Quick Sketch - TT Derogatory & Deadline

Derogatory and Deadline from Tactical Thinking drawn in Sharpie, Indian Ink, Hardcore pigment ink and Staedtler fineliner (awesome pens!), by Kevin Bradshaw.

These are initial sketches for a large scale painting I have planned of the entire TT family, posing like they are real cool hip-hop dudes!

On a related note, I saw a first cut of the '10 to 3 Chicks' promo-video at Robbie's on Friday night.  Looking good; can't wait to see the finished version.

Two more random Cross-hatched sketches

I'm addicted to crosshatching ^-^

Yet another octopus.  I'm trying to develop my own Cthulhu image, and this is part of the process.

On the subject of octopus, I discovered this amazing blog - Everything Octopus.

Lieutenant Tuvok and Captain Janeway from Star Trek Voyager, looking particularly ghoulish.

Quick Sketch - Big Pun

Above us only sky

"Above us only sky..."

illustration Above us only sky by Kevin Bradshaw

Article taken from NSS website; view original here

Atheist sentencing creates a new and dangerous blasphemy law

The sentencing of Harry Taylor to six months in prison (suspended for two years) for leaving anti-religious cartoons in an airport prayer room has been condemned by the National Secular Society as “creating a new blasphemy law that will open the way for every religious extremist to persecute and prosecute their critics.”

Terry Sanderson, President of the National Secular Society said: “Regardless of the fact that this six month sentence has been suspended, it is still totally out of proportion for what Mr Taylor did. Nobody can deny that he was being deliberately provocative in leaving these rather mild cartoons, cut from Private Eye, in the prayer room, but in the end he didn’t harm anybody and was simply making a point about the existence of such a facility. The chaplain could quite easily have simply thrown the papers in the bin.

“Instead, she claims to have been hurt and offended by this material, which makes her ultra sensitivity a dangerous thing indeed. The professional ‘offence takers’ in religious communities will now feel that they have a strong new weapon to use against anyone who is critical or disapproving of them. It is, in effect, a blasphemy law that covers all religions and is much more powerful than the one that was abolished only two years ago.”

“Religiously aggravated offences represent a new kind of blasphemy law, and the professional offence takers in religious communities won’t be slow to exploit this new avenue of restricting criticism and comment about their beliefs. It is time for parliament to reconsider these provisions and remove them from the statute books.”

Mr Sanderson said that Mr Taylor describes himself as a “militant atheists” who wanted to challenge the existence of the “prayer room” particularly as it was situated on John Lennon Airport in Liverpool – he maintained that John Lennon was an atheist and would not have approved of the presence of the prayer room.
© 2010 National Secular Society

Illustrations on Amelia's Magazine website

Amelia's Magazine online gig review

featuring two illustrations by Kevin Bradshaw.

My first two illustrations created for Amelia's Magazine, of which I hope there will be many more.  They were rushed out pretty quickly with less than a day to do both of them - and I have mixed feelings about the results.

The first is of a band called Teeth of the Sea (check out their myspace here), who are a great psychedelic band with noise/drone influences.  I did this image on Tuesday morning and am happy with the way it turned out.

The second image is of an electro-pop/rock band called Baby Monster (their myspace here).  I drew this on Monday evening, and had high hopes for it when I started out but could never get it looking how I imagined it, and in the end I'm really not happy with how it turned out.  It doesn't gel at all; the equipment in the foreground was supposed to stand out much more, and the characters would probably benefit from some dramatic cross-hatching.  In the end I just didn't have the time to fix it or start again.

This experience taught me a lot, especially about the development of my style into a form I am happy with.  I'll get there soon.

A couple of brightly coloured drawings:

Charlie Brooker and Lee Mack argue pros and cons of Twitter

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I highly recommend giving this a listen. Extremely funny ranting contained within. Charlie Brooker and Lee Mack arguing the pros and cons of twitter.  One of them hates it, one of them loves it - can you guess which is which.  

This excerpt is taken from BBC Radio 4 show So Wrong It's Right (the entire series as it comes out can be listened to in full here).

