Brontosaur Will Lantern

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106 days until my 40th birthday and I’m still keen for it to be a big deal. I don’t have the time to sketch out drawings for my friends who have birthdays today so I’m beginning to learn that my own may be a small affair. I have some thoughts regarding spending it in London, let’s see.

I found some sketches in a wee notebook today and coloured them up for you.

brontosaur

There is of course no such dinosaur as the brontosaurus, but since when should that be a problem?

NEWS BULLETIN

Elastic bands cause juvenile delinquency a new study said today. The body, mine, said so, after looking at one, stretching it a bit and thinking, ‘I’d like to ping something with that’. It was later put away but i typed out this news report to make you all feel safe.

I slept badly (perhaps through exhaustion) today, so I may be working night-shifts for a bit promoting Bounce! and TitanCon.

noctura cyburna

FragmentBlog: Comics as Rock n Roll, Belfast racism, Monster Fun Day

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richard cowdry 1 richard cowdry

Actually, I mis-remembered. Jimi Gherkin was the driving force behind those Alternative Press fairs, though Richard definitely brought some muscle. An upcoming documentary appears to look at the spirit around their endeavours. Here’s the trailer,

Comics Are My Rock And Roll: Trailer from Daniel James Baldwin on Vimeo.

The Facebook page is up with a Kickstarter coming.

Graphically offensive images and downer text coming up. Scroll down if you’d rather not see them. If you plan to use them, please credit me as the photographer.

It’s been eight months of erosion of Unionist Northern Ireland now through the barbarism of people who claim to be standing up for that cause. It’s largely happening in Belfast. Sub-simple minded herd thugs are  manipulated by, well, damaged individuals, cult brainwashed kids and a small group of bloodthirsty fuckers speaking the language of business. The worst of these is a bloke called Jim Dowson, who one suspects might be an undercover BNP man. He was certainly behind the racists’ first ventures here as a main centre for administration and electioneering for BNP candidates in Stormont. His views and activities on abortion are visually as pronounced as the Westboro Baptist Church and he’s none too fond of homosexuals either. Dowson has spent the last year playing the Jabez Bottomley, the rent-a-cause emphasiser, whipping up the mobs here under the cover of political rights activist. He’s targeted those afflicted by the troubles. Give his lieutenants Willie Frazer and Jamie Bryson some sympathy/empathy and it’s not too tough to see how he has manipulated their vulnerabilities to co-opt their followings. The photos below show a rare scene. They were taken in a street near were I live. [Belfast Telegraph link]

Belfast Racism 1 - Credit Andy LukeBelfast Racism 2 - Credit Andy Luke

Northern Ireland during the Troubles has traditionally had a rather low ethnic population. There wasn’t much violence towards Indians and Chinese here, but probably because of the Troubles, I heard frequently we  topped Europe’s most racist capital listings. A joke used to do the rounds about how a black man would walk down the street here and we’d be lined up the windows to look, as many of us had never seen one. Since the Troubles, there has been an influx of Polish immigrants  which has been sometimes depressing but mostly refreshing. People bringing  new foods, new stories. These people have seen more of the world than we have. If I never get out of here, I want to have heard these different accents, seen these different skin tones and mannerisms, I want to share laughs with these alien others and notice the things that are exactly the same. I want to know about foreign McDonalds, working men’s clubs, the good music and the painters. I’ve no problem with the Unionist-Loyalist people getting more organised, better managed, but for fucks sake, why do it by payrolling one of the most powerful men in what is essentially Britain’s Klu Klux Klan? There are lots of good local community business managers who can do the same job far better without brains bleeding out the windows of Royal Avenue shops, friends.

And don’t tell me Dowson makes no money from this.  I have the figures here. He’s a rich man, and he’s two decades from living in a row house.

Right, I banged this out quick, so it’s a bit scabby.

monster fun day

Birthdays Today: TitanCon Showrunner, Nordie Shore actor.

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Ian 1

I’ve been giving a bit of a hand to Ian Lawther, the on-the-ground showrunner of TitanCon. With three weeks to go, Ian is, I think scheduled for some fairly major surgery, so trying to organise a major Game of Thrones and pop art media festival must be a royal pain in the hole.

Ian has a good heart, so cool and mannerly that I’m fairly sure he might just be one of the Legion of Doom. He has helped me outof a few pits this year and made me feel very welcome in among a new group of friends.

Ian has a history of con-running being involved in salvaging the last few MeCon events.

TitanCon is running from Friday September 6th this year at the Wellington Park Hotel in Belfast. I’ve been invited to do a comics workshops and I’m pleased to announce here there’s a comics panel on adapting Irish myth featuring Paddy Brown, Will Simpson and special guest Rich Clements.  It’s a great programme (I’ve sneaked a peek), and features many Games of Thrones guests and crew, panels. There are a lot of progressive local authors attending too, including publisher Blackstaff House, who opened their doors across genre earlier in the year.

