Junkyard Angels

I saw this image from Antony and the Johnsons' video for 'Thank you for your love' and thought it was spectacular:

So I did my own version with a bit more of a fantasy feel to it (still prefer the original... just can't beat black and white gritty artsy realism):

Drawing practice

Following my last post about how rubbish I am, I've been trying to be a bit more positive this week and learning to love drawing again. I think there's a constant battle between trying to get my work looking slick and professional, and fulfilling a certain brief, but also retaining a level of imagination and identity to my work - both of which are just as important as one another.

So before I embark on any more 'serious projects' I've decided to have a little 'regrowth' time - just drawing for pleasure and hoping to catch up with myself a bit, so I can carry on where I left off. Here are some of the things I've been up to...

Emotions... raw and hidden.

Fan art for Stephen King's 'Kingdom Hospital' (scary scary anteater).



Some dream about a metal warrior man with a spiky chest and a princess who falls tragically in love.



Uhh self therapy... I imagine myself as two characters in a book and work things out that way! Here I think I was fed up with not being able to draw. And I wanted a stripy jumper. And I missed my cat.

She's a real dragon...

Recently come up with a new design for Halu Clothing based on the Welsh dragon, with some influence from my visit to Dr Sketchy's anti-art school on the 1st March.

I did 3 versions. This is the one I like best, as it's possibly more subtle, and actually looks like the Welsh flag at a distance. It could also be more generally appealing.

This is it with text added (both with and without the stripe). Not sure about the wording now. Although having 'welcome to Wales' in a sexy voice coming from said dragon may be somewhat enduring, it doesn't really work so well on a t-shirt. But, hey, Welsh is cool. We need more Welsh stuff. Go to the Halu website to buy the shirt! (Thinking of making it available on other items too, such as mugs and flags... so watch this space as I find a good selling spot..)

(model images below provided courtesy of Dr Sketchys North Wales)




Word of the Week - PULSE

Haha I managed it! :) Now completely up to date with all my W.O.W images. When do we start again guys??

More Black Feathers...

As for something I have been doing (with great difficulty), here is my entry for the 2012 D&AD Student Awards, a cover for Little White Lies based on Black Swan (good film too).

I chose to do a simple portrait in the end as it seemed more akin to the LWL house style. The feathers are real. I hoped the white ones on the right would look like a bird flying away from water, but maybe it needed to be more obvious.. Things like that I think I need to spend more time on. But I'm generally quite happy with it. Just need to be producing more!!

Harsh words

Okay, the reason I haven't updated for a while (and this may be a well needed vent here), is that I seem to be stuck in an unfamiliar void with a lot of dead ends right now, and I'm trying to get back on track.

I think when I started the Masters course the intention was to get out of a rut, stop going round in circles with my art, start opening up to the outside world and having proper time to focus on my drawing as a skill again. Which I felt I was doing for a while. However, now it's as though I've opened up too much, and entered into this 'void.' But I don't seem to have taken my drawing ability with me. At least for the moment, it's gone. I'm on my own. And I want to know why and try to get it back again.

I don't think it's enjoyment so much as feeling I can do a job well that I love about drawing. I could always get exactly what was in my head onto paper. So I felt like I had a good skill there. All I needed to work on was getting the right ideas in my head. I've always thought I want to be doing a job or career that I'm really good at - and that way I'll enjoy it. Enjoyment kind of comes secondary. Which is why it's not 'trying to enjoy my art again' that I think is the issue here - it's feeling that I'm any good at what I'm doing.

I suppose it's easy to say that's because now I've realised what competition I'm up against, I can feel somewhat inferior.. but you have that in every career, that's just a part of life. I don't see other artists as people to fight against, rather people to get inspired by and work with. Besides, art is more about individual assets as opposed to fitting a certain criteria.. often, it's more about the style and personality and confidence behind your artwork rather than how 'good' it is technically (although there can be artists who are praised on their technical merits, I think I realised a while ago I wouldn't be running in that race).. I've always felt I put my personality into my work, and that it reflected that uniqueness, in a way, so it wasn't something I had to worry about 'trying to add in afterwards.' HOWEVER, again, I think several things have made me question this recently, and perhaps around Christmas-time I made the subconscious decision that I was no different from anyone else, and my drawings were just bog-standard drawings. Nothing special about them. Anyone could do what I do. So I had to find something to make them stand out. In a way, I felt good about this, as maybe I had been too arrogant about my artwork before, and assumed I could do things that, maybe in actual fact, I couldn't. HOWEVER, I think this was a tough blow to take, as it kind of suddenly felt like I'd been lying to myself all those years... And maybe now I can't trust my own judgment any more.

