Ash Wednesday drawings

A few tries at drawing Ash Wednesday/Atash's face, from August 10th 2006.

Sketch of Atash from August 5th 2006

Another early sketch of Atash, from 2006... I was playing around with him having the super-hero code-name "Liberteen" when I first invented the character. To the bottom right, with the glasses and short hair, is his Clark Kent-style alter ego Ash Wednesday.

Atash

An early drawing of Atash (in his human form) - I like it and will probably work it up into a full-colour pin-up, but I'm not sure what to do about the background...

God of Chaos and Liberation

This is the brother and estranged lover of the God of Order and Control. Obviously based on Pan - and Satan!! ;)

God of Order and Control

I was just working on this one tonight... this is one of the two sons of the Supreme Mother Goddess - he's the God of Order and Control, kind of a combination of the Old Testament Jehovah and the Gnostic Yaldabaoth with the hotness of the Greek Zeus. Anyone got a good name for him? I love "Yaldabaoth" for its weirdness but I'm open to other suggestions.

God of Agony

OK - a break from goddesses - here's a god. I've been feeling all sleepy tonight and lying in bed watching "Buffy" Season 8 again and I thought, why not draw in bed while I watch? So I've been working on this latest version of the wolf-god of agony and torment... one of Atash's daddies... he has a more wolfish form as well, pretty much like this but with a proper wolf's head... I was thinking of giving him bat-wings too but with the arm-spikes as well I think that might distract from his wolfiness...

Goddess of Lesbian Love

Goddess of False Beauty

Goddess of Delusion

Spider-Goddess - Goddess of Destiny

Supreme Mother Goddess

I have been pretty lazy about updating this for a while, but about a month ago I had a bit of a burst of creative energy (and time) and sketched out about a half-dozen more goddesses... so I will be uploading them here gradually...

Hot guy in a leather jacket on the train, from my journal

Drawings of Rachel Lifter and Helen Craggs

there was a danger and the danger was

Djalili, God of Ecstasy

This boy I met at the Retrobar the other week...

wanted me to draw him, so I did.

Drawings for "Being No One"

The state of my desk last week...

I DJ'd at Glam Slam UK 2009 on Tuesday July 7th '09 and this is what I played...

OK I know this is meant to be my art blog but I've decided to start posting my DJing playlists on here as well for the hell of it. I DJ'd at Glam Slam UK on Tuesday - London's most glamorous slam poetry contest - organized by my good friend Ernesto Sarezale - and this is what I played:

"Gigantic" by Pixies
"Bella Donna" by Stevie Nicks
"Follow Me" by Amanda Lear
"Sinnerman" by Nina Simone
"Lakes of Ponchatrain" by the Be-Good Tanyas
"Travellin' Light" by the Tindersticks
"Dear Darling" by Mary Margaret O'Hara
"Black Velvet" by Alannah Myles
"Is That All There Is" by Cristina
"Folk Song" by Bongwater
"They're All Out of Liquor, Let's Find Another Party" by the Waitresses
"Video" by Aimee Mann
"Black-Dove (January)" by Tori Amos
"I Only Have Eyes For You" by the Flamingoes
"Land: Horses, Land of a Thousand Dances, La Mer (De)" by Patti Smith
"I'd Love To Take Orders from You" by Mildred Bailey
"Hate My Way" by the Throwing Muses
"Daniel" by Bat for Lashes
"I Sold My Heart to the Junkman" by Patti Labelle and the Bluebells
"Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?" by the Shirelles
"Hidden Place" by Björk
"Don't Give Up" by Siobhan Donaghy
"Under Your Skin" by Luscious Jackson
***
"Everywhere" by Fleetwood Mac
"Do You Love Me Now?" by the Breeders
"Gonna Get Along Without Ya Now" by Patience and Prudence
"Exeloume" by Diamanda Galas
"He Hit Me and It Felt Like a Kiss" by Grizzly Bear
"Fucking Boyfriend" by the Bird and the Bee
"Love to Love You Baby" by Donna Summer
***
"Sometimes I Wish I Were a Boy" by Lesley Gore
"Dog Days are Over" by Florence and the Machine
"I Feel It All" by Feist
"The Man With the Child in His Eyes" by Kate Bush
"La Vie en Rose" by Grace Jones
*** "Wonder Woman" TV show theme song
"Heavy Cross" by the Gossip
"Love is a Battlefield" by Pat Benatar
"Gloria" by Laura Brannigan
"Genius of Love" by the Tom Tom Club
"Money" by the Flying Lizards
"Xanadu" by Olivia Newton-John

Lamia, Queen of Pain and Desire - rough for final image

And today I did this.....

