London Artwork

Ok so a little divergence from the Singapore Project, some artwork. Now that my exams are finished and it's getting to the end of term, I have been using my location to explore some parts of London I haven't really seen much of. On Tuesday, as it was so nice I decided to look around Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens.

While there I did this watercolour of a small shelter in Kensington Gardens. A6, took about 1 hour.

After that I went to see Russel Howard's Good News being recorded and while I waited for some friends I did this quick ink sketch just outside Hammersmith Station.

Brunel Watercolours

Yesterday started as a very stressful day, after having to stay up till 5:30 to get a lab report done, I then had to get up at 8 to finish the report and get to the days lectures. So suffice to say at the end of the day I wanted a way to unwind so, see how it was a glorious day I decided to head out on a walk around campus with some equipment to see if I could find a spot for some watercolours. Sure enough I found a nice spot and, just as the sun was beginning to set, spent an hour doing these two paintings.

Two postcard size studies of part of Brunel University. I must say I really enjoyed doing both of these. I was able to fully relax for the first time in ages, sitting in an idyllic spot under a willow beside the trickling stream that runs through the campus as the sun slowly set, it was bliss. The only downside I guess is that I had to stop early as it got quite cold and I had to go to archery, but still it was very nice.

Stealth Sci-Fi Fighter

This is a Hi Tech Sci-Fi sort of Stealth Fighter Plane Ship thingy. It was done through following one of the tutorials from Doug Chiang's Book Mechanika which I have touched upon before. 

 The first and largest obstacle I had with this was getting the initial design right. As with all this sort of work, if the design is no good, then no amount of rendering or presentation will turn it into a good design so getting that right was key. The sketches above are a testament to that with what I thought were not quite good enough designs. Another aspect I had a problem with was getting the perspective right with the wings and multiple layers.

Eventually I settled on this sketch because, although I knew the perspective was slightly off at the front, I knew I could edit it in photoshop, which I did in the image to the left.

Once In photoshop I replaced the sketch with black lines to complete the design and create a clean and easy to work with outline. I then used red lines to identify the areas that would be in shadow.

Using the fill bucket I added in the preliminary shadows. I then used gradients to add the lighting effects to the rest of the ship.

Next the original lines were duplicated and inverted adding detail to the darkest sections. Then I used an overlay layer to add the colour.

Finally I added some more highlights and shadows with the gradient and brush tools, before creating a shadow and backdrop to ground the design and a mechanic/pilot for scale.

Outdoor Sketch

Today was a really nice day, so I decided to spend some time just sitting outside, doing a bit of reading (By Design, Ralph Caplan- very good design read) and doing this sketch. A nice ending to a quite intense week.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas! Yeah OK I know it is late but the days up to Christmas were filled with shops, wrapping and sellotape, and sorry but I'm not going to be doing this on Christmas Day and yesterday I was out so today then. I wanted to do a wintry scene so I settled on this view over some snowy mountains with the stag (or reindeer if you want) standing on this outcrop. It was fun, I got to use some different and more unusual brushes in photoshop, and it was interesting doing the deer. Oh and I may have been somewhat inspired by The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which I got on Christmas and I must say is brilliant!

 These below show different stages of the painting, which are also the total number of layers I used for this, the last layer being the deer.

So hope you all had a merry Christmas, and hopefully I will get another post before new years so so-long for now.

Sci-Fi Space Ship

Today I had a free day and other than meeting a friend from school whi had come up for an interview, nothing really happened, so lots of work then...well not really. Today I basically had, as far as the work had to go, a creative block. I was still able to get some maths and electronics done, so not a day wasted, but not a great day either. So in an attempt to get some creativity back into me I decided to do something I have not done in a while and embrace creativity wholely, abandoning reality. To make something completely imaginative.

So this is the resulting design (please click for a larger view it looks much better), a sci-fi sort space ship/plane. I chose to do it following the advice of the artist Doug Chiang, an exceptional concept designer whose book Mechanika I own. Doug Chiang is a multi award winning designer (2 BAFTAs and an Oscar) who has designed for movies such as Star Wars Episode I (as lead designer), Episode II, War of the Worlds, Terminator 2 and Forrest Gump. I would recommned his book Mechanika to any designer as it features excellent tips on using markers and photoshop and creating good design.

A Taster, Zebra and No. 80,676,055,781

Ok so before some more serious stuff, I just wanted to show this little gem I found while walking into Uxbridge. Sprayed onto a traffic bollard, a small zebra. It must have been done with a stencil, but it is just a small example of how graffiti can be fun and just add that extra little bit of cheer in what could have been a gloomy day, luckily it wasn't, but it just shows what graffiti should and could be like, small, unobtrusive and fun.

Anyway, I've been doing more work this weekend, working on my project for Graphic Communication, and although I don't want to spoil too much, here is a little taster of the direction I have decided to take for this assignment.

And finally, an interesting little piece of information I learnt is that statistically, I am the 

80,676,055,781th 

person to be born....ever. The 5,592,912,904 person alive at the time.I learnt this from a UN website called 7 billion and me, which is counting down the number of births until the total reaches 7 billion, which is going to be very soon, because as of writing this it is already on 6,999,887,011. You can type some basic demographic information into this website and find out a load of statistically based fact, such as that for me 2,539,378,636 people have been born since me, 1,032,405,962 have died and that I share a birthday with 366,682 other people worldwide, grrrr. So that's quite neat. Oh and just to let you know, since typing the current total, it has gone up by over 700 more people!

