The creation of "Those Pesky Squirrels !!"

So i like to go mountain bike riding with my friend whenever we have a free weekend and the weather is decent enough. Its a huge source of inspiration for me being in the forest, hurtling down hills as fast as possible. I always seem to come back with plenty of creative ideas and the motivation to carry them out after a days shredding. It’s like my meditation, there are no worries when im on the bike and in nature. I’ll ride until my legs are useless.

Inbetween the mountain bike trails there is always time for chatting, most of the time its utter nonsense filled laughter ( which i love ) but every now and then a creative idea comes to mind.

My friend is learning how to be a tree surgeon (arborist) this involves climbing trees with a chainsaw and cutting off branches etc etc. He was telling me how hard the work is, i have helped him out with the job a few times and trust me, its hard graft!

We both thought it would be much easier if you could just have some sort of mechanised robot to take care of business for you while you sit back and enjoy a beer, it would probably be operated by a squirrel, have chainsaws for arms and knifes around his waist we imagained.

I grinned to myself at the thought of it and jokingly said to my mate that it would be sick to paint the squirrel piloted mecha, and to frame it for him to hang up in his work-shed. My friend said he would love that idea! so i agreed to create it for him and his man cave.

And here it is in all its glory!

I really enjoyed painting this one, i think the main reason why it was more ejoyable than most paintings i do was because it was for a friend of mine who i knew very well so i could easily add a lot of small personal touches and just be creative and improvise with it. In the back of my mind i knew he would appreciate the small details!

I have a funny feeling this silly idea is going to spark some more personalised mecha robot paintings in future!

Mark (G-hamm)