Hi everyone, this is the news page, it will contain updates on all the new stuff.

Hello again everyone! Well well well, have I been a busy little boy. To coincide with my new album, "How Modern Games Are Played", I today decided that as I do a wide variety of art mediums, extending beyond the visual ones you see on Jontieart.com, I would like to integrate some of my other ones. To those of you who don't know what else I do, I write and record music under the name The Death Klinik. As I've been blessed with a singing voice that would give a child nightmares rather than soothe it to sleep, most of my music is instrumental, although my lack of singing prowess wasn't the reason. I like to feel transported when I listen to music, I like to be put in a place or perhaps revisit a fond memory or a nostalgic embrace.
When I started, I remember saying my music would be the "soundtrack to my life", in that it was a purely personal and private thing, just some nice relaxing instrumental compositions I could play to myself, while figuring life out, without a singer getting in my way. Now however, I have chosen to compartmentalise my musical creations into personal and, if you like, commercial, in other words, Jontie's private soundtrack and The Death Klinik, although recently, this difference has been disappearing. So far, I have recorded roughly 30 pieces. Most of these were made to fit an immediate mood or situation in which I found myself and would be useless to anyone else. As I can't actually play any instruments, its all done by ear, so theres a lot of experimentation happening.
The first, and of right now, the only collection of pieces, or album to you and Joe Smith, I have finished is called "A Look For Seasons". It has 9 tracks on it. It isn't of course widely available, infact I just made copies for friends who showed interest, but as it is me, I designed the artwork for the sleeves, CD itself and all, just for kicks. Some of these tracks are actually on Myspace.com/The Death Klinik right now! They were recorded using Microsoft Sound Recorder (eugh), a 20-odd year old keyboard (whiched showed its age when, of all keys, middle C died) and a busted old Nylon strung guitar (which actually belongs to a member of one of my genuine favourite bands, The Mojo Fins.) between 2002 and 2004.
After that album was completed, I kind of stopped for a long time, only resuming recording in February 2007, inspired by Bloc Party's "Weekend In The City" and a rather great turn of personal fortune. Sie ist Schön. The new music had more structure to it. The sound wasn't so dark (well okay, to be honest, it was slightly brighter in places) and, oh my god, Jontie started doing a bit of singing. I felt the time had come to mix my lyrics and music together. Around this period, I wrote a lot of lyrics and edited some beats together, sample by sample, second by second, all by ear and counting in my head to time it all, in Sound Editor, a labourious task, but I stopped again in April. Within the past 3 weeks, I have dug up all these old efforts and began brand new ones. The result of all these creations is "How Modern Games Are Played". Some of the tracks will be released on the MySpace in due course, probably in the next month, don't worry, I'll let you all know. I plan on releasing them for listening on The Death Klinik satellite site aswell, once I have cracked the code to do so that is! Athough all that is definate, I am not sure yet weather I will actually make copies of the album, with a booklet or sleeve and all the rest and sell it online. I am still debating this, we will see what happens as the bloody thing isn't even done yet! Again, I'll let you all know.
Last but not least for this news entry, is the actual Death Klinik satellite site itself. I am in the process of making, basically, a sister website to Jontieart.com. In the links page and on the top of every page, there will be a link to "The Death Klinik". This page will be on Jontieart.com, but will look and feel different, have its own look and interface. It will essentially be www.thedeathklinik.com, but will have small elements of its bigger sister, (for example, there is a pictures section in which the pictures are for sale, just like Jontiart.com) and will have an address something along the lines of "jontieart.com/thedeathkliniksite". You get my drift. I am hard at work maintaining Jontieart.com as well as recording my album ,making 2 websites and overlooking the art design of Echo Lawrence, so I'm bloody knackered to be honest;)

Greetings Jontiearters! Right well today, I've only gone and stuck some new pictures into the galleries! There are 2 new pictures released,a graphic piece called Red Flush and a photograph called To The Sky I hope you like them:) More news soon.

Hey everyone, this week I officially became the art director of Galway based band Echo Lawrence! So nice one for me. There pretty good too, check em out here.
Again on the music front, as you may have seen from my homepage, I'm in the middle of recording an album all on my lonesome. I finished the artwork and all last week, again, the cover is on the homepage. To get a taste of my music, click here.
I will give more updates as they happen so check back again for those, but it'll all be released within the next 3 weeks. Oh, and did I mention I can't sing? Just did, but im singing a bit on these new tracks anyway, I've got all these lyrics and ideas so I gotta give it a try. It sucks, its very frustrating, but you can't have it all.

