Sunday, July 29, 2007

Even the cyber me has dyslexia


This is part of a conversation between my cybertwin & wing, who also sent me a postcard from secondlife

sighclone: i'm an adenrurer and occasional cartoonist

Wing : what is and adenrurer

sighclone: Depends if we are talking cyberspace or the real world. Assuming cyberspace, what do you think it is?

Wing: i think its a misspelling

sighclone: Why do you think that?

Wing: because not in dictionary

sighclone: I'm not a dictionary, I'm a CyberTwin. I'd much rather chat with you than regurgitate definitions all day.

Wing: are u an adventurer

sighclone: Am I? Guess.

Wing: so you say.

sighclone: Me? Yeah, what about me?

Wing: i am an explorer.. of two universes.

sighclone: Two what? I am not a calculator program, I don't like arithmetic.

Wing: i looked at your sketch site, keep it up


If you'd like your own animated avatar (such as mine above) try visiting Meez and get your own unique 3D ID

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Hello Mister


The Bar Girls, drawn last week with chinesse ink, a felt pen & highlight markers... at the time I thought these where a little in the sophi (of art for engineers) style... but perhaps I'm wrong (I'm not worthy)

Size really does matter

In the tit for tat world of international prudity it seems the germans are getting censorship from the USA (a bizarroo world inverse of the Flickr german user Censr)

The offending image of a nude male statue

It would appear a grown up author of children's story is pulling the plug on her american publisher who wanted to remove an illustration of a nude sculpture in the background of a museum scene

On the page, the sculpture stands at a very unthreatening seven millimeters tall and the appendage could, at first glance, be dismissed as a wayward brushstroke. The "little willy" as Berner called it “was barely half a millimeter in length.” The sculpture is an aside in the overall museum scene and is in no way prominent to the storyline on that page, she added.


Found this story on Ms Naughty's Blog

search not working?

I'm trying out the new search this blog widgetty tool over on the right hand side BUT it doesn't seem to be working.... any one know what I'm doing wrong?

Friday, July 27, 2007

IF dogs were poets?



"Happiness is having a scratch for every itch." ... Ogden Nash

Although it late friday here, the new topic isn't posted on illustration friday yet... so I thought i should go for it... always wanted to be last on the list

As all cartoonist will tell you there is something deeply satisfying in just sliding in under that deadline.

Maria (the pirate) Blablablanik


Maria the Pirate
Originally uploaded by locarbhiflavor
I found Manola Blablablanik via twitter and probably dropped in at a bad time ...she is recovery from a medical scare... but such is life

If you have time, the archive of her "Sex and the Beach" blog are very well written, totally entertaining and a little bawdy ;)


PS: srcohiba deserves a mention for the pirate photoshop work

Am I a true Bohemian revolutionary?



The speed of broadband in singapore is amazing... and cheap...maybe the mythical pacific broadband bottleneck is real... anyway the extra bandwidth makes it easier to explore the video and vlog worlds and there are some creative folk already in there... maybe the true bohemian revolutions isn't a myth either... but what if you want to view the stuff when you are at lower bandwidth altitudes... well i found a nice little program called Vdownloader, which just needs the URL link details and can download video from several popular sites (including YouTube) into several popular format (including PSP and IPOD compatible format) ... so now their is no excuse not to have good art on your personal technology



For those that like a bit of surreal self reference, the first video I downloaded to my PSP was the John Bulter Trio's Good Excuse video... Its about turning off your gameboy and going outside and experiencing the real world.... now if that isn't revolutionary i don't know what is?

Sunday, July 15, 2007

au revoir pour tandis que

I'll be bcak

Make your own "polaroids" here

Saturday, July 14, 2007

IF [Disc-cover-Y]


for illustration friday topic discovery

This was done as a direct scan of the objects, placed flat on my scanner glass... is this a collage or more like photograph?

Friday, July 13, 2007

what is everyone doing...?

where is the confusion?


I'm guessing the confusion that lead to me becoming unsafe on flickr is the common confusion of NUDE and PORN, which has been a specific US problem for some time... but maybe one that is spreading around the self righteous net ...please don't be confused

W A R N I N G
this site only has nudes!

