30 min paint

30 min paint

Speed Paint (30 mins)

Thought it might be a good opportunity to post these guys up a little more frequently since i'm not so active on here at the moment. Each ones' a 30 min paint (typically done after work) skipping some of the less interesting ones - but they're all numbered still so you can still chart them chronologically.

Inktober 2019 - The Factory

Well another year, another Inktober, similar to last time I eschewed the prompts wanting to follow more of a narrative sequence instead. It's good to be able to share more work more frequently, and I enjoy getting immersed in something. I'd picked up some neat inks and felt it gave things a good sepia feel so decided to do a sort of unspecified period drama.

The first panel

As an exercise I love Inktober, (and have explored it quite a lot through comics before) mainly it's a case of how the regular creation of drawings yields surprising result that lead you to new places. Technically my inking has probably has improved some, but it has increasingly become less about that for me. This year the key thing was story telling, so it was a case of writing/planning something then  kinda pulling a picture book/ story board hat on (although the scenes are all portrait A4)

Some pre=planning prior to October 

The story revolves around a family business, and is a fairly tongue in cheek period drama (with murder, dubious parenting, and villainous cads) roughly in set a world (not necessarily this one) around a 1900s setting. While it's always interesting to see how one can technically and creatively respond to a daily prompt, I really got into exploring the same spaces and characters within a world. 

The time constraints of producing the artwork (the end project was roughly 48 over the month) were a pretty double edged sword in the respect that it was immensely encouraging and positive to fire out sequential artwork so quickly to form a rough draft, but obviously there were certain pacing issues and design elements that couldn't really be as considered as they might have been to keep on schedule. Thar being said, i'd say the net effect was still a positive one, as getting out a first draft seems by far to yield the most benefit - as ever 'finished not perfect' remains my mantra.

A 'happy' family

The family enterprise

Sent away

Garden scheming

The Wright Wrong' un

Personal discovery, I really like inking horrible old dudes

Like last year I was able to combine into a rough comic, which is an obvious plus in rushing through things  and always super satisfying for a month long project. (It was a pretty last minute thing to get it all printed and ready for Dundee Zine Fest...)

Hopefully be getting these along with some other comic projects up on some online stores soon; but since it's all on twitter anyhow so i'll end on a quick run through:

Speed Painting 2018-2019

One of the stand out experiences of last year (2018) was attending THU in Malta, inspiring and terrifying in equal measure. As a visual artist working in video games for 10-11 years its always a very startling reminder of how much there is to continuous personal development, and how it need not be so scary or daunting.

It was a pretty full on week; one of the key take-aways I took from it as an applicable habit, was the notion of daily speed paints. I'm more than familiar with the practice, and I'd always deemed painting to be important to me, yet I hadn't done regular paints in some time - so this past year has been an opportunity to get back into the habit of digital painting, and charting the progress.

A (slightly naff) number 1

Time capped at 30 minutes, some are rubbish, some are surprising. Done in the half hour at the end of the work day Monday to Friday (when possible), these have been a feature of the past year September to September.

Some early scenes from the first 10 or so paintings.

  Mainly it's a combination of created landscapes and scenes, photo studies, and studies from other artists, so jumping around a lot, but largely just little scenes, i'll post these in a rough chronology.

Number 42

Number 46

Number 53

Number 58

Number 81

Number 123

 A few studies from life, other artist's work and photos (mine and others), and movies were in the mix too.

Number 4

Number 21

Number 72

Number 86

Number 88

Number 111

Number 85

Number 107

Number 108

Number 120

Seems pretty obvious to say it's been worthwhile - but when posted up next to each other you can get a better appreciation of any direction of travel and development. I've been able to produce some stuff that's lead onto other pieces, plus really focus on a few elements such a colour and value, and observational painting in general if nothing else. I'd say keeping it to 30 mins is key, and if you hate one or two it's no biggie, but If you can make the habit stick, its a good one. 

(please note as typing this I've taken a break from Inktober and recovery, and I probably averaged 4 a week, but hey! It's still enough to show improvement)  

 (The full sequence of 1 to 136 below.)

(Also just to be clear there are some studies from other artists in the gif mix here too, so props to the originals) 

Update on Updates, (Jeez do people still do the blogger thing anymore??)

It's been very nearly a solid year since my last update here and as I'm starting to look toward 2020 I may be re-evaluating which platforms I use to share and discuss my artwork.

There's many other social media avenues that are good for promoting and sharing work, and considering that my stuff on here tends be a little developmental, sporadic, and not always that finished, it feels like it's neither dev diary, or portfolio. So I'll probably keep it for rambling strange posts like this, while looking into alternatives.

Keep this thing going with the occasional update for now - so some more posts to follow.

Naturally once I've figured this stuff out, I'll be sure to direct folk to where the good stuff's at!

Album cover project 2018

I was fortunate to be asked to produce some album artwork earlier this year; it's always interesting going back into doing illustration briefs after periods of game development, which by it's nature is a collaborative and iterative endeavour and super different.

turned out to be an eye opener, to how 'what I do' works vs what 'I think I do' and was a fantastic reminder that you are only good at the stuff that you both do regularly and or understand the process of. Also *full disclosure* this project was for a friend, and unlike other professional commissions there wasn't quite the typical understanding of the client wanting the artist's existing style, it was more of 'Hey, you're an artist, wanna do my record?' vibe, so in the end I had to do a few stylistic back-flips to find the right solutions'

Final album image (without text)

We got to an image in the end that the client was happy with but it took a fair while longer that I'd expected, since this is a blog instead of a tweet or update I thought I'd go over some of this process...Working outside of my core hours, there was a fairly lengthy development period of a few months for a pretty simple image, trying out a fair few versions on the way. Some things definitely worked, others not so much...

Study

Unlike concept development or character design, you're rendering a real person in their preferred likeness, so naturally you've got to be sensitive and on brand with that. Some reference, and some preferred art styles had been provided, with clear instructions as to which to use as influences - so forgoing the usual thumbnail stage I'd jumped straight into study style paintings. 

Early dev

Perhaps I'd been a tad literal in my interpretations, but my first feedback, could be summarised by, 'yeah you followed my instructions, but can I not look like a total psycho?' it's only belatedly THEN I actually went to the thumbnail stage. 

Thumbnail sketches

This then provided the approved composition, which was going against the brief, and even involved just pasting some of the photo reference into the sketch - so really was an essential reminder of trusting the process of roughing out without rendering.

Jumped into a few rendering style from here, (I was feeling pretty happy with these at this stage)

Still rough, but I was enjoying how this one was working out, now this was actually pretty far off the mark for the client though, (so perhaps another important lesson of not getting too carried away) I'd kinda been hoping to get something signed off and then get finished up and rendered at this stage, but I was directed to another artist's work which was waaaaay more analogue and mixed media based, so involved a bit of reboot.

Some liquid water colour images for digital incorporation.

Again, the nice thing about the mixed media approach is that you can clone and overlay more sections of traditional media in a flexible manner. Also you can definitely go back over cruddy drawings and anatomy bits. 

Anyhow, a wee bit more detail than usual on this post, but when reviewing some of this years projects, I was struck by how much work was underneath the surface on this one.