Okay so firstly I don't feel I do my job that well any more, which leads to not enjoying it so much. PLUS I now have to find other people to tell me whether something I do is good or not, and other people don't always respond when you need them to or give the kind of critique you're hoping for.. I've always had the attitude that, by all means, take as many people's views into consideration, but if you have a gut feeling about something, it's usually right. I've always worked by intuition - not being influenced by others or by society or by what the media says is 'good' or 'bad.' Not just in art but in life... At the same time, I keep an open mind and I know if I'm doing a piece of work for a client, I want to do my best to please them and do what they want. I also like having an audience, or people I know that I can gear my work towards. But maybe I've been trying to treat everything like a client brief without having 'real' clients... and it's just not working that way. It's like talking to a brick wall you pretend is a person, so you end up second-guessing them anyway. And I'm too bad at playing devil's advocate, I'll always assume they want something different to what I've already drawn. Like if I create an audience, I'll always assume my work has no impact and confuses people.

So I'm never satisfied and I'm always failing when I work like this.

I think maybe it's this 'finding out what I can't do' , as opposed to 'what I CAN do' that is driving me into this void of inability.

I CAN'T draw things that are too obscure, or too imaginative, as audiences won't respond to them. I CAN'T draw things that have already been done as what's the point if you can't say something different. I CAN'T draw colourful things because it looks too happy. I CAN'T draw things that are too morbid or depressing as that's just stuff for suicidal teenagers. I CAN'T do semi-realistic images or portraits because my technical skills aren't up to scratch. I CAN'T do drawings for CD inserts because hardly anyone buys CDs any more, and usually bands find their own artists to do the artwork anyway. I CAN'T do childrens books because I don't 'get' the mentality of modern childrens publishers. I CAN'T draw nice dark fairytales because they are too old-fashioned. I CAN'T draw 'just characters' as I need to draw backgrounds and contexts too. I CAN'T draw heads and shoulders, as I need to draw whole figures too. I CAN'T do drawings that are 'all style and no substance.' I CAN'T embark on epic projects because they take too long and I don't have the funding. I CAN'T do short stories because no-one likes my ideas. I CAN'T plan to do anything between June and August because I must concentrate on the dissertation. I CAN'T let the dissertation rule my life. I CAN'T draw anything that can't be used for either the M.A or my portfolio. I CAN'T draw really dark characters like killers and prostitutes because I have no idea about that side of life, and I'll look really stupid and naive. Equally I CAN'T draw happy-go-lucky, innocent, baby-faced big eyed and bushy tailed characters because THEY DRIVE ME F***ING MAD! I CAN'T do posters for imaginary films, I have to do them for real films. I CAN'T make up imaginary food companies to do packaging for, I should be finding real companies to do things for. I CAN'T do genderless people because the majority go "WTF?? Is it a boy or a girl?" I CAN'T do pictures of gay couples because I'm not gay. I CAN'T do pictures of straight couples because I'm not straight. I CAN'T do pictures of asexuality because people will think I'm making a socio-political statement. I CAN'T do pictures of overt sexuality as people will call me a pervert. I CAN'T draw pre-existing characters because they infringe on copyright. I CAN'T do art that looks like 'fanart' as I'll never get taken seriously as a professional. I CAN'T find new ways of composing pictures because there is a standard I have to work to. I CAN'T spend too much time drawing for pleasure as I need to get moving professionally. I CAN'T spent too much time whining as that's less time doing. I CAN'T do comics because I'm not funny enough. I CAN'T draw purely from my imagination as I need reference from real life. I CAN'T draw purely from real life as I'm dead without my imagination. I CAN'T be dead, even though maybe commercially and professionally it makes perfect sense, and there are too many people in the world anyway, because I need to be alive and inspired in order to DRAW IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And drawing is good.

Ugh. Okay so maybe I need to be thinking now about what I CAN do... Otherwise before I even start a drawing, I'm going through the checklist above to make sure it qualifies! I can't work this way.

I can think of a million reasons why this change has come about but, above all, it feels wrong, so I'm gonna have to find another way of working, and continue learning and progressing, but being wary of getting stuck in places of 'spirals and voids,' as they seem just as bad as each other.

