Sleeping Giant

Gather around y'all and sit down. It's Dropping Gems time.

What I'm showing you today is a new illustration. I have to confess that there's not much progress made since the last one I did regarding skill, I'm just not drawing enough. I did recieve a lesson from a personal teacher on how to give more depth to the objects being drawn and while I started with good intentions, in the end, the result looks practicly the same as the older illustrations, a pretty flat image.
My teacher must be cringing right now while foam comes out of her mouth, but I have no regrets, new work is new work.

The villagers travel from far to come and pray to this colossal animal, and ocasionally sacrafising food to earn good fortune in their lives. For them, it is a God, but in reality, it's just an overgrown animal who couldn't care less and is sleeping during the process of being worshipped.
I'd like to think that the image takes place in the same universe as the one from Small Visitor, namely, in the Valley of Giants where towering mystical beasts roam the land. Maybe one day, I can can combine them in a child's story.

Also, I've been part of an expo in our cultural centre. They asked people to send in pictures based around rituals, so I took one of my little nephew who looks under the bed before he goes to sleep. Truth be told, the scene was set up because trying to make a thought out picture with a five year old without some sort of guidance is near impossible. I made a deal involving candy with him so it turned out as a win-win situation.

                                            (Credit to Art Lover for the pic below)

The picture in question:

Something came to my attention, a few months in and I still haven't uploaded something from my own country. Time to change that and Ozark Henry is a great way to do it. I must tell that, to me, his latest work isn't at the same level as it was years ago, but the old Henry is top notch. I went to a concert of him where he played his music acoustic on a piano and it was truly fantastic. I still don't understand why they haven't put his acoustic versions on CD yet, but I guess the marketing people know best....Anyway, here's These Days, I just love that finale.

And now just shut up and enjoy.

                                                     Ozark Henry - These Days

Blast from the past

Hi there, work kept me a bit away of doing much creative work lately, but today, I'll give you a small update.

It's no new work I'm afraid, I hope to be able to present new stuff next time, what I do have to show are some old drawings from my childhood that hadn't seen the light of day for many many years. For me, It's really funny to look at them, (for you, maybe less) and see how my imagination worked.

Here I made a small comic about a baby chick wanting lemonade:

Next up is a comic spreading over 7 pages over a boy who finds a treasure chest with a note in it that says to steal a key from a witch and starts an adventure where he gets abducted by aliens and so on:

The boy even comes across a "sex schop"

When I go back to drawings from a younger age, it even gets more sinister. Nature is wrecking havoc.

Just look at this clouds face, it's filled with hatred:

The poor people can do nothing more then to stand by and watch the brutality taking place, it's so bad even the house is crying.

From here it gets just downright sick. The people here are all on a path to sudden death it seems, on the right you even see a bird molester, enjoying the sight of the birds falling down after hitting them with a rock.

In closeup, we even witness a suicide and a man about to fall in a fire.

Funny, but also a bit disturbing. Kids can be cruel they say, right?

In other news, I had a surprise visit from a six-legged friend. Rogerke came by again. (If you missed it, here's his story: http://droppinggem.blogspot.be/2013/10/small-visitor.html) It was a while since I last saw him but he didn't have time to chat too long because everyone in the treetrunk outside was busy preparing themselves for the upcomming cold that mother nature is about to unleash to all things living outdoors. And they were already running behind shedule (try setting an alarmclock with beetlepaws and you know why). Luckily for them, winter is also on the late side this year in our town. I took a picture of his passing because who knows how long it'll be when I see him again, right?

Anyway, he told me about something that made him worry. He sadly admitted that, apparently, the sales of his instructional dvd's where a dissapointement, even so much, that his house was stacked with boxes of unsold stock collecting dust. "I can barely get to my room without knocking a staple of boxes over, let alone get to the bathroom unharmed for an urgent disposal" he said quietly. He stared into the blank untill suddenly his antenna's snapped upwards "Well, no time to keep pondering about my own misfortunes, the fate of our beetle tribe is of utmost importance!" Rogerke spoke firmly, "There's still much isolation to be stuffed in the tree bark! Gotta run my friend!" and scattered away.
"Hey, wait up" I quickly shouted, "Couldn't you use your unsold dvd's as isolation? That way they're atleast usefull, just a thought." Rogerke's legs grinded to a halt. "You know what, that might just work!" he spoke surprised, "That's exactly what I'm going to do! Thanks mate!", and vanished between a crack in the wall.

Still, I couldn't let go why his instructional dvd's didn't catch on, surley there where many other bugs that needed coaching to develop themselves from a larva to a bug worthy of the name? Some deep thinking didn't reward me with a reason why, so for distraction I began sufing the net. The slow internet connection I experienced lately really got on my nerves and then it struck me........could it be that someone was stealing my wifi signal? And if true, then who was it? Immediately I started looking in the settings of my router to see what users had taken access to it the last few weeks and the result was quite shocking. It appeared that litteraly hundreds of users had been using my signal and the names definitely sounded like nicknames..........a bug would use. Some examples: Beetle_Babe22, 6Legz4life, LeafL0v3r, AntzzinyopantZ, and LorBel666.

Scrolling down the list, the pieces of the puzzle came together. Rogerkes dvd sales are in a dump and all the bugs in the neighbourhood are using the internet like there's no tomorrow...........they are all illegally downloading Rogerkes dvd!!! These bugs may be small but they're not stupid! First thing I did was changing my password to hopefully put a halt to these shenanigans and I really hope to see Rogerke soon to tell him about my discovery. Let's hope he can still sell the dvd's after using them as isolation, feeling kinda bad about my idea know....


As far as music goes, I recently came across this piece, Colour from Pete Joseph. The name didn't ring a bell so I tried to google him and there's nothing to be found of this artist. Which is strange because after listening to this song, you'd think he should be known, it's definitely quality stuff. Here's where I come in and do my part to give him some exposure. Given there's no pictue of him around, I took the liberty to attach one of my own on it. (btw, I updated the link to Joan Baez in the previous post, I noticed it didn't work)

And now just shut up and enjoy.

                                                       Pete Joseph - Colour