slapdash skulls

a very quick digital doodle using an older drawing

Perplexed Pan

This came about after trying my hand at some automatic drawing, in an effort to try and loosen up my style and be more fluid with my pen.

Here's to Love

This is another piece from last semester, an editorial illustration inspired by the short story by Anne Enright. It's part-collage, part-painting - for e.g. the hibiscus flowers were all painted by hand and then cut out (yes, it was a bit fiddly) as were the buildings, meant to reflect the settings described within the story.

Recycled images

Here are some doodle pages from last semester's sketch book. One of the briefs was to come up with some images to be used on recycled packaging. Note my liberal use of cadmium yellow - my favourite colour of the moment - and birds lifted from Ernst Haeckel's Art Forms in Nature:

Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit

One of my neices has a new pet. A rabbit to be exact. 'Peter' is a white, lop-eared house-trained rabbit. She takes him for walks on a lead - much to the amusement of passers-by.

It's been a while...

... since I blogged on here. That being said, I haven't been able to scan much of my work as I've been working on A3+ papers or canvasses. I do, however, have a new camera so will be able to take more photos of my work than before.

This is part of a recent piece for university. The brief was to design a colourful and contemporary CD cover for Luaka Bop, David Byrne's World Music/South American label. An acrylic wash with cheap (I mean, 99p felts!) felt-pen and black fine-liner.

More aliens

Further to an earlier post, Out of the World, here are a few more 'aliens'.

First up, the Belo Horizonte cyclops. Originally a pen and ink sketch that was then digitally coloured and edited:






Secondly, the Cuidad Valley alien 'twins'. The final illustration can be seen on Greetings Earthlings!.

Pages from the sketchbook

I'd been working on illustrating an excerpt from Paul Zindel's The Day It Rained Cockroaches for a university assignment. Below are some doodles from the sketchbook I submitted as part of my final work. While the final illustration (I created a doublepage spread that imitated a child's textbook or diary with various doodles and collage elements) couldn't be any more different from this early stage, I did use elements from it - namely the gorilla, the newspaper clipping and also the drawing of the man with monkey feet.



Above, a combination of marker pen background (I was in a fairly psychedelic-frame of mind), a digitally painted gorilla and a newspaper clipping courtesy of an online newspaper generator. All elements - including the alien and the clipping's headline - came from the excerpt.




This digitally-painted 'man with monkey feet' is - again - mentioned within the excerpt.

Ritta-Christina

This drawing of Ritta-Christina's skeleton (conjoined twins, born in 1829) has been blogged over on Cabinet of Wonders. Below, the original that started off as a pen sketch before being digitally edited:

Sew-sew

I had been trying my hand at embroidery and needlecrafts - this is part of a cloth that I have been practicing on. I've never been particularly accomplished at sewing, in fact, I would usually go out of my way to avoid sewing anything. Whether it be a sock or tear in my clothes but I have been enjoying myself with this and it doesn't look that bad...

The Eighth Wonder of the World

pen and ink with digital editing

Say hello to Gef, the Eighth Wonder of the World...

I did have to go back to the drawing book a few times to get Gef's mischievous look right, along with his fine bushy tail (that earthly mongooses apparently lack). I also provided two digital paintings of Harry Price - the paranormal investigator, and of Voirrey Irving - the young girl who was at the centre of the Gef mystery - for Graylien's new website that provides a one-stop, fascinating analysis of The Dalby Spook.

Harry Price

Voirrey Irving

Also see: Categorising Gef (the talking mongoose) on Cabinet of Wonders.

Out of this world...

This freaky fellow is the Bajada Grande Entity and you can currently find a description of the encounter with it over at the fantastic Greetings Earthlings. Fustar was very kind enough to accept my offer of contributing some artwork to his blog. I'm working on some more entries so I'll upload them as soon as they go 'live' at GE.

Latest work

I've mentioned before how much I hate my camera. I really do need to get around to buying a new one. The quality of the following pics is well... pants!

