Two Birthdays

This post marks the third birthday of my blog. Weirdly, this is also post 333, does that make it 50% evil?!

A good pal said to me over the seasonal break that he would like to see my take on The Dude, from the Coen Bros. fabulous The Big Lebowski.
I've got a real soft spot for The Dude, His Dudeness or El Duderino (if you're not into the whole brevity thing).

Like the film itself, there was a nice syncronicity to events, my friend's birthday is tomorrow, my blog would be 3 today, it was a nice quick sketch that I knew he was after and that suited my current status of waiting for feedback on the project I'm working on. Nothing was f**cked, So I drew him a card!


I don't think I've quite captured what I was after, but Jeff Bridges is a tricky chap to depict, even trying to get an essence of The Dude is a tall order... the desire to include (clever) quote related 'in jokes' was definitely not satisfied and originally I intended to do a group shot including Walter and Donny too, but sometimes you eat the bar and sometimes... well, he eats you!

Yggdrasil - The World Tree

A good friend asked if I'd do a picture of the legendary tree Yggdrasil from the Norse legends for his birthday. I said I'd look into it - what I turned up on the international webbery sounded really cool, if somewhat involved...


After a small discussion, this is what I produced - a picture of a tree, slightly less epic in it's nature and proportions than Yggdrasil... I'm pretty happy with the Snake gnawing at the roots. In the Norse Legend the snake is called Nidhogg. There's plenty I've omitted from the entire legend - a host of inhabitants, a golden cock, four stags, a cheeky squirrel or something, then guarding the roots, there are three goddesses called the Norns who would all have featured but I thought that may distract from the tree, which was to be the main subject matter.
On reviewing the legend, it would appear that a fire giant called Surt burns the tree down during Ragnarok which I imagine, had I drawn that instead, would have looked not dissimilar to this piece I did earlier in the year.