We're all going to be dirt in the ground

Dear void

That’s it. 

I’m done. 

And it’s high time.

There aren’t any more pitchers.

For all my life, man and boy, that was what I did. 

Why don’t you just have a fucking cry, Soc? You big wet.

 
downinahole

 

 

 

I did

Leftover blood

Dear Void

Sometimes (mostly, really) it doesn’t mean anything.

When there’s a bit of paint left over and you know how expensive it is and you happen to have these two mini canvases that you got for your birthday, sometimes a little glimmer of gold happens.  And sometimes it’s just some bullshit you never got around to painting over.  This is an example of the latter:

[WHOA that came out weird!  It looks like I made them out of yarn.  I didn't]

You’d be forgiven for thinking I was trying for some kind of sophomoric poetry with these, but I assure you I was just fucking about.  And all you’ll learn from these is that I know dick all about anatomy.

More fucking about:

This is my piece-of-shit $200 smacktop (on which I am currently writing).  I had just watched Dexter or something and thought it would be fun if my ‘puter looked like it was stolen from a murder scene. Apparently it’s pretty convincing IRL because Frankenspouse asked me if I’d had a nose bleed.  There are also bloody fingerprints on the keyboard (on the keys that spell out ‘You’re a cunt’ but you can’t tell because Soc is a fraud).

downinahole

Narcissism, self-loathing and the paradox it presents – last in a trilogy.

My dearest Void

Soc here

I’m concluding the Catholic of self-portraits today. Starting with this piece: I’m less technically accurate but more true to charac―.

I’ve got to stop myself for a sec here.  I started out this whole project to jovially shred all the ham-handed pitchers I done over the years.  But lo! Where’s the trenchant derision now, fucker? It has become more like a maudlin exercise in self-congratulation thinly veiled as nostalgia.

So here’s how we’re going to round out this dog of a page:  I can’t paint.  I know I can’t paint.  I never went to school to study pitcher makin’.  I just liked doing it enough to burn hours a day doing it.  In fact, I don’t know what I’m going to do with my spare time once this blog is done.  I’ve considered taking up heroin; I’ve heard good things about it and apparently it’s a real time chewer upperer.

So here’s a cartoon of Soc about to start a new abortive cartoon:

That’s how my back yard looked at the time [CHECK DATE] (<- that was a file note to remind me to trudge up to the Cove and check the year I painted it. Please admire my dedication to meticulousness at will.  Except that it turns out that I didn’t either sign or date it.  Now we’re all fucking tortured.  It was probably ‘05ish). The yard was a wreck but some of the foliage came up nice in the pitcher – a shit load of small strokes is key there. 

Frankenspouse never seemed to grasp how emaciatedly thin I was and so all of the clothes she bought me looked like that.

And this, minus the Hieronymus-esque*psychedelica, is how my back yard looks now: 

I hadn’t got around to cleaning up the colours or detailing the background (or even finishing the subject come to that!) when the whole shebang came crashing down around my ears and the painting gears ground to an eternal halt.

*Oh Soc, you little fucker!  So you’re up there with Bosch now, are you? Dude, that is sauteed in wrong sauce!

Yours truly

The Void

And that’s it for the self-portrait trilogy

Soc is a fraud

Downinahole

Narcissism, self-loathing and the paradox it presents – the second in a trilogy.

Dear Void

More from the Stuffed-Shirt Period.  Oh, hang on, it’s still the same period as Mickey Mc NoChin:

This is probably the most technically accurate portrait I ever did, but as for character illumination, it’s treacherous. And here’s why:

I just ten minutes ago exhumed that image from youtube’s dark recesses.  I haven’t seen it for maybe twelve years and I’m fucking astounded at how closely I copied it. It’s Barry Otto in an Australian film based on the novel with the same name: ‘Bliss’. You need no more evidence than that, Void, as to the abject fraudulence of Soc.

That is my head but.   I must cop to that at least.

Soc is the most fraudulent of frauds

downinahole

Evincing melancholy

Dear Void

Soc here

We’re not going to fuck about on this page because reasons.

