I’ve been going through a very dry spell at the moment. My doodles haven’t been forthcoming, so what I thought I’d do was take a trip to the Natural History Museum and do some sketching. Trouble is, I could have drawn everything in that place! I was stood in the blue zone for about 2 hours!
I’ve got a few doodles that I’ve done over the past couple of days that I’m going to play with and see what I can do with them, experiment with rendering techniques etc. No doubt I’ll post the results on here, keep em peeled…
Random doodle done today, no idea who it is, but if you look at it upside down, it kind of looks like a mexican wrestler.
Oily doodle done on the train home from work last week…
I’ve been doing random shit.
Like I said in my last post, I’ve been going back to basics and experimenting with all sorts of materials, experimenting with different styles, and basically doing a load of irrelevant random shit, and to be honest, it’s really working and helping out my process!
I feel that I’ve progressed as I have a clearer understanding of what I need to do. I’ve rediscovered my love of hand drawn typography and speech bubbles, and more surprisingly i’ve rediscovered my love of stripes - remembering my heavily stripy style back in the days of sixth form.
I’ve also found a technique that I really, really like at the moment. I love bold colours, and I think that is why I didn’t really get on with watercolours, the pallet available can be so diluted and recessive, I don’t think they did my illustrations any justice. But what I have found very recently that really makes the colour pop, is creating a base layer of colour with felt tips and working over it with oil pastels and outlining with the same hue but in fine liners to add detail and the thick lines that I love. It combines texture and vivid colour, something I’ve been trying to achieve for a very long time.
I’m also trying to draw from life more, to get a sense of form, colour and light, so I’m using the venetian mask in my living room as a subject to revisit. Today I did a really quick sketch of a guy at lunchtime, and on the train home I tried my hand at turning him into a caricature, it’s not the best, but it has given me an idea to explore, to draw from life more and turn them into doodles. I drew something else from life today, which reminded me of my work in year 5 art class, something I loved doing so much - drawing aztec symbols, and now it’s planted another idea in my head.
Something as simple as drawing from life, something I hadn’t really thought much of in the past, and saw it as fuddy duddy and quite old fashioned has really helped me, even though my fine art skills are a bit rusty, it has inspired me to no end, and I have a clear plan of what I need to move onto next.
And while we’re on the subject of portraitures, Just thought I’d say how much I love the work by by George Dawe. He takes old oil paintings of Russian generals and puts heads of famous people over the top. Pretty damn awesome.
I spent today at the National Portrait Gallery. I’m never normally in to this stuff, but recently I’ve been feeling really inspired, mainly thanks to someone who I work with, through talking to him, I’ve started to appreciate art, the craftsmanship, the lighting, the shading, and the technique.
I’ve hit a bit of a stumbling block with my illustration at the moment, so I’ve just been doing random marks on pages, using a variety of materials and getting back the the basics of art, and this is why I found today relatively inspiring. Above are pictures from the NPG website, and were my highlights of today. Particularly George Hayter’s The House of Commons and the Charles Darwin portrait by John Collier. I love the light, depth, colour, especially the sheer scale and detail in Hayter’s piece, they actually blow my mind.
The contemporary stuff also caught my attention. Portraiture has largely remained the same for hundreds of years, but over the past century, given the massive explosion of various visual styles and graphic art, it has developed so much, one piece contemporary portraiture can differ massively from another. I just find this extreme change in such a small period of time very interesting.
I still suck at writing blogs, but I just felt I had to record this, so there ya go.
(via liamdryden)
This is work by Andrés Ariza. I really like it and further to my last blog post about vector artwork, I thought I could draw inspiration from him. I love the depth and colour used in his illustrations! Despite being vector, Ariza has included alot of detail, using different coloured lines, and shading, which brings the illustrations to life and makes them look less flat. Now maybe the reason why my illustrations look dull when done in vector format, is because I don’t add much detail, both within the initial illustration, and also in the shading and the lines aren’t that distinctive. Maybe I can take this chance to develop my illustrator skills and experiment with different patterns and techniques to add texture to my doodles.
I always hit a crisis when I come to colour my doodles. I’ve found a technique that I really love, which is this textured technique. But then, I also have a thing for vector images, but I cant really get my drawings to work, they just look too… simple. They start to look mundane and boring, run of the mill. I’m also watercolouring in my Moleskine, but even that looks tame. My doodles are more often than not, rather surreal and odd, and I want a style which replicates that, but also want a style which can be transferrable, which is why I like vector images, there’s just this charm about them which can be transferred on all sorts of materials. Maybe that’s it, maybe if I take a step towards screen printing and printing on fabric and other surfaces like that, maybe that’s when vector illustrations come in, because the texture will already be there.
Angry bear. Angry bear who’s been to a party, Angry bear who’s been to a party and had a fight. Photo is from my moleskine, then removed background.
“Hug Wolf” Backgrounds
The episode’s background designers were ghostshrimp and Santino Lascano. The painters were Martin Ansolabehere, Sandra Calleros, and Ron Russell. The show’s art director is Nick Jennings.
Backgrounds are something that I just can’t fathom. They make me panic, I can do the character, that’s totally fine, but when it comes to creating a scene and inserting background elements, I freeze. I guess i’m worried that it will take the focus off the illustration, or that it will become too confined to a space. I like my illustrations to be free, i like the freedom to put them where ever I please.
This is a good shout though, doing the backgrounds separately, and then adding elements. Cunning.
(via keia-was-here)
Inked and water coloured doodle. You will have to forgive the quality, took a photo on my phone, because my extreme lack of scanner. This doodle makes me happy, i’m really chuffed with how it came out, loving the outlines, obviously.
I have a line obsession. Outlines are pretty. Especially nice, thick, clean OUTLINES! I may have a problem, hell, I don’t care!
Ok, so it may be a problem, i’m a bit obsessed with lines, it may be the reason why I love Fairly Odd Parents, Spongebob and Dexters Lab so much. I might watch them today for *cough* research.
Also… I like pie.
I’ve been doing a few 2 minute doodle sketches, literally putting pencil to paper without thinking about anything, and moving it for 2 minutes and seeing the outcome. This is the part where I find out that I have a strange imagination. Look forward to inking them!
And because I like hats, here’s a squirrel in a party hat.
Don’t say I never do anything.
(via happysillythings)
