When Men Were Men

…and were made to smoke outside at break time…

Happy Death Day To Me

….technically it was yesterday, but i felt that is was worth mentioning …

…yesterday was the first anniversary of me stopping smoking…

…this blog has been, and will continue to be, brought to you by the ensuing nicotine withdrawal…

…and the lack of sanity that that entails…

…busy hands…always keep those hands busy…

…I’m into my third A5 visual diary with doodling…

…and my second for finished pieces…

…that’s..um…400 plus pages of scrawl and nigh on 150 finished ‘toons…

…the most creative I’ve ever been…

 

..and before you congratulate me on my “achievement”….

…give me a f**cking cigarette or I will cut you.

All Smiles On These Dials

 

…so, flicking thru the sketchbook I came across a series of these tapa cloth inspired doodles that were drawn over a period of three or four days and decided that they should be reproduced in colour….

…and at twice the size that they were doodled at… A4 instead of A5….

…am kinda wishing that the manic-sans-nicotine state that they were created was still available to me in a non nicotine consuming way…

…’cos they sure are laborius to do.

 

….(finished article makes it all worth while!)….

Like A Cigarette Packet

…don’t know about your country, but over here in NZ (and in Asstralia as well) “they” are trying to introduce plain packaging for tobacco products….

…this seemed like a natural progression to a recently “bereaved” smoker…and considering our governments current behaviour, very topical.

10 Days Sans Nicotine

…from the sketchbook at that time…

…ideas waning…line work loosening up…composition drifting…

…spending way more time on finished art and manic posting on WordPress…

…oh, and day job stuff.

…(if you’ve arrived here late….this blog was started as part of my journey to exorcise the demon nicotine from my system…”sketchbook” was (still is) largely what I did with my hands instead of smoking…”finished art” is a direct result of that burst of creativity and this blog is an ongoing record of all three…welcome to my nightmare…)…

Originally Titled

…something like…”The Proletariat Disappears Up The Right-Wing-Banker-Tax-Breaks-For-The-Rich-Interest-Hike-Petrol-Price-Rise Arse Of Our Current Government”

 

..but I changed it to “Give Me A Goddam Cigarette”.

Unnatural Progression

…from this to this…

…to this then this…

…and tomorrow the finished article….

…no mess, no fuss…no nicotine.

Yesterdays Sketch Idea In Colour

…more smoking cessation related instability…

 

…this turned into an obsessive numbers game involving how many variations I could get with limited expressions and colours…

…not entirely sure who won….

…don’t really care…

….so long as it wasn’t the demon, Nic- O-Tine.

The Wide Wide World Without

…without nicotine mainly…

 

…sketchbook dated 06/01/13 ….(01/06/13…for our American cousins)…

…that’s no nicotine for a week….

…allegedly I’m better now.

A Pattern Is Forming

…every time I visit my sketch book for finished art ideas…

…I’m reminded what a wonderful thing it was to be infused with the madness of nicotine withdrawal and how explosively creative it made me….

…would you all think ill of me if I re-started so that I could re-quit…

…to paraphrase a local health professional….

“tobacco, a marvellously stimulating drug,  shame about the delivery  system”.