Tag: perry

Exciting times to mask some very hard times.

Well hasn’t 2023 been a really testing year? Our family has seen some really tough times, as many are currently. But apart from some recent dire financial problems, and some serious self-adjustment-exploration/discovery, it’s also topped off by some harder times still to come. Hospital visits and a serious operation for my daughter, amongst several other things are making mundane worries hard to cope with. I don’t like airing all my personal life on the Internet, but I prefer to disclose a little, so you get a picture of why things are the way things are!

It’s also been a low and longer-than-usual dark patch, so my usual passion towards art has been thin on the ground (plus trouble with my wrist/thumb/shoulder, (still awaiting results) but my brain hasn’t stopped coming up with ideas on how to take my artwork upwards.

Keeping the smiles!

Amongst the stuff I mentioned, there has been some better news. I’ve been doing a lot of practical practising, anatomy, proportion, perspective, new techniques etc. It is SO important to keep practising this stuff, however boring, it’s the foundation of everything, and you can never stop learning new things. I’ve also been taking a break from social media, freeing up time and lowering stress levels! This is a double-edged sword though, I’ve had more time to draw, but no-one is getting to see any of it! But if you’re in a low patch, you often think no-one cares anyway, which isn’t usually the case.

Also, I’ve had to be super strong for the sake of my children, especially my youngest daughter, who has the op I mentioned earlier coming very soon. She’s incredibly brave, I’m SO proud of her anyway, but I can’t express how proud. So if she can keep filling my life with smiles, then the least I can do, is to be the best Dad I can be. She’s really supportive of my art, so loves seeing and contributing to what I’m working on, so that helps drive me forward too.

New Ideas and New Commissions!

I do have a couple of commissions in the pipeline, but the sort that won’t have W-I-Ps, but I’ll post the finished work, (if the clients allow, of course, the customer is always right!)

Whilst these are in the planning stages, or during down time, I’ve spent some time working on some more design ideas, originally as sticker ideas, but the sky is the limit really, t-shirts, badges, cups, underpants even.

As you can see in the pic below, it started with me doodling a mad-looking rabbit, then a tortoise. I then had an idea that I could doodle many ideas exploding out from a central scroll or centrepiece, featuring both outline drawings, plain coloured versions and fully shaded versions, as a sort of ‘flash’ sheet. If you didn’t already know, a flash sheet is most commonly seen in the waiting rooms of nearly every tattooist in the world, full of countless beautiful designs, of all sizes, but ready to go, a bit like clip-art before clip-art was a thing.

Once my Flash Sheet is full, I can pick ideas, and work on them, up the size, resolution and quality, then save them and post them, the best of the best can then be turned into badges, stickers, t-shirts, even beach towels, perhaps. It’s still in the idea stages but I’m happy so far. I even have ideas for themed flash sheets as time goes on!

I’m working digitally, using software called Sketchbook on a graphics tablet on a laptop, it’s a very time-saving medium, and corrections and adjustments are simpler. It’s great for the environment too, I’ve been getting through a lot of sketchbooks and pencils, this is costly, causes storage issues and isn’t very kind to trees, (I don’t always buy recycled paper!) I’ve not given up the sketchbook, but when you can rough sketch on your phone, paint on your laptop and post to socials almost anywhere, it does mean you can travel a bit lighter.
Back to the point. As I said, I’m happy with the project so far, here’s a few pics outlining where I am to date:

This is the very first layout, with the first four ideas. Each design showing 3 stages ‘exploding’ from the centre. At ths stage, I thought of adding little ideas to fill in gaps, which could feature as smaller designs or collections, perhaps insects, symbols etc. No space wasted and tons of designs for the future!

Several days later, I’d filled the workspace nicely, but as I filled in the last few gaps, I began to wonder if the outline and plain designs were just a little wasted. They weren’t ‘exploding out from the centre, so I figured, if I removed them, I could fit more designs into the work area.

