2013 Island Dreams

A rare occasion that I worked for charity. All of the pieces shown below were sent off for free, I think to hospitals and I hope some of them made their way into the hands of folks who enjoyed them.

Working under the tuition of the wonderful Marty Kuklinski whose name I will likely always pronounce incorrectly I made eight ACEOs and two larger 5 x 7 postcards.

I tried to work towards fantasy and maybe make something a little different for this project. The far right image in the above four was my idea of a floating island, I got hooked on perspective, successful or not I am glad I made some very unique pieces.

For the above four I went back somewhat to create animal themed cards but I still wasn't done with fantasy. Even though I used a reference picture for that eye I must say it was the most challenging piece to try and finish for this project.

For the two larger postcards (5 x 7") I decided I wanted to really step out and make something fresh.

I got a reference picture to get the depth of the valley in this one above, the dragon was straight out of my head but I liked the idea of ‘from where I sit,’ as in what a grand creature might see from such a perspective. I was really happy with this until I added fixative to seal it. The fixative was old and came out brown >.< After so many hours working to deadline I literally cried. Fountains of tears that the fix would ruin all my efforts. A short sleep later and I realised that hey maybe it was a happy accident – the brown fix actually gave the work an old timey postcard look I could have never predicted and it wasn’t bad at all.

I still cry when artwork goes wrong and yes that fixative went straight into the bin.

‘Wish You Weren’t Here,’ was created primarily because the theme of island dreams was lending itself to a lot of scantily clad big busted women in almost-not-there bikinis. I guess I thought that I should break that stereotype by drawing a skinny naked guy – of course the character I have that best fitted that was my guy Kale. This character I designed with very little clothing to begin with save a pair of torn jeans and sometimes a close fitting T-Shirt. He’s a favourite of mine to draw so it wasn’t too much of a stretch to make him naked. I usually draw figures before clothes when I work so naked was easier.

One big problem I had with this image was the water and sky and not the character. I had to ask some online friends what I was doing wrong with the water and got some great tips on how to render reflections. I think I made the colours too bold to begin with to accurately correct it but hey it’s a fantasy image and I think it turned out well.

The title of the piece reflects the character of Kale Arius, he’s a touch left of the traffic lights, with sociopath tendencies at best and is a murderer at worst so I imagine the context of ‘wish you weren’t here’ in a way that suggests he might have just murdered the ship’s crew and thrown them overboard xD

I had a lot of fun doing this and it helped me stretch my wings in ways I didn't know they could be stretched! Always a good thing to step out of the comfort zone as an artist even in little ways.

Hope you all enjoyed this entry and see you next time!

Marty runs the same event for charity every year which you can find here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/220658387956154/ It is a public group packed full of talented artists willing to contribute and the theme changes every year. This was the only year I took part though I have been watching the event and all the wonderful things folks are making for it. ^_^

 

2013 Oil Paintings

A LOT of paintings for me this year! Quite a nice steady flow of them.

I managed to create fourteen oil paintings in total in 2013 so yes this will be a fairly long entry. Feel free to skip past the text and just look at the pictures if it pleases you :)

The first two I made were created early on in January and March while the rest were completed later in the year.

Sunlit Woods – 8 x 10” Oil on stretched canvas.

First painting made in January this year - the above was created on a gifted canvas that already had yellow and copper streaks painted on it as a background when I received it. Since the background was set I tried to imagine what kind of subject would sit well on top. I rarely paint impressionistic landscapes but decided to let the brush strokes speak for me; bending loose trees, plant dots and dappled shadows seemed fitting.

It turned into an interested piece that has an iridescent sheen in all the right places when the light hits it. Of course it is nigh impossible to scan or capture iridescent reflections in a photograph. Still it was a good experiment that got me out of my comfort zone.

Red Lion Fish - 8 x 10” Oil on cradle board

Call this experiment number two for this year. Not very much iridescent so this one doesn’t shimmer in any light but instead is translucence in places. I created the blue background first using thin layers of oil to allow some of the wood grain to show through and create natural patterning. Painting the fish turned out to be a rather delicate procedure of layering very thin washes. Now I work flat and in thin layers to begin with so trying to make those layers even thinner to make translucency was no easy task! Still I think I achieved my goal in capturing the ghost-like appearance of a see-through fish.

