Handsome People

Inspired by Dan Berry's splendid 'After We Shot the Grizzly', I've spent the last couple of days listening to The Handsome Family again. Not only are the songs great - peculiar, condensed short stories - they are full of intriguing characters. Last night I sat down with a glass of wine and a sketch book to see who emerged as I listened.

For the magnifying glass boy, I was going for some sort of mutant Norman Rockwell kid. He looks too old, but mutant enough.


Once I've done some other stuff, I'd quite like to work these up into more finished portraits.

Casting a Net.

eVole prepares to unleash the Netzooka* while Mouse makes for the controls of the Wobbulator.

*(It was a Net-o-Matic until I was preparing this blog post, when I realised I'd not drawn the name on, and then I thought of 'Netzooka' anyway. A happy accident. I like it when that happens.)


I also know there's two rungs on the ladder where there should only be one. It'll aaaall get sorted. GIMP covers up a thousand things.

Behold - THE WOBBULATOR!

(Says Mouse.) You know... for kids.

Behold, the original wobbulator. The brown box under the one Lenin is leaning on (while Jackie Stewart and Fairport Convention look on) - that's the wobbulator.

Squarescapes.

 New squarescapes.

From Lindisfarne, Out to Sea, oil on canvas, 20cm x 20cm.

Mainland, From Lindisfarne, oil on canvas, 20cm x 20cm.

Moonrise, Chirnside Station, oil on canvas, 20cm x 20cm.

Snow Shadows, oil on canvas, 20cm x 20cm.

Sketch for Snow Shadows.

Handsome

I like comics. I like the Handsome Family. But what are the odds that the inhabitants of this overlapping area of the Venn diagram could be satisfied by one single item?


Why, look! - 

'After We Shot The Grizzly' - words by the Handsome Family, lovely pencil and ink wash illustrations by Dan Berry. Crashed airships, human skulls in caves, skin and bone rafts - that kind of thing. But, you know - charming.

"I've always thought that any song on that album [Last Days of Wonder] would make a good comic," Dan writes, "as their brand of narrative songwriting is consistently superb. I urge you to go and buy their albums."

Buy album and comic together and you can have a macabre and enjoyable three minutes to yourself, any time you like. 

Black Hat

A work in progress, the second story featuring Wendell Hicks, Frontier Librarian.


Observe how, using incredibly subtle iconography, I create a Bad Cowboy: