Looks like I may have to go back to rapping... 8:41 PM

So today my tablet stylus was like BRB and never came back. No warning or excuse for it happening, it just died. Not the whole thing either, just the pen part of my stylus (the eraser still works) so I scoped out how much a new pen would cost and it came to roughly R400. Fuck. That. After looking around the internet I found that it's probably because I've dropped it a few times, although it stopped working halfway through a drawing. So I started looking around at getting a new tablet because a bigger one would be pretty sweet. Found the new Bamboo Fun (I'm using a Bamboo Fun at the moment). My current one is A6 and the one I'm probably gonna get is an A5 which is quite a rad upgrade. It's going for R2,500 which is pretty expensive, but hey it's something I need. Oh, and another awesome thing, the new one is also touch sensitive so you can use touch gestures for zooming and stuff which is pretty awesome, productive will increase by roughly + 9000%. I'm gonna pay half and my parents will pay the other half as a Christmas present vibe, which is a bit shitty seeing as I wanted a 1tb external hard drive but whatever. The main problem is I may not get it before christmas >.> So yeah I think I'll get back into the rapping scene. I guess once I've got a little more money I'll buy another stylus and either sell my old tablet or just keep it as a spare.

Graham Paterson Likes This: Helvetica vs Arial 12:00 PM

This is a rather interesting and simple look at some of the differences between Helvetica and Arial from The Ragbag

Graham Paterson Likes Time to Die 9:15 PM

This really made me laugh haha.

Graham Paterson Likes This: Flair - Truckers Delight 1:49 PM

This music video is excellent. It's summed up perfectly over at Drawn!

"Before you watch this insane music video by Jérémie Perin, note that is totally not safe for work. Its video-game inspired animation contains pixellated 8-bit depictions of both sex and pooping. The YouTube description reads “Think Spielberg’s Duel + Russ Meyer’s Faster Pussycat Kill Kill! and Marc Dorcel’s wildest fantasies.”

But what it lacks in decorum, it totally makes up for in animated awesomeness. The look is a pixel-perfect replication of the era of video games I grew up playing. And though it’s sad that there are no more games being made that look like this, I am thrilled to be living in an age when the kids who grew up with this aesthetic are now the grown-ups making new things of their own." [sauce: John Martz - Drawn!]

If you follow that Drawn link, there's a couple comments talking about the content and stuff and personally I think they're being way too sensitive, that video was hilarious. There's plenty worse stuff in modern games and movies.

My Stripper Friend 12:19 PM

The more I think about it, the more absurd it seems.

So when I was living in Australia last year I managed to get a job at the club called Club 299. It was a regular alternative type club, alternative music, occasionally had bands (A Wilhelm Scream, Bring Me the Horizon, as well as local bands), on one occasion there were even these kinda performance art strippers, I say performance art because they weren't just regular strippers, they were dressed kinda like geishas and they really only got topless. So I was working behind the bar Fridays and Saturdays, because those were the only days they were open, for some measly amount like oh.. $18 (R125) an hour. The hours were pretty shit though, like 11PM til 5AM which didn't really matter when you're in a city with hardly any friends. All in all it was actually a really cool job though, got to watch rad bands for free, listen to decent music the whole night, hang out with the rad bartender guy, and serve people like me. When it got super busy, time just went faster!

So moving on... The boss of the club was this guy who was, either my age, or a year younger than me. His dad owned a couple of strip clubs and bars around Brisbane so I think he was like, "here son, take this and have some fun". Actually, I just remembered this now, below the club (it was on the second floor) there was a karaoke bar that they owned too, and at one point they wanted to make a hole in the floor connecting the two. No plans, they were just gonna go ahead and do it haha. But yeah, back to my story. So because my boss's dad owned the club and he did all his business through one of his strip clubs. So on the Tuesday of every week, I would catch a bus into the city and go to the strip club, inside the strip club to the office, and I would get paid. Occasionally I would have to wait outside the office and I would stand there all awkwardly trying not to look at any of the customers, or the ladies dancing on the poles.