Lamia - Queen of Pain and Desire - from my sketchbook...

Fooling around with designs for the Lamia in my sketchbook....

Thinking about the Lamia...

So I was thinking about who should be the head honcha of my pantheon. I was originally intending this to be the Queen of Blood but while I still like the new design I did for her I thought the mistress of all desire and suffering should be a little weirder than a regular vampire/demoness and kind of... special. Then I remembered the Lamia, who entices men with her fabulous breasts and then tears them to pieces. She also eats babies. Look at her:

Totally crazy and cool! I started playing around with elements of this old medieval design - I thought she could stand up on her hind legs like a satyr... what if she had a snake for a tail, what if she had wings...?

Lamia, Queen of Pain and Desire

A few weeks ago I started thinking about what the head honcha of my pantheon would be like. I like the latest Queen of Blood design I'd done but she just didn't seem weird and... special enough to be the Queen of all the Gods and the mistress of all the desire and suffering in the human world. Then I remembered the Lamia - a fabulous beast from Greek myth and Medieval bestiaries who lures men to their deaths

Picture for David - work in progress

This is a picture I drew today of David, my friend and the man behind The Melting Ice Caps... it's going to end up as part of the cover for his forthcoming single.

Drawing for Moon Trent

A drawing for - and of - my friend the singer Moon Trent. It'spretty close to being finished I think.

The Wolf King ~ latest version

It's not really all that different in terms of the design, but with the horns and the more dynamic pose I'm happier with this new image of the Wolf King...

The Wolf King ~ first sketch

Here is my first try at the Wolf King, who is going to be the head honcho of my race of Gods in the ATASH comics, and Atash's daddy, er, I mean, father. I did this a while ago and wasn't too happy with it but I masochistically thought I'd share it with y'all anyway...

"Meeting Yoko Ono"

This is a two-page comic strip I've been working on for Delaine Derry Green's anthology "Not My Small Diary". The theme of the next issue (no. 15) is brushes with fame so I thought I'd tell the story of how I met Yoko Ono in April 2003. So here are some pics of the two very rough pencilled pages (don't worry if some of the words don't make sense - they will in the final version) as well as a partially inked first page. I've actually finished it now but I don't want to post the finished strip online at least not yet because I think it will be more special for people to see the final comic "in print"... is that way old-fashioned of me?!
Anyway I am pretty happy with how the strip's turned out and also with the way I drew myself in the strip as I was getting tired of my usual round-headed comics self-caricature and wanted to try something new.

Melting Ice Caps "Mise-en-Scene" single cover

So here are the images I have been working on over the past week - the cover for the new single form the Melting Ice Caps, "Mise-en-Scene".
To start with we have my original drawing of some hair-loss shampoo (which refers to a line in the song), and then two versions of the finished cover with two different treatments of the "Melting Ice Caps" logo, one kind of small and graceful and one sprawling and filling up the negative space around the image like graffiti. I'm not yet sure what I think works best but we'll figure it out...

The New Queen of Bliss

Ahhh they're done at last... well, pencils-wise at least.

The New Queen of the Deep

Just finished her today!

The New Queen of Blood

I got the Jack Kirby "Fourth World Omnibus" yesterday. Can you tell?

The New Queen of the Cold

I've decided to make the Queen of the Cold a bit more visually interesting, a bit more Kirbyesque, and potentially a bit more nasty, hence this redesign. She's now got the pose and the sword I'd previously given to the Queen of Blood - can anyone guess the obscure 80s album cover I've lifted the pose from? - which means I've got to do a redesign for the QoB as well, but that's OK 'cause I want to. The sword - as well as emphasizing her new more martial aspect - also links to the Swords suite of the Tarot, which is vaguely linked to emotional detachment, emphasizing the intellect rather than the emotions, kind of like the Queen of the Cold here...

A Man For All Seasons

Over the past year and a bit I have slowly been working on this series of images for my good friend David's music project The Melting Ice Caps. The first one I made was the Wintery scene which is now the last in the sequence... then Summer... then Autumn, and now most recently Spring. These were a lot of fun to do - I love working on a series and I also seem to love "fours" - four seasons, four elements, four tarot suites, and all the rest... and it's lovely to see them all together at last.

Pie & Mash Poster - finished!

And here is the finished poster...

Slutty Gindie-Boy Minotaur

I'm working on a poster for the gay indie club Pie&Mash, that I DJ'd at on Friday. As Pie&Mash usually feature a cow on their posters and I'm into mythical beasts, I decided to do a slutty, gindie-boy minotaur.
As you can see from the original rough pencil drawing on the right, he was going to be holding copies of two classic indie-pop records, "The Queen is Dead" by the Smiths and Blondie's "Parallel Lines" - but then I got worried about the legalities of using album artwork in the image, so I decided to have him holding a copy of Baudrillard's "Simulacra and Simulacrum". That kind of goes better with Pie&Mash's theme next month - cover versions and originals - and this minotaur can be (pseudo)intellectual, (g)indie and slutty all at the same time... why not? ;o)
Oh - and I just want to add that the term "gindie" (meaning "gay indie" - obviously) was coined by my good friend David Shah, former lead singer of gindie music band Luxembourg and currently the man behind The Melting Ice Caps - and you should check out their music on www.themeltingicecaps.co.uk

RD Mauzy's 7" "Oppols Ond Bononos" is OUT NOW!

Been meaning to post about this for a couple of weeks - RD Mauzy's 7" "Oppols Ond Bononos" is out now, featuring artwork by the awesome and talented Jon Macy, Brian Andersen and Justin Hall, as well as yours truly! Can you tell how much I love it?!

My image for the back cover - a drawing of a teenage gay indie-boy eating a banana suggestively, was actually based on an art project I did at 16 which included photos of me doing the same, and the surrounding, sexually charged yearning scribblings from his diary, are lifted almost verbatim from my own teenage diaries. That was actually kind of painful to do but seemed to match the vibe RD wanted for the 7" so well.

I also did artwork for one of 4 interior illustrations. Mine was for the song "Apologetic Bananas", and was inspired by a line from the song, "I was grounded in the sand, I was blinded by the rain, I was shaken in the air, I was captured by the flame." And you know how I feel about the four Classical elements ;o)

Death Angel

This was originally meant to be the Babylonian death-goddess Ereshkigal, when I was using a combination of Babylonian, Biblical and made-up names for the divine characters in Atash... I really love the story of Ishtar's descent into the Underworld to visit her sister Ereshkigal, who then murders her and is convinced to ressurect her as long as she sends someone down in her place... and I was planning to make that a part of my mythos. I probably won't now (though I may do something similar) but I would like to do a comics version of the original myth, some day, as well. Anyhoo, I really like this design and I think it works well as an embodiment or personification of Death. I'm not really sure where Death fits in with the gods of my mythos as it stands now... I'm thinking maybe keeping the realm of Death pretty mysterious and even beyond most of the gods... at any rate this Death Angel is probably the one that welcomes you when you get there... maybe she also has a male form and she switches between male and female depending on whichever is the most appealing to the spirit she's taking into the great beyond... well, if she feels like being nice to them that is.

The Queens of the Heart, part 4 - The Queen of Bliss

The Queen of Bliss was originally named Naamah, again, one of the angels of prostitution and, after Lilith, the one with the most stories attached to her. Her name means "pleasurable" and she was by all accounts the most sensual and hottest of Satan's wives... she was kind of an adulterous slut but Satan was ok with it as her sexual appetite was too much for even him to fulfill.

The name "Queen of Bliss" comes from a medieval Christmas carol and is apparently a title for the Virgin Mary... but I got it from a Luscious Jackson B-side where they sing lines from said Carol backwards... ooooh! Check it out... I love that song. My Queen of Bliss takes aspects from Naamah in that she is the most sensual of the four Queens - she is the goddess of sexual and emotional connection, satisfaction and fulfillment - she gives her all - but I also imagine her as having many, many lovers and keeping them all happy - because, as a supremely powerful goddess, she can!

Her "look" is obviously based on the leopard, and I had in my mind the Egyptian goddesses Bast and Sekhmet when I was designing the Queen of Bliss - like the cat-goddess Bast she symoblizes sensuality, but I also imagine she could turn nasty and bloodthirsty like Sekhmet when provoked... she has to have a dark side to hold her own against her sisters, right?

The land of Bliss is a tropical jungle or forest... with huge trees and flowers... and the gods of Bliss will probably be the most diverse and colourful of the bunch, being based on various tropical flora and fauna.

By the way, in the past few days I've been thinking about the way the 4 Queens might have some complementary male deities... brothers, lovers and/or male alter egos... that might be fun to design... so watch this space...

The Queens of the Heart, part three - The Queen of the Cold

Like all the Queens of the Heart, the Queen of the Cold began life as one of the four Jewish "angels of prostitution", but early influences on the Queen of the Cold also include Hans Christian Anderson's "Snow Queen", the fairytale of "Snow White and Rose Red", and Tove Jansson's "Lady of the Cold" from her book Moominland Midwinter, possibly my favourite of the Moomintroll books. In the "Snow Queen" too many kisses from the Queen will kill you, while Jansson's Lady of the Cold can kill you just by looking at you.

I imagine my Queen of the Cold as beautiful and seductive but ulitimately treacherous. While she may enjoy physical pleasure (it's not like she's frigid) she is the goddess of sexual and emotional detachment, so she will always be a cold lover and cannot make the connection between physical and emotional intimacy... she's something like an emotional void. Her domain is a barren icey wasteland - The Cold - and the gods that live there are the spirits of Arctic beasts and birds, as well as spirits of ice, snowflakes, and maybe even Arctic atmospheric phenomena like the Aurora.

She's the most human-looking of the Queens simply because I wanted some of my gods to look a bit more human, but since I did this drawing I've altered it so that her crown is now actually crystalline icey spikes growing out of her head, and her skin has little icey cracks all over it, so hopefully she looks a little more interesting. I'm pretty conflicted as to what her skin/hair colour combination should be... Should I go for blue skin and white hair? White and blue? White and blonde? Blue and blonde? White all over? Aaaaarrrrr......!!! I drive myself crazy with this shizzle.

The Queens of the Heart, part two - The Queen of The Howling

My initial idea for four queens of the heart came from reading about the "four angels of prostitution" in Jewish mystical lore who are the four wives of Satan... they sound like totally fun, wild gals, right? I love the idea of "angels" of prostitution... the most famous one was Lilith of course, who is well-known for having been Adam's first wife and being kicked out of the garden of Eden because she just wouldn't do as she was told and also liked being on top when she and Adam had sex... crrrazzzy. I find Lilith especially fascinating because so many versions of her have appeared in comics - Marvel and DC have various versions of her, and so do various indie publishers.

So here's my version - I was actually going to use the name Lilith, and refer to her as "The Queen of the Night" (one of Lilith's actual titles) but I recently decided to ditch any and all "real" mythological names and just make up my own. Since then she's been through various titles - I am still torn between The Queen of Blood and The Queen of the Howling. I like both and I can't decide. I imagine her kingdom as being in the middle of a desert and populated by gods who are the spirits of various animals you find prowling the desert - scorpions (like Queenie herself), bats, vultures and wolves... all the claassic "horror" creatures in other words... Actually I'm not sure if wolves are indigenous to deserts, probably not, but I'm gonna bend the rules this one time ;o)

So - the Queen of the Howling - what's her deal? She's the goddess of broken hearts, sexual and emotional rejection, cruelty and misery. She gets off on inciting lovers to treat each other bad, leading to those painful endings of relationships, and the bitterness, anguish and regret that follows... "Howling" here obviously refers to the anguished tortured feelings of tormented lovers, right? But would "Blood" (y'know, as in pain) be better? I'm still undecided...

The Queens of the Heart, part one - The Queen of the Deep

These are drawings of four background characters in Atash's universe, very much works in progress at this point... the four rival goddesses who seek to control the human heart and mind... The idea is that they each rule one domain in the realm of the gods, and each represents a distinctive way of relating to love, sex and the emotions.

So let's start with The Queen of the Deep, the goddess of sexual codependency, obsessive love, desperation and delusion... I think we've all been there right? She rules a subsea kingdom (queendom? seriously does anyone know of a good name for a matriarchal principality?!) populated by gods and spirits who all get off on various aspects of dependency and obsession... They are not all necessarily merfolk - though a lot of them probably are - but I imagine they are each going to look like composites of humans and various sea-dwelling beings.