Give Ian and TitanCon your support and you’ll get looked after in return. 

Ian 2

 

Jordan Dunbar

 

How do I know Jordan? How do I know Jordan? A fast food coffee, a friend of a friend? Jordan plays Dean, the in-your-face, animated pox, STD-riddled, alpha male antagonist chav/spide in Nordie Shore.  Oh eck.

Northern Irish sitcoms have a track record of being badly managed, bottom-feeders. The BBC wouldn’t invest and UTV would only market the Julian Simmons ‘family uncle queen’ type. (Much as Julian does it brilliantly, it was not something to base all original programming on) Shows trying to appeal to all, but appealing to none and inspiring as much hate as they seek to soothe. Nordie Shore was a different beast. Sure, it used the reality show pleaser at it’s base, but Nordie Shore: funny.  A barrage of comic gags, mini-stories, freakshow exhibits, surrealist trips, capturing the yobbish under-class of Belfast (or any major city), relatable to as had never been related before; oddly. Nordie Shore has that Uber-Viz-like quality that’s not to everyone’s taste: at times it’s like being in a whorehouse with a flooding toilet.

Past the excessive crudeness  there’s a good work there and a hint of the grass-roots comedy resurgence springing up around the city.

Hinkin a happy birday m8.

Cooke n Beans

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Cooke

That’s apparently a guitar. You wouldn’t know because I drew it like a fast food totem pole and when Andrew makes his guitars he welds on stones and buttons and slashes paint everywhere. He had some of his instruments on a pick up and jam exhibition at the ADF a few months ago. He encouraged people to pick these stringed beasts up and play them, using tree sticks, lightbulbs, screwdrivers, I wrecked a Nokia2690 plectrum. Some video and photos from the ADF sessions.

I don’t know Andrew terribly well, but he seems a pleasant enough man and was quite helpful in talking about the process he goes through. You can buy the instruments or just look at the pretty pictures on Andrew-Cooke.co.uk

In a house in Oxford filled with what the English call chavs and what the Irish more sensibly call spides, I roomed next door to a guy called Mike. An incredibly funny, pleasant and charming bloke working through a scholarship with a gifted brain. It was Mike who taught me about folding oven foil to separate, who introduced me to The Philadelphia Experiment, and whom I went on marathon video watching sessions with over a nice beers.

Beans

I felt I was on the right track but as usual the first sketch looks not much like him. Mike was fond of cooking beans until they were stodgy and I called him ‘Mike Beans’. Somehow it stuck. I couldn’t find Mike Beans on Facebook, so it was nice to catch up with him under his real name today. Stuff seems to be working out.

Mike drank a fair bit more than me, and I was working at the Thresher’s off-license at the time. This was useful for discounts. One day I must have come home with a promotional sign: ‘Buy more, save more’, according to this mp3 recorded at the time. Mike wasn’t having any of it and threw it down the stairs.

The Code is This (Expanded)

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I’ve gotten my back in knots of fucking sadness trying to find something inspiring to write today, so I’m getting out the expanded version of an old favourite. You can read the ‘first part’ at https://andy-luke.com/2013/07/18/the-code-is-this/

“Aeroplanes aren’t yellow granny. That’s an old tree, and I love old, old trees.”

There is breeze.

As I sit and write this to you, another kid plays among the small birds on land. A goose is staring at me. He has been staring through the railings with another who only has one eye fixed on me. Standing like monarchs. I turn my gaze to  a fuzzy little duckling, a yellow child.  Suddenly, the kid gets too near it and the geese turn their heads from him and hiss. The kid cries and runs off and away, happier and his mother feeds them all from a bag of bread. Several of the shit-heads find their way out and it only takes one four claps to send them all away, but later they return to the mother with the bread bag: the monarch geese, the mallards and  self-respecting lapwings.

The birds trust me now: the little grey and white flecked lapwings looks like a pigeons  with manners and self-respect. There is another bag of bread. She has gone to. That was GEC08 just disappearing over the bird island.

This is all on your phone as you walk and walk to who knows where. It started with happy solitude at the bank were a fish-like bird dived and you followed the trail. Into green green paths through trees, cool serene airing until you were wrapped in them and their oxygens got inside you and your knots are snapped. This is the time you escaped to England, this is the time you escaped to Wales, this is Northern Ireland, this is patriotism. This is a song and a flag and worth getting the skin out for your chums. This is the best thing about religion and people looking at one another, and strangers. The code is this.

8 Portraits

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Before we begin, I have no ambitions as an illustrator, I’m drawing sketches of people because it’s a hobby. If you want to hire me to do something creative, I’m a hell of a writer.