If you wanted to inspire gloom and despair in me, you need do no more than show me a child playing alone in their bedroom.  And such has it been my entire adult life. Just thinking about it now creates a virtual knot in my stomach. My children are grown now so I don’t ever witness this, but when they were small I saw it all too frequently. I’d complain to my wife and she’d cursorily pronounce me a mawkish twat.

Without getting too psychoanally, I reckon it’s rooted in a lonely and awkward childhood.  I don’t know if it was really so, or my adult brain pretends it was.

I did this one in the late nineties, when my elder kid was small:

 

Notā bene: I don’t have the original any more.  I gave it away many years ago and have been unsuccessful in acquiring a picture of it.  All I have is what’s pictured above. FUCK YOU MUPPET LOL JKS ETC

I was lamenting one day about having lost it to the universe.  Then I thought, ‘Hang on there, Soc me old boy.  You’re an artist*, just paint it again’.  So, in ’08, I did:

And it’s a vast improvement. All the original elements are there but everything is tighter.  I guess that’s what ten years practise does for you; I’d learned a few more cheats and what a difference patience and perseverance makes.

So much had the craft improved that Frankenspouse has allowed this one to reside in Frankenspouse Manor.  So it can torture me with its inherent sadness every day.

There was something powerful about the ham-fistedness of the original though.

Soc is a fraud

downinahole

*Shut it.  It serves my purpose for this page

Another extemporaneous addendum

Dear Void etc

There’s this bloke who explained, as eloquently as can be, more than twenty years ago that there is one thing you can’t lose: that feel.

An undeniably brilliant, and romantic sentiment. 

But I lost that feel

But then

Soc is a fraud

Narcissism, self-loathing and the paradox it presents – the first in a trilogy

Dear Void, you faceless, no-account wastrels, it’s time to cut to the vice.

I can’t paint good but I always wanted to paint portraits.  Here’s the thing: People find out that I paint for a hobby and their first question is, ‘ORLY what do you paint?’.  Well if you’ve seen any of the other pages in this cess pit, you’ll understand how difficult it is to answer that question. 

I decided to be a portrait artist simply to make that question go away.  The problem was that I had then even less artistic ability than I do now (or did, until recently. Now I’m back where I started, with little possibility of recovery). So I couldn’t very well ask people to let me practise on them; there was pride and integrity on the line (both false, I assure you).

If I do your portrait, you will respond in one of two ways:

A)     You’ll shout at me in a hurt tone, ‘That’s how you see me?! You’re a cunt, Soc!’
B)      You’ll shout at me derisively, ‘That’s what you call a portrait?! You’re a cunt, Soc!’

We both lose either way, so I never do it.  Well, almost never.  I have one subject who calls me a cunt on a regular basis, both in hurt and derision by turns. My subject is Soc.

I kicked off when I was about eighteen, completely confused about how paint works, and utterly untrained (heh, apart from my age, these conditions persist to this day).  This nascent effort was more than a little delusional.  And laughably twee:

As will be evident by the time this is done, I’ve never liked my hair, so this is a complete fabrication. I’m still a skinny fuck though.

Next up, a few years later, the second attempt.  This Soc is about to marry Frankenspouse:

While still woefully amateur, it’s not a bad representation (as best I can remember) of me at the time.  The square-on angle a) clearly reveals that I used a mirror and b) obscures the monolithic protuberance that is my nose (while at the same time accentuating my sticky-outy ears).  But check out that head of hair!  I wonder if it really looked like that!  I’m skull-bald now.  But I remember that shirt.

In later years, I got a bit more figurative:

Now we’re getting introspective! Yes we’re copping to the big nose and the sticky-outy ears, but what’s this? No chin?! That’s why forty-year-old Soc wears a beard.

I was approaching my late twenties and had a penchant for the stuffed-shirt, three piece suit look.  I never did it in the real world because I’m a bum.
And the hair’s gone! Portentous...

Soc is a fraud

downinahole

Hide the dick and balls, Puritan!

Dear Void

When you see something that looks wrong, it’s not always an artistic choice

The Giftstone. Oh boy! Where do I start?

There’s no hiding from it, here’s some bullshit I did back in the early nineties:

I didn’t know what a Möbius loop was then and I’ve no idea why I used it here. The proportions are embarrassingly off and there appears to be careful, if clumsy, obscuring of genitalia. 

