Taking The Pith.

I don't think I've ever publicly gone into how many hours and how much energy I spent trying to acquire a Pith Helmet for an Art Project back in 2019...

I live in small quirky British seaside town, which I searched high-and-low that Summer, looking for that damn elusive hat. Exploring so many hidden nooks and crannies in hopes of randomly finding one, but always to no avail.

There was the trip to the scary Military Store for a start... It's never fun being the only customer in a small shop, but for some reason it was so much worse in there. The time I actually found a really, really old white one in a fancy, second-hand, Antique Shop. But it was the wrong style, and also super expensive and looked rotted and gross and not something you'd wanna put on your head.

   

To be fair, there was a happy ending to the story, though, as I found the perfect Pith Helmet online and when it turned up, it actually looked like the hat in the photo advertising it (if you order stuff online, you'd know how rare that actually is). So all's well that ends well. I was very pleased with the one I ended up getting my hands on.

Still... it was quite annoying to say the least when I was walking past a local 'outdoor activities' shop the other day and just randomly saw one in the window staring back at me. The thing I  had spent so long looking out for locally in a shop about a 20-minute walk from my house.

 

Again, I can't complain about the way things turned out, but just so infuriating at the time seeing it. Like it was mocking me or something.

Come On England!

Would just like to quickly take a moment to wish England good luck in the Euros this weekend...

It's been a great couple of months of Football in an otherwise not always very fun Summer. 

To show my support (and hopefully not come across as too jingoistic) I thought I'd post this unrelated growling WW2 British Paratrooper character I've drawn recently that I thought fitted the mood for the finals quite well. True Brit grit, as it were.

I know a lot of people have picked up new weird habits and hobbies during this ongoing Pandemic, especially during lockdown. Mine is that I've really gotten back into War comics lately. I would read some as a kid, and enjoyed them, although War comics were really out of fashion when I was young. But it's just recently I've started to get back into them and appreciate the British ones more.

Clay Fever.

In previous years I kind of thought Hay Fever by itself was pretty bad, as people try and mow their lawns during the brief hot weather, filling the air with so much Pollen in the Summer months.

But I was wrong... it's so much worse when you've got non-stop building work going on outside with Jack Hammers and Saws kicking up so much Dirt and Cement Dust, and it just keeps going on-and-on, day-after-day.

I had to do the shopping yesterday and felt like I was trying to make my way through a scorched Earth landscape, with the Sun beating down, and the sound of giant machines tearing things apart, and the air full of sand, all while wearing a Face Mask.   

Fresh From The Graveyard.

Just to show this Summer's Zombie invasion can't be stopped (unless some crappy builder puts their Jack-Hammer through my Phone-Line again... in which case it very much can be...), here are two more undead Ghouls for people to enjoy.

Fresh from the Graveyard, as it were...

The first one was meant to be my attempt at doing an obese Zombie. An idea I've been wanting to draw for a while now. I kind of like maybe their unquenchable hunger has carried over into the After Life, making them even more dangerous than a normal Zombie, and they've got a bigger belly to fill, too, so need to eat more people. Sadly I think he probably came out more as 'Middle Age Spread Zombie', if I'm really honest, rather than super overweight. While he could certainly use some plumping up, he's still one of my favourites, though. I like the tiny teeth and rotting mouth turning into a creepy smile look. I think he definitely at least looks hungry for human flesh.

And secondly to add a bit of diversity to this gruesome Zombie group, I had a go at drawing a 'Girl Ghoul' to add to the mix. I found it actually kind of hard to suggest feminine features on her when you can't fall back on easy female tropes like full lips and big eyelashes. Drawing Zombies is like the opposite mindset to drawing women, for me. I also kind of threw the bite on the neck in at the last moment, but I think it actually works well to tell a bit of backstory to this character. She got bit herself and now she wants to pass that 'Undead Kiss' on to a new victim, and make them like her.

  

Please feel free to let me know if you've been enjoying this undead Summer onslaught, and if you have a favourite, maybe?