Sometimes. 12:43

Sometimes when i'm in a bad mood about the world Michael Franti comes along and cheers me up. Do a dance, sing a song- and if you're really lucky, you might get someone else to sing it with you. Peace!

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
~John~

A Present. 15:10

Since it's Christmas and all, I thought I'd share a little present for my fellow artists; a list of the most useful reference sites I have for making comics. Most of them are for backgrounds... because I like backgrounds. You may also notice a slight penchant for urban decay, but again- that's just me. I have many more, but most are project specific. Remember! So long as you significantly change the image, it's not quite stealing. :)

• iStockphoto
  
• Fotosearch
  
• Urban Decay Livejournal group
• Abandoned but not forgotten (check out the B52 Bomber!)
  
• Fine Art for men
• The Fugitive (Fotosearch)
• Colour Palette Generator
• TravelBlog
• Derelict London
• Dixcot Locations
• Photo-Locations.com
• Location Partnership
• Cover Browser (for pinup ideas)

~John~

Spread the Love. 00:54

Ingredients:
1 & 1/2 cups plain flour
1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons cocoa
1 teaspoon soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 &1/2 oz melted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon vinegar
1 cup water (or milk)

1. Shove the dry ingredients into a pan (9 x 12) and mix together well.
2. Make two small "wells" and one large one in the mixture. Pour in the vanilla into one, the vinegar into the other and the butter into the large one.
3. Pour the water or milk over the lot and smish together with a fork, until it turns into a nice cake-mixture looking mess.
4. Shove in oven for 35 to 40 minutes (preheat to 375°) or just leave until it looks like the top is springy.
5: Stuff cake in face! with icecream!

"Crazy Mixed-up Cake" is probably really a brownie recipe.
I like it because it uses one pan, takes 10 minutes out of your day to prepare, and can be made in vast quantities for when people arrive who simply must have something chocolatey.
So now you have no excuse not to make cake every day.
~John~

MAN power. 12:29

I spent yesterday being quite miraculously male. First of all, my day involved a lot of heavy lifting- and I also managed to erect something using a power drill. (Notice how I got the word erect in there, that's how manly I am.) It wasn't a particularly complicated bit of construction, but it was to re-establish my old chin-up bar, so that compensates nicely on the testosterone scale. Okay, so i'm sure more manly days could probably have been had. Did I mention I was watching the football, playing paintball and eating raw meat at the same time?
Here's an elderly doodle of a man for you. Grrr.
~John~

Reject. 21:04

God, I have so many rejects lying around on my computer. For those of you who don't know, in this wonderful career of mine you have to do something called samples. This basically means that you do some designs, some character studies and some full artwork (exactly to the standard you would charge for) just for the publishers to say "mmmmmmmmmm, nah". This specific example is from a Tokyopop pitch that fell through some time last year. I spent a good two months working on this and many, many, may alterations on the cast. Unsurprisingly, I didn't get paid squat. I've no problem with Tokyopop- that's just the Biz!
~John~

Hey, Blondie. 22:13

I was cleaning out my cesspool of a studio today when I found an old digital camera. Y'know, one of the ones from back in the day before every single cell phone on the market had a shutter attached, and a little mini-camera was a cool toy to have. Anyway, among five year old pictures of artist buddies and ref. pics - I found this. Who the hell is this? I have absolutely no memory of this person whatsoever. This camera didn't have a two second delay, like most of these newfangled things- so the poor woman intentionally took a photo up her nose. Either that, or I did.

Nope, still don't remember who she is.

Like finding a single lost glove, it made my day in an Amélie Poulain, kind of way.
~John~

My new blog. 22:40

I got a myspace account the other day.

Then I realised myspace was uglier than a virulent strain of herpes, So here I am. This blog is designed to hold, display and hopefully get some feedback on my adult artwork. By that I don't necessarily mean bare-arsed smut, but there's likely to be some of that too.
To get the ball rolling, I'm very glad to have finally found a use for this unfinished djin, which has been sitting on my mac for years without seeing the light of the internet, poor dear.
~John~