Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb.

Yeesh, it's been more than a month since I had an art update. Stuff is (as usual) stupid busy at work but it's mostly been animation gigs and it's starting to calm down a tad. Here's the coloured version of Vega for the childhood heroes collection. I was about 8 when I first played Street Fighter II, at Dunedin airport. I don't know why I chose him. Maybe even then I subconsciously liked the idea that a man could be effeminate and badass at the same time. Still working on the latter.

I'm about to abandon this drawing blog and start a new one on Tumblr (that's what you kids are doing, right, right kids?) but I'll update them parallel for a while now. That blog is here.

Another true experience angry drunk for the collection. Once again, working late, I'd come down from the fourth floor of my prison to indulge in the worst of my petty vices when I was approached by this frightening youngster. He was tall and stooped in a baggy outfit, leering about stink-eyed like a hunching, oversized scarecrow wearing overlarge hessian sacks. He asked for a cigarette, I obliged him, and then he lingered, not able to say much due to being so shit-faced, occasionally giving the burning end of his dart a violent blow to keep it alight and generally being shifty.

He was...lurking; there was no better way to describe him. Any action he took had a sinister lurkality, a malefic lurkhood, an ominous lurkitude, a malevolent lurquation. Whilst lurking, he kept furtively looking at me, my pockets, and then to the sparse but ever present passers-by. He seemed to be waiting impatiently for a moment when no one else was about. This moment didn't come in the time it took me to finish my cancer stick, so I bid him good evening and went back upstairs.

To date, this has been my greatest motivation to quit smoking.

Another real-life angry drunk, and once again it's from the Rugby Sevens. Last year I was at a stag night that ended up in the thick of the Sevens bedlam. This poor young broad looked like she was trying to help her comatose friend get up from the ground, though she was trying to yank her into a standing position by her hair. Then she socked her friend square in the face. People ran in to break them apart but she just wouldn't let go of her poor friend's locks; it was straight up awful. Fuck the Sevens.

Leechback Tumbler

Hornback slider

Two more critters from the pocket Moleskine (thanks again for that, Melle).

Be well, samelings.

Another real-life addition to the Angry Drunk set.

Now, I may have given the impression in my last post that I don't like the Toast Martinborough event, which isn't the case. It's not for me, but I think it's a fine idea indeed.

A Wellington event I have nothing but contempt for however is the Rugby Sevens. Every year, Our Waitangi Day long-weekend is ruined by hordes of jocks, douche-bags and slappers dressed in their matching safety-in-numbers costumes who fill the bars with fuckwittery, and the streets with vomit, broken glass and sexual harassment. I'm being general and unfair here, but bear with me. As I've said, rugby, dressin' up and drinkin' in the daytime are all great, but this event brings out the worst. Like the dude above who I saw.

When this dick and his sexually-frustrated mates are nice and horsed from the dozen tasteless Steinlager Pure they've each smashed back, I'm sure stomping through town in their matching afro wigs shouting 'Tits out for the boys!' aggressively at every passing woman seems like a right harmless lark and a bit of laddish fun to them. To everyone watching, it looks like something else: a date rape parade.

Fuck the Sevens.

Yep, still got a few more of these angry drunks left to do. In fact, I finished the pencils and inks for all of the remaining nine mid-Feb, but haven't had a chance to finish any due to my day-job turning into an all-day-and-night-hours-of-the-blimmin-week-job.

This guy is a real-life encounter. Toast Martinborough is an event which happens every November, where city folk head out to the vineyards for a day of wine-swilling and music in the sun. And what seems to start as a mellow time with at least delusions of sophistication (maybe even actual sophistication) produces, well, the same outcome as any event in this problematic country that involves lots of people drinking (which I guess could've been simplified to 'every day in New Zealand').
The bus carrying these bloated, sunburned revelers unloads right outside my work where, surprises, I was working late and met this chap with a face like a squarish tomato. He was trying to to tell me something meaningful but was at the point where he couldn't even form noises that resembled words, let alone actual words. He must've gotten lost and started stumbling round the same block repeatedly because I saw him again an hour later, where he failed again to pass on his important knowledge. I'll never know what brilliant gems of wisdom I missed out on.

And here's the poster. Not my best work, but a lot of fun and just what I needed.
Click it for big ol'!

After my lost weekend, I've had some time today to work on my freelance projects. Above is the custom type logo (first time I've attempted that) and the cheesecake pin-up sketch for Space Cake's gig poster (which will be finished later tonight).

Hopefully more work coming up here soon, dear samelings.

My work-work, as usual, is taking up all of my time. Evenings and weekends spent trying to keep the loose, careless promises made by higher-ups who don't understand what they're selling/managing. This means none of my personal or freelance work has been getting done, but I can occasionally make time for some sketchbook scribs.

Patrick: "How come all the monsters you draw look like cocks and scrotes?"
Fine then, Patrick, this one above doesn't look like those things; are you happy now? I didn't think so.

Here's a stoneback plodder I scribbed out at drink-n-draw with Guy last week.

Be well, samelings.

Oh, whaddup, melodramatic coping mechanism? Ha, same as always. The battle with the previous landlady still rages on and I'm just about all out of mustard for it. I wish I could just bury this nonsense for good.

The plus side is, I promised not to trim my beard until the battle was over and, as it's gone on for ages, my beard is now bigger than ever. Also I just paid off my student loan, which is awesome.

Be well, samelings.