Experimental

I painted the first of my sequential images, and it's terrible, a big lump of brown mess. So it's back to flour mill pappy. Here are some sketches to see what I can come up with. Pretty random, not concerned with quality, just pure experimentation, see if I can loosen up enough to do something useful.

Acrylic Ink, hold the soda

I've got into using acrylic inks with a brush rather than with the aquash pen. The great thing about them is that they are so easy to mix as the bottles come with a handy dropper. So 3 drops sepia mixed with 5 drops scarlet and you get a pleasant old fashioned red. Below is the sort of thing I'm now racing to do for the Sequential Image project. I have my sequence sketched out on acrylic friendly paper, I now need to get the palette right and get painting.

More character designs

Still not happy with my drawings/character for this module and time is running out. Here are some more alternatives I've been trying.

More from the sequence

This top one is probably the one I dislike least so far. I'm starting to like it more and more, but I think this is because I'm getting used to it and being lazy. The composition is ok, the drawing certainly is not.

Another one from the sequence.


A painting using my old technique (chinagraph pencil - blue, arcylic inks and aquapen), which I'm determined not to use, at least not for this module. I'm also avoiding using the computer for now as I'll rely on it too much. I might have to do a bit for the final pieces though.

Too much reverting going on

I'm putting together ideas and establishing ways of getting this ladder idea done. This top image is the first in a short sequence after fiddling with character design (see below). This is acrylic ink using an aquabrush + pencil.

Character sketches for 'Frank Normal' the victim/anti-hero of the ladder idea.
World design using my old way of drawing but using new techniques. If I followed through with this it would have been pointless doing the course, I need to push myself to do different things, far more than I am at the moment.

The Ladder

This is an idea for my Sequential Image module. The top image is the most recent, the bottom one is where it all grew from, the middle stuff is (all) the steps between. The most recent look a bit washed out compared to the originals. I also had a great chat with David Hughes on Wednesday who seemed quite pleased with my progress (still a long way from being good mind), most of which I wouldn't have made without James Mayhew's help. In fact all the tutors on my course are pretty damn good, the complete opposite of my experience as an undergradute.


Two test framescharacter and scene test which somehow warped in the lower image into something I liked much more.
Trying to develop a characvter for the sequence


Playing around with composition and trying to nail down a subject.

More life drawing

Both of these were done using Acrylic ink and the Pentel Water brush.

Acrylic Ink

After my outing with James last Monday I've been looking into different inks to use in the Aquash Water Brush. I was using the Rowney Drawing Ink, but the shellac in it was bunging up the brush. so then I tried Dr. Ph. Martin's concentrated water colour which was much more friendly. I got this in blue though as the big black pot was expensive and I didn't really like the results. So then I got FW Acrylic Artists Ink (black) and it's great. The aquash brush seems to have an airtight seal so the brush never dries out and the ink worked well with the brush. Below is a drawing done using the FW ink and a Faber-Castell artist pen then fiddled about with a bit in photoshop.


Here I just started drawing to see what would happen. All done with an art pen.

Draw or die

This week has been fairly eventful drawy wise. On Friday I went to see Scarlett and Faith's new addition "Tynan". The little bugger is a handsome chap, much more handsome than my clumsy penmanship can capture unfortunately (sorry Tynan). NB: He's not a conjoined twin, I just drew him twice on the same page.

The weekend was eaten up doing film work. On Monday, the talented James Mayhew, who teaches on my course, and myself wandered the streets of cambridge sketching and righting wrongs. I'll have to use the Uni scanner to scan them in as my scanner is too small, so I'll post them up another time. It was a fun and useful outing, even though I'm not terribly impressed with my results. James got me to use some new drawing materials which led on to:

Brush and Ink work. On Monday I tried this for the first time and the results were sketchy to say the least, but something seemed to interest me about it. Today we had life drawing and I mostly used the clever 'water in the handle' brushes and some indian ink.



This one below I did with one dip, meaning I dipped the brush into the ink once and didn't put anymore on after that. I think this is my favourite. I might even go as far as to say I like this.

This one underneath was made using a fat Derwent 8B thing James lent me. I quite like this, it's like my other 8B I've talked about before but much fatter.

Fiddle

My first collage image. This is an interpretation of a fragment of Radiohead's 'Sail to the moon'. The stars are shiny Christmas wrapping cut outs. I used paper cut-outs, pen and ink, conte pastels and graphitone.


A row of houses using sepia pencil and conte pastels.

There's a light in here somewhere

More life drawing. Life drawing is always rewarding to do, even if the results aren't rewarding to look at. I've gone at these in different ways:

The first I scratched out in pen and then went over roughly using the graphitone.

This one I used the same pen and graphitone but tried to be more economical with line and tone.


Dipped ink using a flat edged pen.


I still don't feel like I've found a way to capture what I see in a way I like yet. I found an illustration book in the 2nd year BA Illustration student's room the other day and found a few inspirational images that go someway towards where I want to be. And a girl in my class, Biddy, showed me some work by a French artist called Nicolas De Crecy, who has worked with Sylvain Chomet, and that's been very useful. I still feel like I'm in the dark looking for that light switch though.

Outside the Circus

We had a little field trip to the circus and this is one of the drawings I made. Probably the best technical drawing I've done but very dead.

Costume Life Drawing

This was all using the Graphitone 8B pencil again. I drew it very lightly and then boosted the contrast in photoshop.

Various

This was my second attempt at watercolour work and predated the picturehouse painting. I think this is the least rubbish watercolour I've done. Probably because it was new and I enjoyed it more.


Some toys (borrowed from Jon and Erica) drawn in line.


One of the life drawing students drawn in charcoal. It's very messy I know, but I'm trying different ways of capturing form.

Cambridge Arts Picture House

I haven't posted for a while because I've not really felt inspired to blog. The images here are from about two weeks ago. Eva Nowak (a former house mate and quite talented filmmaker) was kind enough to let me wander the cinema.

First one here is a watercolour of the kiosk area. A great friend of mine was once eaten by the Ben&Jeery's Ice Cream machine here.


Roger (thanks Erica!) the top projectionist fellow, drawn from memory in Ink and then quickly 'toned' using photoshop.


Inside the projection room it's quite long, snug and loud. This was done in charcoal and then restored using photoshop (I haven't fixed it on the paper yet)

Tone

My focus for this week is on tone, atmosphere, environments and capturing people playing. Quite a list. Plus I have to get 'toys' in there somewhow. To practice I've done two drawings using the Derwent watersoluble GRAPHtone pen which I'm liking a lot. These don't have toys in, I'm focusing on getting fast at doing environments with tone. I think these took about an hour each.

Toys

Beginning the Toy project, I started with a little red wind up toy and ended with a pastel redering of a Gloomy Bear on my bedroom floor. The pictures going down are reverse chronological, so the top one here is the latest.


Using oils for the second time , here are the red wind-up toy bear and the blue soft toy rabbit. Unfortunately I ruined the painting a bit when I scanned it, but not very badly.


The blue rabbit done in pastels. This took about 2 hours I think as each hair was drawn to match the direction of hair on the actual toy. I should really have put a background in for this to make it look more complete.

A pastel study of the red bear composed as a lose narrative.


Early colour test of the bear using pastels and crayons.


Trying out different ways to get down the form in an interesting way. Pen, crayon, pencil, pastel.


A sketch of a display in forbidden planet.