MISFITS II

Calling this done I think, thanks for the responses on the last post. Here are indivdual sheets and a few closups as well as a revized main image.

MISFITS

Hi everyone. This is a WIP of an ilo I am working on of the marvelous MISFITS characters from E4. Just for fun, I have really loved the 3 seasons of this show and just wanted to do something with the characters. Feedback welcomed as I intend to spend a bit more time on this one yet.

compressed charcoal

Been playing with compressed charcoal. Heavily inspired by on of my art heroes, the fabulousMr Nathan Fowkes. If you are not familiar with his exquisite work then check it out here: MR FOWKES. I have miles to go but i really progressed a lot with these two... I took progress photos as I worked on one of them and made a little 3 stage gif so you can see what i was doing a little. They are both a bit overworked and i need to work on my simplification a great deal but this will come with practice hopefully. Model is Missy Malone (again :) reffed from the shoot with Miss Rain a few weeks back.

mark making experiments

I am playing with some new techniques. These are all drawn using a hatching technique where I attempt to follow the surface forms. Next up I am going to try a more contemporary illustrative thin line technique...

The two lady heads are both Missy Malone and the chap is Joey a local life model. Apologies for poor photos of these drawing the light was failing and so they are a bit grainy..

Dr Sketchy Nottingham October 2011

I haven't shared any of the fast drawings from the Dr Sketchy Nottingham sessions for a while. We had a blast yesterday and people did some great work. Here are my favourites from the session:

The first two were 10 minute drawings and the 3rd/4th were 5 mins. I was very pleased with the last one.

2 new paintings

Two new ones. One was a birthday present for a friend, its a double portrait of his two marvellous little lads (one of which as been dressed as Superman for a full year now!!-he only responds to the name Superman man now and even dresses as Clark Kent over the top of his Superman suit, brilliant!!)

The second piece is of Aisling Grace Flaherty its been floating around my studio half finished for months but I finally grabbed another session on it and got it finished. I am pleased with the handling on this one. My first piece in the Burlesque series was of Aisling so its nice to get back to her once more. The photo ref is another one of Emmas: Miss Rain Photography.

3 paintings

Here are 3 recent paintings. The landscapes are both wedding presents for friends. Lake bled in Slovenia and St Ives in Cornwall Both are from photos that the respective grooms took. The portrait is my wonderful wife Becky. I started it from life (2 hours) and then finished it in another session from a photo taken during the painting session.

Life painting

We had an all day life session a couple of Sundays ago. It was ace to be able to take my time and not have to paint from life at a manic pace. I am hoping to do more of these all day sessions. Roughly 5 hours painting here.

If you are in the Nottingham area and want to attend Jon's brilliant life session on wednesday evening then pop along to his facebook group. He is a great teacher and an extremely nice guy to boot!

LINKY TO LIFE SESSIONS

A break from watercolours

I was painting in the studio today and decided to photograph some bits and bobs that i had lying around.

I have knocked my watercolours on the head. I keep dabbling across to many different areas and am ending up Jake of all trades, master of nowt! I loved doing them but realistically I have miles to go before I end up with anything decent...

I had a bit of an epiphany and decided that I really ought to try and limit my art activities to concept art and oil paintings as they are my two main joys. So here are my last couple of watercolour bits as well as a few plein air oils.

I am busy doing a film project with some mates and also have a a batch of concept art and some oils in progress but its all pretty long term stuff.

Chin chin my dears. What what!

Sudbury Hall
A seagull
A sunset. The horrid separation of the green fields and the orange sky kills me on this one but I was learning lots about application through Nita Engle's wonderful book.
Lots of Nita Engle texture technique on this but another failure overall
A splendid tree painted en plein air from the grounds at Sudbury Hall. I love a good tree.
Plein air oil from Sudbury. Ran out of time but learned a lot through doing this.
I did this one ages ago but only photographed it today.

stuff!

Its been a while since I updated this thing. I have been super busy with various art stuffs. I just finished a coule of sheets or robot thumbs and decided to upload a few other digital bits and bobs that were gathering computer dust. The first one is reffed from a famous photo of the lovely Brit Eckland. I did it a few months ago as a warm up for doin the burlesque drawings.
I have a few things that are nearing completion so pop back soon!

A lesson learned!

On a recent painting trip it rained and I kept painting anyway. The rain fell on my palette and painting but the oil and water seemed to stay separate. I did my best en plein air piece so far...

I left it alone in the studio to dry and came back a few days later. I was pretty gutted by what I saw. The whole piece was now covered with a network or cracks and all the darks had chalked out. Stupid rain and stupid Jake! The problem was exacerbated by the fact that the board I used had a heavy amount of old (several months dry) paint on it so the old thin over lean rule was broken.

I will be adding a big umbrella to my painting kit asap.

Here is the piece including a detail:

Pennies for paint

My lovely wife has started her own business so we are pretty tight financially now. I need to make my art pay for itself so am selling off my en plein air and burlesque work here:

ORIGINAL ARTWORK FOR SALE

The prices are extremely modest as all I need is enough to buy paint and supports. It might be a fine old investment for you. If you see something on my general blog that you are interested in that is not on my art for sale blog then please shout up. Thanks guys!

Prints For Sale

The incredible Missy Malone is now selling prints of the series of pin-up illustrations I did of her. Pop along to her website & buy a set! I am proud of this series, they are great fun!

BUY PRINTS HERE

Huge thanks to Miss Rain Photography for Emma's wonderful photography. You can see Emmas work here: http://www.missrain.co.uk/

Holiday Watercolours

My lovely wife and I spent last week in Dorset. I managed to do a fair bit of painting with my watercolours. The landscapes are about 50/50 plein air/ from photography.

These first three are separate to the holiday. Fist is a drawing of Millie Dollar, the other two are more gouache paintings of Lud's Church.