The background for the teenage sketches is not by design but simply for convenience. It’s our blue bed-spread and it reminds me of the Juxtapose bed sheets.  And it’s entirely coincidental and it tickles me no end.

I’m not going to make excuses for these sketches. I was fifteen and illiterate. Which, admittedly sounds very much like an excuse, because it is.  I’m a fucking coward.

I may have to make some excuses for the next abortion too.  I was in my twenties by the time I pulled the trigger on this shit, and I should have known better:

I mean really!  Why did I even do this?! What about that teenage sketch made me think, ‘OH FUCK this shit has to be writ large in oil!’. I’ve no idea, and it’s only here to show my poor judgment at every turn.

And that I still want to hide the dick and balls.

Soc is a fraud

Downinahole

About being smarter than Frankenspouse. Or at least more recalcitrant … (two in a series)

Dear Void

I painted directly onto the doors in my house, much to the chagrin of my long-suffering wife, Frankenspouse.

I found a clunky solution to my photographic problem.  It’s not a good one, because it necessitates loading these pages with huge images.  But you have to remember, this is about me, so fuck you.

I previously showed the initial abortion. The next one is the elder kid's bedroom door.  I distinctly remember doing this one; it came together in four hours: 11pm 'til 3am. Not counting the time it took to sand down the lacquer (by hand back in them days) and slap on 382 layers of undercoat:

 

The theme to these is the ajar door TO COMPLETE THE ILLUSION.  Trouble is, I suck at perspective, so none of them look quite right.

The last one (as it turned out) was the younger kid's door.  He was little then and keen on animals, so:

 

See that little feller down the bottom there? Merrily fucking up my fake door? 

I started on the bathroom door.  It stands to this day, sanded and undercoated and ready to go.  I guess that’s the way it’ll stay because

Soc is a fraud

downinahole

Shiny paint and how to misuse it

Look Void, I’m not trying to puss out on posting part two of the doors paintings but I had some more of the technical issues that resulted in the last post. So rather than get all vulgar about it (perish the thought!), I thought I’d take a moment to figure out a better way to do it.

To sate your unquestionably ferocious appetite in the interim, I thought I’d leap back a few years to an abortion which was birthed* by pure experimentation. I really don’t remember exactly when this was but I’m going back a good chunk of years.

The rapey copper man: 

 

This pitcher was painted with one of those highly reflective, metallic paints.  It looks great when the light is right (which it clearly wasn’t for that shot) so I tried to make it look like a copper bas-relief.  This is why I’ve tinged the tears in the canvas with a dirty green (as though it was oxidising, you see).

I think I got that wrong.  It’s copper ore that’s green, but I didn’t know that then and I’m not even sure now BUT THIS IS NOT A FUCKING CHEMISTRY LESSON SO LET’S ALL JUST CALM DOWN FOR A MINUTE

(The canvas tears weren’t an artistic choice either, by the way, I fell over again)

I’m not sure which of the two principals is more creepy: the sweaty old man who is boxing the little girl in the corner, or the threatened, Victorian virago** who’s been backed into that corner.  I know which one frightens me more; I’ll punch a fat man in the face any time you like.

Holy shit! This never occurred to me before!  Maybe she’s not there at all, and only appears in his shadow.  A wife from many years ago?  A daughter?  But why only in his shadow, Void, why?!

You see that’s just another nail in my ‘artist’ coffin.  I don’t pretend there’s a meaning to this shit.  I just like things that look cool.

If only I could paint …

Soc is a fraud

 

downinahole

*You see what I did there?  Because of irony and—.  Never mind

**I’ll fess to you right now, Void, you need no more proof of a brutally patriarchal society than the literal definition of that word.  But with my critically limited vocabulary, that’s the best I could do.  I hope you can forgive me.

