COMIC BOOK DRAWINGS and VIDEO GAME ART

HEY APATHY! That's me playing the new comic book drawing HEY APATHY! Video game at Nuit Blanche. Special thanks to the collaborative team of Michael Richards (programmer), Dan Morphy w/ Tor-Q (musicians) as well as Alice Dixon and the Urban Space gallery for the opportunity to show! THANKS ALL it was awesome! 

COMIC BOK DRAWINGS "ALL WATCHED OVER BY MACHINES OF LOVING GRACE"

HEY APATHY! COMIC BOOK DRAWINGS

nature, man and mechanics in joyous synthesis

inspired by the manifesto and Adam Curtis documentry of the same name...

ALL WATCHED OVER BY MACHINES OF LOVING GRACE

Read Comic Books Online

HEY APATHY! READ COMIC BOOKS ONLINE

A Surreal Cityscape.

Getting ready for the NEW ARTS FESTIVAL in Ottawa this weekend and enjoying the incredibly hot weather with some cityscape cartooning while sitting in Kensington Park. It was so quiet and beautiful there today. I hardly even noticed and drug addicts and saw a lot of families with their little kids. Total meditation. The wind was extremely powerful and for the first time ever, I could actually feel the giant tree that I sit under swaying back and forth as though it were a twig! The gust help to keep the heat and humidity down, it was a beautiful day. READ COMIC BOOKS ONLINE!

smaller version....

READ COMIC BOOKS ONLINE

HEY APATHY! READ COMIC BOOKS ONLINE

A weird little strip from the future. As if cigarettes weren't enough but as we all know nothing is ever relly enough when it comes to satisfying man's cravings and desires.

COMIC BOOK BLOGS METAMORPHOSIS

COMIC BOOK BLOGS METAMORPHOSIS

Comic Book Blogs "SURREAL CITY"

HEY APATHY! Comic Book Drawings And Strange Stories

Inspired by my new housemates who have decided that the no smoking rule doesn't apply to them when a) they think no one else is home, b) they think everyone else is asleep, c) it is raining outside and d) if they have company over despite repeated warnings and a recent notice of eviction if the problem persits. Also a low income housing project that some of my friends from the graffiti street art days used to live in burned down last week thanks to a similiar problem.

Comic Book Drawings & Graffiti Street Art

HEY APATHY! Comic Book Drawings & Graffiti Street Art!

The end of an era, (so to speak) I got a phone call from a long time collector who I met while working the streets yesterday who was wondering if I had any of my old canvas’ left for sale. I used to make a bunch of acrylic on canvas’ works ranging from 8” x 10 “ to 30” x 40 “ which I sold while performing on Queen Street West in downtown Toronto. So I scrambled through what little I art I have stored in my apartment and discovered there are only 4 pieces left. Pretty amazing considering I was cranking out anywhere from 25 and 50 small canvas’ works a week between 2006 and 2008. That equals about 2500 artworks ( mostly 8 x 10”) hanging on weirdo’s walls world wide. And this total does not even include the small prints or ink on paper works I was producing before graduating to the finer canvas’.



It pretty crazy and well feels really good to look back on that accomplishment and say hey those were some damn good times. I’ll never forget one morning when I set up my stuff and this guy with a really thick Australian accent approached me with the following question “ So you just sit here and draw pictures all day?” My response was “Pretty much, here let me tell you about this one …” He cut me off before I could explain it saying “ oh I know all about the City of Gears, I have one in my house in Australia, my daughter bought one here the last time she was visiting.”

COMIC BOOK DRAWINGS and MONSTER ANIMATION

HEY APATHY! COMIC BOOK DRAWINGS  & MONSTER ANIMATION

OK this is pretty freakin cool. I am working with graphics designer Michael Peters on a new series of 3D paintings in which we are going to render my surreal cityscapes in a virtual video game style format. These interactive artworks will be projected on the gallery ( any interested galleries out there?) walls and the audience can navigate there way through them using a video game joystick. Er, um, I think this is crazy amazing and the closest I've come to interactive art since I left the streets. More as things develop. 