So the one day I go to get paid and I get outside the entrance to the club and I'm standing there counting my money or something, and the door lady (girl) is like "oh cool, you just got paid, that means I must get paid", and then, I guess it could have been loneliness or something, but I decided to take the bait or whatever and chat with her. Turned out she was from Canada and she wasn't a stripper or something as I had though, but that she actually just worked the door and the bar. We ended up exchanging numbers and stuff (just on a friendly level) and I referred to her as my Stripper Friend from then on. We also become friends on Facebook and turns out she's only a couple months older than me anyway. We only really hung out once, which involved us walking around trying to get wasted, She talked a lot, I just remember her saying every place we walked past was too pretentious and telling me a story about when she took acid and thought her friend was made of cheese.

All in all it was quite a weird experience but at the same time it was really rad.

My Favourite Artists: Aled Lewis 1:12 PM

I've seen Aled Lewis's stuff pretty often on Threadless and it's pretty awesome, clever, beautifully illustrated and so on. The work itself is similar to Glennz work. But yeah, he's one of my favourite artists because of his clever designs and great illustration! Check him out here!

// blog.grahampaterson.org //

Graham Paterson Likes This: Cobra Skulls 5:00 AM

Just got a hold of Cobra Skulls' American Rubicon album and I'm in love. Really rad punk rockabilly stuff. The song Bad Apples made me super amped! To each his own and what-not, cool song though.

I don't think that Ian
Would approve of what I'm seeing
The substance you abuse
I call another human being

You're not convincing me
To come to your conclusion
If alcohol's the problem
How is fighting the solution?

Hey bad apple tell me
Are you straight edge
Or high on violence?
When the adrenaline starts pumping
Do you like the rush?

If someone's fucked their head
Or passed out at the shows
That asshole's gotta go
But don't you go and bust is nose

Don't need me telling you
What the movements all about
But you don't keep in touch
You just keep lashing out

You give the scene a bad name
You ruin others work
You give the scene a bad name
You're just a militant jerk

Still you're telling me
You're straight edge
But your actions make you look
intoxicated
And just like every drunkard
that you've hated
You're high on violence

Springleap Entries 2:59 PM

Cool so I've got 2 entries up for the Springleap "The Living Dead" contest. Would much appreciate it if people would vote on my stuff! Tell all your friends too!

The first design is Agony of Rebirth (vote here!)

And the second is Zomburger (vote here)

Graham Paterson Likes This: Octopus Skate Bowl 2:29 AM

[source]

// blog.grahampaterson.org //

My Favourite Artists: Parra 1:00 PM

I first read about Parra in a Juxtapoz magazine and at first I wasn't too impressed because it seemed so simple, but his stuff has really grown on me. To do such rad striking stuff with simple shapes and few colours really does make him stand out. His typography work is awesome. All images and quotes from his Big Active Biography

"An underground star in Amsterdam where kids search the streets to tear down his club posters, Parra's work is treasured by a generation of design fanatics. Living with his painter/sculptor father, Parra grew up surrounded by colours, oil paint, wood, weird looking pictures & Rubenesque paintings." [source]

"Almost entirely self taught, his minimal colour palette, beautiful hand-drawn typography & esoteric character creation are reminiscent of screen printed poster designs of the 1960s & 70s." [source]

"Taking a select few commercial design jobs per year he devotes the bulk of his output to flyers & posters for friends & admirers, making his work available for everyone to use, keep or discard as they wish.
Parra also co-runs Rockwell, his own skate wear clothing label, has his own hotly tipped electro band called LeLe and regularly exhibits his works around the globe." [source]

// blog.grahampaterson.org //

Pool Skating and Ukrainian 2:37 PM

The suggested plans for the new beach park look amazing! I thought I would support the group (as the plans aren't set yet) by inviting a whole lot of people and yeah...apparently all the people I added made google think it was in Ukrainian haha.