Flash Sheet 001.
This is the finished ideas sheet, crammed full of designs. I have no idea exactly how many, but I’m counting as I re-draw each one!
(if you look closely, you’ll see loose scribblings here and there, these didn’t quite make it, but may in the future)

Here’s an example of the next stage of this project. Originally just ‘fill-in designs’, these fruit designs, once re-drawn, make nice designs in their own right. The eagle-eyed of you may have noticed that the original grapes had faces, but the fruit didn’t. To rectify this discrepancy, I drew two versions….

So now, there’s fruit, with and without cartoon faces!

And outline versions.

Some designs won’t warrant 3 pages of different versions, for example…

Here’s ‘Cactus Prickly’ 2 sheets, one with outline and plain, the other with plain and shaded. All bases covered on two sheets for the future.

I’ll be adding a whole new section to this website for this project, so keep an eye out for that and I’ll post all the designs on my social media pages, plus timelapse videos of some of the designs on YouTube and TikTok! Here’s one of the designs I’ve added to YouTube:

Timelapse video of The Cactus design (no sound)

So here’s to the future. Whatever rollercoaster it may be, I can only do my best.

I don’t know what is round the corner, but I know it won’t be easy and probably won’t get easier. But there’s people out there far worse off than me, and my thoughts are always with them.
So I’ll keep making people smile with my daft doodles, I know some do, and if I make others happy, I’m happy too.

Keep on keeping on x

(Also, please pop over to my social media and do what you need to do to follow me and keep up to date with what’s new, plus this project’s progress, links below x)

The Shopping List(s!)

Ermagerd! Ermagerd! More lists??

It was bound to happen, wasn’t it? Give someone a tiny bit of attention or exposure and it goes to their head. They start getting wild ideas and before you know it, they’ve lost their marbles, throwing their art around all over the place and up your nose.

No apologies, but thanks to the suggestions of many, I decided to leave another list laying about. My youngest is enjoying all the fun that ‘The Shopping List’ has brought, and enthusiastically left Shopping List No.2 (or S.L.2) in a Trolley on Fri 30th March. We waited. And waited. Nothing. Zilch.
‘Ho-Hum’, we thought as the week drew on and forgot about it. But, (unlike the first list), we remembered to take a photo before we went shopping. There’s a pic further down of S.L.2 (I missed a trick there, I should have drawn a reference to ‘On a Ragga Tip‘* or something.
*(opens in new tab)

So, did we give up? No! Sunday (2nd Apr) saw the Pickle family off to Tesco again, same Tesco as the previous 2 shopping lists. We do shop there a lot and have done for well over 25 years. It’s a good Tesco.

This time, I wrote the list whilst sitting in the car, as Vikki did the fuel, so tried a different ‘style’ of shopping list. This time, I tried to incorporate all of the items in the list into one coherent picture, nearly managed it too, but later, noticed I’d forgotten the baked beans in the drawing!)

This particular Sunday didn’t require a trolley, so I had a basket on my lap and was in charge of the list. When we got to the till, the plan was to leave it in the basket for a lucky Tesco employee to find and brighten their hard working day.

Oops.
When we got to the tills, I remembered that I hadn’t taken a photo of the list. Panicking and hoping I wasn’t noticed, I carefully used my phone (which was luckily ready to use for the clubcard – phew!) I was sweating and nervous at this point. As my finger clicked on the button, the phone made a noise and the photo was taken. I hastily flipped over the list and took another.

No-one saw. I felt the adrenaline as I dropped the list into an empty basket in a pile of similar baskets. Mission accomplished. I breathed a sigh of relief and helped pack the shopping.

We went home, even consumed some of the things on the shopping list for tea/supper. Then, almost immediately forgot about the list again.

Until today! My son’s mate’s mum, Claire, works at the same Tesco, and she knows about the first S.L. and has been following it’s fun progress. This morning, she WhatsApp’ed the Mum’s n Dad’s group “Thanks.” (see below)

Claire’s W.A. message : with Danni – “Well Chuffed” – Holding S.L.3.

