CAPTAIN HOLD FAST IS BACK

The new Piratical Purple Glaze of my Captain Hold Fast Mug is now available from Tiki Farm, just in time to fill you Christmas stockings....

Purple Captain Hold Fast - Buy Him Now!!

I've been to Little Big PLanet

When I was in Primary School, in the term of the year they had activities afternoons when parents came in shared hobbies with you. One of these activities was computers, now this was back in the days of BBC micros, C64 and Spectrums, but one of the kid's mum was real geek and had an early mac with a basic platform game, which was completely addictive. Not for the game play but because it allowed you to create your own levels.

I didn't think I'd ever find a game with this simple joy and then my brother stuck Little Big Planet on I was transported back to that childish creative joy. I knocked this Moai head up out of cardboard after only 20 minutes of playing, I could kill so much time building levels for this game.

Munny I is scared!!! part one

A commission piece for my brother this time, he handed me this vinyl figure the other week and went "make this Tiki", and then he went "you can get bigger ones, and a car and a rabbit", so I think I'll be engaged in painting for him for sometime.

The Munny from Kid Robot

Poor disassembled Munny, reminds me of the children in Titus Andromicus.

Fooling around while painting, sort of looks like Marylin Manson.

Shiny wet undercoat, the colour of old bones.

Shadows over Hawaii

Another great artist mixing up the Cthulhu and Tiki is Hawaiian Brad Parker aka Tiki Shark, his painting "Forbidden Island" depicts very desirable Cthulhu Tiki mug, that I'm frankly surprised that no tiki mug manufacturers have picked up and produced it.

Can punk rockers remain orthodox when they grow old?

I love the Ignoble Prize, with my Sister-in-Law being a scientist I know how easy their massive decade long researches can sound downright daft to normal people. What with her partner about to do his post-doc into a type of ant that can pass through the surface of water without any surface resistance and it lives in a rainforest in Borneo, then i know that conditions and coolness influences what things get studied, cool ants in Borneo or lugworms in Millport, cool ants ta!

So when I read in about Joanna R Davis study "Growing Up Punk: Negotiating Ageing Identity in a Local Music Scene" you can pretty much guess she fancied hanging around with the cool older punks in her local punk scene.

I used to work in a Punk Pub so I have a lot of experiences of older punks but whenever I'm talking to them, they always remind me of a Punk Grandfather I remember from a 80's sci-fi kids show. In the show he was this old geezer dressed in punk clothes knocking on about 80's bands, at the time it was comedy but everytime I look at elderly punks I realize it was rather prophetic.

The show was called Luna and starred a very young Patsy Kensit and Colin Bennett (Mr Bennett from Take Hart), there is a wonderful website all about which is well worth a look.

Lunaviron

The Call of Cthulhula - part three

A bit more on the face and a set of voodoo bones, I like painting bones and it balances out the body, detracting from the fact the figure has no discernible arms.

The background had more added the dancing figures and drummers, suggesting a debouched cultist ritual occurring in the swamps presided over by a lost idol.

I didn't think that the Tiki Bob figure in the far right was working or the reflection on the swamp, so I went a bit far on wiping it out.

With another idol added and it looks a bit better than before. Then I've gone over the midground with a wash of blue just to darken down the white and push the portrait to the front.
The skull design on the bone necklace is The H.P.Lovecraft Historical Society Logo, which I think is fitting for a cursed bone necklace.

With the painting almost finished it just needed balancing up, so the good-lady-wife suggested that I add white highlights to the portraits hair and just a touch to the star on the tapa band on the hat.

I'm really going to have to learn how to take better pictures of my paintings, depending how the light reflects of the acrylic then the tone totally changes, plus I must use a better camera than the one on my phone.

Devil Reef - a great place for a Cold One.

The "Call of Cthulhula" must be strong at the moment as i was working on my H.P. painting Tikiracer posted the best Cthulhu/Tiki artwork of the year on Tiki Central, with the menu for entire Cthulhu mythos tiki bar and swizzel stick.

Devil Reef Bar finds - anyone know more?

I actually own two of this mug also posted on that thread, they were the first ceramic tiki mugs I ever found.

The Call of Cthulhula - part two

I pondered the painting and figured the island in the background wouldn't work stretched across the painting, so I panicked and slapped down loads of dark paint so i could add foliage and tikis in the midground.

more dark paint in the foreboding sky.

A lot done to the painting, lots of monotone figures and then I attacked the portrait sorting out the face, making the shirt work and getting the hat right.
To complete the midground i went through the "Book of the Tiki" and nicked bits from dozens of menus and album covers, pretty much a painting exorcise rather than a unique work of art.

The Call of Cthulhula - part one

I'd thought I'd try something new, instead of a snarling tiki something a bit different. So I've been wanting to do a Cthulhu themed painting so I found this fantastically photographed "Don the Beachcomber" mug of Ooga-Mooga and overlaid it with a portrait of H.P.Lovecraft.

Then I transfered the image to the canvas using the grid method, which I've never done before, the trick to it is to copy exactly whats in each grid, rather than use the whole grid as a guide. Since I nicked the source image I went further and pilfered the background image from an old aku-aku menu printed in the Book of the Tiki.

The base colours laid down red background and blue for the front.

Since the face is the most important part of the image, I've backed up the pencil sketching with neat blue.
With two shades of green added on the hat and shirt and the figure start to come together.