From yesterday,
Martin Downey

I met Martin though Stephen. We’d begun working on Absence together and Stevie had just got engaged to Aimee. So, a wee swallie with the Downey clan, just a quick drink, turned to 4am and Martin and I smoking, dancing and laughing outside the Ramada. Martin was also doing a lot of singing. I’m sure at some point he took the nervous energies that always exist around me for some fear of stuff, but that past and we saw eye to eye and had a good time. Though I’m remembering another occassion, 4am, at Martin’s house, a Pizza order like a meeting of the U.N. in a situation comedy with James and Stephen. We were very drunk too and I don’t know which came first. Perhaps he’s always been there, craic of the party.

As a wean (wee one) I spent some weekends living with Joy Richmond, out in Ahoghill, a large village just outside Ballymena. The journey out to it is all fields, leading to me telling some friends I spent sometime living on a farm, and being hypnotised into believing that Slate (pronounced Sla’t) was a suburb of Ballymena.

Joy Richmond 1

I really wasn’t happy with that, so I tried another. I suck at drawing women more than I suck at drawing men?

Joy Richmond 2

Way back in 2005,  I suffered an overwhelming bout of claustrophobia. At the time, it seemed  I was required to live in my box room, so I took respite in webcam chat rooms. The sessions enhanced my love for music and widened my culture generally and evolved my social interaction skills. The people and relationships made there inspired a few arts such as my piece on Dierdre Ruane’s Maps project and the Camfrog Sketch Gallery. Weirdly today three people I met there share a birthday.

Kubi

When I last knew Kubilay, he had a beard and was a silent, mature figure with occasional outbursts of anal sex jokes which I mistook for confectionery reviews.  He’s quite different now from how I pictured: a few years younger than I am rather than older. Getting old can include the most meaningful years of the existence of the world around us but all the same, may your energies never dull and your cognition never jam.

Megan

Sorry Megan. I’ll have another go at sketching you for tomorrow.

She’s a supremely beautiful woman. About the time we met she was setting up Just Fab Photography, away and add her on Flickr would you not?

Nicola Tweedle,

Nicola

I’m still looking forward to meeting Nic one of these days.  A deeply caring, life-enriching and funny creature.

My degree at Brookes was probably the widest ranging undergrad program of the time, crossing into nine different fields. Of the two majors I took, Jenna seemed to be a recurring fixture across the years. While many ‘students’ infuriated me, Jenna was focussed, engaging and stoic, level headed, but not above indulging in some surrealism. I’ve not quite got all those qualities in the portrait, nor the full elfish cuteness, still she might like to use this for an 80s themed emoticon party. Though I can’t imagine just what that is.
Jenna

And a happy birthday to Karen Wenborn.

Karen wenborn

This was my 5th attempt to draw Karen and I guess it does. Karen is a recent addition to my friends group, through her interest in the area of educational comics. Before illness took hold last year, It was a direction I’d hoped my multi-study Brookes time degree would be of some use in. From time to time Karen pops up in my FB feed with something earthy, humorous or engaging and I don’t mind that at all.

Celebrated Anniversary of Delivery Sketches

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I spent the weekend going through invites for Bounce!, the Arts and Disability Forum’s three day festival packed with music song and dance. The FB page links to a page for every event, but rather than fire out indiscriminately I tried to tailor each listing to a friend. I’ve about 100 in Belfast or close by. It took all night.

Bounce! is on from 30 August to 1st September. Tickets are £20 for the full event, and there’s a handful of freebies or £7-£8 events.

Inviting one-by-one was useful, I feel more in touch with people, circumnavigating FB’s troublesome clique-machine to get closer to remote friends interests and recent lives.

Exercising my creative muscle today, I find friends with birthdays, people  I barely know more to the point. Brian has been on my FB list for a few years, united by a common obsession with Mob Wars. Happy birthday Brian. I’ve long left the organisation. I hope the games are good for you today and all of them.

11082013 brian k telfair 11082013 john moe

John Moe in black and white. I hooked up with John through Mob Wars too. Yep, that is his real name as far as I know. John have a great birthday mate and may stuff really feature better for you and yours.

One of my Facebook friends is Lourds Lane, who I discovered this morning is a thrilling underground rocker, camp broadway performer and immensely talented classical musician. She’s also very scary, energetic and amusing. Lourds and I agree about the concept of superheroes, so I put some of that into her birthday sketch.

11082013 lourds lane

Finally, someone I do know. Adam Lively, poet author of Hazy Days and also known as the cartoonist Bisson, from Hold the Phones, It’s Alex Jones. Adam is one of the lounge men I drink with every few months, and he has a big heart and an odd head. I like to tease him over his preciousness about his music: he’s a big Brian Wilson fan and in that spirit, this wishes you well pal.

11082013 lively

Happy Birthday Aneesh

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aneesh 1

aneesh 2

Aneesh’s wife has some cartoons up of the two of them. I was up with a challenge.  Also, I was terrified I’d mucked both these up but they are okay.

If I’m helped by my memory Aneesh and I met through our mutual friend Hitesh in Oxford? Or was it over in Chandigarh, where we shared good company, trust,  laughs, dances and drinks… A well-loved bloke, I hope he’s having a good time today.