Woo and Yay, Houpla and Huzzah! *Drumroll*………. The S.L.3. has been found!

It was found by ‘Danni’. I’m not fully aware of all the details as to it’s discovery, or subsequent adventures, but I have been assured Danni was ‘Well chuffed‘ and the list is ‘living on our work desk now‘. That has made my week! Thanks to Danni and Claire for letting me know!

Here’s S.L.3. Before ‘the drop’. (Note the tesco floor as I secretly took the pic)

shopping list with a pig, punting a chicken along the river on a bread and butter raft as a carrot runs free on the bank of the river..

SL3 – Front:
The Third Shopping List; With a pig, punting a chicken along the river on a bread and butter raft as a carrot runs free on the bank of the river..

No baked beans were hurt in the making of this list. Because I forgot to draw them.

SL3 -Back:
Featuring a Chook from the future.

And, because I like to spoil you…. Here’s
SL2: ‘The Second List – Missing presumed binned’.

Title – S.L.2. – On a Shopping Trip.

Grapes on the beach on a hot day in California.

Happy cherries.

Pizza – Being eyed up by Leonardo TMNT. – All 3 kids did something awesome recently, so nicer pizza than usual as a little reward (amongst others during the Easter break), they’re good kids and deserve it!

Milk – obvs.

Sugar – Sing-along-if-you-know-it – Made famous by the inventors of said substance, ‘The Archies’, a band from yesteryear (1969 -The summer of sugar), not only discovered sugar whilst mountaineering in Holland, but also sang a song about it and how, after comparing it to honey, realised the similarities and really liked the results.

Ready Salted Crisps – or ‘plain’ crisps. It’s worth remembering that the crisps we consume were once beautiful, free-range potatoes, foraging for food and roaming the landscape of countries like Ireland, England, Jersey and the Serengeti. Sometimes hunted for their skins, sometimes hunted for their flesh. Makes you think, doesn’t it? I don’t know what about.

Kiwi Fruits – I couldn’t bring myself to draw Kiwi-Knackers. So I censored it and cleverly got away with it. It doesn’t look much like a Kiwi, but you’re too pre-occupied thinking of testicles to notice.

Recycled – Of course. I won’t be cutting any trees down to write a shopping list. Apart from the impossiblility of carrying around a tree whilst shopping, I’d be overflowing with old envelopes, they’d stack up and up, then I wouldn’t be able to go shopping, or leave the next list somewhere, because my house will be full of envelopes that could have been recycled. I would be trapped.

Fbook address to pickledpizza.art – I decided to put a way of finding me/ contacting me to save the ‘ i found this, does anyone know who did it’ part – I loved it first time, but I think some people might just bin it or be negative if I keep being anonymous.

SL2 – The Back

P.T.O. – You’d be forgiven for presuming or assuming that P.T.O. stands for Please Turn Over, but it’s a common misconception. It actually stands for Page Transformation Organisation. Founded some time ago, The Page Transformation Organisation or ‘Patranorgan’ for short, discovered, during routine experiments in page-transformation that test subjects were observed losing concentration very rapidly, often turning over the whole page before getting to the end of the Header, which simply read: “P.T.O. – Organised but Transformative Page Research and development.”
Further tests revealed that just the initials of the organisation was enough to make even the tallest test subjects turn the page involuntarily.

To this day, P.T.O can be seen on shopping lists and tattoos across the world. Apart from the countries that don’t use the letters P, T or indeed, O. They have other symbols and letters for that.




Chook – A lovely chook from the future.





Disclaimer – As someone on the KentOnline article said that it is littering to leave a shoppinglist in a trolley by accident may be delighted to know that I’ve decided not to do it accidentally, as this is littering. So I’ll do the opposite, because leaving them deliberately is art, for free, as a donation to the good people of Thanet.

Smiley – It’s a smile. we all need those as much as possible.

Where next?

Who knows where? Who knows when? Perhaps subscribe to find out the next thrilling instalment! Thanks for reading and keep smiling when you can, it’s infectious and fun.