Sketch Diary: 21st Century Band Practice

I've joined a band. This is how we roll.

We crazy.

Sketch Diary: Orthopaedo

An attractive blonde physiotherapist calls me into her office.
Hmm...she's nice.
She orders me to take my clothes off.
Ooh...interesting...
She has really cold hands.
Oh.
She assesses how enfeebled my shoulder joint has become and prescribes some light rotator cuff exercises.

Sketch Diary: Real Arse Festival

Here's a sketch of an unintentionally hilarious auction on stage at the Great British Beer Festival in Earl's Court.

Two walking stereotypes, pregnant with ale, flogged assorted junk to around 100 drunk students and fat nerds. One provided the banter - a mixture of misogynistic jokes and anti-Budweiser preaching - the other just held up the items, and scowled at the crowd.

Memorable items included:

A bag of 100 beer mats, assorted brands
An untested Grolsch bar light without a plug
A used beer towel, 'needs a rinse'

One lunatic was even mad enough to bid for 'a night out in Horsham with me and Phil for some beer, some more beer, and then possibly even more beer.'
Oh yeah and I spewed on a train on the way home. Damn them and their stinking 7 per cent filth.

Sketch Diary: Zonked up Zooty Boy

I stumbled across this joker at 7am, all pale and yellow and apparently dead, in the middle of the pavement in Archway.

Luckily his brain wasn't oozing sticky crimson gunk after a bike crash. His fed-up looking mate was explaining to passers by: 'He's just had too much to drink,' while texting something - possibly:

Daz tk 3 zootie beans n is MONGED up BIG TIME on cressida rd. Wat a dick. come n look LOL

Sketch Diary: Greenway is.. Grap

Sorry about the considerably lower standard of drawing here.

This is my 'refreshingly honest' marketing campaign for the Greenway Walkway that runs from Hackney to Newham.


Newham's Mayor, Sir Bobby Spittle, says:

"Come to Greenway, a dead-straight tarmac path cutting through Newham's overgrown industrial wasteland and scrap yards. Try and escape the heavy stink of sewage as it follows you down the path's six, long miles! When you get to the end, you'll find yourself in a field, miles from anywhere, with some horses tied up, and wonder why it is advertised as a nice walk on the Walk London website. See you there!"

Sketch Diary: Poopy Time

I abseiled down a 100ft castle turret as part of a birthday suprise that was so fun, I won't be able to make my usual sneering, cynical, miserable little comments about how crap everything is.

I doubt I actually looked this scared as I lowered myself through the medieval trapdoor of doom, but you get the idea. Poopy time.

Sketch Diary: Gonad Bay

Studland, Dorset. Passing through the famous nudists' section of the beach, you may see the odd flesh-coloured figure lying in the bushes, enjoying the breeze on their balls.
Trying to find a shortcut to the car, I got lost in the sand dunes. There roamed a different species of naturist, popping up occasionally on small vantage points above the heather. They wear T-shirts, sun-hats, backpacks. But no pants. They are slightly creepier.

Go on, click on the image, you might find a willy.

Sketch Diary: G20 Riot

A pathetic two sketches in the whole of March and then... Woo hoo! Civil unrest and police brutality come along on April 1st.


I went along to the G20 Meltdown protest after work and got close enough to see a guy get his head smashed against a police van, which deep down was kind of why I went I think.

With hundreds of other curious office workers and some posh stoners, I explored the outer perimeter of the police 'kettle' and ran away every time the terrifying riot police came anywhere near me.

I'd love to do a big sketch to capture the whole exhilarating scene around the Bank of England but I can't be arsed.

[Update] Actually I can.

Sketch Diary: Shit-Art: shit art.

I don't want to sound like the kind of person who says 'all modern art is rubbish,' but within a fortnight I've seen two video installations that feature people rambling incoherently and actually eating shit.

What I find most interesting is all the people who shuffle in, pretend for a few seconds to feel something other than total bemusement, then walk out again, reading the impenetrable guff in the leaflet, looking thoughtful.

Click on the image to see the filth close up, which I quite enjoyed drawing.

Sketch Diary: The Great Blizzard of '09

In direct contrast to the last post, this looks exciting, but wasn't really . The tricky bit was keeping the sledge moving above that crucial speed called 'not moving at all'.

Sketch Diary: Sport and Leisure

Not even a sexy angle and some keerrraaaazzy perspective can make table tennis look exciting, but it is.

Sketch Diary: The Corpse Museum

On Saturday I just totally lost my mind and skinned some bloke. I stood up his slimy cadaver and positioned it so he was holding up his own skin and looking at it. Then I masturbated.

Not really. But a German professor called Gunther von Hagens has done pretty much exactly that (the wanking bit is unconfirmed). In fact he's been skinning people, messing around with dead babies and pickling cocks since 1975. He's not even been put in a mental home or anything. I paid £14 to go and have a look at some of his work/victims at the O2 Arena in Greenwich.

Sketch Diary: Sporting Legend

I am well and truly littering the Internet now, with a yawn-inducing sketch of me playing badminton.

I was going to apologise for the confused order of these 'diary' entries but then I realised this is my blog, and nobody reads it anyway.

Sketch Diary: Jeered and Cheered

This is a really poor sketch, but my book is tiny and I had a lot to fit in.

Being booed and shouted at by hundreds of people is a great buzz - I really recommend it. This band were so vomit-inducing that 'You're shit!' just rose out of me from within, without me really having any conscious control over it - like a powerful belch. It just happened to be in the middle of a dead quiet bit, and the band stopped playing; the crowd turned on me like I was a paedo on the Jeremy Kyle show.

The annoying brown thing has re-appeared on the bottom right of my pictures. I think there is a bit of smudged biscuit in the scanner. It looks a bit like a copyright symbol though, which may come in handy.

Sketch Diary: Five Go Mad In Kemble

I had a spiffing weekend at a friend's relative's cottage in Kemble, Gloucestershire. Here I am bouncing off a trampoline into a giant paddling pool, which I did over, and over again.

Sketch Diary: Neither a mental nor a moonface

This is a picture of my girlfriend, holding onto a buoy, in Hampstead Heath bathing ponds. I thought it was a fantastic picture when I drew it, but I realise now I've scanned it in she does look a bit mental and a bit of a moon-face.

She's neither a mental nor a moon-face, by the way; she's lovely, and is quite possibly my only reader.