Party 02

Digital - 297x210mm - 2019

This is the second drawing I contributed to the fourth issue of the French punk art zine Ад-Ra. I had such a good time creating art for the third issue and was more than a little happy when Bikesabbath asked me if I’d like to be a part of the fourth.

The theme for the fourth issue was party. I originally had the idea of a person with a party of people in their head talking, kind of being representative of one's internal monologue playing out conversations with people they know. I tried drawing the idea and spent quite a few hours working on it, but the drawing wasn’t feeling fun and generally just wasn’t working out. I kept coming back to the drawing periodically but I was in no way enthusiastic about what I was making.

With a week left before the deadline I decided to change the idea entirely. Taking a serious and thoughtful approach to the ‘party’ theme stifled me, so I went the complete opposite direction of doing something silly. I hadn’t drawn Smoke (my dog) before so I wanted to do something involving him due to him being a silly party hound. Having only a week to make the drawing I jumped into the first idea that came to mind which was a spin on dogs playing poker to dogs partying around a table, drinking, doing drugs etc. I thought it would be fun to use my friend’s dogs as the party pooches.

The initial sketch was terribly composed. I resigned myself to accepting the drawing was going to turn out bad, and that I should finish it regardless. I asked my housemate Blake to hold Smoke in various positions so I could get some reference photos. During the photo shoot Blake put Smoke on his lap and had him sitting at the table and said I should draw him like Scarface with a huge mound of cocaine on a table. I initially dismissed the idea as being too silly. I then looked at my crappy sketch, and figured making Scarface Smoke as the centerpiece would at least be better than what I already had.

I drew Jenny (the dog at the bottom right) first, I thought it would be cool if she was wearing her human’s denim jacket, which then led me to think it would be cool if Jenny and Bomber (dog at the bottom left) were Scarface Smoke’s enforcers, a dog gang. I wanted to include my dead dog Buddy in the drawing because I miss him and wish I could still have him included in my life. Having Buddy in the drawing developed the narrative of the artwork to be a tale of how Smoke became a drug addict and later crime lord due to the trauma of me always expecting Smoke to live up to the memory of Buddy.

I feel the finished artwork really captured my love for movies like Black Rain, Blade Runner and Scarface. I had so much fun creating this, I was a little burned out by day 6 of drawing dog fur and details, I’m not great at drawing realistic - I tend to give up and make random swirls and shapes - I’m proud of how the dogs turned out. It was the first time I drew Buddy (my previous dog before Smoke) since he died, my love for him came rushing back to me, and as I finished the rain pouring on him I felt cathartic.

I thought of the layout like a noir movie poster, which I altered on the fly because I was seriously rushing to get the drawing done in a week. There’s crime lord Smoke in the middle, haunted by his history of drug addiction shown upper right, and also haunted by the memory of Buddy shown upper left. Crime lord Smoke amasses his mountain of cocaine. The coke mountain then forms into a coke desert that is scattered with and eventually leads to the skulls of the victims of his doggy crime conquest, a conquest ruthlessly executed by his enforcers Bomber the no-nonsense tactical German Shepherd and Jenny the sassy muscle Rottweiler. The dog gang is called the RottPile, because Jenny and Smoke are Rottweilers, and it’s the gang name I have for them in real life).

I tried to do my usual psychedelic flames for the top background but it looked out of place. Then I thought rain might add a bit of somber sadness to the mise-en-scène. I never draw rain and it worked out better than I thought. After adding in a rough city the whole drawing took on a Blade Runner vibe which I leaned into heavily for the finishing touches.

I’ll try in future not to weigh the memory of Buddy so heavily on Smoke in the future. I don’t want to make this drawing a reality.