But yeah, for the last 2 weeks I've been really keen to skate, but everybody is busy an I'm lazy, so I was pretty amped to go skate a friend's pool when the opportunity came up! Never skated a pool before, was pretty fun cleaning it out and everything, and I was just happy to get on my board a bit...but yeah, here's a few photos my friend Gareth took with the assistance of the pool owner haha.

// blog.grahampaterson.org //

Unfinished Business 6:56 PM

So, quite often I'll start drawing something and it won't come out the way I expect it to immediately and I get over it and stop working on it. I've kinda learnt that if I just persevere through the siff parts, it normally looks pretty rad in the end. Other times I kinda start half heartedly so it never really looks good. But yeah, here's a couple of my unfinished illustrations. It's all part of the process...

Frank Abagnale 7:23 PM

So today I was watching Catch Me If You Can for like the 5th time. I always liked the movie and thought it was great and stuff. So at the end of the movie they have the epilogue and it's like "Frank's been married for 22 years, earns millions a year, etc, etc..."
So I thought to myself (and aloud to my brother), how much of it is actually true? So I looked up Frank Abagnale and oh my gosh was I surprised!

So he really did impersonate a pilot...

"Pan American Airlines estimated that between the ages of 16 and 18, Frank Abagnale flew over 1,000,000 miles on over 250 flights and flew to 26 countries, at Pan Am's expense, by deadheading. He was also able to stay at hotels for free during this time. Everything from food to lodging was billed to the airline. Abagnale stated that although he was often invited by actual pilots to take the controls in-flight, he never actually accepted their offers, instead using the "8 hours between the bottle and the throttle" rule as a convenient alibi." [source]

He really did pretend to be a chief paediatrician for almost a year! He basically worked as a night shift supervisor, where they had an empty spot until they found a replacement a year later. Being a supervisor he hardly ever had problems and just let interns handle stuff. Yes. For a year, he pretend to be a doctor and only once was he almost caught. Makes you wonder what the hell the supervisors are getting payed for...

And lastly, he really did work as an attorney for 8 months before retiring because one of the other "Harvard graduates" kept asking questions about him.

This all happened before he was 21, freaking insane! and just like the movie, there is a happy ending too.

"He later founded Abagnale & Associates, which advises the business world on fraud. Through this system, he raised enough money to pay back all those he scammed over his criminal career. Abagnale is now a millionaire through his legal fraud detection and avoidance consulting business based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Abagnale also continues to advise the FBI, with whom he has associated for over 35 years, by teaching at the FBI Academy and lecturing for FBI field offices throughout the country. He also has a son who now works for the FBI. According to his website, more than 14,000 institutions have adopted Abagnale's fraud prevention programs."

On the other hand, there isn't much concrete evidence for most of this stuff so it is a bit suspect.

\\source www.grahampaterson.org \\

Scar Tissue Sucks 1:52 PM

I'd seen the ads for Scar Tissue on Vuzu before and I was like "man this crap looks lame", but I never watched it so I was like, meh, not harming anyone, except for the retards in it of course. So yeah, today I got home from uni and while enjoying a delicious roll with, cheese, ham, lettuce and sweet chilli sauce I decided to see what was on tv. Not much. I guess I'll watch this Scar Tissue thing.
So they've got some dry ice and they're sitting back to back and putting it in between their backs to see who chickens out first. Was pretty lame, I know I wouldn't do it, but was pretty lame to watch nonetheless. The rest of the time, one of the guys has his face in the camera, extreme close up, claiming how hardcore they are, saying he's the ice cream man or some shit. I was like, fuck, 5 mins, I'm done, I need to rectify this! So I wrote an e-mail on the Vuzu website.

You'll notice I said "nice website", well, that's because I was pleasantly surprised by their website. It's nice, contemporary, easy to navigate and so on. I probably should have added that most of their shows are pretty rad and I like what they've done with the old GO so as not to seem like too much of a dick, but I really just stopped watching after like 5mins of that show.