Pied Piper Paddy

This is going up a tad late considering Paddy's Day was Tuesday but no harm. I've done paddy's day themed nonsense before but he's a saint who keeps on giving. This year he's taken the form of a pied piper luring the younglings away with his sweet booze. Despite tales to the contrary, there is something decidedly serpentine about our patron saint. But the only apple this snake is offering is in a two litre bottle of cider.


This also has the honour of being eye on dublin number 36. So I've been at this malarky for three years now. Oh how time flies! It seems only like yesterday I was producing Celtic Tiger themed doodles and wondering where we'd spend our massive personal fortunes.

Valentine Dole Queue

Just can't avoid recession influenced fun at the moment. This month's eye on dublin takes on romance and poverty in one fell swoop. So like many other national institutions, Valentine's Day has just been nationalised due to a shortage of dates. The resulting queues can take hours for a paltry Government hand out. A second date is out of the question.

Job Creation Scheme no.666

Ok, I've already referenced the Tower of Babel in an eye on dublin a while ago (Babel Royale - the leaving cert tower of death - in the June issue) but it's just too good an image not to revisit.


There's also the influence of stunning manga and anime Tekkon Kinkreet and it's western/eastern hodge-podge shanty town metropolis. Go see it/read says I.


This combines to make the eye on dublin's recommendation for job creation, the Celtic Tiger Commemorative Building. Job creation, the building industry, possible collapse, it's all a very subtle metaphor you see AND it gives me a chance to draw cute cat heads.

Naughty and Nice

Obviously a Christmas special was unavoidably for December so I decided to add a small dose of humbug into the mix by introducing the Anti-Claus, complete with tommy gun carrying Penguin sidekicks (he's based in the South Pole you see, so no reindeer). Still fun and seasonal though; he's not a serial-killer or anything. Just a curiously attired burglar. Go Santa.


Merry Christmas one and all. Except you. Yes, you.

GAME OVER, MAN. GAME OVER

Slightly odd one this month. I was away in middle of nowhere in wildest England when I did this one. So no scanner and a long panicked hunt for an entrance to the interweb. As a result it was done in double time all in illustrator vector glory, no scratchy pencil lines to fall back on.

Straightforward idea of the celtic tiger as a broken down 80's arcade machine. With the arcade game reference I could have overloaded it with various elements if I'd been drawing everything by hand but because of my vector drawing limitations I kept it fairly simply. Worked out alright as a result, I think....

All Hallow's Evil

Shock! Horror! I've never taken advantage of this time of year to do a Halloween based eye on dublin. That is now rectified with a jolly rejigging of the traditions with the scary monsters as the victims and the kids as the super creeps.
I've done some Halloween themed stuff before that came in handy. In particular was this poster for a college ball


I remember spending ages looking up wacky old horror film posters as reserach, stuff along the lines of 'I was a Teenage Frankenstein'

So I had all that preprogrammed into my brain by the time I had the idea of evil hoodie kids hassling the classic Universal monsters. It was pretty straight forward after that. All that was left was a slight nod to count von count from sesame street

and viola

A scary eye on dublin!

Sunshine R.I.P.

Admittedly last summer was bad but there's something about two wet summers in a row that seems to officially hammer the global warming nail into the coffin of the Irish summer. Been very busy of late so this month's pic is more of a pin-up than the usual detailed diagram. Still the grim simplicity kind of matches the subject matter.


Hope there's something good on the telly.

Please God let the rain stay away at least this weekend as I'll be stuck in a field at the Electric Picnic music festival. I'll be drawing on some boards along with a number of great artists throughout the weekend, so say hello if you're down too. BC