With the basics of the figure in I can start on the backgound and the ominous evil idol starts to appear.

Sorry! Aye Right!!

We took a travel set of "Sorry" with us when we went around the world, sometimes it got crazy competitive between me and the missus, cards slamming to the table and foul language and threats too my life, yup the missus gets seriously competitive.
But then again we play "Sorry" by Kiribati rules and use real playing cards instead of sorry cards, so it get to be like poker.

What 10 games should really be called, but not all the renames are funny, but the Sorry one is spot on!

The Largest Pound Store in the UK

Do you know that visiting the largest pound store is like having the biggest penis in the UK but its made from marzipan, its no use for sex but its great for covering a Christmas cake but your allergic to marzipan.
Once you enter the store and see the isles of goods you can go a giddy at the though of the hundred of thousands of bargains to be had but once you actually look at the quality of the stuff then you soon realise its all a bunch of crap, which you may be able to buy it for a pound but you really don't need it.
I was almost suckered in by a big tub of Brylcream for a pound, but i hate the smell of it and its no good for pomping my hair, but it was about a pound and a half cheaper than normal.

Robots Vs Monkeys - Films

Here is a tough one D.A.R.Y.L.(Data Analysing Robot Youth Lifeform) was almost quite cool it was advertised on the backpage of 2000ad and he stole a plane and everything.
I always advise friends to choose a name for their child which could work as an abbreviation if their child turns out to be a secret synthetic robot child, like my beat friend's child O.R.R.I.C.K. - Organic Robot Replicant Infant Computer Killer or my sister-in-laws A.N.J.A. - Automatic Ninja Jet-powered Android



On the truck based monkey movies I guess their is only the classic "Every Which Way But Loose" - Clint Eastwood and an Orangutan called Clide, whats not to like.

Jazz-Age Tartan Kitsch Highland Beestie

Today is the 75 anniversary of the publication of the first photograph of the Loch Ness Monster, a Jazz-Age creature that own half its life to Scottish legends but most of its existence to King Kong.



Is it a fin of a unknown beestie or a dog holding a stick in its mouth.

Story about Loch Ness Monster photographs

My own animated tribute to the Loch Ness Monster

Robots Vs Monkeys - TV shows

I saw this clip of the theme tune of "Small Wonder" a terrible sit-com about a robot child called V.I.K.I. (Voice Input Child Identicant), which I might have seen, I defiantly remember the scary robots face and the clunky robot innards.



But if your after TV monkeys then do you remember "B.J. and the Bear" I used to love this as a very small kid, I just looked up what it was about on Wikipedia and until then i would have sworn it was about a private detective and his crime fighting chimp, the chimp used to be Cheata from Tarzan and the man went on to drive the truck in Knight Rider.
But I'm wrong it was about a trucker and his monkey like Convoy meets Every Way but Loose, oh and Bear was the monkey.

Three Heads are better than one!

So I've done another painting, wish I had a better camera to catch the detail of the art, but first I did a pencil sketch of the monster, two heads on top and a third face to make up the body. I intended to have a grinning devil long tongued face but after the two tentacle tongues of the last big painting I decided against it.


Slapping on the background red, which is a bright new crimson.


Brown for the body, the spear held by the monster is cribbed from a real Maori souvenir, I just trace around the object, its sort of cheating but more a way of excusing my dust catching collection of Maori weapons to my wife.

More of the lovely wood grain effect, their a living statue monster, plus two-headed mutants were held by some pacific cultures as divine. In the museum in Rotorua I think there was a two-headed Maori carving, it was tapu to take pictures so I have to rely on my memory.

On with the black outline and the image is pulling together, I've coloured the blade of the spear and club green to suggest Jade or as the Maori call it Pounamu.


The last of the shading, high lights and the facial tattoo's, hot pink and sky blue for them, I gave them almost identical tattoos because its easier to copy something that has worked on one rather than get all experimental and loose all the good work done so far.

Sometimes paint can be a bit odd, take the crimson in the background, it started off looking red but by the time I'd finished the figure, it looked to me that it was a strong orange. So I went for a cop out background and slapped down the old tapa print design, the dark colour is another red and a yellow ochre, which with the background comes out a faded black and gold.


The tapa almost finished, it quite soothing doing the tapa, I rub the pencil marks off as I go.



and the thats the picture finished, I like the new square canvases they suggest the cover of records, it's always been a hope to do a record cover one day, I'll just have to find some form of band that suits my art.

My little shopping

Every week that my wife goes to the supermarket with her father, she tries to reverse shoplift a "My Little Pony" toy into the shopping trolley, to make up for the ones she wasn't allowed to have as a child.

Her father always spots it before the checkout and places it out her reach on top of the supermarket shelves or hides it behind inappropriate products elsewhere in the store. I wonder if the staff have realized that they are the reason the "My Little Pony" wander all over the store.

Today her dad was unavailable to do the shopping with her and we had to do the shopping by ourselves, but were warned no "My Little Pony" were to be bought.
So we decided instead to re-brand some choice products, and to extra annoy him we added bad spelling and cutesy spelling to the labels.

In the Dark Eons before Dinosaurs...

..in time for Halloween scientists prove that eight legged star shaped beasts ruled the world before the Dinosaurs, just like Grampa H.P.Lovecraft said they did.

Star Beast from Before Time!