Hello, not much happened today. Oh, I got my hair cut, but thats about it.

Hey everybody. Following last weeks adventures, I'm giving you the names you kind people sent me, in an attempt to guess who I had drawn. Some of you were off, some were bang on. Here's the names I got;

Jesus-Wrong-1 Guess

Dave Grohl-Wrong-2 Guesses

Myself-Wrong-2 Guesses

Christian Bale-Correct!-6 Guesses

Ultimately, I plan to erradicate the uncertainties. Thanks to everyone who e-mailed!

Here it is. This is the drawing I was babbling on about yesterday! The picture on the left is before I applied my new techniques and the one on the right is after. I always had a problem drawing noses and eyes. Hey, can you guess who it is? Answers on a postcard to.....only messing, but why not have a laugh, if you want to, send the name of the person you think I've drawn to jontieart@gmail.com. I've had one person guess already and they thought it was Jesus. They were wrong.

Anyway I hope you think it's alright. I am putting up some ink and pen drawings real real soon so please please please keep checking back in the news section. Thanks a million everybody. I'm really interested to find out what some of you think the picture is of. I know, I'll post a list of the names as part of a news entry next week! Great! Good luck! It's my first attempt at drawing really real looking things, so there will be improvments. Easy to say, but it's hard to see all the nice details in this picture as its so small, but overall, I'm pleased with how it turned out. There are still loads of things I don't like about it though, but as long as I learn and improve as I go, I'm happy. By my own admission, I still have a long long way to go to reach the level I ultimatly crave.

Hello hello wonderful people! Well well well....what a crap week! Died of a flu and came back to life, all I could do was watch my girlfriend play Zelda on my Wii, while I coughed and spluttered so hard and so much that I've started developing a six-pack, or 'sick-pack'.
However, nothing but a tingle in the throat remains and Today, Jontie popped down to his local art shop and picked up some pencils. No biggy, I hear your think (does that make sense?, I hear you say, thats better English), you just bought some pencils, you run an art site. Well the truth is, to me it was a biggy, because it was the first time I bought art supplies with the pure intention of doing doodles for sale! Oh, and did I mention the fact that I can't draw, even to save my dogs life? Oops, I just have! Yeah, to be honest, I can't draw all that well, I mean in the respect of perfect proportions and all that natter. I'm sort of learning on my own as I go.
To save myself from going mental, I have We Are Scientists pumpin' in the background and a rather endless supply of tea at my disposal. If it turns out okay, meaning, it's not great, but if I don't go and f@*k it up, I just might put a little picture of the drawing I'm doodling right now on-line tomorrow. Oh........

I would like to let you all know, that I have changed Jontieart.com's e-mail address, due to on going problems with mail not getting delivered on time, properly and sometimes even at all! In case you would like to contact me, don't bother with "info@jontieart.com" anymore. The new e-mail address is jontieart@gmail.com. Good old Google, never let you down! Sorry if this has caused you any inconvienience, but now you all know. Cheers, take it easy.

Hello again everybody! There are some more updates to the site which I released or uploaded or whatever you want to call it, today. In the galleries I've changed the thumbnails a bit, looks a little nicer now I think. There is also a new picture released, its a photo called Fire Heart. Check it out here.

Still working on those oil paintings at the moment too, I'm a busy little boy indeed. Doing a band photo shoot at the weekend and also putting there website together, but dont worry, all this code and programming isnt making me fat, I dont have drums of pop corn and large buckets of coke lining the place, dressed in nothing but a string vest and underpants, im keeping myself together! I never want to turn out like that!

Hey, more news! I have started messing around with oil paints. I'm kinda new to it so I'm finding my feet a little bit. Im experimenting with different smudging and smoothing techniques. Its going alright so far, I'm just trying to be patient;0)
I can't tell you exactly how long it'll be until some of them are on sale in the galleries, as they say you can't rush art! I'll post more news as it happens, most likely some time next week with more info on the drawings I will be posting in the next month! Wish me luck. Take care, Jontie.

Well well well......in the next few days I will be majorly re-doing Jontieart.com! I have a totally new look and interface in store for you all! I always wanted to have it the new way, but only recently got a bit of javascript to work that I always had issues with, basically, the dang thing never wanted to work!
As I'm going to be away for a little while, I wanted to get the new version online and launched before Christmas and its all going in the right direction (fingers crossed it continues this way)! Anyway, I hope you like it and if you want, you can e-mail me and let me know what you think. Thanks a lot again for your time, take it easy, Jontie.