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!

Just Can't Get Enough: the Chippendales Story

"Men have always danced around in their underwear, as far back as Jesus, even before Buddha"

I've been watchng the new C4 zombie Big Brother "Dead Set" and being a chronic zombiephobic I've had to sooth my mind with non-horror immediately afterward. So how overjoyed I was to catch "Just Can't Get Enough: the Chippendales Story" a perfect made-for-tv-movie about the seedy history of the all male strippers the Chippendales.

I for one was shocked to discover they dabbled in sex and drugs, but the bomb threats and Hitmen was news to me. I do belive I saw the leader of the Chippendales Fabio appear in a cameo as a photographer in the film.

For me the Chippendales will always be the snowmobile driving heroes from the mind of Zodiac Mindwarp in the fantastic book "Bad wisdom".

The Barras

I love it when people photo blog an entire days tiki hunting or searching thrift stores. Today I went to the Barras in Glasgow and its just not the place to be waving a camera around. Its not just that some stalls have counterfeit goods, illicit tobacco, or support paramilitary organizations its more that its the experience is the thing.
I swear today I saw the banjo playing guy from Deliverance in a white shell-suit selling homemade happy hardcore cd's but I defiantly saw shaven headed family guy with his daughters and grandchild pass by, i do think his half face maori moko was a strange tattoo choice.
Some of the stall's are interesting stalls selling only tablet or dog chews or used pornography or Nazi uniforms or paint/Elvis memorabilia or the book seller who has that many books you can't look at them or move them without causing an avalanche.
The best thing i saw was three six foot tall religious paintings done in household paints by a divinely inspired outsider artist, they were so nuts.

Dr Menhunious, The Wee Drunkin' Frankentiki and The Bride of the Frankentiki (part 2)

So on with the shading, slapping the black paint on.


So I've added the white highlights and some more detail on the figures and now skuffing black onto the green background to add mor atmosphere to the image.


The frankentiki is affixed to the painting by wires I cast in its back way back in the plaster stage, so i have to brutally knock holes into the painting so it can be fixed in place.


A final bit of tarting up on the Bride, extra stitches, sort out that boob and a bit of highlighting and my tiki tribute to James Whale is complete. That's James Whale the film director and not the talk radio host.

Dr Menhunious, The Wee Drunkin' Frankentiki and The Bride of the Frankentiki (part 1)

So at the last London Luau I had this idea for a version of my "Wee Drunkin' Tiki" done as a Frankenstein's Monster with Menhunes transformed into the Doctor and the Bride. So I finished the Frankentiki a year ago and finally I've gotten around to starting, originally I planned to convert the Trader Vic's Menhumes with tiny little costumes and fit them into a shadow box. But the Menhunes proved to be too thick to fit in the box without some serious cutting, so instead i decided to paint them.

In Britain we can never find Witco Carvings but I can allways find these burnt grained spanish macho wood items, this frame came with a faux oil paint print which i flipped over and about ten layers of white household undercoat flattened out the surface enough so that i could paint on it.


Because the Menehunes are now at a larger scale than the Frankentiki, I've made the male Menehune into Dr Septimus Pretorius rather than Dr Frankenstein, so the Frankentiki is like Pretorius's Homunculus.


More green and brown.


The pink added to the Leis and wood grain on the table.

And thats the black added, my hands cramping so I'll leave it and finish it tomorrow.

A Big Basket of Yuck!!

Purple fluffy feathered winged unicorns, this is what fairies vomit would look like.

Neal Stephenson

Tonight I went to see Neal Stephenson reading from his new book "Anathem", which was a bit difficult due to waterstones not having a working radio mike, so Mr Stephenson had to shout his reading.

After the reading there was the question and answer session, all the question were from glasses wearing wanna-be-authors asking about writing and not many question about the stories or characters. I really wanted to know who Mr Stephenson thought would win in a fight between "Captain Jack Sparrow" and "Half-Cocked Jack Shaftoe"?
But I did find out that by the time he was almost finished "Cryptonomicon" he came up with the idea for "The Baroque Cycle" and was able to place teaser-mcguffins into Cryptonomicon.
Not that every bit about Solomanic gold was cunningly put in as a tease, Mr Stephenson smiled quite widely when i Enoch Root's cigar box and the golden punchcards.

I did also find out that Half-Coked Jack Shaftoe's Syphilis was cured by the high fever (apparently this was crib from the life of Sir Richard Francis Burton who may have been cured of the clap by malaria) and not as I suspected that he was brought back to life by Enoch Root. Which I could have sworn there was a passage in "Confusion" that alluded to this.

It were great and then I came home and had oven chips.

Sunday Morning Occult Car Boot Sale

I've finally broken my duck at my local Sunday morning carboot sale, normally there is nothing worth buying, just holiday novels and bad home decor. This morning though i found a box with a lovely selection of mid-90's weirdness. The three books of the Illuminatus trilogy, Cosmic Trigger Vol.1 & 2 and The Book of the Subgenius, all for only 20p each.

I used to read books like this back in my "Crazy Youth" and was quite disappointed when i was jaunting around the world, to find that the backpacker libraries were full of "Da Vinci Codes" and other new age twoddle and missing the real head messing literature. If your going to have a malaria medicine and heat stroke based breakdown you might as well have it based on the classic conspiracy texts, so I'm going to send these off to my friends in Cambodia in hope of reviving 90's style traveler insanities.

Robots Vs Monkeys

In the age old war between monkeys and robots to become our faithful servants/butlers, those ever resourceful Japanese have trained up a bunch of monkeys to be waiters.

