Portrait of a General

The Final version of the portrait of my friend. This is the low-res version believe it or not, the full resolution is 5000 pixels high as it was destined for print. It took about 40+ hours of work and went through a lot of revisions, I hope you like the finished product.

The Best Job In the World

There's a rather naughty comic strip below the jump, but you probably wouldn't be interested, it's not your kind of thing...

WIP: Portrait 2

To celebrate a little spike in traffic yesterday here is a 100% zoom detail of the jacket ;)

BROTHER!

Another lunchtime speedpaint (a request from Kayvon Darabi-Fard). This one took about 30 minutes

After Shinkawa

A lunchtime speedpaint In honour of Yoji Shinkawa - about 30 minutes.

WIP: Portrait 2

Detail added to the buttons and rope.

Camo Man

A speedpaint from lunchtime, I'm going to work on light and reflection for a few weeks.

WIP: Portrait 2

More colour work and revised collar - taking a lot of reference from the portrait of The Duke of Wellington

WIP: Portrait 2

I worked on the face paying more attention to the reference instead of working from memory, and also started using the CS5 brushes to add some texture. I'm much happier with this now and will move on to the colour.

WIP: Portrait 2

Posting the latest work in progress for my friend's portrait. I had started in colour already, but I went back and re-worked the grayscale painting and I'm going to start the colour again this weekend. It needs a little more work before then though, I am going to darken the right side of the face a little more and increase the contrast on the right side of the body - also lighten the background to lift the silhouette. Will post more soon.

The Big Gaddafi

I saw on this site that Gaddafi had quoted The Dude in his attempt to disuade the coalition forces from commencing airstrikes, and couldn't resist making this one up.

WIP: Portrait 2

More WIP

WIP: Portrait 2

Here's the new sketch for the portrait. Looking like a proper Gaddafi

WIP: Portrait

More WIP with a detail of the head - the hair needs more work, needs to look more greasy. Perhaps a combover.

WIP: Portrait

Ok, so here is another WIP from the portrait, I'm going to try and throw together all kinds of materials and textures in here to give myself a challenge. Here I have used a polished silver breastplate and blocked-out sash, obviously it needs more form, I'm just trying to nail the pallete at the moment. My aim is to really give convincing textures, I really want to nail satin, but I'm not sure I can put that on this kind of character. I think I might take it in another direction and make it more of a faux 19th century portrait.

Also the right upper arm (his right) is too long.

WIP: Portrait

This is basically same as the last WIP but with the sketch on top, I don't know how most of you do it, but I often prefer to block it out before sketching. I guess that's kind of backwards. I'm trying to draw the fine line between Fascist and Pirate here, it turns out that line is mostly in the choice of collar and cuffs (no innuendo intended).

WIP: Portrait

This is a work in progress of a portrait I'm doing on commission for a friend. Initially I did a couple of pencil sketches to work out the costume, then did some small thumbnail sketches on photoshop to get the pose and composition and here I went straight into blocking it out in grayscale. The first time I did this I actually started on the background first to get the colour and lighting right, I even spent about an hour doing the flag in the background using a lot of ciaroscuro - but unfortunately I managed to accidentally pull the plug on the mac before saving it. Boo.

As for the proportions it is quite chariacatured (sp?) with big hands and limbs, but I want the lighting and colouring to be fairly realistic. I will talk about the colour and style more in later posts.

Barry's Ices - Storyboards I

So here is my first post of stuff from the present day - I would love to say that I will be posting 27 content-rich posts every month, but that won't be happening. This is work that I did for Barry's Ices, an amazing short film that I'm working on which you will shortly be seeing on every '1000 things to do before you die' list compiled between here and Patagonia for the next millenia.

First up: some storyboard panels done with felt tips and that.

This one has had the contrast played with on photoshop, hence it being darker than the other one.












The credit for this composition should go to JD (who will get a link once I find out what his blog address is), but I did the pretty picture so there.

Retroactive - Naked People V

This is a selection of life drawing which I handed in for my assessment in spring/summer 2009.

Retroactive - The Long Way

The Long Way is the working title for a short film that I pitched in summer 2009. The film is based on the journals of a life-long sailor and circumnavigator. I would love to be able to tell you more about it, but I'm a little nervous of the idea being stolen. I have an animatic and some basic character designs, at the moment the running time is 2:30. I will probably set up a password protected blog just for the film. In the meantime, here is a teaser poster.