Oh Shit Dat Me

Process Diary

The instructor took this one without asking. I was somewhere in the middle of a curve at the MSF course, doing the thing with my whole body that you do when you are still learning and think leaning is a personality, and afterwards he handed me the phone with the photo already open and I said the title out loud before I had even looked properly: oh shit, dat me. That is the whole piece. I have drawn a lot of machines and a lot of creatures, but this is the only one where the subject is that exact half-second — a person who has just discovered that the rider in the picture is them, and is quietly thrilled about it. So I kept myself honest: black full-face helmet with the visor in light blue, black balaclava, the grey hoodie I actually wear with the little mushroom on the chest, black gloves, and the cruiser leaned over with its round cream headlamp still on. Behind me I put the doodle — that purple wire-mesh pattern I fill pages with when I am not paying attention — and let the gold smoke drift over it, thin, like something remembered rather than seen. The road runs red and jagged along the bottom with a neon purple arc sweeping off the left, because the ground at a range never looks like a road; it looks like a strip of light. Eternalised. 2025.