I WANT TO EAT A NUT OF LAERMA!

DRAWING UPDATE #3

I'd say that I'm about 75% to 80% done.

For the third "sample", I'll present to you the right third of the drawing, showing the corner logos at Piccadilly Circus (which were, at the time (July 2000) Nescafé, TDK, and Sanyo), and then Shaftesbury Avenue, with the Trocadero building at the absolute right of the picture.

The remaining 20% or so of what I still need to draw is mainly is those annoying small details, like background people (mainly background people) that are actually very time-consuming to draw.

For the buildings along Shaftesbury Avenue, I was originally just going to draw a not-well-defined grey mass with a few vertical lines to represent columns and windows and a skyline that was a rough approximation of the real one, but I decided to have a closer look at what I considered to be a "less important" portion of the original photo and I got a much better idea as to how the buildings connect and relate to one another and I added a bit more detail, especially showing the way the sunlight hit those buildings, and I'm actually pleased with the sensation of "distance" I feel there. The buildings still aren't that well-detailed, but there is a limit as to how much detail I can pull from the photo, and the drawing isn't that big and my coloured pencils can only get me so much precision.

I also added more detail to the Trocadero than what was originally there.

The "Men at work: End" (Construction End) sign is pretty incongruous to the rest of the shot, but it's a nice point-of-attention in what would otherwise be a dead area of the picture.

I'm probably going to have to redraw the Nescafé logo... it looks like it's going "up". I will also add better definition to the sides of the letters in the TDK and Sanyo logos (though the "A and N" in the logo were carefully measured).

I had to redraw the face of the girl right at the edge of the picture because, the first time I drew her face, she just looked to me like a porn actress and not just some random girl.

One weird thing is that, when I was drawing the spots on the black dress of the girl towards the left edge of this scan, I was reminded of a very similar drawing technique I did in a picture of Teri Hatcher-as-Lois Lane from a Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, and then I thought "Hey, when did I draw that?"... and I realized it was almost twelve years ago. (I think I still have that drawing somewhere; I ought to scan it.) This picture is actually a return to a somewhat realistic style of drawing I developed around when I was 19 years old in 1993 and 1994, which I did mainly to either get shown on the request show on Musique Plus (a foreshadowing to me getting my Sailor Moon drawings shown on YTV) or to mail to people, especially this one Filipina pen pal I had at the time.

I expect that the next time I write about the drawing (not counting mentioning it in passing), it will be about the completed drawing and have the full picture. I think my next drawing will either be based on this photo, of Trafalgar Square with the National Gallery in the background, or this photo of Covent Garden (where some random guy stepped into the shot and somehow made it even better). There are also a couple of photos taken around Montreal which I'm strongly considering drawing.

EDIT Finished Piccadilly Circus drawing here.

posted by Steve Brandon @ 11:56 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

MICHAEL JACKSON IS GUILTY...

...of releasing an album in 1982, Thriller, that still kicks untold amounts of ass 23 years later!

Wow! Now I can play Michael Jackson's Moonwalker on the Sega Genesis again and it won't feel creepy!

From Linda Deutsch of the Associated Press:

"A jury acquitted Michael Jackson on Monday of molesting a 13-year-old cancer survivor at his Neverland ranch, vindicating the pop star who insisted he was the victim of mother-and-son con artists and a prosecutor with a vendetta.

A caravan of black SUVs delivered Jackson, wearing a black suit and flanked by family members, to the courthouse. Jackson was greeted by "Michael, innocent" chants as he walked into the courthouse.

The jury, which listened to 14 weeks of testimony and arguments, deliberated over seven days before sending word of a verdict at about 12:30 p.m.

The announcement came shortly after Judge Rodney S. Melville issued a statement saying that the jury asked and withdrew a question Monday morning. He also confirmed that on Friday the jury had a read-back of testimony and there were four meetings in chambers with attorneys. News organizations had filed motions seeking information on such developments.

Jackson, 46, is charged with molesting a 13-year-old cancer survivor in 2003, plying him with wine and conspiring to hold the boy and his family captive to get them to rebut a damaging television documentary.

In the documentary, "Living With Michael Jackson," Jackson held hands with the boy and told interviewer Martin Bashir that he let children into his bed but it was innocent and non-sexual."

I wasn't going to give much of an opinion during the trial, and, I don't know if I'm misguided for still having some faith in Michael Jackson's innocence despite what we've all heard over the past decade, but I feel somewhat validated. I don't deny that he's probably in need of some serious professional psychological help he doesn't seem to be getting, and I don't deny that he does himself no favours by surrounding himself with a whole estate full of "yes men" who will never call him out on the excesses of his weirdness, and I don't deny that the notorious Martin Bashir special was terrible P.R. (though Gavin Arvizo should have realized that his classmates would make fun of him for admitting that on camera), and I don't deny that a fourty-something man sharing his bed with prepubescent and barely-pubescent boys is very creepy. But it's no crime to be creepy, and somehow I just never quite believed that he is a child molester, so I don't think of the verdict as a repeat of O.J. Simpson or Robert Blake as I believed the defense.

Is Michael Jackson a pedophile? Perhaps, but not all pedophiles molest. Michael Jackson is just a horribly troubled soul who is very naïve in regards to how people perceive him.

Not that I don't find the Robert Smigel TV Funhouse "Michael Jackson" cartoons on Saturday Night Live pretty fucking hilarious. And Smigel as Triumph the Insult Comic dog mocking the Michael Jackson supporters outside the courthouse on Late Night with Conan O'Brien last week was possibly the funniest Triumph bit since the Attack of the Clones line-up "Attack of the Nerds" video, or, at least, since Triumph insulted separatists in Quebec City in February 2004.

posted by Steve Brandon @ 9:21 PM 0 Comments Links to this post