Thursday, December 29, 2011

INTRUDER (unpublished)

Intended for either one of the Tangoes or Hysteria #3, this one was ready to go until I saw a particular Hollywood movie that told a story too similar. Happily that movie was utterly trumped by a Hong Kong film using the same premise but taking it far further. Enjoy!






Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Emotional Baggage


A friend of mine had a book of Charles Addams cartoons which made me try my hand at single panel cartoons.  It didn't take but I liked a few of them. This is one.

MARIA


A friend, Diena, gave me a box of coloured pencils just after Hysteria #1 was released. I wore them down to stumps in a fortnight. After that I never really had much to do with colour. The Cintiq is changing that ... slowly.

Maria was a composite of a few exes and the eternal pair bond of Drada, a composite of me and a few friends. They had a rotten relationship that could never quite end. I put a little of this into the two editions of Hysteria that I published. They'd come from a novella I gave up on when I was particularly good at giving up on things. It was called Spring and was about the pair's mutually idiotic relationship. It was meant as a kind of nostalgic dig at the auld Fitzroy scene but just seemed too auld when I started describing it. Anyway, Maria....

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Undeveloped monster


There was a bloke in my social circle with the worst case of unexamined rage I've ever known. He moved among polite middle class people secure in the knowledge that when they gathered he could encourage himself with massive doses of alcohol and start flailing, first with verbal abuse and then (depending on how reptilian he got) all out physical harm. He did it this way because he knew two things: all those well reared folk would forgive him through fear and a little middle class guilt and; he wouldn't remember any of it once he emerged from his hangover. No one approached him with the notion that this behaviour was effectively criminal and wouldn't be tolerated. It was always tolerated.

Most people are the same when they get drunk. They just get slower, repetitive and boring. I do. This guy went from being an affable part of the convivium to a violent cretin in a shockingly short space of time. If you knew what was going to happen, watching him drink was like seeing Popeye down a can of spinach and suddenly burst into a musclebound  proto-Hulk. I never did a story about this as I think it was just too close to people who might have been upset by it but the idea worked. He'd be a kind of super anti-hero. His head started as a brick and became a brick wall.

Didn't even name him. Well, here he is.

Personal archeology: "I'd Rather be Creative than Competitive"

Something I heard a friend of mine say when he wanted to trump another friend's statement about getting a competitive edge. I hate sloganeering and stock phraseology posing as impromptu wit. No one in the room mistook this for earnestness but it was still crazy to see him try it on.

It's summer holidays and I'm going through the clutter of my studio. Everything loose or non essential is getting scanned and the paper recycled or (if it's not presentable as potential pulp) binned for landfill. My Cintiq is being put to more monsoonal use so I'll fill the days with a few o' these.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Smith Street commando

I saw this bloke a long time ago now but have never forgotten his palpable forcefield of pure selfprotective aggression. Anyway, I needed to draw something, thought about it and he turned up.

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

End

Intended for the back cover of Hysteria #2 but I went with a slight continuation of the main story of that one. Found this recently in a sketch book and thought I'd retouch it. Not entirely successful but there ya go.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Eyebowl

Just a new drawing. The image appeared just before waking a few days ago. Now here it is. That'll learn yuz.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Placeholding Clown

This is here because everything else I tried this evening failed more spectacularly. I came up with the first original story idea I've had for a long time this morning. I'll be working on that and putting it up. BUt I want to make that break through this middling stuff and mean something. Meantime. Clown.

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Poppy from antique photo

This is from a photo of my grandfather Phillip Ivanovich Jetnikoff in his uniform. I was trying for another thing but it got too omplicated and I ran out of time. So here is my second representation of PIJ whom we called poppy. A man with a gently absurdist sense of humour.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Janine Smits

From an old story of mine. I wanted to get a pencil sketch from a long time ago and I found one in the first sketchbook I started before getting into comics. This worked a treat as I didn't want to stop once I'd finished it. Only other things that I needed to do stopped me. So, getting better...

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

No more numbered days. Gail at party.

Just a quickie of an old pencil just to reconnect with this blog, and my cintiq after too long away. I really need to keep in touch with both .So here we are again.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Day 6 - Grandfather's eye

Taken from a formal photograph of my grandfather. I'll do the whole thing and probably return to it like the old student card image.

Monday, May 2, 2011

Day 5 - Banyan

From a photo of a banyan tree taken by a friend on Magnetic Island as requested for use in backgrounds for The Monsoons.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Day 4 - Margot

This is a long standing friend of mine from our uni days. This is from a photograph taken at a band practice. We were in two bands together. This is from the first one, The Pits. Taken either by myself or Peter MacPherson. Surprised to find this print among my old photos. But there it was

Saturday, April 30, 2011

Day 3 - 89 Brunswick Street Fringe Party

From a photo taken by my erstwhile other of significance as I jigged around on Brunswick St on the afternoon of the Fringe Festival street party. Doesn't happen there anymore. This is from 1989.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Day 2 - Gail at Party

This is a trace from an old draft of my character Gail from The Monsoons at a party. Very little time tonight so I had to pick something quickly and put the cintiq to work. The original is a pencil surrounded by ink which has an unintended eeriness (especially when the whole scene is apparent). All that's lost here o' course.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Day 1 Student card

I had to replace my scanner so to test it I thought I'd also give my Cintiq and Manga Studio a run as well. It's sloppy and too quickly done but that was the idea. Also, as it's from an embarrassingly old student card the source image was taken with a polaroid, so it's reversed, so it looks a little lopsided even as a photo. I'll be returning to this as I go, seeing what I can make of it.