PEANUTS

(Gel Fineliner on A5 Paper)

This picture is finished. It may not look it, but it is, and there's two reasons why I've done it this way....

The first is to reflect those peanut display cards you'd see in pubs and clubs in the 1970s and 80s, which were nothing but peanut strip-tease, where more of the image would be revealed as the packets of peanuts were bought. It was clever marketing. Big-D Nuts were known to produce quite tame ones, but other manufacturers got in on the action and were more risqué. They won't admit that now, as the evidence was thrown away, but that is what they did. The only clues that might be around are the photos people took in pubs and clubs at that time which might show these display cards in the background, or old television shows made at the time.

The other connected reason I did this piece was to generally take the piss out of those who always post WIP (work in progress) images on social media, that are nothing but a dull form of “peanuts” in themselves, which they seem to stretch out. I mean, if I did that image again, I could probably get a year's worth of posts out of it doing it leaf by leaf!

Fighting Fantasy Spoof - Not Quite Skav Art

 

THE MAP SELLER

 

(Pencil on 116mm x 154mm cartridge paper)

 

 

THE ROTTING CORPSE INNE

 

(Pencil on 123mm x 192mm cartridge paper)

 

Normally, I wouldn't put such pieces up on this blog as these. They're older works, done in the latter part of 2000 and early 2001. I thought I'd lost them, but found them last year when doing a bit of clear out. They were meant to be a spoof of the old Fighting Fantasy gamebooks that were popular during the 1980s, and I had the idea of doing more of them, but must have gotten side-tracked by something else and completely forgot about them.

 

But it wasn't the theme of them that struck me as interesting, but more the battle of ideas that took place within them, which I was unaware of at the time. The idea of skav art was struggling to rise against the dominance of traditional art processes. If you look at them, you'll see it for yourself. They're both under A5 in size, I used no reference when working on them, and I wasn't too concerned for the odd mistake I made (The area under the map should have been in a darker shade, and yes, those fingernails do need cutting, don't they?) But that didn't matter for what they were.

 

However, the old art processes repeatedly stamped on it at every turn. The work had to be done with decent cartridge paper - 135gms at least. I used more than one grade of pencil for background and foreground. I even remember doing some quick pre-concept thumbnail sketches (especially for the pose of the corpse in the second one). But the final killer blow against the idea of skav art was, of course, the ruled line around them both. Such a shame. It put up a good fight. I've probably done other pieces like them which had the same struggle going on, but these two are a good, surviving, example of it. I've added the final pages below, with their text, to show what I was going to do with them. I could finish the project off with skav artworks, and I still might at some point, but I thought it was a good idea to show them now. The one thing I did do when I found them was laminate them with the words: "Not quite skav!" written on the back of each.

 

 

 





Chuckin' Out Time At The Cough Inn Pub

(Black biro on 105mm x 74mm card)

- NOT AVAILABLE -

For the first post in this blog, I thought I'd go for an image that is more of a social satire on a disappearing way of life. On the back of which I've written:

"With all the pubs closing down, you're more likely to see sights similar to this in town and city centres these days. But when the average local was more frequented, you'd see such diabolical creatures lurching along the roads and footpaths of estates, late at night, with only a confused homing pigeon instinct left for an intellect. Pale, dishevelled, and grunting incoherently. It's difficult to believe that these mindless shades were once rational human beings. Nevermind the complete and utter horror that they could be people you once knew."

I think the regular late night plague of "pub zombies" that was common across the UK has greatly diminished over the past years. Maybe that's a good or bad thing, I dunno.