Cherry Blossom -  8 x 10” Oil on stretched canvas.

The above was an unusual and specific commission that took longer than I expected. I walked the buyer through every stage of the painting to ask what they wanted. They sent me several random photographs of blossom and we outsourced what type of bench should be presented. I sent the composition before paint was applied and then kept them up to date until we reached a point we were both happy with. It certainly taught me a few things! I think it turned out rather lovely even though this isn’t an atypical subject for me to paint. The best news is that it was a gift for someone other than my client and the report back was that the new owner loved it :D

Young Snow Leopard – 16 x 18” Oil on stretched canvas

Well the beauty above spent many years as a WIP waiting in the wings. I started this painting in 2011 and by 2013 I pulled the confidence to finish. Yes, that’s quite a long time to leave a piece sitting unfinished, it even travelled all the way from England to Canada in its raw unfinished state! Still it ended up being a great finish. I guess good things are worth waiting for after all.
As always there are many things I want to change but I was so relieved I managed to get it down and that the cool colour balance I planned from the start actually worked!
I put the green plant on last and I recall I was so afraid I might mess up those slender lines and have to try and fix the background my hand was shaking!! Painted those plant lines about three times to try and shade them and phew what a relief I didn’t have to correct any shaky hand errors. ^_^

For comparison below is a blurry photograph of the 2011 version I worked into for those of you who like WIPs (stop giggling at the pun you!!)

Next up in order of creation date we have a piece I titled Courage.

Courage – 12 x 9” Oil on canvas board

The above is one piece of art I love and hate simultaneously. If 2013 taught me anything it is that I really dislike working on canvas boards and that purple is the worst colour to try and mix from your basic set of colours. I painted the rocks here with relative ease but that pretty flower took more than a few re-paintings and I ended up having to borrow a purple from someone else because I just couldn’t get the shade I wanted from mixing.
I have since purchased Dioxazine purple for my paint set and even named a purple-haired character Dioxa in honour of my struggle.

On the plus my persistence paid off since many people seem to really enjoy this image and I was personally pleased with the final too. This painting has also served me well in various print formats so I’d call that a big win :)

Below is another example of me not quite learning my lesson when it comes to canvas boards and flowers.

Valentines in October – 12 x 9” Oil on canvas board.

This was a hugely experimental piece for me and aptly named because I literally painted the dead flowers that my husband gave me in February in October. I seem to have a thing for dead flowers, I really love the way they curl up and preserve. Those interesting shapes were the reason I kept the flowers for so long and why I wanted to try and paint them. Adding my new knowledge of translucency, I thought I could apply it to the glass vase and the faded flowers.

As usual I made the background first and was enamored with the idea of the dripping paint look. Sadly, I forgot to realise than chucking a whole lot of water onto something that is essentially cardboard beneath the canvas might have a negative outcome. So yes the board warped under the amount of water I used to get the stressed drippy background – gah!
Some acid free paper (to protect the art) a heavy book and a wet cloth are required to unwarp it.

I was aiming for delicate again but different and decided to have the vase ‘float’ rather than have a hard surface for it to sit on. I also wanted to aim for a watercolour look.
As read I probably should have known better, last time I tried to paint dead daffodils I ended up with two perspectives in one image – now that is a feat I couldn’t do again if I tried!

Moving onward then, I had several of those canvas boards left that I wanted to put to use.

A glutton for punishment maybe but I had also been working on some ACEOs (small art cards 2.5 x 3.5” for those that don’t know – and yes that will be my next blog post shhh don’t tell) based on a starlight theme. Since I enjoyed doing the smaller set of star-scapes I decided to create larger versions.

Orion – 9 x 12” Oil on canvas board

Orion will always be my favourite go-to choice of constellation. It reminds me of home because in a soft romantic Disney-esq type of storytelling ‘I can always look up and know that my friends and family can see the same constellation, no matter how far apart we might be.’

