Bleh...

A close up of a full figure I did a little while ago. The reason I'm posting this is, A. To keep the blog alive, (I've been very quiet here because of commission work), and B. Because I'm having a go at doing this face in oils. I keep banging on about having another go at them, and always end up having to procrastinate for some reason. Well this time I printed it out as a tonal drawing and mounted it on hard-board (US - Masonite), a la Donato Giancola's method using Acrylic Matte Medium to coat it and glue it. I decided to do it this way, as still struggling with oils as a medium, having a tonal 'sketch' to work on might be a help for a novice. It's also a method I used at the Illustration Master Class in Massachusetts last year. Hopefully it'll end up completely different or at least 'changed' in some way. I'll post my 'attempts' in stages as I do them for you point and laugh at... :P

Bristol Comic Expo

A little heads-up for an event I'll have a stall at this coming weekend, of the 12th - 13th May, the Bristol Comic Expo. If you're in the area please pop along! Last year they had Stormtroopers directing traffic...

BRISTOL COMIC EXPO

I shall have prints, The Steampunk Tarot, and a couple of other goodies for sale!

The Steampunk Tarot

Over a year in the works, through some pretty traumatic personal times in my life, and The Steampunk Tarot is now in boxes! 78 cards, plus a reverse image, and not counting the 'redos'! It includes some images already familiar to some, plus lots of new ones.

The text is written by the lovely Barbara Moore and the images by me, with her guidance and supervision throughout. The 'steampunk world' in the cards is mine and Barbara's, and has our own personal 'take' on things. I've kept it pretty Victorian, but it blurs occasionally.

Credits to some Steampunk Photoshop brushes a friend gave me, which were named 'hannarb'. Inspiration from John Singer Sargent (believe it or not), most images were drawn from scratch, apart from a couple for which I used my own reference or occasionally a pose from fashion sites or my huge folder of random imagery.

Anyway, a snapshot photo of the box and some of the cards, and suffice it to say, I never want to see another cog as long as I live!

She Wolf Reads

An interview with me on the rather excellent blog, She Wolf Reads.

I really do babble on at times!!

Thank you Lee.

HERE

Gráinne Ní Mháille

Gráinne Ní Mháille, or Grace O'Malley. Just a personal piece of 'Tudorpunk' shennanigans, women in doublet and hose, swords, cigars and flintlocks! ;) I've taken a few liberties with the costume, mixing up appropriate Elizabethan with a bit of Napoleonic, and she was supposed to have trimmed her hair short, so you could see this as her a little older perhaps...

Gráinne Ní Mháille was a really interesting 'pirate', clan chief and real life heroine of Ireland, who met Elizabeth 1st and generally kicked a lot of bottom in the 16th century! (And if you're wondering how her name was pronounced: GRAWN-ya nee WALL-ya, apparently!)

Photoshop CS2, drawn from scratch based on an old sketch I did for a Character of the Week challenge that I never finished. Painting a chest of coins could be described as either therapeutic or madness inducing...

And a close up. I edited this recently, sometimes looking at something again lets you see what's 'wrong' with it...

'Discount Armageddon': Seanan McGuire

Last year I was asked to produce a cover for Seanan McGuire's new novel 'Discount Armageddon', almost unable to fit it in because of previous commitments, we juggled and managed it. It was lovely to work for Seanan and DAW books, and I had fun with the image!

All in Photoshop CS2, using my two favourite personal brushes, with some help from a custom cloud brush, and one of Charfade's leaf brushes, that I adapted to suit.

Sacre Bleu by Christopher Moore

There was a nice surprise in the post a couple of days ago! Last year Christopher Moore, the author approached me wondering if he might be able to use 'The Absinthe Fairy' on an upcoming book. The thing is it would have to be 'blue' for reasons, self evident! So I made the changes and this is the result! Enormously happy and grateful to Christopher for wanting to use the image! Thank you! Funny how a character design for an on-line challenge has such a journey!

Chris's website is HERE

And you can see the original HERE

Please excuse the awful photographs! :)

Ligeia

She sings her song, a waltz to death,
On ravens wings and spiders breath.

'Ligeia'. I was starting to tweak too much. I was going to go mad on the detail, but sometimes you realise that wont do it any favours...

Rosie Lugosi

A promotional image for the wonderful Rosie Lugosi, cabaret and burlesque host. Her facebook page is HERE!

Burlesque

Edited, rather than a new post: Some more 'burlesque' sketches. The third one had a doodle of a poster in the background, so I did it as an image on its own, and all the performers too! :o)

More Showgirls

Some more sketch burlesque/showgirls. These are just warm-up exercises I do in the morning when I should be doing other things...

Lemmy

Mr Ian Fraser Kilmister, aka: Lemmy of Motorhead and Hawkwind. A sort of caricature of him for an on-line challenge. I did this whilst my internet router was busy dying at the weekend! (Why do they make these things so complicated!!?)

Back Stage Burlesque

Yesterday's sketchiness. A burlesque girl back stage... These are fun so there's more to come...

Rather than make a new post, here's today's as well... Very quick just to loosen up a bit... :)

LSM

Two events in almost as many weeks! Well, I'll be at the Steampunk Market in Leeds UK this coming Saturday 10th March selling prints etc.

THE LEFT BANK
Cardigan Road

Leeds
LS6 1LJ

There'll be lots of stalls and stuff, and a some tea and a scone too!

The Alternative and Burlesque Fair

I shall have a small stall at the Alternative and Burlesque Fair in Manchester this coming Saturday 25th February. Please come along and say hi if you're in the area! There will be plenty of alternative clothing stalls, art and general lovliness, alongside burlesque performers.