USK, Easty Boys - 8bitpeoples Chiptune

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This is the first track from chiptune artist USK's first 8bitpeoples release Picopicodisco.  The whole thing can be downloaded here, or you can read about it here.

8bitpeoples are "a collective of artists sharing a common love for classic videogames and an approach to music which reflected this obsession. Our primary interests were to provide quality music for free and most importantly to have fun."

MC Paul Barman - It's Very Stimulating & Paullelujah

I'm sharing this album and EP because I love them so much, and Paullelujah! seems to have completely disappeared off the map.  Unavailable even as mp3 on amazon or www.mcpaulbarman.com - what's with that?

http://rapidshare.com/files/390988134/MCPaulBarman.rar

If you download, do the right thing and buy Paul Barman's new album Thought Balloon Mushroom Cloud here: www.mcpaulbarman.com/audio.html

Buy It's Very Stimulating (320 mp3) with lyric zine for $5 directly from MC Paul Barman by clicking here/here

If you are Paul Barman and you want me to cease and desist just let me know.

Stewart Lee and Alan Moore

Two of my favourite artists ever in discussion about comic boooks - Alan Moore the famed comic writer, and Stewart Lee the 41st best stand-up comedian.

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Alan Moore of course wrote Watchmen, which I only read a couple of years ago. I've only recently got into comics again, after reading Beano as a kid and Viz as a teenager, and thought there was no way Watchmen could live up to the hype. It's a comic, surely it can't be literature as well. I was so wrong - the depth of the characters and the intricacy of the storytelling is second to none.  Plus with Watchmen, a great movie was finally made from one of his books (after crap remakes of V for Vendetta, From Hell, and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.)

Stewart Lee has his own unique style of stand-up which is easy to hate, but just as easy to love. His slow, repetitive, precise, 'pretentious' style can alienate the audience and has kept him just outside the mainstream for 20 years. His 'Jerry Springer: The Opera' brought him death threats and inspired him to make the documentary What's Wrong With Blasphemy.

Together in this chat taken from the BBC Radio 4  series Banter they discuss Alan Moore's life and their mutual interest in comics

Paint my Album (with MS Paint) part 7

Not exactly a classic album, but it's in my record collection, and it definitely has classic speeches.

Go to Paint my Albums facebook group to submit your own: 

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=24955166436

Paint my Album (with MS Paint) part 6

Paint my Album (with MS Paint) part 5

Paint my Album (with MS Paint) part 4

Paint my Album (with MS Paint) part 3

More MS Paint album cover stuff.

Paint my Album

I have just discovered the Paint my Album project and cannot get over how brilliant an idea this is.  This is exactly the sort of idea that pisses me off for not coming up with it myself.  The guys involved have committed so much to it at this point that I can't even pretend it's worth stealing and passing off as my own idea (not that I would do that sort of thing anyway).  As a result I'm just going to have to draw some of my own and send them in here.

Here's the concept.  Recreating classic album covers using only MS Paint - the most basic, god awful illustration software this side of Art Alive on the Mega Drive.

I've just put together my interpretation of Cradle of Filth's classic first album 'The Principle of Evil Made Flesh'; as far as I'm concerned this fulfills any possible definition of classic I can think of.

Feeding-the-Shitenoji-terrapins haiku tripych

Feeding-the-Shitenoji-terrapins haiku tripych

by Kevin Bradshaw

Their bodies submerged
and their heads reach to the air
as they fight for food

Occassionally
a back leg flicks and they turn
just to keep going

The biggest, bites and
shakes the smaller ones, over
what it doesn't need.

=================================================

I've just submitted this to http://www.isreads.com/ an "outdoor journal".  The project involves selecting 10 short poems for publication in the journal, which is then emailed to people to print out and stick up around town.  Public poetry to be discovered by accident.

The above poem is an old one as I haven't written one in years, but haiku is fun to write, and I really used to like doing them in series to form a fuller narrative.  Here is the complete terrapins one.

Feeding-the-Buddhist-terrapins haiku

Turtle or tortoise,
are they interacting or
swimming aimlessly?

their bodies submerged
and their heads reach to the air
as they fight for food

Occassionally
a back leg flicks and they turn
just to keep going

crowd around biscuits
a pigeon looks envious
a sparrow postures

pigeons and sparrows
daren't brave the water's surface.
Disabled they fly.