Out of the Slump ....

Been feeling not good lately but I got a very special message from some very good freinds today -

I am revitalized. Thanks VALENTE click on his name the artwork is amazing.

TCAF Toronto Comic Arts Festival!!!!

I just got back from the TCAF it was rocking. My word there were more people there than there are at some of the main stream conventions I attended last year. I saw Chester Brown and for once he was too busy signing books too talk with! The whole place was packed, it was actually really hard to check out the comics but I pushed my way around( as politely as possible) and saw tonnes of amazing drawings. No freaking way was I meant to be a spectator though and my agoraphobia got the best of me, I eventually had to run for my life. Couldn't find the Sequential crew unfortunetly but I did get some impressively awkward attempts to avoid eye contact with me from another small press company that rejected my work last year. Ha that was a  fun. I might try to go back earlier tomorrow because I didn't really get to talk with any artists it was just too busy ( I can't afford to buy anything so it wouldn't have been fair to eat up  there time). Get your butts down there  if you can!!! 

WHY THE UNIVERSE MUST END a not so WEIRD TALE

HEY APATHY! Weird Tales

I woke up a bit early this morning in hopes that the cafe I sit at had recovered my lost knapsack. It is the only place I went yesterday and they are often pretty good about returning articles that get left on their bench. No luck though I really hope that whoever got the bag ate my groceries and is using the brand new sack as opposed to savagely investigating it in hopes of finding money or drugs before tossing it in the garbage. Very likely the latter of the two scenarios.




So I had to abandon all hopes of retrieving my new backpack and artist's supplies (notice I'm reposting old drawings these days can't make any new ones) and got myself a coffee. The young girl behind the counter proudly announced that she was going to the WEED march today and my heart sank. If it was a march to support hemp products and medicinal usage I could get on board, but it isn’t, in all honesty it really isn’t but I’m not even going down those thought processes right now, I couldn’t handle it.



The bench is outside but is covered by an over-hang and heavily decorated with No-SMOKING signs in compliance with both the city's bylaw and common sense. There was only one seat left beside a fairly respectable looking and recognizably regular member of the community, probably between the age of 45 and 50, who sat there with his beatnik hat on backwards smoking.



I approached him politely as I prepared to take my seat and said "Excuse me sir, you are not supposed to smoke on the bench there are notices everywhere".



"I know" he replied continually smoking.



"I'm sorry I don't understand, does that mean I have to sit beside and inhale your cigarette smoke"



"I guess so," he responded bluntly puffing on the fag.



I sat down and as calmly as I could and continueed, "If you don't put that out or stand out on the walkway like everyone else I'm going to get the owner." For the record the owner of the cafe is a tough cookie, often referred to as the coffee Nazi a la Larry David, and is not fond of smokers because as odd as it may seem he is the one who will receive the $1000 fine if the officers catch people smoking on his property.



"Get the owner."



Was he trying to call my bluff?



I got up and went to get the owner. Now in all honestly I was rather upset and disrupted by the utter disrespect this individual showed me. I was a little shaky; I mean this was almost absurd except that it happens everyday. When I returned with the owner the man had fled the scene. He had certainly been through this before but for some reason had chosen confrontation over common sense. I read a page of my book without catching a single word before I was able to calm down enough to restart my day. Just another reason why the universe must end. ( at least writing it out feels fairly therapeutic though taking that cigarette a putting it out in his eye would have been a lot more fun).

Dark Drawings and Human Erosion

HEY APATHY! DARK DRAWINGS

          I must say it almost feels like I’m falling apart. The expression “when it rains in pours” comes to mind only it doesn’t quite suit my situation. It feels more like a small drizzle that just won’t stop, it keeps tapping lightly at my skin, almost unnoticed, but is creating an accumulative effect of erosion. I am eroding.

