Dropping down in size next for Melisande the Absinthe Fairy. I really wanted to add bottles and glasses and things to this one to help it read but the scale didn't work. I've had to make do with painting everything green!
I tried to push the pose a little bit further than my original sketch, it's gone some way to help the action read but it could still go further - I'm having trouble letting go of my classical training I think. Struggled a bit with the skin tone with this one too, she was extremely fair and my colour notes had a lot of very cool greys in them which made her look like a corpse against the green background. I think there's just enough warmth in their now, any more and she'd look like a prawn.
26/06/2010
Moving swiftly along, next up is Sophia Disgrace taking a well earned soak in her favourite barrel of toxic waste. This one wandered slightly from the initial idea in that there's now less reference to the whole radioactive theme. It's not necessarily worse off because of it, but I may have another crack at this idea later on to make it more obvious.
One of the things I'm finding now is that the portrait side of what I'm doing doesn't always fit with the illustration side, it's just one more lump in the road to iron out as I travel along my merry way.
06/06/2010
This is the fantastic Juliette October in magicians assistant mode, chasing that troublesome magic bunny. I'm just at the start of a little flurry of paintings and this is the first to be finished. So, just to keep my ego in check, it proved to be another difficult one.
It was always going to be a tricky pose to nail, she is supposed to be peering down into the magic casket but I'm not sure I pushed the pose far enough to help the action read. Also, this is the third time I've had trouble with trying to get my eye-lines working for a downward looking gaze, you'd think I would have learned by now!
The colour on this one was quite a challenge too, Julie has amazing pale skin which needed a toned background to help read well, it took a few goes to get this far, but I like the old sepia photo look that I ended up with. All in all then, not my best result, but I keep trying..
03/05/2010
Do not adjust your monitor! No, I haven't been struck down with colour blindness, this is my first official Zombie Pin-Up! This is also my first work for print which I'm very excited about. She'll be gracing the pages of a student magazine shortly and I'm very grateful for the opportunity.
I finished this one in record time, everything just seemed to come together perfectly and I'm really happy with the result - I feel like a proper pin-up artist now :)
07/04/2010
Crikey! Nearly April and this is my first post since the new year - disgraceful. Actually, I have been working away on various things but I just don't have anything to show for it.
This then is the delightful and talented Minki from the band 50ft Woman (and yes, she really is almost that tall..). This is actually my second take on the tall lady theme but this one is decidedly more glamorous.
Apart from the ridiculous delay between the sitting and getting round to finishing the painting, this one has been fairly smooth sailing. The initial drawing was very nice and the painting has a distinct Fritz Willis feel to it which I'm rather pleased about :)
My only hope now is to try and recover some of my previous momentum and start getting more pictures up for you all to see..
07/01/2010
My first official post of the year :) This one is from my little flurry of activity towards the end of last year, it's just taken me a while to get it finished and processed and put on-line.
I made a list of a few vaguely 'seasonal' ideas, and this one just happened to be picked - even though it wasn't summer. Anyway, this is the lovely Rayna Terror in essential English summer gear. The sitting for this painting went really well and I was left with a very nice drawing and a reasonably accurate colour study - all I had to do was not mess up the painting, simple! I'm very pleased with this one, although the flower in her hair could be better..
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