Those of land and sky
miss the orgiastic feast
mmm, wet biscuit, yumm

The biggest, bites and
shakes the smaller ones, over
what it doesn't need.

Biscuit bobs an inch
then floats to the surface or
hits a shell and splits.

One takes a bite and
pushes away what it can't
finish in one go.

We'll have to wait and see if my poem is accepted.  I'll keep you posted.

another octopus

ppl

Idea for Electoral Reform

Everyone feels we have a need for electoral reform.  We have a hung parliament, people continuing to call for proportional representation (as always happens around election time), and a stale out-dated, un-elected upper house - The House of Lords.

I propose a simple solution which I feel will come some way to solving all these problems.  Step one:
Abolish the House of Lords
Out with the unelected illegitimate great grandchildren of King George/Henry/Edward and some forgotten peasant maiden; out with the bishops; and out with those who bought their seats.

Step two:
Keep the House of Commons UNCHANGED
Yes, keep the parliamentary elections as they are.  You go and you vote for your local candidate, the MP you wish to sit in the Commons to represent you.  Each constituency gets one seat and that's that - no change there.
Here we see my constituency Withington winning a seat in the House of Commons for the Liberal Democrats.
And here we see anyone who voted Conservative or Labour being pissed off that their vote is now pointless - lost, the democratic process ends for another 5 years.  This is the cause of popular disenfranchisement.

Image (c) BBC MMX taken from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/election2010/results/constituency/c82.stm

Here we see the House of Commons as it currently is, with the Conservatives hold a non-majority lead.  Notice the apparent massive difference in influence between Labour and Liberal Democrats.

Image (c) BBC MMX taken from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/election2010/results/default.stm

Step three:
Create a new Upper House
Lets call it 'The House Formerly Known as Lords', or even better 'The Upper House'.  Create a number of seats therein - let's say 300.  It's a good number, not too high to get unwieldy, but high enough for our purposes.

To fill these seats we use Proportional Representation.  Let's look at the current full UK Scoreboard, paying particular attention to Votes and %.

Image (c) BBC MMX taken from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/election2010/results/default.stm

Conservatives lead Labour by 41 seats and 1,932,907 votes.  Labour lead Liberal Democrats by a massive 199 seats, but only 1,817,580.

We continue to fill the House of Commons using the number of seats, however we fill the Upper House using the percentage of total votes across the whole country.

Based on my number of 300 seats in the Upper House, this would give:
Conservatives 108 seats
Labour 87 or 88 seats
Liberal Democrats 68 (possibly 69)
Democratic Unionist Party 1 or 2
Scottish National Party 3
etc.

Parties will then be allowed to fill their seats with representatives of their choosing (as long as they don't also sit in the Commons, and have no other conflict of interest).

Some details would need to be worked out such as how to represent Sinn Fein's 1.5 seats, and what to do with tiny minority parties.

Also this system would give the much hated British National Party 5 or 6 seats.  However this is what happens in a free democracy.  Unpopular stupid opinions are thought, expressed and sometimes agreed with. Giving them the 5 or 6 seats that they have earned will allow them to express their idiotic views, and for the majority to respond appropriately, and it will also have the major benefit of helping BNP voters to feel they are being heard.  This I feel will be a major step towards enabling everyone to feel they have an active part to play in parliamentary politics and a voice that is being heard.  It may also result in a swing away from extreme party support, which may have only had it's resent upsurge as a way of protesting against the stagnation and bullshit of the major parties.

In Summation


Conduct the elections exact as always.
Continue to fill the Commons seats based on number of constituencies won.
Abolish the Lords and replace with an Upper House.
Fill the Upper house based on percentage of total votes.
Simple

Why cephalopods are awesome!

Updates

I have added some updates to my portfolio over at http://www.myspace.com/lackofenergy.  

I'm trying to collect together a selection of my work, although I'll probably go crazy and end up putting everything on there.  There are things from 15 year old sketch books that I fancy showing off, but I'll try to stick mainly to recent stuff.  Also coming soon will be a biography.