World Book Day! An ode to Funnybones….

To celebrate World book day today I recreated a little bit of late eighties/early nineties nostalgia. I have loving memories of a sweaty uniform-clad bum sat in a red plastic chair at Penn Road library, flicking through Janet Ahlberg’s illustrated skeleton family with utter glee. I recall copying entire pages out, drawing the dog both together and in pieces (after running for a bone and hitting a tree). From an early age I had a morbid fascination with anatomy, and how things looked beneath the skin. I’m holding this book responsible for my initial obsession with gothic imagery and body horror.

Timelapse

In my rendition of ‘Funnybones’, it is a spin-off which focuses entirely on the teenage years of ‘White’, the dog . White has become disillusioned with life-dogs with guts and fur pay him no attention and years of falling apart have left him with no body to play with and tightroping thoughts of nihilism. And so he runs away to join the carnival, and there he discovers a new life of hardcore clowning. At first he loves this new tribe of oddballs and is welcomed with open lobster boy arms, but soon the bounding bone rattler is trapped inside an infinite slapstick loop cult of dark, dark comedy, a pom-pom adorning the boney tail between his legs….

Drawn in Procreate

Geek corner:

Edited using Motionleap and InShot. Title is a manipulated font called ‘bone lock’, I used the warp tool to jazz it up a bit and follow the contour of the dog. Names are in ‘ashes to ashes’, currently one of my favourite grunge fonts. Lots of splash but primarily layered up using medium spray can brush in Procreate. Music is ‘Dem dry bones’ by The Delta Rhythm Boys. This was fast and fun.