@ SOUND CONTROL
OXFORD ROAD
MANCHESTER

Just next to The Salisbury and Oxford Road Station.

Dr Sketchy's

I went to my first Anti Art Class the other day, Dr Sketchy's in Chester. It was fantastic, alongside the excellent Jonny Duddle, we scribbled away at one minute, five minute and fifteen minute poses. Here are three of my attempts, the top two five mins each and the bottom one minute. I can't wait till I'm able to go to another one. Thanks to Heather and the organisers of Dr Sketchy's North Wales.

BTW, I have an 'Art' Facebook page so if you're on there pop along and 'like' if you feel like it.

Brunel

Small update... This was originally a character for a Tarot deck I've recently worked on (more of that some other day), although at the time it wasn't working for me. I came back to it the other day and tweaked it into something at least presentable. Er... Isabelle Kingdom Brunel, as a sort of portrait... ahem...

Comments!

Apologies for not replying to comments. I've discovered a tab I'd ticked by accident and nothing was showing up! I'll have to go back through them all. So I'm sorry, I wasn't ignoring anyone! Thank you to Wiggz for pointing this out. Apparently the blog should have been sending me notifications and it wasn't!

'Real' Rosie

A 'real' version of my cartoon character 'Rosie Poe'. I can remember when Goth 'chicks' were kick arse, and not doe-eyed and fluffy. The internet lies to you! They drink Special Brew, strong cider and think Jason Statham is a big girls blouse! ;o)

'Trilby' and 'Rosalind & Celia'.

First personal images for a while...

Trilby O'Ferrall after George du Maurier's depiction of her in his own novel: 'Trilby', featuring the hypnotist Svengali. Also inspired by images of Dorothy Baird as Trilby. (Trilby gave her name to the hat!)

Du Maurier describes her very specifically, including the huge slippers(!), and drew her himself as he was a well known cartoonist of his time:

"It was the figure of a very tall and fully-developed young female,
clad in the gray overcoat of a French infantry soldier, continued
netherwards by a short striped petticoat, beneath which were visible
her bare white ankles and insteps, and slim, straight, rosy heels,
clean cut and smooth as the back of a razor; her toes lost themselves
in a huge pair of male slippers, which made her drag her feet as she
walked."

For those interested in the process, it's all painted in Photoshop CS2, with a few textures used partly for some of the grain on the wood and to 'distress' the coat a fraction.


And another personal piece, indulging my obsession with Elizabethan clothing: 'Tudorpunk'! An interpretation of Rosalind and Celia, from 'As You Like It', by William Shakespeare. (That's WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, not Edward de Vere). Also a close-up of their faces.

I did not then entreat to have her stay;
It was your pleasure, and your own remorse;
I was too young that time to value her,
But now I know her. If she be a traitor,
Why so am I: we still have slept together,
Rose at an instant, learn'd, play'd, eat together;
And wheresoe'er we went, like Juno's swans,
Still we went coupled and inseparable.

Small Update

Sorry the blog has been so quiet. I'm still finishing off a big deadline. So to keep it alive here's a reworked Ice Princess that I never really finished, an Austin Osman Spare pastiche that was really just a bit of a play and an image I did a bit ago but I don't think I posted here. And The Absinthe Fairy lineart which I think is only on my website. Thank you for continuing to pop in. :o)

Warrior Alice

The current Character of the Week is 'Warrior Alice' (as in Alice in Wonderland), a la Tim Burton. Poor Alice, never has a literary character been subject to so much abuse, on all sorts of levels. One day someone might... just, you know... illustrate the books..! which have enough originality and imagination to inspire anyone surely, without repeatedly 're-inventing' the poor girl! Well, this is my adulteration! Following the brief, of course... Done really quickly as I should have been doing something else... shamelessly inspired by Mr Frazetta. Texture O/L on the rocks, other wise just my usual brushes in Photoshop CS2.

Black Widow

This was another attempt at a superheroine from last year, Black Widow this time. The pose is a bit stiff, so not my favourite. There's some heavy duty 'pouting' going on here...

Yesterday's Lily: Jeffrey Catherine Jones 1944 - 2011

There will probably be a lot of tributes to Jeffrey Catherine Jones, who died today, but artists have this knack of affecting each of us personally - it's what they do - so here's mine.

I first discovered Jeff Jones' (as he was then) work in Heavy Metal magazine in the 80's, 'I'm Age' was the one-page strip that leapt out at me. The simple but beautifully drawn line line work, strangely philosophical and full of metaphor but with a distinct humour appealed to me. The fact all the women were naked helped! His painted compositions and covers managed to turn shadow, hair and clothing into strange dreamlike shapes purely as a compositional element. His shadows were deep and mysterious, and his lighting never gratuitous. And he was the master of simple composition, where so little seemed to be happening but so much was being said, an achievement few artists manage. The women he painted were more allegorical and sensitively drawn than many of the female figures one was prone to seeing in 'fantasy', certainly in the 80's, and sometimes seemed androgynous and imbued with a degree of ambiguity that was refreshing.

I don't know much about Jeffrey Jones' life, why should I? The life of public figures, on even a small level, often gets too confused with what they achieve and what they create. But she wrote an autobiography for her website which can be found HERE. Suffice it to say, bravery takes on many forms, one of those ways is to be true to yourself, probably the hardest kind of all.

Jeffrey Catherine Jones spent a lifetime creating extraordinary art, and that's how I'll remember her. As Frank Frazetta said: "Jeffrey Jones is the greatest living painter."

My favourite 'I'm Age', followed by some scans from an old copy of 'Heavy Metal' I have containing an interview with Jeff Jones.