I was standing in line at a Moe’s when I noticed this kid peeking at me while I was sketching. So I drew Goofy with mouth cancer.

I really wanted to practice drawing something, so I found this image in my folder of random collected photos and called him ‘Manuel Mondragon aka Samuel Lardsworth Jackonshire.’ I got the idea for this guy’s name from one of my favorite recent Achewood strips and hopefully you’ve spotted that the name is also a genteel-ization of Samuel L. Jackson.

Back in the summer of 2009, I decided to re-explore one of the more curmudgeonly computer drawing applications: Microsoft Paint. I do like the sort of thick, inexplicably impasto-seeming quality of some of the images I created, especially this one. It’s perfectly flat and totally immaterial (being electronic ‘n such) but it still makes me think of thickly applied paint with that sort of hog hair bristle quality. Weird!
This is, of course, The Lady in the Radiator from the David Lynch classic Eraserhead. Me and my friend refer to this character as Biscuit Face.

I used the image search button from an older version of the Google toolbar as the basis for this image. I really liked how the Mona Lisa was crushed down so incredibly small and yet still retained a clear resemblance. So I guess this image is a lot about seeing and how much of seeing is made up for by our sensory apparatus as well as our visual memory. That’s what a lot of the pixel work is about; the painterliness of it.

I’m interested in the compositional possibilities of landscape imagery derived from early videogames. My generation’s familiarity with these “places” seems to validate their use as subjects of landscape drawing and hopefully painting. The images were built up with intersecting lines of colored ink pen. The only solid portion in this image is the shadow on the tree in the bottom left corner and the snifit bullets coming from the upper right. I love producing imagery that tests both my hand and my patience and stamina, and this image certainly delivered on both fronts.

I picked a random, years-ago primed piece of paper, drew a line down the center, and just started drawing. I would draw for a few hours until I just couldn’t think of anything else to add (I was also incorporating doodles from my sketchpads to facilitate development), and then I’d come back to it the next day with a fresh eye, erase what I didn’t like, and build on what remained.

This is one of the largest images I’ve ever done and was definitely a big step forward. It still isn’t finished, however; I’ve been busy! Anyway, it was based on an engraving done for the section about Baal in Colin De Plancy’s Dictionnaire Infernal. I used Barney Frank’s face for a reference since he’s really jowly and his voice was the first thing to come to mind when I read Bael’s voice is, according to earwitnesses, very hoarse.

Ashley’s flickr.

This entry was tagged as ART., Ashley Anderson, baal, barney frank, David Lynch, drawing, Goofy, LA, Mona Lisa, paint.