Illustration Friday – Confined

I hope to refine this a bit more in the morning. <3

So I Noticed I Hold My Pencil Funny…

… and I wondered what effect this had on my drawing. Normally I hold it a bit like the tripod  grip, but with the pencil resting on my ring finger instead. I don’t know why I do, or how long I’ve been doing it for. So I read a bit about different ways of holding a pencil and gave it a go on the small cuddly giraffe that sits in front of my monitor. Not quite sure what to make of the results!

Illustration Friday: Crunchy…

…well, almost Crunchy.

I was going to have a go at a version in oils, but other commitments got in the way [Mainly laundry…] I kind of envisaged this as a series of images, or a comic as this sad little elephant keeps popping up in my sketches.

Ironically, if an elephant stood on a snail, or anything crunchy for that matter, we wouldn’t hear it because of the fat cushioning underneath their feet. Imagine that, having an elephant silently sneak up on you!

Illustration Friday: Music

Long time no post…

After years of wanting to start doing IF, I’ve finally got around to it. Here’s to many more!

Oh, and blog thing needs redesigning desperately – I’ll get on to that shortly.

Animation Progress…

Extremely enjoyable, but devastatingly time consuming!

13 frames down…

Can’t find a place for something? Put it on the floor.

Plus pre-empting my own retardedness and taping down the cables.

I guess this is procrastination, but this is the animation set up. I just switched the easel and camera around to get more consistent light [the desk lamps can now point at it easily, or is it easely? Haha, it’s late…] My studio is an absolute mess [most of the mess is actually behind me in the picture, on Tom’s side]. Mess normally drives me insane, but I’m obviously past caring at this point. I can’t really justify spending hours sorting through stuff.

Animation Paint Tests!

Well after many months of having my animation project sat in a folder, in a dark dark corner, lurking in the back of my mind. It’s out again. Finally got my Amazon order – a long firewire cable essential for actually shooting the animation, amongst other things.

So tomorrow I begin. I am terrified. The clock is ticking. Tonight I did some paint tests, working out colours and reacquainting myself with oils. Manage to snap a palette knife in the process? A metal one too… what on earth. I absolutely love oils, I am looking forward to the summer when I can just paint for the hell of it [this is fun too, but the pressure makes me nervous].

So without further ado, the paint tests!

 

I’m going to go with the earthier colours, like the Greek vases I spent far too long photographing months back. I think a limited palette is going to be even more essential than usual. I’ve got to head to the art shop tomorrow morning to buy some large tubes of oils; Yellow ochre [this colour wins me over every time…], white, burnt sienna and paynes grey. Paynes Grey mainly to save myself the pain of mixing my own ‘black’, I hate black out of the tube.

Oh and a new small palette knife.

So apart from the paint and the guts to start, I’m ready. The glass is prepared with a base coat of white, the easel and camcorder are set up and aligned, I did a silly run through with an oil pastel to make sure I knew exactly how I was going to shoot and then sequence the animation [Animator DV Simple+ followed by Adobe After Effects]. I’m going to allow myself two days to do the bulk of the animation, one day to sequence and edit, and a final day to do any further animation that’s required and finalise the sequence. Sleep will be lacking, but that’s been part of what I’ve found so exciting about animation before. Spending so many hours really involved with it, it’s exhausting but so strangely enjoyable. I think I’m a masochist.

My body won’t be too happy with it, latest blood tests claim I have a low RBC count. Damn, surely they couldn’t have missed that all these years I’ve been struggling with fatigue?

Dr Sacks – Plasticine bottle bust?

 

 

 

 

Making fairly rapid progress with my comic now, I’ve settled into a way of working so I just need to keep plodding on with it. It’s quite difficult considering all the other projects I’m trying to juggle in these closing few weeks.

Was struggling ridiculously with one particular panel last night, generally to do with the perspective/foreshortening of Dr Sacks head. This prompted me to make this plasticine bust, which was a huge amount of fun – and will hopefully prove useful? Got some nice shots of it with my new camera though, so that was fun.

Will post all the finished spreads together, I think. They definitely look better as a whole rather than as separate pages. Which is lucky I guess…

 

Printing and Studio Tweaks

So avoiding printmaking for the entirety of the course  - partly because I didn’t want to become reliant on methods I couldn’t use at home, but mostly because I’m too shy to head up to the print rooms. Well I failed these past couple of weeks, I was put in touch with Charles Shearer and I’ve been working with him in his studio on one of my projects. The “Evolution: What if?” one [the one the giraffe drawing was for].

So I’ve been making etchings for it,  one drypoint and an experiment with a technique that he uses which involves using mountboard as a relief plate.  That last one is something I think I’m going to use to rapidly and cheaply produce a book as my last project.

 

Also, reorganised my studio and put together a shelf made out of old MDF and some drink cans. It has solved many problems. I’ll paint it one day when I have time for such frivolous details…

Studio

Back in London a year older [21 now, apparently]. I bought myself a delicious new digital camera, yum yum. Just finished tidying my studio for a week alone full of hard work [that is the plan anyway]. I love my studio, and I love seeing other peoples studios, so combine that with the new camera and you get…