An additional extemporaneous addendum

 I fucked that one up in a big, and bad way.  The fucking picture wouldn’t go in the way I wanted it  and it’s entirely my fault.  It kept importing horizontally and I WANTED IT ALL VERTICAL LIKE
but it kept coming out like this:

 

I now know my mistake but here’s how I subtexted the mistake before I fixed it:

[FUCK FUCK CUNTITY FUCK I can't get that right. I'll fix it later]

[You know what, Void? I fucking tried and tried but this software has no love for Ole Soc today. So you're getting it all sidewards and shit. I apologise. Twist your iPad really fast and maybe you'll get it. Unless you're Frankenspouse who can just walk down the hall]

I’m as flawed as a three storey building.

 Soc is a fraud

downinahole

About being smarter than Frankenspouse. Or at least more recalcitrant … (one in a series)

Dear Void

Frankenspouse is not enamoured of my paintings.  But she indulged my daublings up to, but not including, hanging them in the house.  Understandably, sophomoric cartoons of phalluses and daylight nightmares are not welcome in Frankenspouse Manor.

But Old Soc was a creep who was as conniving as he was anathema.  I painted directly onto the doors. "Fuck you, bitch," I shouted thought as quietly as possible, 'My art will be endured by you, by me, and by your friends when they come around for coffee!'

All the internal doors at our place were lacquered brown. Not tan, not beige, not even chocolate.  Just fucking brown. We have this pointlessly shallow cupboard at the end of the corridor, which would glare at you like an oblong turd as you walked down to the bedrooms.  It was the first to fall!

 

"If you're looking for me, lovey, I'll be out on the patio with a single-malt and the Fin Review"etc

Before you ask, I've no idea why the clouds are cubic. Some quasi artist bullshit I expect.

We were in the middle of replacing the floors which were just bare concrete at the time. Rather than leave a permanent scar on the floor, I took the opportunity to do this:

YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE IT LOOKS LIKE THE SUNLIGHT IS FALLING INTO THE CORRIDOR

That 3D chalk guy can duck my sick!

I think I’ve assaulted your ocular input receptacles enough for this day

Soc is a fraud

downinahole

It all started with a frog. Then the cattle came

Dear Void

I painted a pitcher for my younger kid.  I decided it would be a frog because I thought I could handle it: friendly lines, flat colours, easy to caricature and so on.  Then I had this psychedelically genius idea about making it celestial or god-like (eat some ‘shrooms and think :Ganesha) so now the Earth hangs in imminent peril at the mouth of the Uni-frogger (If I were smarter, there would be a Ted Kaczynski joke here).

So that’s that.  The kid hated it, and now it hangs in my office.

Now, this dick I used to work with (called Cattle – you’ll see why I told you that in a minute) had a petit version of an idea, ‘Erm like dude you should totally do a whole series with like different types of Earf in ‘em’.

I made him sound dumb there but the joke’s on me because I ended up taking the idea.  With disastrous results SO FUCK YOU CATTLE:

 

Firstly, it is patently obvious I put very little effort into this. I guess my heart wasn’t really in it.  Looking at it now, I feel like I was trying to rip off Gary Larson of ‘The Far Side’ fame but it’s a cow because of Cattle (Remember?  The dick I stole the idea from).  But I’m still proud of the coastline/tennis ball pattern allusion.  But then, as these pages will attest, I set the bar pretty effing low.  Oh and, do you see the strings on the tennis racket?  I done that by stabbing the brush through a swatch of fly screen.  I know, genius right?

Second, note the water damage.  This is the worst example but there are others because I don’t look after my toys and some of these poor, pariahed bastards were left to languish in the garage.

Did I just anthropomorphise my paintings?  Is there a Toy Story-esque script in there?  I’d better go, I’ve got an Oscar to win.

Soc is a fraud

downinahole

One long night of Christ

My dear Void

I don’t know how this came about other than my passive fascination with the Crucifix. I find it’s such a powerful symbol in my community (at some time I’ll have to investigate exactly what My Community is). I guess it’s only as relevant to me as the Eiffel Tower, or the Swastika, or the Opera House; but it speaks to me of humanity in context of death and strength and passion.  And a fuckload of waste.