First of all I’ll state that while I wouldn’t exactly describe my living conditions as ‘poverty” it is necessary for me to work under a very strict budget in order to subsist. As an artist with no real employer or gallery representation I never really know when or where the next cheque is going to come from. Fortunately there are few frivolous things I desire and am reasonably content as long as I’m well fed and have my artist’s supplies. In fact almost all of my belongings fit into a knapsack which I just replaced after an entire winter with holes and  broken zippers.

I have been feeling kind of down lately and thought that a hearty meal and a bit of productivity would be the best cure for my blues tonight. So I went to the market and filled my new knapsack to the brim with groceries came home. had a nap and awoke ready for food and work. Somehow, and I can’t remember the last time that this happened as my whole life is in there, I have lost my new bag. I have lost my new bag, my fresh produce, my pens and my ink. It is 10 pm on a Friday night and everything is gone. Like I said I’m not exactly destitute and can replace most of these things tomorrow but tonight I am without. Just like that my dinner, my supplies and my new bag, gone.As I metioned I don't exactly live in poverty but I am not wealthy either.

It all sounds so trivial when I put it on paper but add the fact that some one has taken up smoking in these non-smoking shared accommodations, I really just don’t feel well. Every few hours and particularly late at night my room is filled with grey nausea and yet it seems difficult to identify the culprit. Once the smoke gets in your nose everything smells like that and it becomes very difficult to trace the source. Nothing tragic or grandeur to excite the reader or even really worth while to complain about, it is just all sorts of little things wearing at me, drizzling. I was so looking forward to that fresh salad. I was so tired of the old knapsack with holes in it and it really wasn’t in the budget to replace the two $40 pens and a $25 bottle of ink I carry around with me. Ah yes, right on schedule, now I can smell the cigarette smoke coming up through the vent again.

I don’t even have any right to record this silliness but I can’t draw any pictures again tonight, I can’t refresh myself with a big meal and I have no other means of distractive productivity. Maybe I can look back at this post and laugh  in the morning? Maybe everything is going to be just fine? Maybe I will be younger tomorrow than I am today? Maybe, I am eroding.

GRAFFITI STREET ART COMIC BOOK DRAWINGS untitled

HEY APATHY!

I am trying so hard to care about anything today that I started to realize how much I miss being a street artist. Truth be told it's a young persons game and I couldn't go back under any circumstance but when I was out there I could always find hope. I sometimes look back at that adventure like this:







I remember standing at a party with a beer in my hand way back at Art College. I was thinking about how I’d spent my entire life to that point in the suburbs where there was little of interest to talk about. No one out there knew who Neil Gaiman or David Cronenberg was, I hadn’t even heard of Chomsky was and if you didn’t play hockey you were likely to get beat up or labeled. This complete lack of interest nearly turned me into a recluse so I ran for the big city, made a bunch of paintings and got involved in the college. I started to get excited.





Here was this giant institute of ideas with professors of the world, controversial courses and critical thinking. I learned about radical behaviour and had many of my concerns regarding consumerist culture and the decline of western civilization validated. I even found hope in the possibility of artwork being used to incite social awareness. I discovered the Dadist’s and learned more about the theatre of the extreme. I read about people who used artistic expression to cause trouble, to educate, to question the state of our unsustainable existence. Marcel Duchamp, Cindy Sherman, and my first exposure to Banski. It actually made sense, we, the artists, were warriors, the last known defender’s of common sense and human decency. This was were I wanted to be. ( Actually I wanted to be Batman but this was as close as I was going to get)





So I was standing there at the art party and saw a circle of classmates forming. Most of them were recognizable as top students and they all had begun to make names for themselves in the scene. In fact if I told you who they were now you’d likely even know of most of them. Their artworks have become reasonably successful and I’ve seen them all in magazines. So I got fairly excited and sort of out of character I shed my recluse and slipped quietly into the circle. I was excited to join the intellectual think tank.





