The Dark Knightmare

   I've spent the last few days trying to come up with a decent layout for a piece I've been commissioned to do featuring some superheroes, primarily Batman, and I'm becoming very frustrated because I can't seem to figure out how to create something that is at least kind of original.  Any thing that I draw that's any good is because I'm blatantly ripping off some one else's work.  On top of that, all the styles I'm stealing from are in conflict with each other so my designs are a mess.  Darwyn Cooke's retro simplicity is directly at odds with Alex Ross' complicated hyper realism.  Mike Mignola's distant noir abstractions are the exact fucking opposite of Jim Lee's gritty explosions of detail.

   Goddamnit this is going to drive me INSANE!  It's like Batman has become my arch enemy!

   

Happy Valentine's Day (Deluxe Edition)

 
   I had big plans for Valentine's Day.

   That day at work I, and all the jackasses I work with, had spent eight hours listening to my chronological Prince playlist (including rarities!) so that when I got home I would be suitably inspired to create my Valentine's Day masterpiece.  I was practically giddy with excitement because I had a ton of good ideas and it had been quite some time since I had posted anything.  The plan was to create to create a tumultuous emotional roller-coaster filled with everything from joy and laughter to heartbreak and tears all set to the perfect Valentine's Day soundtrack of Prince's epic Purple Rain!

   ...but (sigh) the end of my work day really sucked ass and the fucking commute home was an abomination.  And I'm old, so my back hurt. What I needed was a drink to get me focused and get my energy up.  If I was Popeye, whiskey would be my spinach.  Revitalization here I come!

   And then I had a couple more revitalizations just for good measure!

   Soon, it was clear that I had revitalized the fuck out of myself.

   In fact, I was so revitalized that I could barely even drag myself over to the kitchen counter to get more revitalization juice.  I would do it though, no matter how difficult walking across a room proved to be!    

   It was my moral responsibility, as a thank you for all his years of ridiculously-amazingness, to do my absolute best work for Prince (whom, I'm fairly certain, I thought was going to to be my BFF after he read my super-awesome post.)

   You can probably see where this is going.  Obviously, my consumption of way too much alcohol had severely impaired my ability to control my brain by this point and most everything I drew was complete shit.  The original concept for the drawing was much too complicated for Revitalized Andrew to handle and so it got simplified down to my favorite part of the idea (and even that was a stretch to complete.)  The accompanying text, while entirely true, was the written equivalent of some drunken idiot sitting next to you at a bar leaning over and interrupting your conversation because he thinks people are missing out on how witty he is.

   I tried really hard to just let the post go as it was because I've been told many times by many people that not everything I do has to perfect all the time and they are right.  On the other hand, I can't really let my work be mediocre garbage if I can help it either.  All through the next day at work I couldn't stop thinking about how I needed to fix the previous night's sub-par post.  I knew it wasn't the worst thing I'd ever done, but I also knew that it could've been much better.

  So it is in the spirit of trying not to be awful at things, and with the stench of sobriety all over me this time, I have completed my original idea for the Valentine's Day post.  To bastardize a classic Prince lyric, this is what it looks like when drunks try.

Please click to enlarge my Valentine's Day shame extravaganza.

   As anyone who's ever been drunk with me while a Prince song is playing will tell you, the highlight of my amazing dancing is always the excessive amount of pointy-finger that I get going.

   Don't be jealous, this is just how I get down.


 

Happy Valentine's Day

   Dig if you will the picture of you and I engaged in a kiss...

   Somehow, it is much hotter when I imagine Prince doing it while "When Does Cry" plays in the background.  I bet Prince would be having an amazing Valentine's Day if he wasn't a Jehovah's Witness, or some shit.  Goddamn I do love him though... like, I'm the 'listens to his new albums' kind of in love with Prince.

   Oh, screw it.  Happy Valentine's Day, Prince, wherever you are.

         

   

Gnarled Barky

   Before Christmas I was commissioned to paint a twisted, old oak tree for some reason. I tried to explain to the prospective clients that this is not really the type of work that I do, but no one ever listens to me and so they decided to go ahead with it anyway.  Also, I suspect that I was the only artist that they knew so I would have to do.

   I have no idea why they wanted a what is usually a vertical object formatted horizontally or why they wanted it split onto two canvases, but I just do what I'm told like a good little money-grubbing robot.

   Logically, of course, if I actually was a robot I wouldn't draw naked girls.  I would draw naked robots!

   ...hmmn, anyway,  I think the tree painting came out fairly well and the clients loved it.  Done and done!

   I never would have bothered to post this piece since it doesn't really fit in with the other things regularly I do, except that one of the dummies that I work at my day job won't stop sighing and whining about wanting to see this painting because it's a landscape and he fucking loves landscapes.  So, this post is especially for you Cheap Chris!  Now please stop your whimpering.  It's annoying.

UPDATE:  I'm not sure how this blog became about Cheap fucking Chris all of a sudden, but apparently it has.  After speaking with him at work today, I learned that he thinks the orange parts in the picture at the top of this post are my rendition of... water (thereby once again confirming my suspicions that he is a complete moron).

   I have no idea why he would think this, but just in case I have any other readers that might get lost in a hall closet, I have some helpful guidance; the first picture is the painting in progress, the second picture is not the painting at all, the third picture is the completed painting and the fourth picture is a close-up detail from the finished painting.


 

Christmas is just like any other day of the year for me, except I get to wear much fancier accessories!

Happy holidays from Stick Figure Andrew.