Gentle Giant

Peter Mayhew has passed away a few weeks shy of his 75th birthday.

Despite being covered from head to foot in order to portray a walking carpet, his shuffling gait delivered more character than many of the million dollar digital creations of modern sci-fi movies.

He helped bring the Fuzzball, The Beast, The Mighty Chewbacca, to life.

I thought it was about time Chewbacca got his medal.

Hopefully Chewie will go on being a staple of Star Wars movies for decades to come (unless Abrams does the unthinkable (though without Han there, there wouldn't be the required emotional payoff)).

Peter Mayhew 1944-2019

Rave In Peace

The Prodigy defined an era in my life. Voodoo People, Poison and No Good Start the Dance were staples on every mix-tape I made, I queued at midnight to buy the Fat of the Land CD, we blasted Firestarter out of our first car's stereos, and they were touring festivals throughout my late teens and early twenties.

Seeing the prodigy live is like nothing I've ever seen, or likely will again. The sheer amount of energy that is that erupts from the audience is a spectacle in itself, with the rabid crowd whipped up into a seething frenzy by Liam's music, Maxim's ring-leading and 'Mad' Keith Flint's demonic clown.

It's hard to understand how this seemed like only way to find some peace, but I have no doubt there will be little rest wherever he is now.

He'll be thrashing the afterlife into one hell of an after-show.

What horse?

As my Red Dead 2 inspired rediscovery of all things 'wild west' continues, I have been reading up on the wagon-trains that would cross America on the Oregon trail. It seems such a wild notion now to be able to pack all your belongings into a box and head out into a largely unknown land, hoping to make a home somewhere, despite this still being a reality for many brave people.

The shapes that some of the carts were made of inspired me to sketch out a considerably more exaggerated version, that pretty much looks like a Pringle. On wheels.

I generally start off with a loose composition and work inwards from that point. Here, unusually for me, I focused on the single shape of the wagon and worked up the detail until it was almost complete before trying to place it in a scene.

With the angle of the cart predetermined, I struggled to compose an image around it that wouldn't overshadow the shapes and details I'd created.

I'm just going to pretend the horse ran off.

I cant draw horses.

Yet.