We all know that once you have experience as a waiter you can train for silver service and then its a hop-skip-&-jump to becoming a butler.
So for the moment its Monkey 1 Robot 0.

Painting a picture - part four

So now its down to the final fixing, a bit more detail on the menehune's lei and finish his concussed expression. Its important to note that the menehune is only knocked out and not dead because as i was finishing the picture i realized it was quite a violent scene.



Sorting out the eyes on the tiki, a touch of the "big eye" look.




I was thinking of painting a necklace onto the tiki, or perhaps the shrunken head of a lady menehune but instead I've gone for ribs and a ripped chest. What good fun!

Painting a picture - part three.

Adding more shading on the central tiki, the war club in it's hand is life sized, I had one kicking around so i just set it on the canvas and traced around it.



That's all the black on the figures.



Slapping on the white..



..and the whites finished, then i go over all the black lines again, to tighten up the image.



I tried to think of various way of doing the background Tapa design easily, like using stencils or make stamps, but in the end I have to carefully pencil in the shapes and hand paint them. Which is quite pleasing to do.


With the back painting finished its time to give it a rest for the day, I've been recording these pictures on my camera phone and sneakily peeking at them in every spare minute, its like a timelapse in my pocket.

The Return of Alleschwindel?

My all time favorite live bands, have finally got a myspace page, and new versions of some of there tracks. Check them out HERE!

Painting a picture - part two.

Another day and a splash more paint..



Once I have the big colours down I like to lay down a thick black outline.



more black.



Almost all the black down..



Thats the mouth all filled in..



and the pink on the menehumes lei, with a wee touch of shading.

Painting a picture - part one.

I've picked up the brush after far to many years, and I'm really enjoying slapping the paint around..



First the rough sketch, this only took me two days and a dozen different images to work what the central tiki was crushing with his maori war club.



Slap on the basic colours.



Then the background colour, I have a big tube of cobalt blue, so I'm using it.




Finally some faux wood grain on the club and its time to clean my brushes.

Take This!

I've always said that "Take That" should have been the new Beatles, whilst their version of Teen Spirit is a touch limp and lacks a certain menace, it has the incongruousness that makes a good cover version.

Sneaky Peeky

It less than a year since the Captain was first released to the public, but now its time for him to change colour, have a gander at the new purple glaze.

Captain Hold Fast ON SALE NOW!!

Now on sale in time for Winter festivities, imagine drinking your hot spiced rum at new year from the beauty.

Buy the Captain from Tiki Farm for only $11.95 (thats only £5.79 in sterling)

Halloween Skull Mask Project

Here is a lovely skull I created for Tiki Chris 31 skull mask for Halloween project. You can see all the rest of the talented artists skulls here.

Back to the Blog

So what have I been up to since Sleazy Cheezy went down the tubes. Well I've been working on my Tiki Art and have been chosen to design a Tiki Mug for one of the worlds largest manufactures of Tiki Mugs, the great Tiki Farm in America.

So save your pennies for "Captain Hold-Fast"

No Sleazy Cheezy until December!

What I hear you ask how can this be?

I have been sworn to not venting my spleen about things that we cannot help, but there you go, ask me when I'm drunk and I shall tell you all.

David has provided some lovely pictures again from the crime and punishment night, what fun we finally cracked the music timing problem and got a nice new young DJ to spin the wheels of vynil all night, he so good he brings his own headphones. Ahhhh!

The Lucky Charms Tribute to Prisoner: Cell Block H

Miss Angel D'Light Stealing Some Hearts

A Very Naughty Boy allways standing in the corner

Friday October the 6th “Crime and Punishment”

“No good deeds go unpunished”

All good Johnson folk are invited to hang out with our collection of bunko-men, dippers, dolly mops, two story boys, purse snatchers, long conners, street walkers, bag men, blaggers, teenage hellcats and jailbait jezebels.

No band for this month but hell we gonna have some mighty fine burl-Q ladies shacking their thangs while stealing your hearts. Their gonna mug you with love coshes, roll you in the ditch of desire and bury your beaten body in the shallow grave of SEX-U-AL FRUSTRATION!!!

Well last month was a hair-puller and a half, perhaps we celebrated our birthday a step to far before putting on our show, but the we never claimed to be profess-I-anal about the running of this club. Why a lack of screaming tension and last minute high jinks would ruin thee process.



Young Mr Lucky Strike in his tribute to the Late Freddy Mercury with a nod to Ed Wood, you just gotta love angora on a man.

A Tribute to Tretchikoff

Due to the unfortunate passing of Vladimir Tretchikoff Sleazy Cheezy will be holding a minute silence to mark the passing of this great painter and also offering two pounds of entry if you come dressed as one of his paintings.

Our dear friend David has put online his Tretchikoff tribute movie you can watch his film Kitschen below. Also on a lighter note David will be doing a DJ set this friday, knowing his taste in music and movies it will be full of very fine tunes.

The return of Miss Hope Eternal

Miss Hope Eternal (the love child of true 70's suberbian swingers) has been away for a few month, chasing after fame and fortune in the world of stand-up comedy and the girl did good making it to the finals of the Gilded Balloons "So you think your Funny".
But its great to see her back at her home Sleazy Cheezy, perhaps we can persued he to do a turn , if not she'll definatly be taking her turn on the wheels of sleaze.

R.I.P. Tretchikoff

What sad news to report the death of the worlds gretest painter Vladimir Tretchikoff, the man who gave the world the kitsch mona lisa "The Green Lady".

He died in south africa on monday and a couple of thousand miles away my copy of the green lady dropped of the wall for no apparent reason, perhaps it was his works way of announcing that the "King of Kitsch" was dead.