Gentlemen Bears was good.

Gentlemen Bears Comedy Night 23rd of Nov Marlborough Theatre Brighton

Facebook event page link

My friend Nicholas Cooke and I (Laurie Rowan) have begun our own comedy night in Brighton. I’ll be playing the part of Chapsom Bear, the resident compere and theatrically trained grizzly bear. We’ve build a suit and everything. God I hope people don’t find that too wanky to laugh at, the more used to the idea the more cynical I become.

It’ll be good. A lot of groundwork has gone into it, we’ve designed the flyers all nice (see below), picked a great venue with just the right level of faded glamour to it and constructed an elaborate bear costume for Chapsom. We’ve also got my friend, the wonderful Ed Briggs providing musical accompaniment on the piano between acts.  It’s all very novel.

That’s not even mentioning the acts we’ve got to come and perform, each one is genuinely exciting to have involved, we’ve got Naz Osmanoglu, Kieran Boyd, Keiron Nicholson, Will Ainsworth. Pete Armstrong and Viv Groskop. If you don’t know who they are, up your game.

Here’s the poster:

And here’s a little making of Chapsom’s head:

 

It’s got fur on it now and looks like the one in the poster, but I’m saving that for the night.

If you’re around you should come.

New GIF: Bubblegum Hell

Click on it. It’s a looping animation.

Did a video

It’s called Fuzzy Banter.

New Illustration

Hello.  For the first time in a little while I’ve done a new illustration, it’s on the theme of music and words.

I’m also working on a polished version of my Belcham image from my 100 days project which will hopefully be finished and posted here soon.

Thanks,

Laurie

 

Jason Smendelflank

Here’s a stream-of-consciousness story I wrote a while back:

It was a summer’s afternoon when Jason Smendelflank decided uncharacteristically to leave the house for a stroll. Uncharacteristic mainly due to the town’s mistaken belief that Jason had been dead for the past 15 years. He wasn’t dead that’s not where this is going, but he wasn’t a long way off in his current state of health. Not that he was terminal but he’d just not been looking after himself was all.

15 years previous Jason had ventured up to the loft to have a dig around and find what he could find, and there was plenty to be found. It was a full loft, full of curiosity and clutter and Jason’s imagination ran rampant for some time, a few hours, 5 hours 13 minutes if we’re to be exact, and we shall, there’ll be no complacency in this tale. There were boxes of old Mad magazines, lampshades mascaraing as ships, bottled ships with the ship removed, old cassette tapes, teddy bears, jam jars, hair nets, a big Barbie head where you could brush the hair if you so wished, and he did, loads of stuff, some of it more exotic and intriguing than the things I’ve just listed but I’m employing artistic licence here, you can fill in the blanks yourself it’ll make for a better story.

Interior/Exterior Illustrations

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. I’ve quite busy recently working on bit and pieces and haven’t had the chance.

Here’s something I did last week as part of Illustrator and animator Matthew Reay‘s free Zines series.

Each zine is based on a single word topic and features a range of artists and their interpretation of that word. It’s lovely stuff. Each zine is given away free at Vets In Hong Kong gigs, the band Matt drums for.

Here are my entries for the last issue, the theme was Interior/Exterior.

100 days: 45

Booth.

‘Hey, hey boy!’ called the man in the booth. Kyle approached cautiously. He assessed the man’s bare emaciated arms, they resembled two clusters of broken knuckles bound together with a thin layer of cheap sausage skin, if you can imagine such a thing. Kyle considered this image and estimated a potential grab/stab/grope radius taking into account the length of the man’s torso and then stood approximately one foot outside of it. He waited silently for the man to justify his bellow, which he did at leisure. ‘You want advice?’ asked the man eventually. Kyle shrugged which served as enough encouragement.

‘Good boy,’ began the boothed stranger, ‘so, what troubles you lad?’

Kyle wiped a fleck of mucus from his nostril and shrugged again.

‘Be creative champ, come on,’ ventured the man to no avail, ‘ok, let me begin the process. This, brother, is a damned heavy world and each man, each man carries his share of the weight, it’s our birthright, we pop out, the doctor spanks our ass and the soul never stops weeping, so, what load are you carrying boy?’