A positive note. Keep going. Don't fall at the first unfamiliar hurdle. Don't let people confuse you. Challenge yourself carefully - don't knock steady supports out of place for the sake of questioning their worth. Trust your intuition. It's the only thing that learns with you, and is with you for your whole life. At the same time, be open to reflecting on outside opinions, and maybe other people can bring opportunities to find out more about what you CAN do, on your own or with help. Don't be ashamed of needing help. Don't be afraid to just take some time out to regenerate. Be alive not dead. Plenty of time to be dead in the future.

Now I know I should be trying to get some work done but if you don't mind I think I'm gonna head down to the underworld and retrieve my soul first. AND I'M BEING BLOODY LOGICAL ABOUT IT TOO!

Maybe catch you later.

H

Eat Me Alice

Okay finally (before I make myself go to sleep at 4 o' clock in the morning) a group of us on the M.A are plotting and scheming for an exhibition on the theme of Alice in Wonderland towards the summer.

So far I have begun work on a series of watercolour postcards, that will give routine glimpses into the general narrative, as well as four or five larger prints of more contemporary character interpretations, like this here shmexy Queen of Hearts:

As a nice surprise, fellow illustrator and Masters student, Phill Evans (see his blog on the right) came up with this sketch for the Eat Me concept...

... which was then adopted by Shane and I to create these alternate versions... yay! :)

MINE

SHANES

Folio Society and The Bloody Chamber 2011

This was a competition entry I worked on over Christmas. The brief was to illustrate 3 stories from the 'Bloody Chamber' fiction collection written by Angela Carter for the chance of winning a commission to illustrate the whole book by the Folio Society.

I hadn't heard of the stories before and took great pleasure in discovering and reading them, as I've always been fond of looking at fairytales and characters from folklore in a different light. It was also inspiring to learn more about the Folio Society and browse past winners and illustrators' work.

The stories we had to illustrate were The Company of Wolves, Puss in Boots, The Bloody Chamber, and we also had to include a rough cover design.

I had a tough job with the Company of Wolves more than the others, possibly with it being my favourite of the three, and also working around pre-conceptions of the 1984 film.

All the stories had specific 'atmospheres' about them - The Bloody Chamber being warmer and richer, like blood and gold, The Company of Wolves being cold like snow and more typically haunting in terms of the wild woods and the false human appearances of the wolves.. Puss in Boots was more comedic and had a French / medieval type feel to it.

It was difficult trying to communicate these very different atmospheres as well as getting a kind of consistency so that the three images worked well together.

In terms of atmospherics, I was happier with these two watercolours I did:



Company of Wolves #1



Bloody Chamber #1



However in the end I found the Red/Black/White colour scheme was one I preferred, along with the less literal translations. These were the final submissions:

The Bloody Chamber

Company of Wolves

Puss in Boots

Cover design

On reflection, I think possibly I got too excited by sourcing the work of other artists towards the end, and Vania Zouravliov at the last minute, which, although may have been positive in some ways, meant that the final images might have lost a more 'personal' element. But I was generally pleased with them on the whole. I think maybe they make better cover pieces than internal illustrations. They are nicely striking and I like the more experimental composition in all of them. Red, white, black and that creamy colour seem to be a colour palette that works well for me, and I think suited the book well, however I think suiting colour to atmosphere is also important, and maybe I lost out on that criteria when I opted for the unified appearance.

Overall a brilliant and worthwhile learning experience, and it was great to work on a competition entry with guidelines and an active 'client' in effect, alongside the opportunity to share ideas with fellow students also undertaking the brief, so definitely something I would like to repeat.

Now eagerly awaiting the announcement of the winner and runners up - http://competitions.houseofillustration.org.uk/folio-2011/ - (although I know it's not me, I am very interested to see what kind of artwork the judges went for in the end).

The next competition I am thinking of entering is the Student D&AD Awards. More on that to follow...

Valentine's Day

It was a couple of days ago but I'm posting these anyway. I'm not big on romantic gestures and Valentines has always been either too commercialised or seemingly obligatory for my liking, but it still often inspires some image making, so here is declaring my everlasting love for Art in two very different interpretations. Please feel free to download and use them if you wish :) ...

'The labour of love is ours to endure' - Crowded House
I think love works best when the heart is built together, not one-sided.
It can be hard work but makes the best reward.
Also a card for asexual steampunk robots from Mars :) .

This is Ingrid Dracula again (from BBC's 'Young Dracula). A card for those who just 'don't get it'... 