Knight Poster

This is a large digital painting I made in photoshop. I may end up getting this printed off as an A2 poster. Below it are some variations on it.

That is all thanks.

Perspective...

For my A2 art exam the title was exploration and discovery and I considered painting up the image below, but decided not to. The image is a combination of a photograph of earth and a quote from the astronomer Carl Sagan. The picture itself is special as it is the furthest photo of earth ever taken, taken by the last action of the Voyager 1 space probe as it left our solar system looking back towards the sun (the coloured lines are lens flare from the sun. The picture is named the Small Blue Dot, which is a quote from Sagan, the same text where the quote I have used is from. So yeah, perspective.

Fantasy Tolkien Duel Watercolour

Click on the images for higher resolutions

So this is one of the two promised large water colours. I am very pleased with how this has come out and has ended up.

The subject of the painting is a scene from one of the lesser known works of Tolkien, The Silmarillion. This covers the history before what is seen in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The scene is a confrontatio between the High King of the Elves, Fingolfin, and the Valar(god) of Darkness, Morgoth (Sauron was his lieutenant). So quite epic stuff. The text follows:

"Thus he came to Angband's gates, and he sounded his horn, and smote once more upon the brazen doors, and challenged Morgoth to come forth in open combat. And Morgoth came....

...And he issued forth in clad in black armour; and he stood before the King like a tower, iron-crowned, and his vast shield, sable unblazoned, cast a shadow over him like a stormcloud. But Fingolfin gleamed beneath it as a star; for his mail was overlaid with silver, and his blue shield was set with crystals; and he drew his sword Ringil, that glittered like ice.

 Then Morgoth hurled aloft Grond, the Hammer of the Underworld, and swung it down like a bolt of thunder. But Fingolfin sprang aside, and Grond rent a mighty pit in the earth, whence smoke and fire darted. Many times Morgoth essayed to smite him, each time Fingolfin leaped away, as lightning shoots from under a dark cloud; and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds, and seven times Morgoth gave a cry of anguish, whereat the hosts of Angband fell upon their faces with dismay, and the cries echoed in the Northlands.

   But at the last the King grew weary, and Morgoth bore down his shield upon him. Thrice he was crushed to his knees, and thrice arose again and bore up his broken shield and stricken helm. But the earth was all rent and pitted about him, and he stumbled and fell backward before the feet of Morgoth; and Morgoth set his left foot upon his neck, and the weight of it was like a fallen hill. Yet with his last and desperate stroke Fingolfin hewed the foot with Ringil, and the blood gushed forth black and smoking and filled the pits of Grond.

   Thus died Fingolfin, High King of the Noldor, most proud and valiant of the Elven-king of old"

So good dark climactic stuff. Anyway the working pictures for this are below if you are interested, thanks.

 

Sketch for Digital Painting

This is a quick sketch I did to help with a large scale digital painting I am currently doing and I'll show you when its finished.

Poster, Stone Carving and Broken Mirror

So just a few random things today, while I work on a couple of larger projects which I will show when they are done so you will have to wait. Anyways onwards.

This is a little poster idea I came up with in bed when I wasn't able to sleep. I realised Brunel the university I am going to, and design, the course I am doing, have the same number of letters. So I came up with this idea for a poster using design related words and It has worked well.

This is a merge of a photo I took in Wales and have then recoloured in Photoshop, and the Viking version of my name from  previous.

And finally, when getting up this morning my brother managed to break his mirror. I then decided to piece his mirror back together jigsaw style. Broken glass in a mirror or pane have always interested me, so I then took some photos of it.

Gouache Desert Video

So today I tried two new things. The first is a type of paint called Gouache (pronounced gwash like squash). It creates a more opaque watercolour effect somewhat like acrylic but not as thick. Below is the painting I did, a spontaneous painting of a western style Mexican village at night in the desert. For my first attempt with these paints I am very pleased.

The second new thing I decided to do was to film me doing the painting. This was quite tricky as I had to improvise a stand out of a desk lamp and duct tape, but although it is somewhat out of focus, I think it went quite well. To save you from the tedium of watching the full 15mins or so, I have sped it up to just 2 mins (I don't paint as fast as the video may suggest). I also put it to some themed music to make it slightly less dull. Hope you enjoy, I hope to do more in the future.

Fantasy Watercolour Stage 1

So today I started work on the two watercolours I intend to do. I have not posted anything for the last few days for a couple of reasons as I will explain, the most inconsequential of which was that I was shopping all day yesterday, but I was able to prepare the paper for work so not all was lost. Anyway onto the actual artwork.

 

These two above are attempts at the two watercolours. However these were done on only heavy cartridge paper rather than gummed watercolour paper. This meant that when applying the water and the paint, the paper start falling apart, not good. However I did not have any watercolour paper so I persevered.

Until I found that I did have some from my AS. So I prepared two sheets of that to start afresh on. The preparation consists of soaking the sheets in water for as long as possible, before fixing them to a board using masking tape and leaving them to dry out completely. What this does is it first of all swells the paper while it soaks, and then once it is fixed and it starts drying it stretches the paper. This ensures that when you start applying the water and paint, the paper will not curl or create bumps while drying. Anyway so once that was done I applied the first paint in a wash layer which you can see below.

This is a very simple layer simply to get some colour on the page to cover the white (but it will make a bit of a comeback later). So all is going well so far, though still lots to go.