156

This is the sort of illustration you get in modern, trendy magazines. Not that I read any. There’s no need to try and read the words.

139

This is a self portrait, tweaked slightly in Photoshop. I really like the colours and I think it captures my best side.

It also reminds me of something but I can’t think what. Any ideas?

132

112

It’s a while since I did a portrait so I thought I’d use today as an excuse to have another go.

Good luck, B.O. – I think you might need it.

094

I may dissolve Creative Year and devote my attentions to setting up a Co Stompé fan club. What do you reckon?

061

My friend Paul, despite not having a computer or knowing how to use one, has been internet dating for about two years. He does it by getting me to help him, and by ‘help’ I mean doing 95% of the work. His success has been limited, but having been on dates with some of Suffolk’s looniest women we can only assume that ‘the one’ is just around the corner.

Anyway, he wanted some new photographs for his profile(s), so we went out this afternoon and did a bit of a shoot. We looked so gay it was unbelievable. Still, it was a reasonable success and on a day when I haven’t had much time for anything else, I though I may as well use the best ones as today’s post.

The question is: would you date this man?

I should probably have asked him for permission before posting this, but since he would have flatly refused I didn’t bother.

006

Ariane asked for a portrait of Richard Dawkins and I, ever eager to fulfil my readers’ hopes and dreams, have obliged. Trouble is, she might not like it because it’s a bit ‘experimental’ (which is probably a euphemism for ‘rushed’). Still, that’s the name of the game with this project – experimenting, that is, not rushing things – so I used a stipple brush and hoped for the best. It’s different, if nothing else.

004

Although I like doing portraits from photographs, it’s a better test to create characters from imagination. Whenever I do this they usually turn out to be older people. Perhaps they just have more expressive faces. Anatomically, there are a lot of things wrong with the example below but I don’t have anything better at the moment.

He looks a bit like a bald Richard Dawkins.

001

Welcome to my Creative Year, in which I will endeavour to post something vaguely creative every single day until October 2009. To be honest this is almost laughably optimistic but in true fighting spirit I’m going to ‘give it a whirl’ and see what happens. Be aware that there will be days when the definition of creativity is stretched to breaking point, but this whole thing is as much about ideas as finished output. It is also most likely that my updates will be posted in the late evening as this is the time that I will ‘do my stuff’. Patience will be required, though not necessarily rewarded.

To kick things off we have a nice colourful portrait. No one ever knows who my portraits are supposed to be, so I’ll save you thirty seconds of squinting and a shrug by revealing that it is, or is supposed to resemble, Naomi Watts. You know, she was in The Ring and Mulholland Drive. And King Kong. They killed her big gorilla friend and left her at the top of the Empire State Building with that bloke who looks French but isn’t.