Just a quick post to say that the new blog header is one of the personal projects I’ve been working on, and although its not quite finished yet I thought I'd put it up anyway. I'll try to have some new stuff ready to post soon.
You can download the 'Found Songs' EP for FREE here, and the song 3055 here.
I had a few ideas floating around for this project, but somehow managed to leave it until the night before it was due to start on the final piece. This meant I was up until about 5:00am getting it done. However, I was relieved to find that I wasn’t the only one in this position, and might have ‘given up’ much sooner otherwise.
This is what I managed to get done. Someone suggested to me that the escape symbol might look better on the right side of the composition, so that your eye is led across the piece. I wish I’d thought of that before I started. Until I figure out why Blogspot hates me, you'll have to click the link underneath to see them bigger.
This is it again with about 30 minutes of photoshoppage. The symbol is perhaps a bit too eye catching? I may try it with a few different colour keys as well. It’s a work-in-progress.
Looks rather nice with just coloured lines as well. I like that it’s got a more raw quality, but I don’t know if I’ll do anything with this.
Here are the drafts for the piece. I think that some of the thumbnails are perhaps a little more hard-hitting than the image I produced, but I could always come back to them with some other project. Having said that, I really need a break from drawing trees!
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I came across the work of Colin Stimpson a few days ago. If I was better at interpreting and portraying briefs, then my illustration might have looked something a bit more like this. Here are a couple more that I really like – Castle and River.
This ‘lost in the woods’ picture blows mine right out of the water (by David Hong). A few more of his that I like – Sketch I, Sketch II, Sketch III
I was nosing through the new Illustration Now! 3 book, and one of my favourite artists in it is the Brazilian artist Kako. Amazing.
The best finds for this week though, have to be these amazing sketchbook pages by Daniel Robbins - San Remo, Building and Ripples.
Hope someone out there enjoys these links.
If you don’t enjoy them, then I will fight you.
Over and out.
Year I – London
Year II – Paris
Year III – New York.
Anyway, I don’t think this blog has ever suffered so much neglect. I've wanted to update for a while, but our house has been without internet for the last month. Now its finally up and running though, so I have no excuse any more.
I did this portrait of my dog a few weeks ago. I have lots more photos to work from, and I want to do some more quick studies from them. Might put them up here, depending on how they go. (Click here to see the detail).
Jones
Biro and Photoshop
This is part of another project I started before I came back to Cornwall. It’s based on a short piece of creative writing I did, about an astronomer and his observatory tower. I’m not confident enough in my writing ability to put it up here, but maybe one day I will do some more on it, and bind it all together nicely. For this piece, I wanted to show the whole room, and because it’s circular I thought I’d just do a cutaway view like a set design (I had this picture by Ben Mauro in my head before I started). The perspective drawing was done on paper, and the tone and lighting effects were added on computer. To me, it makes sense to work that way, just tackling one artistic discipline at a time. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to get the colour stage to work, even with the magical tool of photoshop. Please just try and imagine this picture with Disney colours, and you can kind of see what I was going for. I might do a character piece on the Astronomer himself if I find the time.
Observatory WIP
Pencil and Photoshop
We had a lecture a while ago on how to make the best use of our sketchbooks, the salient point being that we shouldn’t be too precious about how we work, or what we choose to show people. It’s made me more comfortable to work loosely, but I’m still inclined to turn back towards more careful and precise drawing. This is a page from one of my new sketchbooks, clearly not breaking any boundaries just yet. The colours are a little garish, but it’s not a bad foundation to work from if I decide to do some digital painting over the top.
A not-quite-finished piece, of some randomer smoking a rather unusual shaped pipe. The smoke looks rather tame in comparison to the Nimit Malavia piece that inspired it though. (Calm down Finn, it’s just a sketchbook.)
This was my contribution to the induction project we were given when we started. Each person drew a small section of the Falmouth High Street, and then it was stuck up in the studio in two long lines, so you could walk up and down between all the pieces.
The workload has really stepped up this year, which is a good thing because it gives me something to structure my time around, so hopefully I’ll be far more productive now. I plan to revamp this blog soon. Not sure how yet, but we will see.
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Some more inspiring art I've come across recently...
Rift by James Jean (Scroll along)
Nostalgist by Sam Weber
Mulan Sketches by Alex Nino - I II III IV V
Forever/Never by Nimit Malavia
Airborne by Ed Kwong
Battle by Ken Wong
A sketch by Paul Felix (A Disney veteran, whose work I can't find much of on the net unfortunately)
And a couple of good tunes...
I was tempted to put a moon in as well, but I fear it would have too closely resembled the infamous three wolf moon t-shirt. Nevertheless, I had fun with this piece and I followed the same process I did with the Fisherman picture, which explains why they look so similar. I am going to do some more animal pictures, maybe birds. I’m not sure yet but I’m open to suggestions.
More moleskine...
I read this. It excites me…
“The cool thing about being an illustration groupie is, sooner or later, you end up meeting most of your art heroes. The cooler thing about illustration is how often they turn out to be humble and gracious people.”
Irene Gallo
Listen …this is literally the greatest thing I have ever heard. Click it!
And of course, I wouldn’t dream of ending this post without attaching some new art links, so here are some of the more beautiful/interesting pieces of art that I’ve found recently.
Riot by Mike Puncekar
Sans by Eric Fortune
Mystic by Jason Thielke
and a few amazing watercolour paintings...
Pass at
In The Lava Beds, (1892) - Thomas Moran
Autumn (1893-97) - Thomas Moran
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