just for fun and that

my current theme

Continuing the theme of characterizing myself within favourite game titles, I have decided to go in the Chuck Greene direction. Dead Rising 2 has been eating up some of the countless spare hours that I have accumulated throughout the summer so far and so I sort of owe it to the game....(?)

Anyway, this is my preliminary sketch that I've scanned in with the intention of finalising in photoshop, much like my Gears

Of War character (below, obviously).

I'll head back here to post it up as soon as it's done. That is, of course, if I'm not busy slaying the undead with boxing glove knives.

Damn... I'm not looking good.

So today I played the demo of Duke Nukem Forever and oh dear... I wasn't impressed. First of all I was shocked (and quite appalled) at the graphics but even the gameplay was very straight forward and disappointing. The only thing I will say for it is that the novelty parts of the game make it quite enjoyable such as the ability to interact with a variety of different things (such as toilets and whiteboards in the demo) but I know that this kind of novelty is short lived. If this game had been released when it was supposed to be then I probably would have loved it but unfortunately it's too little too late. I imagine lots of people will enjoy it, and I'm sure I would for awhile too but for forty of my hard earned squids? no no, no no. Anyway it made me want to do a little sketch of a deflated Duke and so I grabbed my sketchbook and a pencil and whacked this out... Then I went to play on Gears of war 2 because that is a game that is still worth playing. Shame on you Duke! Too bad.

am I good yet!?

A few more lady sketches... I think the one on the bottom left is probably the best one so far... the two above it look rather like black babies. As for the one on the right she isn't bad but her lips are probably too small, her eyes too big and her eyebrows just aren't doing it for me... the battle continues!

Sleepy thoughts on the origins of emotions.

If anxiety can be considered an emotional response with its own evolutionary purpose then surely all emotions have an evolutionary necessity. I imagine jealousy to be beneficial in order to keep others from potentially taking away our mate, thus reducing our chances of passing on our genes. I imagine that animals who fight (like so many do) over mates feel what we could call jealousy. It would seem that anger has similar origins as well. Anger is basically aggression and when we think of what makes us angry it is often centred around humiliation and potential mates again. There are more things to consider for example I am unable to explain why a child repeatedly asking “why?” as a response to a previous answer might manifest anger. I could only explain certain pet peeves as a result of upbringing and environmental factors at this point unfortunately. Humiliation is important because we are highly social animals and belonging to a group is important for our genes survival and so anything that might separate us from a group is bound to result in aggression. Potential mates are fought over continuously in nature as a result of the female of the species being often quite choosey with who fertilizes her egg. The competition is hot amongst the males who wish to mate with as many sexually mature females as possible, but the female has to carry the burden of pregnancy which may take many months, in which time the male could fertilize a very large amount of females. By being choosey, the female is giving her genes the best chance at survival and not wasting precious time on young that would not survive. In the midst of anger or jealousy, people are rarely able to consider the genetic reasoning behind the emotions. If they did, they might find that the emotion becomes drastically less intense than it was prior to the realisation. These emotions are easy enough to explain, though I may not have explained them too articulately, but as of the moment I am unable to explain emotions such as sorrow and happiness. Granted that these emotions are just labels for emotional responses but that doesn’t make them any less real. Happiness and sorrow definitely do exist. Perhaps when I experience these feelings I’m just another animal, caught up in the moment and unable to rationalise. The closest I can get to explaining happiness and sorrow would be to explain pleasure and pain. Both are opposite ends of the spectrum but we wouldn’t call them the same thing by any means. Pleasure has evolved to persuade us into doing something beneficial for our genes. It’s no secret that sex sits around the top on most peoples lists of pleasurable things. Interestingly though, people may also place eating certain foods, for example chocolate, at the top of the list too. There is a correlation here, both result in pleasure because both are (or at least were) beneficial to our genes survival. We seek to reproduce not because we want to have children but because we enjoy the pleasure of sex. We eat not because we need to fuel our bodies but because we enjoy eating. Dawkins states that the gene obviously could have had no idea (obviously) that animals might evolve to exploit these pleasures to such a degree that it stops being beneficial. I feel like I am really butchering the amazing work of Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene with my feeble attempts and so I would strongly recommend reading it yourself. Pain, rather obviously, works in exactly the opposite way and barely warrants an explanation at all. What we see as painful is also often obviously damaging to our bodies, and that remains a concern for the logical part of our brain as well as the instinctive. I am unable to explain things that make me happy, such as brilliant thunderstorms and heavy rain or amazing views of natural beauty. I would really love to read in to this more if I could find a book by a respectable scientist of sorts. Anyway, it’s quite late now and I’m rambling in a sort of half-asleep daze. I apologise for not uploading any art, this is an art blog after all, and I also apologise for my poor explanations and theories surrounding emotions. When I’m more awake I might have stood a better chance of making it clear, but for now you will just have to put up with it or read a Dawkins book. SWEET DWEEEMS.

progress...

This is a quick little sketch that I boshed out before work after looking into the differences between male and female faces a little more. Comparing this to some of the abominations that I did before gives me hope that I will be able to draw women pretty well fairly soon. Right now I had better put on my purple uniform and switch to my robot personality.

just some sketchy faces today done with an almost dry fine liner and a bit of water to spread the ink... MUST KEEP DRAWING.

More lady drawing practice.

While watching the grudge and the grudge 2 with my lovely lady Kayleigh I decided to get some more drawing practice. I couldn't be bothered to finish the sketch entirely but I think I'm gradually coming to terms with drawing women from my imagination... Here's a little look.

Social Anxiety Disorder can suck my balls :D

just so you get an idea of the scale of my outcome pieces.

Today was results day for my foundation art course. I only needed a pass to get into Bournemouth to do illustration but even so it was a very worrying time... Turns out though that I got a bloody distinction! I wouldn't have been able to do with without my bloody social anxiety disorder though, so as much as I hate it, I am extremely grateful for it right now :) Here are the final outcomes of my project.



I'm bloody chuffed.

Damn all you B-UUUUU-T-4-GIRLS.

I've been wanting to draw some girl concepts for Matt's idea about this roller derby thing and I just can't seem to draw women. I think I've spent so much time drawing angry, testosterone fuelled men and hideous monsters that I just lack the skill entirely... SO, I started doing some practice sketches at faces but even then I was wondering what made some images work while others fell so gloriously on their arse... I needed to UNDERSTAND what makes somebody good looking. So anyway, while I continue to figure out the reasons for finding certain people more attractive than others, have a peek at one of my sketchbook pages.

Automatic drawing ;)

When I have nothing to do and nothing to draw and no desire to push myself beyond my average ability I draw whatever I feel like... which just happens to be a load of cartoon bull shit as per. I NEED INSPIRATION AND FAST!!!

Gears 3 mania

So I'm becoming more and more obsessed with gears of war thanks to the books and the recent E3 stuff on show and so today I just had to draw myself a wild brumak without all the armor and machinery on it... took a lot of inspiration from one particular image found on gears pedia as you can see...Absolutely mental eh! Anyway, this is what I produced based upon it. Pencil on A3 for the win this time.

After reading about Horde 2.0 I am definitely as excited as I possibly could be now... Bring on September 20th!

Press START to begin

So I've finally gone and sorted out a blog page for my artwork. Luckily for my facebook friends this means that I probably won't be uploading every single piece of art that I do to my "art shizz" folder... Actually I'm still going to!

I haven't got much in the way of new art to upload as of the minute, but here is a sea snake sketch I was working on the other day for fun... didn't get very far but MEH.

I'll do some more posts as soon as I have something decent to talk about or show you.

Time to go and eat cheese now though.