Word of the Week - VENUS and APHRODISIAC

Some sad news over recent months. W.O.W has gone into a temporary coma, with words left adrift and uninterpreted :( . Both Dave, Shane and I have paid occasional visits to the hospital wing, but have been a bit pre-occupied with M.A stuff and various competition deadlines since Christmas and it's been annoyingly difficult getting back into the swing of more 'casual' drawing exercises. However things are looking up, and W.O.W is being nursed back to full health as I type.

If you remember we started a blog to archive the entries so far - http://art-of-wow.blogspot.com/ - which was great! But. It was yet another reason not to post on our own blogs, and include additional commentary. It started to become more of an image uploading exercise rather than something more interactive and collaborative. So. We are re-adjusting things a bit and going back to the old arrangement of posting entries on our individual blogs. I will be taking charge of collating the archives - yay :) - so please keep checking the W.O.W blog to see direct comparisons of the images submitted!

Otherwise, I can't emphasize enough the admiration for and pleasure I have of knowing these two fantastic artists, so go check out their blogs too, at http://thisishorrorbusiness.blogspot.com/ (Shane's blog), and http://davehiggins.wordpress.com/ (Dave's blog).

This week I have been determined to get the stray words drawn so we can start afresh when W.O.W wakes up :) . The three words were pretty closely linked, which I think made them quite difficult to approach, but VENUS and APHRODISIAC are as follows, and PULSE is my mission to get done before the end of the week...

Ahh Venus De Milo..... possibly the last idea I had for this word, but it was done nonetheless!

.'My Aphrodisiac is You' by Katie Melua - actually don't like the song but it gave me the inspiration to do something with vampires..

Creeping back... in 2012

Um. Hello. Yes I am still alive. I disappeared for a bit but now I'M BACK.

I'm going to try to get this blog thing going again because it's a good way to keep a running feed of what I'm up to and interested in. I think for a while I lost the point of it altogether. It's weird when you don't know who your 'audience' is or whether you have anybody reading at all. I've opened an account on facebook here, which I think almost killed off the need to post anything here, as it's so much more instantaneous and easier to get a dialogue going. However, it seems a 'done thing' to have a blog as well these days, and I guess it's good for putting more detail into posts, and also maybe writing longer articles and being able to reflect on stuff. So I'm going to keep facebook for the quick updates, and here I will hopefully be looking at putting a bit more commentary into my postings, and give a wider view of my 'life beyond the images' so to speak. Also, there's an archive here that goes back over a year now so it's interesting to see how I've progressed, and keeps me wanting to move forwards.

Onwards and upwards. And sideways if you like...

An update! Young Dracula and Word of the Week

I know I know.. I haven't updated in such a long time.. I'm having to think about re-organising things at the moment and possibly the way I use my blog.

For the moment, though, I am posting a short comic I came up with for last week's Word of the Week, which was TINSEL... I happened to be watching the BBC series 'Young Dracula' at the time and the way The Count segments words had somehow lodged in my brain so I read it as 'Tin Cell......' aaand then the rest kind of followed.

Characters are copyright of the BBC - Count Dracula played by Keith Lee Castle, Ingrid Dracula played by Clare Thomas, and Renfield played by Simon Ludders. It's an AWESOME show! :)

Word of the Week - STUDENT

Wow. Thought this was a really dead word til this idea popped in my head. Wanted to use a similar style as I did with my 'Manuscript' entry, so became immersed in Gris Grimly for inspiration...

Feeling a bit more on track with my drawings again, having had a couple of busy weeks. Now I really want to get focused on a project. I want to at least come out of the M.A with a book of some sorts that I can potentially look to publish, and I basically have a year to get it sorted. Just need to settle on an idea...

And the next Word is THROWS...... THROWS?!!

Word of the Week - FINGER

A week behind again.. just busybusybusy at the moment! But here is my entry for FINGER.... bit of a strange word. Could've gone anywhere but for some reason stumbled upon an old drawing I did of David Sylvian's 'Thoroughly Lost to Logic' and remembered the finger bit stood out to me so I drew it again..

New version:

Old version (probably done a couple of years ago):

I actually prefer the moon background in the old one as it holds the image together more, but I prefer the characters and colours of the new one, so I might re-draw it a third time with better overall composition..... if I am so inclined the next time I pick up a pencil.

Next Word is STUDENT...... and there should be another new one today as well that I'll have to catch up on.

Onto other news, I've been developing my Facebook page, so that it's not just another replica portfolio, but I'm posting all sorts of random stuff I've done over the years and doing a bit of reflecting. Like the picture above, it may help me come up with revisions of good ideas.. or it could just be a bit of fun and something more informal and easy to keep up with.