This is a four piece set (I’m not trying to sell these to you, by the way.  They’re mine).  I kicked off the first one at about eight in the evening and I thought it quite nice.  Cool blue et cetera:

 

Then it was about midnight and I thought I had a themegoing.  This one is tinged with that blocky pointless shit them beatnicks were doing in the early fifties (Oh you’re getting judgy now, Soc?  I’ve seen you’re shit and you can fuckj off — yours, the Void):

 

Suddenly it was three in the morning.  My focus is waning.  You will have noticed that the attention to detail has declined; Soc is very tired and emotional now and there's more of that to come.  Two canvases are drying and teh lines are starting to blur. FIRE AND BRIMESTONE TIME FUCKERS

Maybe not yet, it was jus peach time to   skeep the colour scheme carrying oon:

 

Oh wait wait wait I forgota bit: see that accenty thing ehat keeps recurring at the bottom he cross? Because I fel over and dashed a bit of paint on the yellow one an had t go back and make all the others same so that’s whay that’s tere.  Not artsistic choice just because i’m a clumsy fuck.

And then dawn broke! The sky began to lighten and I thought I might just possibly be human once more!

Well that lasted only a few moments because the fear and cold of the pending day came crashing down like a builder’s skip.  And I don’t think I was quite straight yet. RGHT YO FuCKS I shouted at the unprepared magpies WE’RE GOING TO MAKE A FINAL CROSS AN ITL HAVE A A STABBY THING IN IT LIKE WHAT JESUS GOT. 

Then I quit shouting and got to work:

Sunrise is a time for reflexion on failure, not fire and brimstone.  Or maybe it's the other way around, what do I know?

I didn’t really rip the canvas intentionally, it was another falling over accident, but I retconned it to look like I knew what I was doing.  I see that I have failed to fool you again, Void.

And here I remind you that

Soc is a fraud

downinahole

 

So respondeth Soc

Dear Void

      ___

     /  7

    (_,_/\

     \    \

      \    \

      _\    \__

     (    \    )

            \__  _\__ _/

 Warm regards

Soc is a fraud

 

downinahole

So speaketh the Void

Dear Soc,

This is the Void.

Can we just have a conversation for a sec here please?

While we appreciate your desperate desire to have your kindergarten-grade pictorial thoughts available to the world at large, we at the Void Caucus are starting to shift uncomfortably in our seats.

Look, it’s fine, but some of us around the office are talking about your sexually explicit and racially insensitive comments, and it’s not going to look good to the upper management.

I know you’ve been a solid company man for – what is it now, ten years? – but would you mind cranking it back a couple of notches, old son?  You’re making people uncomfortable.

Thanks for your time, Soc, and I hope this clears up a few things for you.

Warm regards

The Void

Back to school: the misfits

Dear void,

I have one genuine teenage effort from back in the dizzle and one which doesn’t really fit anywhere so I’m plonking it on this page.

Before I knew what dope sickness was, I’d experienced an agony known only to the hormonally challenged youth and the irreparably foolish.  This is what it felt like:

 

Or so I thought …

Look, I said genuine teenage effort …

Similarly, this one doesn’t really belong here either, but it needed a home.  When my elder kid was about ten he was into the sword and crystal type books, so dashed out this little cartoon and stuck it in his bedroom door. 

 

It stayed there for eight years.

Inevitably, the day came when girls were more important than books and I had to rescue it from the recycle bin.  The ass looks a lot like Scott Mosier (canine, not human) to me.

Soc is a fraud

downinahole

Is it misogyny? Or is it just horrific?

Dear Void

Soc here

Frankenspouse hates this one (I said that like she doesn’t hate them all to varying degrees.  Let’s just lock this issue up: She doesn’t actually  like any of them). Is it because it implies women are two-faced, harpy banshees?  Or is it more that, like the Billy one, it’s just plain unnerving (neither charge can I really answer to, by the bye, I don’t know if it is either):

I don’t remember painting it.  I don’t remember what it was supposed to be about (as if to imply that any of them were about anything – They’re not).  I guess it was just something effed up to look at.  Suffice to say, it was never going to make to a wall in Frankenspouse Manor. 

A quick tangent if you’ll allow it JUST TRY TO STOP ME GO ON

I slyly circumvented Frankenspouse’s rules about hanging pitchers in the house by painting directly onto the internal doors.  I real pain in the arse because you have to sand off all the lacquer first and put down forty thousand layers of undercoat.  I’m a sloth at heart and this sort of prep I would generally consider prohibitive.  I’ll do a page on the doors later.