They were talking about Hockey, not theoretically, not conceptually, not critically. They were talking players, goals, fist fights, stats and scandalous behaviour. And I, in my infancy spoke out about something else. I made a remark regarding the negative sociological affects that such fist fights must have on a young audience. Needless to say the circle went silent. In fact not only did this grouping of Artist’s stop their conversing but so did the entire bloody room. Everyone stopped talking and stopped drinking and stopped laughing, the keg let out a whisper, even the DJ stopped mid-groove. I could hear my own heart stuttering. The light directly above me illuminated to an uncomfortable level like it does after a concert so I calmly retreated the discussion and the party resumed. It was as though I’d ceased to exist. This is not where I wanted to be.







It wasn’t until a few years later, after this sort of situation continued ad nauseam, in the classroom, at the galleries and even the museums, that I finally cracked and decided there was no other alternative. I made a big sign, like any respectable derelict, and went to the streets to protest the world. The amazing part of my time there sitting on the side walk was that I’d finally found a place to discuss alternative ideals. People started stopping and my “save the world “ sign kept getting bigger and every single conversation was about problems and solutions and taking actions towards change. I met thousands of people from all over the world and in each individual instance, we were discussing philosophies, growing and learning from each other’s experiences. I was no longer reclusive but in fact quite the opposite and I never had listen to selfishness or meaningless consumerist bullshit out there.





Well I’m old now and my knees hurt and it’s not much fun to sit on the sidewalk, but worse than the physicality is that I’ve found myself back where I began. Without my huge sign I’ve nowhere left to turn for hopeful stimulation. Every where I go people are lapping up the American lifestyle, worrying about cars and sporting events, money and themselves. I can’t seem to find any more sympathizers nor any intellectuals and I miss all those zen marches out on the street.

The Godshave been Advertising and there are Corporate Robots inhabiting the Park

Today is weird (period). The sun is shining and people are smiling, the market is flooded with spring hormones and stupid fashions and everything appears dandy. It isn’t (period). On one side of things I see life and people growing, there is a lot of positive energy out there. In particular the local Longboard skateboarding shop is teeming with excitement. They are one of the last best things this neighborhood has got. The sport is purely uplifting both spiritually and physically and I must revel in their success. They are opening a new store and while you’d never know it from the appearance of the previous location this one is much better equipped, in a better location and well going to be a success. I a very happy to see this and so is the community. It’s a sport made for kids and promotes healthy living, (Thanks Ryan you are really making a difference!).

However there are also a couple of absolutely hideous things growing here also. The first terrible event happening right before my eyes; the Gods started advertising! Five jet planes started criss-crossing across the big blue airwaves leaving sky written commercials all over Toronto. Now this isn’t really anything new and has been done for decades but the technology is certainly more sophisticated and the impact is the same. Suddenly hundreds ( and that is only what I could see in my peripheral) of people were starring up at the sky at what sort of chemical compound I dare not imagine. I will not perpetuate the advertising by stating the brand title but I will say I feel mind-raped and won’t soon forget it. Not only does the technique require a magically chemical compound but product itself was some sort of cosmetic. Have we really failed to progress past these manipulative parlor tricks, in the year 2011 do people still was there faces with alcoholic concoctions believing them to be a fountain of youth. Obviously we have failed.

