Violent Violet
Literally just doodling with Procreate ‘lightsabers’ as I call them. It turned out with a pretty good likeness of the cat, so posting it here.
Tag: portrait
Moose never would’ve hurt her
Charlotte Rampling as Velma in Farewell My Lovely.
Hayley Atwell portrait
I’ve used photos as reference, obviously – I don’t have Hayley Atwell on speed dial.
I’ve been finding my portrait drawings not being as good as I want. It’s good to practice things like hands too, but I’m going back to basics with faces and heads. I’ve been studying how favourite artists approach the head. This includes Loomis method – an idealised way used for commercial and comic art. It’s quite magical following this method and seeing pretty accurate 3D heads and faces appear very quickly. Even better, it can be used for real people, to set up a life drawing or portrait sitting quickly and getting a face likeness.
Anyway, I realised I don’t have a systematic way to do portraits and generally just battle with the paint until the face looks OK. Starting fresh, I’m learning about approaches to structure, and in this example, working skin tones. It’s not my best portrait, but I was mainly following a skin tones technique tutorial. I find it useful to practice from well known people as you can find a range of images from different angles to help with understanding the 3D aspects of the face. This is ALWAYS second best to a real life sitting, but good enough for practice.
Christopher Walken
None of us are getting out of here alive, so please stop treating yourself like an afterthought. Eat the delicious food, walk in the sunshine, jump in the ocean. Say the truth you are carrying in your heart like hidden treasure. Be silly, be kind, be weird–there’s no time for anything else.
Might’ve been him, might not. I like to think so, though 🙂
Engineer
A3 Pencil sketch
Granny
Drawn for my granny’s 97th birthday. I hope she likes it.
The Dead Queen of Bohemia
The Dead Queen of Bohemia by Jenni Fagan (The Panopticon, The Sunlight Pilgrims) is out today. I am very excited to say I illustrated the front cover and internal images.
Looks pretty damn cool – Irvine Welsh
The book is an extraordinary collection of poems.
The original brief was to illustrate the cover. Taking inspiration from the book itself, I ended up with a collection of illustrations to fit individual poems.
I think this is one book I will judge by its cover. It looks fabulous.
Ohhh, beautiful cover!! – Hank D
The poems are extremely visceral and I didn’t want to detract or overly influence the reader’s own imagination when reading them. I decided to just draw objects from them, rather than scenes. There are Wonder Woman Converse trainers, Doc Marten boots, a duck with sharp teeth and a dancing skeleton. They are in pencil – for complete honest simplicity. I love the way the publisher has allowed them to look like doodles scribbled into the book.
Nathan Thomas Jones’ illustrations really help to make this come alive. – Ed Crossan, Birlinn Books
I’m not a twitterer, but feeling the love via Jenni Fagan’s twits here:
https://twitter.com/jenni_fagan/status/667302860548272130
The Dead Queen of Bohemia is out today (14 April 2016) and is available in all good bookshops, as well as online at the publishers website:
Birlinn/Polygon
http://www.birlinn.co.uk/Dead-Queen-of-Bohemia-The.html
Blackwell’s
http://bookshop.blackwell.co.uk/jsp/id/The_Dead_Queen_of_Bohemia/9781846973390
Foyle’s
http://www.foyles.co.uk/witem/fiction-poetry/the-dead-queen-of-bohemia-new,jenni-fagan-9781846973390
Waterstone’s
https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-dead-queen-of-bohemia/jenni-fagan/9781846973390
and
Amazon
Also
You can see some photographs of people reading the book here.
Aftershave Dave (nightclub bouncer, Edinburgh)
I was actually sat having a drink next door and tentatively stuck my head in the club next door to find out what the smell was. It was the bouncer and his malodorous spray can. The paint was peeling off the door frame.
The Stynx effect… what is it about men wanting to smell like a urinal blue block?