Ciao for now.  

Word of the Week - VACANCY

That was easier than expected. Welcome to my employment history... in both worlds...

Word of the Week - BARON

Actually I think it was last week's... or the week before... had a lot on recently so a little out of practice but here it is (based on the character Baron Samedi to chime in with Dave and Shane, but throwing in a little Halloween while it's on the horizon - hooray)...

More news, I have two more words to catch up on - VACANCY and FINGER.

Started back on the M.A and I am planning a picture book and a range of greetings cards. More on that later...

Following 'The Cult of Done' at the moment and spending more time doing and less time thinking about doing, so I'm sorry if things are a bit brief here but I'll make sure to keep the blog up to date somehow!

Black Feathers

Well it seems I've become a bit too fond of plain ink sketches and the Creative Phantoms want me to do a bit more in watercolour and 'stuff with texture...' so here are a couple of pieces.

I'm noticing a theme of dark creatures and black feathers in a lot of my artworks. Thinking of doing some further reading into demonology and mythological beasts... Any kind of literature along those lines I would be very interested in illustrating. Or maybe just creating my own.

"In the Sky of Dreams where birds carry sleeping souls this is the Nightmare Bird who destroys them. But Nightmare has an enemy of his own in the beautiful Phoenix, whom he has pursued for hundreds of years and never caught. Some say he is in love with the Phoenix, but thus distracted from his course, so he seeks to kill it and be completely empty and ruthless again. Others say he wants to steal its flame, as it would make him a powerful destructive force. Either way, the Phoenix has always been too fast for him.. though always leaves a trail of feathers behind. Some believe perhaps one day it wants to be caught?"

And this is a Time Fly I made out of a real black feather, some old postcards and various bits and bobs. It looked kind of rubbishy but I was determined to get a good image out of it... so persevered on Photoshop for a few hours and eventually came up with this... Really pleased actually. It's got me thinking about the next project for the M.A (starting again on Monday) and doing some designs for CD inserts.

Word of the Week - VOLUME

Changed my mind at the last minute with this one. Was going to do something steam-punky with measuring the volume of stomach acid in a robot but suddenly preferred the other interpretation of 'volume' and went with a rather more simple illustration...

Good it's got me into using watercolour again. Felt that was needed.

I think the idea is to get W.O.W going again on a regular weekly basis so I'm going to offer the next word, which is BARON. Yay... I think.

Word of the Week - PLAY

Word like this you could spend a lifetime pouring out images. BUT! One thing I've been short of recently is time. So here's the first idea that popped into my head. A Play... with pirates... with bags over their heads... yay!

Head over to Art of WOW to see Mr Dave and Mr Shane's entries. Some very different designs this time! Next word is VOLUME... and all I can think of are dull science lessons... welll maybe that's a start.

Dark Fantasy

Some random sketchings:

Word of the Week - CITY

'City' could have had endless visuals come to mind but to save the indecision I went with my first idea:

A Cartoon Strip

Been inspired by some of Matt Groening's old angst-ridden cartoon strips, 'Life in Hell,' and came up with some of my own characters. Maybe further adventures to come...

Naked Girls and Special Effects

As a new side project for the W.O.W trio, we have decided to illustrate a different music track each month. Music has always been a brilliant source of inspiration so it's an exciting prospect, especially from the point of view that tracks may come up I've never heard before or wouldn't normally think of illustrating. Going to try to also take the 'feel' or aesthetic of the musician into account.

The first challenge was 'Naked Girl Falling Down the Stairs' by The Cramps (great song - luckily didn't mind playing it several times over). I had doodled something to this before but it was stupid. So decided to stick a few Cramps albums on and just absorb. The Duchamp painting 'Nude Descending a Staircase' was also a useful starting point. Then I scribbled this out:

By trying to incorporate Cramps-esque colour schemes and stark contrast into this one I discovered some new effects on Photoshop. Had fun playing about with them on some other pics (below) and had a pleasant surprise.

Think I'm starting to cement my own style and 'identity.' Whereas it was perhaps hinted at before, it is becoming more defined now, possibly just by having the time to really focus on my drawing ability as a skill. Then by finding new ways I can experiment with this style so it doesn't become restrictive, rather a foundation to add stuff to, is really rewarding and makes a lot of difficult decision making pre-M.A seem worthwhile.

Long may it continue............ :) The next music track is 'Beasley Street' by John Cooper Clarke. I'm thinking something complex and doodle-like but we shall see.