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

IF its cool to be geeky?


For Illustration Friday's topic geeky

I am still searching for a new computer generated style in my cartoons... hand drawing and computer colouring, does speed things up... but it is still not WEB 3.0 enough... or is there a better way?

amber necklace..


watercolour on paper .........pastel on paper

I'm still working on colours that bring the skin tone to life...especially the shadows

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

a goddess reclining

It seems the goddess venus was a favourite with the old masters because she was a subject that allowed to be painted nude... pity they all copied the same pose

Venus reclining (after giorgione) charcoal on paper

playing with light and colour

I've been experimenting with new, thicker, watercolour card, so i can paint wet-on-wet to try and get a more luminous light on skin tones... also experimenting with cadmium red over yellow ocher against blues


the blue bed


the blue dress (after Ken Howard)

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

new toys.... how can i resist

Blogger if offering its "new adaptors" a chance to to have a play with some new toys in blogger (well its being called blogger in draft)... but who am i to resist... the one thing that appealed to moi... was polls, being able to add polls as page elements... so look over on the stuff on the right hand side and give it a GO! Please....

I am getting a bit feed up with the good stuff on the net always being overrun with bullies, cowboys, trolls and childish behaviour... I really see the social networking side of the net being a great thing for the true creative spirit... somewhere where they are free to flourish, and collaborate, and do brilliant things, and some good things... maybe do a few things that aren't so good but without hurting anyone.. so where is that place... VOTE NOW (its over in the right handside remember)

Am I being too naive?

twisted torso


This is a sketch for illustration friday's twisted topic sorry its a bit late!

I had read about anamorphosis some time ago, but an email conversation got me doing some left hand writing and thinking about left handed painting, then painting in a different dimension, so I researched this art form a bit on the net and found this wonderful place Art of Anamorphosis, and their is a gem of a little program inside that can be downloaded for free, called anamorph me, created by Phillip Kent, it let me create a perfectly twisted torso that you can "unfold"...actually you must fold it... and see the "true" torso sketch.



To make the image I fist took a photo of my friend from flickr and trimmed it a bit and ran it through the anamorph me program using first the convert to a greyscale (I only have access to an old black and white laser printer today) and then used the inside a cone anamorph function... printed the result... then cut it out and folded it into a cone...(note have a small tab on one side of the segment makes it easier to stick the cone together)... nothing special yet? I them copied this flat image as a pastel sketch and that is what you see above, print it cut it out and fold it for yourself... it contains a lovely surprise



OK turn the cone over and look inside!

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

filtering out the world

It seems even second life is getting into the content filtering caper, but the way i picked this up through a tweet on twitter, not via second life... so chance are the source is a rumor not an official announcement



On the technical side I scanned this pencil sketch in with paint.net (a free download), as all HP scanner owners will know by now the controls over scanning are frustratingly inadequate not that paint.net has more controls it does the scanning as i would want!

Monday, July 02, 2007

in search of a new gallery

yahoo photos are shutting down... hmmmmm, i will have to look for a new home for some old favourites... what about flickr... well I dropped my pro account when I was made NIPSA, so i only get to display 200 photos

AND now HORRORS of HORRORS I'm rated UNSAFE... which means I can publicly display ZERO

This hurts a bit as I have been an advocate for Flickr self filter systems... and I was diligent in rating my nudes... so why am I unsafe?... why am I a loose cannon, maybe it because I stand up to bullies and self opinionated morons...perhaps it is just that other see the nudes and i get lumped in with the pornographers, the picture thieves, fakrs, spammers and other low light making flickr into something more like the wild west than the creative place it should be... AND I'm too tired of all the jibberish to participate in the current Flickr Censr(ship) debate.

but let's not cry over split milk... i will just need to find a different on-lime home for my sketckbook pages... c'est la vie

Sunday, July 01, 2007

A short break


soft pencil on paper

There is a lot going on in my life at the moment so this may the last sketch posted in here... well for a little while