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| Thinking about it.... |
Hello, here are the details of the paintings on head charge: thoughts on design, media, approach and content. I hope you liked the paintings on show and would like to know more about the thinking which went into each, so here it is.... |
This piece is an amalgam of single line artworks. Drawn originally on cartridge paper with a fineliner technical pen in early 2001, "The face outside the window pane" was embellished through work in the image editor "the Gimp". I took each image and slightly resized them, overlaying one on top of the other to achieve a blurred image, I felt this enhanced the original picture, lending more credence to the "...outside the window pane " tagline. This fairly spooky effect was further improved by altering the colour values from a deep black [if there is such a thing!] to a slightly paler grey. gradiated by altering the opacity of each layer slightly. All in all I was pleased with the outcome, and felt I had updated this picture successfully, the detail in the original pen work illuminated by the changing complexity of the varios sized line work.
With this work I drew the ultimate collection of surreal elements on top of someone's head and left it at that. I hope with " Sanctuary woman colour " that the detail is interesting, yet not as involved as some of my other examples....
Here the colour was applied digitally to a simple line drawing. I kept the style unfussy for this one, and tried to bring in "fun" features...comic book style. inspiration? just applying as many comedy things as possible with a bit of distortion of forms for good measure.
A bit more hand colouring here, this time with trusty old felt tip markers on an inked original done in 2001.The tightly worked lines were inspired by trying to get as much detail into the "portrait" as possible.[ pictures within pictures ].The other elements such as the light bulb [lower right] were clip art with the layer opacity turned to "dodge". This, and the foreground, were the only digital elements present.
| ...and actually finishing it! | ||
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 This picture is another "brought up to date" digitally. The various elements present, [alien heads, ice-cream faces and leprachaun] were all drawn individually at seperate times, unrelated when I initially committed them to paper. The large alien head and his co-horts were all drawn with technical pen and coloured pencils, as was the "ice-cream" face[ behind the triangle frame]. The alien head was then duplicated and repeated in a line, [removing the need to draw it every time!] and the urban background was added....a frame from an animation I had previously created. That was it as far as digital "trickery" went, really just used to compose the different pieces, all of whom look much better in company...
This artwork " Green and pleasant land " was drawn more recently, at the end of last year [2008] and owes its' inspiration to a scene from how the future might have happened if we still had a Victorian outlook [ perish the thought ]. I just imagined an impossible dichotomy of a land with industry and greenery side by side. [Wasn't that what "the workshop of the world" was all about?].Anyhow, the colouring was done digitally in the gimp and the photograph of the sky was added below the main image. Remember, to see the picture in all its' glory visit the head charge site.
Another semi oldie. This was drawn in my ever present technical pen style but was coloured with ink washes, building up the colour randomly in small areas to produce the psychedelic effect. Popping up are the alien head and ice-cream interlopers, which have drop shadows applied, again in the gimp. The detailed nature of the pen work is brought to life by the colour washes I think.
The coloured pencil work of the main image stands against the coloured background which is a Windows sample photograph altered to a line drawing. I liked the desert motif this presented and felt a line of snaking heads, reminiscent of a sand snake, coming towards the viewer was the way to go. Each and everyone of the sand disciples is a carbon copy of his mates.
Just for a change I left this black and white and dropped in the starry sky where the blank paper was. Compare this to the coloured version above. The line here is bolder and more defined and is hardly a shade removed from the original pen drawing. I like this version best, as I feel it stands up without too much embellishment.
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![sanctuary[she sells...]](drawing011.jpg)
" The dream goes on " was the original marriage of these elements seen in the picture above, I felt the tramp character and his "urban" setting needed a more fantasticated element, so I duly added our old friend the "ice-cream man" by dropping him in on a new layer and duplicating and resizing each of his pals. The very original drawing of mr whippy goes back to 2001, and as detailed above was done in tech pen and coloured pencil [with a lot of overlaying colour to get some "depth"].I have re-used this picture element on the other odd occasion. [ you might have guessed! ].
