So what will it be? Asteroid? Nuclear? Virus? Planetary demolition for a hyperspatial bypass? Whatever it is, when the shit hits the fan where will you be? My ‘ditch kit’ is packed and ready, containing such items as a torch, water purifier, my Hellboy collection, a laminated photo of Scarlet Johansson and a box of Jaffa Cakes. But some people won’t need a ditch kit, they wont need to duck and cover under the kitchen table, they’ll be somewhere safe, somewhere secret, somewhere…underground. They’ll be in The Bunker.

The latest leaked documents from the secret Government facility reveal the name of another lucky shit who will be waiting underground with the rest of the world’s elite for the whole thing to blow over, that person is Will Barras.

An undeniable master in his field and one of the founding members of the Scrawl Collective ,Will’s unique and recognizable style flows effortlessly between the traffic of urban themed work as well as the trees and alien landscapes of his more dreamlike pieces.

It all started as simple scribbles to escape the monotony of his days working in a call centre with fellow doodler and Scrawl founder Mr Jago, but now the work that Will creates is so alive and rich that it allows us to escape and explore the vibrant worlds that he kindly shares with us.

So enough waffle, here is this weeks entrant into The Bunker, WIll Barras.

TB: We can allow you access to 1 music video. What will it be?
WB: Everlong – Foo Fighters.

Foo Fighters lyrics

Foo Fighters – Everlong Video – Foo Fighters Music Videos

TB: There is room on the wall for 1 piece of art. What would you like?
WB: The Hunters in the Snow (1565) — also known as The Return of the Hunters, by Pieter Bruegel.

TB: There is a small bookshelf with room for 1 book. What will it be?
WB: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

TB: You’re allowed 1 film. What will you watch?
WB: The Big Lebowski.

TB: There are bunk beds inside the room. Who gets the other bed, and which bunk would you like?
WB: My girlfriend, we will probably take the bottom bunker together.

TB: We’ve managed to get you a CD player. What album would you like?
WB: Led Zep 2.

TB: We are willing to cook you 1 meal of your choice on your first night in The Bunker. What would you like?
WB: Chiken Tikka Massala.

TB: – All inhabitants of The Bunker MUST have their memories of Old Earth erased. However, we will allow you a single memory of your old life. What will it be?
WB: England winning the ashes.

What?! It’s cricket related!

TB: We can project a view of your choice onto the Window Screen. What would you like to look at?
WB: The BullRing shopping centre.

You can see more of Will’s work over at…

www.willbarras.com
www.scrawlcollective.co.uk
www.stolenspace.com

In other news, I’m pleased to reveal I’m planning something exciting. I seem to have stumbled through life being late to every cool party around. Never been entirely sure why this is, did I really lead such a sheltered upbringing in the grim north? Or have I spent most of my life going from day to day with my eyes to the floor, so lost in my own miserable little existence that everything I SHOULD have been into completely passed me by.

Whether it was music, literature or art, my eyes were only really opened when I first moved to London back in 2000, and even now, I’m still only just clumsily stumbling across things I wish I’d discovered years ago. Now, when I was a kid, I loved to spend hours making my own comics and magazines, writing my own fantasy stories and badly copying Frank Frazetta’s art to accompany them. But as I got older, a lot of that DIY mentality lost the great battle and was sent cowering to the caves at the back of my consciousness by things like girls, video games and horror movies. I still loved to draw, and that’s never gone away, but all my creative efforts began to be self consciously hidden away from the cruel world in sketchbooks, and so it was until I discovered the London street art scene back around 2002.

So it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I discovered something else almost completely new to me. Zines. I saw people printing their own little mini comics before but the penny never really dropped. Not only did I not realise that these small run, indie publications had been created by people just like me, in their own time, with their own dime, BUT this is also something I could do myself, just like when I was a kid.

So, late to the party as usual, I’m about to crash through the door with annoying enthusiasm, good intentions and a shit bottle of wine. My journey into the world of non-profit and extremely time consuming self publications is at hand, and I’m excited.

In the coming months I’ll get together the first issue of the Freak Show zine, and if all goes well will hopefully go on to release around 3 issues a year. Each and every copy will be a signed and numbered limited edition with screen printed covers and pull out posters, Gocco printed postcards, badges, photography, comic strips, illustration, stickers, mindless articles and anything else that seems like a good idea at the time.

By illustrator Olly Moss. You can see more of his work here.

She’ll eventually be a central part to a larger piece that will be used in a future project, but I’ll tell you more about that later

Here’s an actual relief of Erishkigal that I used as reference. I decided to ditch her 2 owls for the moment, but will hopefully be able to squeeze them into the final piece, simply because owls rule.

I’ve always loved the statue of Pazuzu, the Babylonian King of the Demons of the Wind; more famously known from the The Exorcist movies as the demon who crawled into Regan, making her get personally aquainted with a crucifix and vomit pea soup.

I used his upper wings as reference instead of the wings on the original relief. Having them raised seems more confrontational as well as increasing her overall size and making more impact.

The pages will be made up of new pieces created especially for the book as well as forgotten about scribbles and illustrations that have been liberated from the artists sketchbooks.

Here’s my contribution. A little freaky and far out but not a million miles away from the stuff I was drawing when I was a kid. I’m already looking forward to seeing how the yoof will customize the weird space guy.

Quick one from this morning. Not too happy with it, wasn’t really sure where I wanted to go with it, didn’t  have an end result in my head, which is sometimes good, sometimes bad, but if you don’t have a defined goal, it’s easy to come off the path and overwork it. The direction of the background hatching is all over the place and the tone washes need a lot of work. Reference taken from a book called 1000 Nudes, hoping to start going to a life drawing class soon to improve. But still, pages go forward, not back. It’s all progression.