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This is actually primitive photo-shopping. It is two picture prints, one of a coastline, and one of a Kult poster hanging on a wall. The post was cut from its picture with scissors and glued onto the coastline picture!
Thanks for stopping by and remember: Friendly fire - isn’t.
Barbed Wire Dreams by Scott English, Copyright 2007
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Barbed Wire Dreams is a drawing that I did one day after a particularly disturbing dream in which I was running through a fog. Hidden within the fog, seemingly at every turn, were cruel villainous apparitions that threatened and followed me as soon as I stumbled upon them, and kept following - hence a sense of a growing threat as the murder of “crows” behind me grew. Then to make matters worse, hidden within the fog at various levels - some shin height, some neck height, etc - were runs of barbed wire…
No problem Leonides, the least I could do for your 300.
Stuck.
In one place while the world rages around you. Passing you by as if you didn’t exist. Maybe, you don’t. But that’s crazy! Of course you do! Don’t you?
Treading water for so long, just to stay afloat.
The world passes you by, alternatively in slow motion, than in fast. You reach out to grasp something, anything, but your hand slips right through. Like some sort of movie special effect or a cliché of sand through an hourglass. Your world grows up and decays around you. It is oblivious to you: a breath of air to dissipate amongst the breaths of so many.
And why should you be recognized? What is so special that you should have a voice? Who are you to stand up to the challenge of time?
You can’t.
No, that is wrong.
The truth is: You won’t.
And so you keep treading in time, trying to keep your head above the flow when all the while you are fading.
Fast.
A shadow of what could be. A memory of an untold epic.
A ghost in time.
Snap Dragon by Scott English, Copyright 2007
Can you see the Snap Dragon? Because it can certainly see you!
Be careful about smelling the roses.
This photo was taken of one side of a fairly mundane tunnel at a building close to where I work. Then in Photoshop I cropped it, removed an extraneous aura of light that was separate from the central concentration of light. Then I mirrored the image, put the two pieces together and viola: a spooky light at the end of a tunnel. Now, if I could just remember whether I should walk towards it, or run away…
copyright Scott English, 2007
The Vampire Myth has done a great amount of solidifying thanks to the swarm of Vampire Fiction flooding the market in recent times (I put the blame pretty squarely on Ann Rice). Unfortunately, the Cyclops Myth has gotten very little air play outside of ancient Sinbad tales. But, hey, if you’re going to allow bloodsuckers, then why not let in the occasional one-eyed chap as well?
Given then that you have both wandering around, undoubtedly causing mischief, it seems to me that its only a matter of time before you have a Vampiric Cyclops. Or is that a Cyclopean Vampire?
Notice it only has one fang?
Copyright Scott English, 2007
When I doodle (only in polite company), I’ll often just squiggle a few lines to start and then develop something from there. Usually, I end up with some sort of humanoid beasty, but occasionally I get to take a break and draw other things.
David’s Star originated as one such squiggle and soon I had this “dude” in the middle of an empty page looking like he was holding something while at the same time doing a bit of a sprint. And the hair!
Next came the star… and that was followed quickly by three shepherds. And of course, where you have shepherds, you have to have sheep. Top it off with a township on a rolling hillside (I am sure that there is a manger in there somewhere), and an incidental crescent moon and viola!
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I am not pleased with this drawing for its visual aesthetics: I’d be hard pressed arguing that it had any. My interest in this piece is the unique way that it was born, and the interesting effect that was born from it (for me).
To understand how this particular drawing originated, you’ll have to imagine me sitting on the can. Well, you don’t have to, and in fact I wouldn’t recommend it, so lets just say that I was sitting around idly in my bathroom one day looking around for something of interest to pass the time. The soap dispenser, toilet roll, toothbrushes … all minor distractions - nothing to hold my attention for a while like a good book (which I was lacking at the time).
That’s when my gaze fell on the abstract design of the shower curtain that we had at the time, and within it I could see a face, and then another and another. That in itself was amusing, but I noticed also that if I tilted my perception while I was looking at one face, I would find another one hidden within it.
So with paper and pen, I started drawing the faces that I saw, and how they interlocked with each other. Some were drawn from that shower curtain, some were birthed as originals specifically for the drawing - at least some of those should be obvious to even the casual viewer. There are many many different entities hidden within the woodwork of this picture - some strange head tilting may be required to greet them all.
I liked this concept of entities within entities in my drawings and this was the first time that I consciously explored down that path. I was excited by the possibility and found myself rushing forward on and on, both capturing and releasing, hiding and revealing, my little inked folk with a sense of excitement that left careful consideration for visual appeal behind with the child-like giggle of a kid exploring an interesting attic littered with toys.