The second problem involves the city’s new bike racks. These giant electronic rental stations are popping up all over town. Now to call them the ”city’s” is likely mere confusion as they would appear to be privatized and not really public at all. First of all the one that appeared here in Kensington Market runs the half the length of the parkette and is a terrible eyesore. I’m serious this park is probably only 250 feet long and the rack is at least 100 feet and is using up a lot of space. Secondly the machine is only accessible to people with credit cards which pretty much excludes everyone under the age of 18. Not only is the machine ridiculously cumbersome but the bikes themselves are uselessly designed giant pieces of junk. They are really clunky and have at the most 1 or 2 gears and are not particularly ideal for getting around. Hooray for the environment? Well yes we should be riding bi-cycles but the bikes are eating up our parks and are reserved for people with lot’s of money ( a $250 dollar deposit is required) which means that they will just sit there for the majority of the week. I can’t believe that Toronto doesn’t care about this marketing technique, I mean a company can set up an automated business just about anywhere but they nearly arrested me for selling artwork in the streets!

 

Anyways I ‘d like to add that I’ve spit this all out completely on intuition and have not yet done any research into the matters at hand. I think this is important and I’ll be doing in more regularly because it might be interesting to note my initial reactions before I do either confirm or refute by researching the details. I’m going to look into these bikes a bit more later on this afternoon and add some more commentary after I find out what the newspapers say.

 

“HEY MIKE WHERE ARE THE DRAWINGS?” I’m not drawing nothing maybe not ever again. I am feeling so totally disgusted by the world and all of it’s stupidity that I don’t want to draw anymore, I simply can’t see any point.

POLITICAL COMICS

"TALKING TO AMERICA"

 HEY APATHY! POLITICAL COMICS

I recently got into a "debate" with a few all-American chaps in which we tried to discuss the connections between the 1st world's consumerist mentality and it's effect on the rest of the opopulus and the environment as it directly relates to the rise of terrorist and anti-American activity. However the response was less than literate and the American's refused to claim any responsibility in the matter, in fact they pretty much refused to take part in the debate and decided it was more appropriate to chant U.S.A. and yell out slanderous remarks. On the subject of sweatshop labour world exploitation and unsustainable environmental practices the general concensus was "That's Reality live with it". My concern is that long as we continue to live with that reality we will also have to live with anti-American factions, terrorist-bombers, hatred and the destruction of innocent lives. Certainly the people involved in these activities are all insane, the business men, the politicians the mad bombers, they are all freaking nuts! Make Peace not Products!

MONSTER DRAWINGS!

Comic Book Monster Drawings

Addiction can be a monster, this creepy comic creature is made of sugar, tar, and many things bizarre, yet for some reason we keep going back for more .

HEY APATHY!

In case anyone wants me dead, this is what I look like and what I'm all about...

Comic Book Drawings

More comic book drawings from the land of Neuroberg, I don't know maybe some day I'll actually go outside again and have something more interesting to draw than the details of my own personal mental decomposition...

Comic Book Drawings Skateboard Designs.

HEY APATHY! Longboard skateboard designs. These samples show a number of the different styles I work in ranging from detailed comics to bold cartooning and graffit street art.

Cityscape

crazy manga robot battle

Underground Comics

exploding heads

Superhero Fight

 Scene

the Machine heads

Toronto Landscape- early Longboardliving screenprint deck ...

... and the first mural I did for Ryan's Longboard shop back when it was still hidden in the cellar of a house. Just thought it made for a nice comparison after seeing the more recent ceiling mural featured in the promo at the top of this post. More about Longboardliving and their new store here!

more art/stuff at HEYAPATHY!

Monkey Drawings for a better Future

Charity T-shirt Design for the Canadian Ape Aliance Fundraiser

MONKEY DRAWINGS! “Congo Classrooms for a Better Future” is an upcoming Canadian Ape Alliance charity fundraiser to help support environmental schools in Kahuzi-Biega,,. My friend and musical/ artistic collaborator Mark vanZyl is organizing the event and amazingly enough will  be travelling to the Congo to do research later this year. Along with several musical acts, Mark has got a bunch of local artist’s to create t-shirt designs for the event.  Mine is a collage depicting the schools, the apes, children, a map of Africa highlighting the Congo and a little bit of jungle vegetation.

Same design w/text, just wanted to see them on the screen to compare.