 

As you can see, like many of its fellows, the this one has a bit of water damage.  I’ve never looked after my toys.  You should see how I treat books.

Soc is a fraud

 

downinahole

Back to school: The third in a series

My dear Void

I present herein another collection of abortions from my youth.  I rather like the idea of abortions having the collective noun ‘Catholic’. 

Here is a Catholic of abortions (fuck you, these pages are for me, and I’ll say what I want and I don’t even know who I’m shouting at) which aren’t themed but were instrumental in my development as a semi-professional abortionist (Oh boy, I painted myself into that corner, didn’t I?).

We open with Kurt, who earns his second mention in these pages: 

Euche! It was just teenaged idolatry and I think we can just leave it at that.  Except that he was so cool when we were young, right?

 

Next up! Girl’s with pistols! Hot!

 

I’m trying to establish some hetero cred here because the next one will strip that away like a tissue in a sand storm.  I think I saw it in a movie or something.  One of them foreign jobs, where the beaches look like damp rock quarries.

At any rate, here’s the cock.  Now, you have to realise that, if memory serves, this was me.  Scrawny fucker, huh?  Still am …

 

But I didn't then, and nor do I now, have a swingin' dick like that.  I'm hung more like a— a duck, if I'm honest.  I presume I must have been embarrassed about that in my early teens.  But not anymore! (Now for the warning: scroll carefully because an actual and current picture is adduced below):

 

 

 

 

downinahole

 

 

An extemporaneous addendum

Dear Void

This is more of a post script than anything else. The ‘Greg and Ryan’ (from Stupid Wankers) painting was exceptionally bad. It was not well received. And that is more than understandable.  Here is why:

Picture this:You're an Executive Producer at Disney and Stephen Whoeverthefuck pitches you ‘Finding Nemo’ or a ‘Toy Story’. You get excited, right? But then he delivers ‘Ice Age: Sid beats the rape charge'.

Disappointing .

And thus, Void, my fraudulence was exposed.  Hence

Soc is a fraud

downinahole

Juxtapose? Oh that’s hilarious, you genius!

I’ll diverge from the Back to School series for a moment for this little embarrassment.

Here’s Soc’s thought process, such as it was:

Real artistd do nudes right I could rdo that ands I would be a realsl artist right bu I get to paint pitcher s of tities and sweet sweet abs and none wilil judge me for it right?em

So I painted titties:

 

And abs:

 

But it was artistic and I punned it up with the titles, ‘Juxta’ and ‘Pose’. You see?  Because they are together and I’m fucking cleverer than you because I—.

But I’m not cleverer than you, am I?

Soc is a fraud

downinahole

Back to School: Second is a series

Dear void

Since we’ve started this fucking thing, I guess we should finish it. 

Girls didn’t feature much in my youth.  Well, not the nice kind, at any rate …

So this bijou page is about little girls.  Oh, not like that, you sick fuck, I was a kid!

I plagiarised this landscape from the cover of a tin pencil box I inherited.  I find that a touch poetic, and not in any way a copyright infringement.

 Here it is: 

This was the first colour girl in my oeuvre.  That wasn’t a typo (I can’t decide whether I should use these parentheses to highlight that racially insensitive comment or point out that I used the word ‘oeuvre’ in reference to the sewage I’ve been pumping out for twenty-five years.  I suppose they did both.  Shall we move on?)

 Given the macabre nature of most of the shit I’ve done, you might surmise that the girl in the violet  dress (Yes!  Coloured.  Now STFU) has been pitched off (or, Heaven forbid, pitched herself off) some upper peak. 

Not the case, you morbid fuck.  I think she’s just looking at the view upside-down.  And what a vista it is!

Euche!  I was a kid stealing images from pencil boxes and putting fantasy girls in them.  What the fuck do you want from me?!

Oh boy, this one’s a bit closer to the spleen:

 

Even with my wife of twenty years, I find myself reticent on this topic.  What’s the expression about less said, sooner mended?  That.

If it wasn’t plainly apparent from the above,

Soc is a fraud

downinahole