Fig II. The Sword-Wielding Crabtopus

There's no coming back from this, Fig II is well and truly glued down for good. I'm so proud of this little fella because it was originally my least favourite collage out of the series.

May have spelt Wielding wrong though... -__-

A Male Cecaelia Contemplates Miasma

They're not finished but shitting hell I'm definitely moving towards a conclusion with my collages. Kinda silly really because originally they were only meant to be idea experiments but I fell in love with them a little bit. Here's the collection so far

Here's the first one, not completely finished but the most-completed so far. Love the old-fashioned frame I managed to find for it. Really getting on my nerves that it isn't quite centred and the brown paper isn't quite straight but I suppose that's my graphics roots ruining my life again. I haven't stuck it down yet so it can still be adjusted, just wanted to see what it looked like in a frame.

I think it needs more detail round the edges somehow but I love how the graph paper turned out.

Thinking about naming the project 'Catalogue of Creatures that Should Never Exist' but I'm hoping I come up with something a bit more catchy over time. I want them to look like a collection of specimens. Perhaps when I have finished these I can move on to creating 3D aspects to the project.

Trying to come up with fancy names for everybody at the moment. So far I got:

• A Male Cecaelia Contemplates Miasma
• Sword-Wielding Crabtopus (highly territorial, likes collecting shoes)
• Insectile Abomination cheers on its favouite team
• All-Seeing Sea Turtle Plays the Tambourine
• Satan-Powered Motor Trike and Rebel Jesus
• Cetus Rhinocerotidae (The Uncommon Rhinocerfish)

I am so inspired by the work I have seen lately and the people I have met that I can't wait to do more work on this. Might have to beat Lorraine up a little bit to get her to do some work too.

Jesus was a rebel

When Jesus went through his rebellious teenage years, he probably owned a satan-powered motor-trike, but luckily god forgave him eventually and had him hung on a cross to die slowly and painfully.

Building up ideas for another collage and part of the continuing collaborative work between Lorraine Bennett and myself. I forgot to take my scissors with me (I feel naked!) so I can't make the couple of tiny adjustments needed before sticking-down time (chop off deer legs beneath wheel, trim down elephant horn, get rid of jesus' straggling hair).

I need to work on the backgrounds anyways, plain white cheap-ass paper looks a bit rubbish, I wouldn't put it on my wall in that state, so I can't imagine anybody else would want to, let alone kindly give me monies for it at a craft fair.

Learn those vowels kids! by order of the queen.. and buttons

I bought some tiny canvasses that cost 60p each and I found an old pad of squared paper so I made a generic cutesy-looking wall decoration and took a crap picture of it on my webcam because I'm too lazy to get my nice big shiney camera out, and I'm too impatient to wait for proper lighting.

Was thinking about taking my earlier collages and making them into bizarre little decorative canvasses. Another idea I had was getting old doll-house furniture and making models of little monsters emerging from tiny porcelain toilets and beneath little wooden bedframes.

Bee Dude Vs Sword-weilding Crabtopus

These collages were done in my rather portable A5 sketchbook, continuing on from this previous post. I like to imagine that the two creatures have a terrible vendetta that they need to settle. Visually, I'd say that Bee-guy-thing wins but if I think the crab-thing with a sword would be physically more deadly.

Recently my grandmother decided not to throw away her super nice big shiney camera and donated it to The Cause, so these less blurry than usual pictures are courtesy of that. It has a manual zoom. A MANUAL ZOOM PEOPLE. I'm so happy.

Initial collages

The best part about making these was coming up with the word 'Rhinocerfish', and the main reception I've received so far is that they are weird and creepy. Not sure if that's a good thing?

It's part of the joint project with Lorraine Bennett. In a bizarre twist, whilst she's making little doll mackettes, I'm still sketching and researching ideas (since normally we work oppositely). I think they flow on quite nicely from my research into Bosch

Probs the least successful one is the snake with a tambourine and legs and a massive eye on its back (I can't even think of a more succinct name for it) but I'm rather fond of them all so far. 

Made from pictures cut out of an dusty, old-ass encyclopedia I found at my parents house, bought specially for decimating. In the days before we had the internet and printers and if we wanted to include a picture in a school project to illustrate a point, odds are I usually had to cut it out myself. Pretty sure I inherited nerd-genes from my mum, all the cool kids were busy playing outside.

And these are the resulting sketches

This is Lorraine Bennett's beautifully detailed sketch of her doll.

I think I'll call my collection 'Attack of the Crayons'

 The bottom right picture is a sketch of the picture below

These are photos of Lorraine's initial mackettes

Here be a lovely sketch of Pat by Lorraine Bennett
Patrick has a habit of having his picture drawn.

I am ridiculously excited to be able to publish some of the work done by and with Lorraine Bennett. I'm not sure where to begin. I guess a good place to start is from a couple of initial drafts from Lorraine's sketchbook.

another doodle

Seems like every time I go to the park I come home with something weird in my sketchbook.

Work with Lorraine!

Here is a doodle I roughly copied and coloured in with acrylics from historical painter Hieronymus Bosch whose work I am much in love with these days.

It marks the start of a joint collaboration project with Lorraine Bennet, not entirely sure where that will lead us but I think we both agree on it being an awesome idea. We both wanted to do something mythical and mystical but have super different approaches so I am excited to see the way different artistic disciplines can work together and the hopefully complementary outcomes that will be our result. Currently meeting up for thursdays sketching and doodling ideas stage. Next week is going to be collages, so watch this space.

(detail from 'The Hay Wain' by Hieronymus Bosch)