It was a large ineloquently posed question for a small mind to decipher. Kyle swilled it around for a while, pulling his interpretation of a thoughtful expression (puckered lips and scrunched brow) as he tried to locate his as yet unlabelled notion of self.

‘Well,’ Kyle began, ‘I…’

‘Off load, come on, let’s work through this together, come on,’ encouraged the stranger.

‘Well…I lost my Casio driving watch last Saturday,’ began Kyle.

‘I see’ said the man leaning forward empathetically, Kyle recalculated the radius and took a step back.

‘It could go 30 meters underwater, my mum said she’d get me new one but she said she’ll only spend £20 on it, you can only get 20 meters for £20 and all my friends have 30,’ continued Kyle wistfully.

‘I see,’ said the man, ‘now, that is a pickle. It seems to me that you’re at a crossroads in your potential development. While your predicament centres around your ill fated Casio diving watch and the respect of your peers this all speaks to me of a deeper underlying problem. By begrudgingly accepting your mother’s kind offer to replace the watch with an inferior model you are in fact placing more value on the loose materialistic relationship you have with your ‘friends’ than the everlasting paternal bond you have with your mother. By subjecting her offer to scrutiny misses the central point; who lost the watch? Where does the responsibility lay? Where should reparations be sought? Perhaps you should be looking inward. We may be talking about a relatively cheap digital watch here but as your grow up you’ll find the same scenario repeating over and over and you’ll long for the day a simple Casio SGW-100-1VEF was at the centre of your troubles. Choose the right path now and you could spare yourself a lifetime of inaction and servitude.’

Kyle absorbed these words for a little while, then pointedly asked:

‘Why are you purple?’

The man appeared despondent.

‘Amazon.co.uk has got a sale on digital sportswear at the moment, you can get 50 meters for £17.50 for the next month,’ he disdainfully spat out. ‘That’ll be a quid.’

‘Fanks!’ said Kyle and ran off without paying.

‘Fucking kid,’ muttered the man as he lit his 20^th cigarette osf the morning, ‘why are you blue? You little bugger.’ Kyle was already out of earshot, tugging his mother’s arm, presumably saying something about Amazon.

100 days: Day 44

Balloons

Balloons

In response to the animation request on the 100 days site (http://www.hundreddays.net/) I’ve spent the day creating a mini loop-animation entited ‘Balloons’. Unfortunetly I can’t find a way to put it on my blogpage because wordpress doesn’t accept flash files, bit frustrating. So if you’d like to see it you’ll have to follow the link, there’s one up there at the top, or if you tend to scroll the cursor along as you read then here’s one for your benefit, here.

Here’s a still so the page doesn’t look empty. I’ll try and get the animation on the actual page when I can.

Thanks.

100 days: Day 43

Manners.

Imagine a pub setting, with lots of nautical trinkets adorning the walls and a plaster model of a fishermen in a yellow mac that was originally created with the intention of looking creepy outside a fish and chip shop. This story is set in such a place.

An almost visibly tangible smell of over ripe fish hung in the air, the kind of smell that forces involvement from the taste buds as well the nostrils. But that’s an aside. The pub is called ‘The Fisherman’s Anchor’, they serve food and it’s mostly fish based.

The Anchor attracts two very distinct sections of society; the young (sorry to resort to the stereotype, but) studenty type, maybe even A-level students, generally they’re attracted by the kitsch value, it dominates their pub banter and the trinkets are adopted into prop-based horseplay. This angers the other distinct section of society which on reflection isn’t that distinct at all, it’s just people who live near by, locals. But they all do tend to be middle aged men, a lot of bald spots and tan leather bomber jackets, just an observation.

One evening, one such man (the local demographic type) was stood watching a game of popular sport on the television. He had a tin of rusty brown ale in one hand and the other hung by his side, the fingers parted to the exact width of the cigarette that would have once smouldered there. Another local demographic man barged past leaving nothing but static between the pair. It caused the first man, Pete, to jolt and spill some drink. The second man, Chris, offered not one word by way of apology.