.

But then the music stops as abruptly as it started, you collapse in a heap at my cuban heeled feet. As you look up into my smitten eyes you pull the currency from your avant garde chops & realise it isn’t tainted tender after all but my latest blog!

So my friends, once again we find ourselves together, you there, I here. I sit behind your computer screen. I’M TRAPPED! LET ME OUT!

Of course I jest, but this week’s blog is no laughing matter. I come to rest on a very serious matter, the work of David Attenborough. More precisely his latest master piece FROZEN PLANET. Many moments through out the series have made me pause the TV, drop to my knees & weep at the majesty/ cruelty of nature, my mug of hot chocolate suspended millimetres from my mouth as I stare transfixed at some new marvel unfolding before my eyes.

The five hour death match between a She wolf & a Bison was beyond belief. The seals got it pretty bad as well, those poor fuckers aren’t safe anywhere. Sit on an iceberg & you’ll get eaten by a marauding group of killer whales, pop up out of a hole in the ice & a Polar Bear will swipe your fucking bounce off! Unbelievable.

I was also inspired by my erstwhile friend& living legend Stephen Maurice Graham aka 400Facts, check his business here https://twitter.com/400facts an illustrator of true talent & rare form. So as a homage to the Arctic equivalent of the doomed rabbits from Watership Down I have created the Ghost Seal. I will write a theme tune over Christmas & get it uploaded to You Tube. It will go something like this, “GHOST SEAL! HE’S A FUCKING GHOST. GHOST SEAL! HE’S A FUCKING GHOST .E.T.C.”

Totem Gesture

The earth shakes beneath your moccasin clad feet, the very bones & marrow of you vibrates as your heart pounds with unknown fear, but as you throw yourself to the ground & scream for mercy you realise it is just my latest blog thundering past your prone body on the buffalo plains know as the internet!

As you can already see my friends, my blog this week has a certain High Plains Drifter feel to it. I am immersed in the world of Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy of books. At the moment I am languishing in jail with his two heroes in Mexico. I hope to have escaped by the time I get off the train this evening. BUT WHO KNOWS!!! Ah, the wonder of books, how the commuter world around me falls away as I am whisked to exciting new places by words. Words, words, words.

The last book I read was Empire Of The Summer Moon about the Comanche tribes of America, a thoroughly riveting & blood thirsty read. All of it true as well which made it all the more terrifying. I am stuck on the proverbial bucking bronco of American literature at the moment & holding on for dear life as I am tossed & battered around by the eyes & mind. Tis a thrilling ride, though I fear saddle sores at the end of my journey.

Having read the Empire Of the Summer Moon I decided to create my own interpretation of a totem pole. It’s in honour of Quannah Parker, the greatest of The Comanche Chiefs & a man of considerable genius. BEHOLD! BELOW!

Brain Fruit Issue 2

At last my intrepid friends the next issue of Brain Fruit is here! As it is All Hallows Eve this edition is a monster special! MU HA HA HA e.t.c.

Brain Fruit 2

Your greatest fear isn’t fear itself. It’s what fucking scares you.

You awake with a start, your cold clammy hand reaches up to mop your feverish brow. It is then that you realise how complex & beautiful you really are. As the realisation dawns on you a spider crawls under the bed sheets & sinks it’s malicious mandibles into your sweat prickled skin. As the venom courses through your veins you shriek in terror as you realise it is my latest blog!

At the moment spiders seem to be a hot topic of conversation on social networking sites & in the media. The two are intertwined like urban foxes making sweet love to each other. Their demonic baby like howls piercing our ears until we have no choice but to respond by running naked into the alley to join their vicious tryst. But I digress, arachnids. I suffer from arachnophobia, I fear the spelling as much as the ailment. These eight legged creatures strike fear into my very soul & this year there is an abundance of fear, under the sofa, in the bathroom, scuttling through the kitchen, crawling down my mouth as I sleep & laying eggs in my ears so that their hairy fang wielding offspring can munch on my brain over a period of weeks until nothing is left & they inhabit my skull socket & take over my life.

What would a spider do if it took on human form or could control our bodies like the little silver men in Zoids? (A toy of the eighties, google the shit out if it).

Well my friends the human spider would run rampant! Eating anything in sight, but they would mainly congregate in fast food shops, really crap ones that imitate the bigger multi national food chains. The establishments called things like Kenny’s Fried Chicken or Beef Royalty. Here they would meet to plot sinister crimes & stare hypnotically into the deep fat fryer.

I know you were hoping for the reality to be so much more Peter Parker, but the grim truth is spiders would eat us all if they had the chance. A dog’s bark is often worse than it’s bite, this is not the case with spiders as they can’t bark. Therefore biting is their only option.

So on these damp late summer evenings when you’re sat at home watching repeats of Terry & June, if a spider crawls into view, leap from your chair & run for your shit ridden lives!!! Abandon all belongings, loved ones & hope for we are doomed!!!

Now I normally do an illustration at the end of my blog to ram home my salient point like a samurai sword into the skull of a ninja assassin. But I’ll be honest, the thought of illustrating a spider scared me so much that I had to illustrate my second greatest fear.

This fear is of being in the sea, drowning, as I can’t swim. (I have lead shins, medical fact). But not only am I drowning I am being attacked by a Great White Shark, as things can’t get much worse a performing bear falls of a passing Russian Cruise ship & joins the killer shark in the vicious life ending attack.

The illustration is called, ‘WELL THAT WAS AN ANGRY EMAIL.”

The Skull Man & The Lactating Elephant Rampage.

You cower in the corner like a small hairy Mexican boy in a freak show. I lean forward to caress your supple overgrown face, but you recoil, remembering the glaring hungry eyes of the dime paying spectators as they watched you cavort & perform your mysterious South American wet dance. My hand holds forth a paper bag full of exotic beans, your nose twitches as your beautiful nostrils realise the smell is my latest blog!

Monsters lie in wait for you, either under the bed or on the news at Ten. Whichever it is, one of them will get you in the end. Death comes to us all my friends, I was reminded of this only last night while watching the superlative Bill Hicks documentary by Matt Harlock & Paul Thomas. The visuals were astounding & I squirmed in my seat as I guilty regretted having never succumbed to Mr Hick’s charms before.

I had always wrongly assumed he had died at an early age due to excessive living. I shall now be checking out his oeuvre with the passion of a lusty nun.

And so, after this enjoyable programme I retired to bed, some people think bed’s are like ball pools at a childrens’ theme park. To be jumped in, cavorted on & slammed into. I slip under mine like a lizard under a cool rock in the noon sun. There I dream, of late my dreams have taken on a stressfull turn. On the night in question I dreamt I was a rampaging lactating elephant, running amok through the streets of suburban Sydney. It didn’t end well, I crashed, full pelt into a conservatory & collapsed next to a small stone sculpture of one of my grey skinned brethren.

I awoke trying to fathom the meaning of this night vision, but soon gave up. On a subsequent night I dreamt I was conversing with a suited skeleton who was sporting a glass bowl on his head. I have illustrated this dream in the picture below this blog, it captures the event that took place in my night brain, which is never to be confused with my day brain, altough on occassion it has & with disastrous consequences. Sometimes it is best not to delve into the inner workings of the human mind, I often yearn for the simple dreams of a young terrier, chasing rabbits o’er hill & Dale, nipping ankles & pissing on posts. Maybe tomorrow night…