For this painting, I began with the lettering. The sentence just popped into my head fairly randomly. I was bored and just fooling around with the paint and didn't quite know what I wanted to do with it until I put the brush to the canvas. As it was, I didn't sketch anything out at first, hence the jumbled composition. Inspired by my love of all things circus and carnival, I've yet to finish it - the monkey and elephant need more work doing to it and I need to sort out the flag, too. Acrylic, A3 canvas.




This is acrylic/mixed media - it's a recycled-from-my-hoard-of-junk shallow wooden box that I jazzed up with some acrylic. I then rubbed 'Goldfinger' - which gives the same effect as gilding but is much more economic - around the happy skeleton. I edged the box with gold braid, the circular dots are small mirrors which I dotted around the skelly, along with some Victorian-style rose cutouts which I also used on the top of the box.

I'll be attacking the floral cutouts with some homemade varnish (PVA glue with some sooper sekrit addition to it) for an 'aged' effect. Approx. 30cm by 10cm.



Again, acrylic with a rubbed-in, gold 'sunburst' effect around the skull: A5 canvas.

Hearts and Spades

I'm finally getting around to posting the final two Queens on here - Hearts and Spades. I completed them a few weeks ago and since then I have been working on some paintings. Two are complete (although I've got apply a varnish to one of them) and I'm still working on the larger of the three. I've also been turning my hand to embroidery while I was on holiday. It helped pass away the long journeys although I occasionally had to pull the needle from out of my nailbed - especially if we hit a pothole in the road - ouch! Hopefully, I shall be able post up some photos of the paintings and needlework tomorrow.

Queen of Clubs

I finished this earlier this evening. As before, just a doodle while I watch or rather - listen to - TV. A frothy mix of Richard Dawkins, a Law & Order spin-off and Jackass - the movie.

I don't particularly start with any firm idea of what I'm going to draw - I just go with the flow... of the ink. Truth be told, I'm getting a bit bored of them but I guess I'll now have to do the other two.

Queen of Diamonds

Following on from this post, another playing card-inspired doodle. I've spent most of the evening watching films on TV - Near Dark and The Devil Rides Out - and scratching this out in pen and ink.

Sketchbook round-up

This is a pen sketch of a Parian ware bust of Dante Alighieri that currently resides next my armchair. I do the majority of my sketches or paintings in this chair. I usually have my handmade craft bag (I bought it at a fete, it's really a knit/crocheting bag but it's made out of quite funky purple retro material) at my feet - it's great in that I can keep and carry the majority of my sketchbooks, pens, pencils, brushes, cutting mat, watercolour pallette and all other sundries in it.

In front of my armchair is a small carved pedestal table that my uncle made back in the 60s. It's handy in that when I'm sat down it is lap height and I can comfortably rest my feet on the circular base.






I wasn't very successful with this scan (I am hopeless), as with the next image I've managed to cut off some of the page. My sketchbook is hardbound and not very flexible. This is just a page of random doodling while I'm watching (or rather listening to) TV. I've got a 'thing' about drawing fantastical birds at the moment.


Fine-liner and watercolour




This is a view of St Matthew's Church, Walsall from the top floor of the New Art Gallery. I was visiting the Cult Fiction exhibition and took a walk up onto the top floor to have a look around the Suzanne Treister/Hexen 2039 exhibit. I keep meaning to write the visit up.


Fine-liner and collage

Rome

Some more images from my sketchbook, this time some cariacatures from the BBC2 prog, Rome. I've edited the layout from how they appear on the page just so I could scan them in.

Atia, Mark Antony and Veronius

You can discuss the programme over on Cabinet of Wonders.

Jimmy

Another page from my sketchbook, Jimmy the Cat:

Four Queens

A bit of a dodgy play on the Kings of Leon track, Four Kings, but here's a pen doodle.

I was stuck with nothing to do while I was visiting my mam. She regularly plays card games and/or dominoes with her fellow OAP friends so I nicked a deck of cards from her (she has got plenty more!).