It’s a very easily recognised constellation that also happened to be the one I could see from my bedroom window as a child.

Well of course I had to attempt this in oils. I used a wet-on-wet technique for the darker foreground and again tried to let my brushes make the marks of the silhouetted trees.

The next two I will put in tandem follow this theme of star-scapes.

 

Northern Starlight – 9 x 12” Oil on canvas board

I love the idea of the aurora and made a pretty good smaller piece based on this.

I don’t personally think the above painting captured what I wanted to show but I’m glad I tried and it also shows my love of reflections. Reflections or mirrors in still water is a theme I am still working on. Speaking of reflections in still water:

Another Starry Night – 12 x 9” Oil on canvas board

The third in this set was just that; a mirror of sky and silhouette.

After such a foray into landscapes and sky I decided I should do a little fantasy.

Serv Eye – 6 x 6” Oil on cradle board

The above piece sold – woo – hoo! It is named ‘Serv Eye’ because this is one breed of dragon in….yeah you guessed it, my story. I based this painting on earlier drawings of one dragon in particular. This wonderful and huge dragon was named Fao. Write his name backwards and be amazed at my literary skills when it comes to names :P

Back again then to more ‘serious’ paintings I give you my second large piece of the year.

First Autumn – 16 x 20” Oil on stretched canvas

This was difficult in terms of pose and colour. It’s much easier to work in one colour theme and much harder trying to make those complimentary shades match. Also pointillism isn’t a technique I was familiar with so it took me a long time to try and ‘pointillism’ the grass backdrop with my brush.

A much smaller piece below that involved ink and paint.

Ivory – 3 x 4” Oil and ink on cradle board

I’d call this one a study. It also involves those reflections I seem to be inclined toward.

I stained the wood block using ink and then added the painted skull and candles. It was interesting to see how the two mediums worked together. Also without sounding too morbid I really enjoy sketching/painting animal skulls.

Last two oils for this year were both animals.

Autumn Wolf – 10 x 8” Oil on stretched canvas

 This was great because I got to throw ‘all the colours’ at the backdrop and then make them muddy. I also very much enjoyed making a different type of grey for those rocks. I should have written down the combination I used to make that one.

Tiger Eye – 8 x 6” Oil on stretched canvas

The above tiger eye is another piece that found itself a new home – hooray!

The best part about this one for me was the unusual cropping. Seems I really do like cutting my pieces in odd ways. I guess if it works then don’t knock it!

Well that's all for this round. Catch you on the next post ^_^

2012 Paintings

Well I pulled my thumb out and got to painting again this year so I have quite a few to showcase! Seven paintings if I am to be accurate but considering how many other pieces of art I made in 2012, seven is a fairly impressive amount to add onto my workload. I guess I can say with certainty that I found my passion again during this year.

Starting then with….

Cat’s Eyes  - 8 x 10” Oil on stretched canvas

Not the first cat eyes or black surface I have worked on but the first fully black canvas I tested out. I called it complete but am still not overly happy with the final piece. I may see if I can rework this at some point or create a newer version with more detail.

The Watcher – 8 x 8” Oil on cradle board

I always enjoy painting on wood more than I do on canvas and I feel like this piece was quite successful. I was happy with the colour balance and amount of intensity I managed to capture in a singular eye.

Snow Leopard - 8 x 10” Oil on canvas board

I always seem to struggle the most with canvas boards, they are a little too slippery for my liking. The challenge here was to create something mostly made of white since I find white/grey tricky. I wasn’t displeased with the outcome though I decided that next time I set myself the challenge of painting in whites I should use a surface I am more comfortable with!

Morning Harvest - 8 x 10” Oil on canvas board

I think I got a touch obsessed with spider webs this year since I made three paintings including their delicate formations. It’s a shame my copies of the images don’t show the iridescent golds I put on the webbing. Interestingly all three spider web paintings sold. It may have taken a few years but they all found new homes – hooray! :D

For the above Morning Harvest I was aiming to create the tingling sensation of a frosty morning. I chose a limited palette of softer browns to evoke a misty dawn look that I thought would highlight the silhouetted corn and golden threads of broken web.

