When I was younger my drawing skills were surprisingly negligible. I have unearthed several copies owned by me through the ages of 5-8, and they are amazingly pathetic. Even for a 5 year old, I’m sure. Still, despite my handicap I was always a keen and eager patron of the arts. I think the drawings began to improve when i was about maybe 8 or 9. During this period, they generally consisted of giant wars between rival factions of stick men. Yes, stick men. Often the drawings were so packed it was impossible to make anything out. I think every drawing in this period consisted of more or less the same thing: A rugged landscape, with an underground base in which two groups of stickmen battled in out with helicopters, tanks, guns and robots. I suppose this went on for ages…unfortunately I cannot find a single one of these pictures out of the thousands that must have been drawn.

 

A major influence was definitely our 4th class teacher Mrs Howely. She used to give us an hour every Friday from 1.30 – 2.30 for drawing time. Nothing in particular, just anything we felt like drawing. It was about this time me and my friend Kalen first saw the movie “Starship Troopers.” So, every drawing time from then on became an hour of blood soaked and crap drawings from me and Kalen (originally titled “Starship Troops” and “Starship Soldiers” respectively)

 

It got to the stage where the teacher monitored our drawings, moved us apart and insisted that we draw non-violent imagery for the remainder of the year. It worked out for a while. We started drawing boats. Initially cruise boats, but then it moved onto the titanic, then the titanic crashing, then it turned from a cruise boat to a navy boat, then into a navy boat under attack. A very discreet transformation! Eventually we were sitting together again drawing soldiers getting torn to shreds by ravaging bugs.

 

Everyone assumes that when you get to secondary school that you mature and that kind of doodling and drawing stops. There was a lot of drawing in first year. Mainly of this strange guy in our year called “Briain” who was just so outrageously odd it was impossible to restrain. It was in 1st year my other friend Sminkey (Ciaran O Toole, he was known  as “Kiwi” at this time) started to draw with us as a group. Apart from the eternal and hilarious doodling in Spanish class, Kalen didn’t really draw like he used to and he still hasn’t up to date. It was Me and O toole that really kept up the drawing. I also met “Delmon Nolan” and “Martin Cassidy/Beard/Merve” at this time, and for the next 5 years we produced a HELL of a lot of drawings, most notably the “Naft” collection, “Hobocop”, “Delmon VS Martin”, “Tell it to the marines” and millions of parodies of each other and our respective fathers. I cannot really find any of these which is definitely a shame but I will continue looking. Naft, however, is still up on my site in his own gallery. These are all drawn by me, but there is a mix of mine and delmons drawings on the original Naft Page, www.naft.20fr.com.

 

So, by 3rd year, Me and Toole had a new fascination with drawing. Robert Rotherham. It’s an obsession that continues to this day and a subject on which we produce our greatest drawings. It all started with Danny O Conner saying it looked like Rob wore lipstick. Then we made fun of his stupid round glasses (He no longer wears them but they are an essential part of the drawing regardless). And then, we noticed he had a bizarre bald spot on the side on his head. By now, Rotherham was being drawn and ridiculed on a daily basis. Combine this with his love for Star Trek and general nerd-like attitude (He once walked over and said “phasers, set to stun!”), and we had a surefire classic our hands. Another core part of the Rotherham drawings is Rob’s dad, Jonty, who is considerably old for a father and has a great love of England, Computer games, and gardening. Yes, in that order. He features in every drawing, bar one or two exceptions.

 

I have drawn some serious drawings. Some people, some objects, stuff like that. I have a limited amount of it up on my site, most of it unfortunately went in the bin a long time ago. One of my favourite pictures ever, I gave it to an ex-girlfriend because she wanted a picture from me. Now, we are not on so good speaking terms, I can’t really ask for it back. It was a picture of Edward Burns from the movie “15 Minutes”, a movie I like very much. Oh well. I might draw it again sometime.

 

Now, since we are at college, it is solely me and O Toole who continue the drawings. We share them with others via our websites. Nearly everything produced now is Rotherham orientated, although we do have a few side projects

 

Me:                  - Some serious drawings, a few parodies of O toole, Miguel Sanchez

O Toole:          - Fernando Duran, and…I’m not really sure what else. 

 

In the future, I plan to get A LOT more Rotherham pictures up on the site, and possibly move to a .com address, so the rest of the world can see our works! This is a VERY brief history of my drawings. There is much, much more I have not mentioned, but I think I’ve gone into enough basic detail.

 

Some facts you probably didn’t know :

 

Daniel O Conner used to draw a lot. An all time classic was his “Violent” series. (That’s the name of the series) This featured a bald guy with headphones called “Blooper” taking on some famous arch nemesis’ such as the Russian mob, the Russian army, Aliens from space, random creatures and a giant 200ft Worm. All with intense and unsurpassable amounts of gore, swearing and violence. When I say gore, I mean serious gore. 60% of white space was taken up by red marker.

 

Robert Rotherham once drew a “cool” picture, which featured a square man smoking 30 fags at one and still managing to say “I’m Sid, the big kid.” I’m hoping this picture can be obtained from an old school magazine. Yes, it is EVERY bit as stupid and rubbish as it sounds.

 

My sister draws pictures also, and funny enough some of them look the same as mine. She writes, too. However, she draws things like girls in school uniform, girls out shopping, but the basic skill is there. She is just 15 now, so hopefully she won’t get better then me in the future :P

 

Stephen O Riordan drew a comic in 4th class which featuring explicit swearing, violent sex scenes and the shooting of a baby. I don’t think I have to tell you what the teacher thought.

 

I got a C in Art in Junior Cert. I was pissed off, I thought I was better then that. And people who are really shit at drawing got B’s. I was annoyed at that, mainly because when people who are crap get B’s, naturally people think the guy who got a C…is REALLY shit.

 

As far as I know Nicola Couglin (I haven’t a clue how to spell her name) is a brilliant drawer who makes me crap. Never visit her page www.jennaprena.tk!

 

Well…that’s about it. I’m even boring myself now. Bye for now!