Autumn Glow - 6 x 6” Oil on cradle board

For this one I wanted to try warmer colours and to capture that hazy glowing feel that autumn sunsets create.

Iron Web - 3 x 4” Oil on cradle board

Back to colder tones for this little piece; I was hoping to evoke a frosty morning again and juxtapose the soft webbing against the hard metal spiral.

Supper - 6 x8” Oil on cradle board

I really love this one because the subject challenged me and also allowed me to use some iridescent colours I wanted to test. I love the way that wooden cradle boards absorb my thin layers of paint and allow me the option to keep some of the wood grain patterning on show. Of course I also like working in dark colours and on creepy subjects as much as the cute ones so this was a win for me ^_^

Well that’s all for this blog post, hope you enjoyed it as always and catch you next time :)

Book Sketches 2009/2010 - (part 4) - Layouts/Backgrounds

Ok, last post to do with the book, I promise, for real this time, honest it’ll be at least two whole posts until I mention it again.

This one is all about the layouts I created way back when, so it will be art heavy, dealing with my initial concepts of what the places in this tale might look like. Many of these are largely unfinished, they vary in quality and handling, some have suffered bleed through or dreaded tea spillages over the years. The ideas are still sound even if tea drenched intentionally or otherwise so let’s take a walk around.

First up, gates to Draygun city: those are meant to be huge stone dragons. I imagine these gates to be colossal but like most things on the isle of Niam rather broken and rundown.

A rough layout of the city centre within Draygun, showing the glass spire that gives this blog its name.

So this one is a little confusing due to my choice of warped perspective; to explain, there are tunnels running beneath the houses of Draygun city, these are primarily lit by glowing moss (the blue bits here) and this is a semi down shot of a tight bend in one of those tunnels.

A complex close up within Niam’s city centre, I worked on this many times and actually only just finished it this year – yikes! Hehe and yes for those who have visited my website, (here) those are the two shops I mention in my welcome write up ^_^

Above are the first three renditions and below is the final. I might have a go at colouring this at some point, at present the different coloured pencils merely served to help me get less confused in the myriad of lines.

Niam’s wastelands and Tine canyon; Fao and Amber live here and yes this was intentional usage of aforementioned tea staining.

Below is an idea for the entrance to Amber’s cave within the Tine.

Knuks is a small town outside not far from the major city of Draygun. Below is a very very clean (by Knuks standard) example of a street.

Another example of a street this time in a town called Odel which is not on the island of Niam.

A very basic room; I imagine this room to be in the very seedy ‘hotel’ in Odel.

Yet another confusing down-shot, guess I must be a fan of those. This is a small cylindrical tower in one of Dirzryn’s hideouts, a place I imagine he goes to sit and drink tea and brood.

The location of this dungeon is not known, however I imagine it to be a place where vampires keep their thralls and just you know generally torture people.

Speaking of torture, below is an early concept for a place affectionately called ‘the room of the dead,’ I’ll let your imagination run with the reasons why it’s called that.

This had both bleed through and tea-spills – oh joy, oddly the bleed through on it is actually from the first portrait sketch of Dirzryn.

Last but not least, well I couldn’t leave without posting up our lovely Cold harbour dungeon.

This sketch was created for a written role-play we set in The Elder Scrolls universe, specifically the daedric realm of Cold harbour because none of the games at that point had any playable content in that realm. The role-play began in an empty cellar, hence this sketch. Also it seems even more appropriate to mention it again now since the makers of the Elder Scrolls games are soon to release their new MMO which is set in …yep, Cold harbour!

24.08.13 - The missing artwork – has returned!

So this post is a little out of order chronologically speaking, however seeing as I have just now received back all the paintings listed as ‘still in England’ in previous posts, now seemed like the perfect time to fill in those gaps. Listed then in reverse order, starting with paintings and posts that are more recent and working backwards, here they are:

2008 - Paintings

The box canvas set of four is once again complete. These are all 12x9" oil paintings on 1" deep box canvas'. I scanned the one titled ‘Ruin’ again seeing as upon its arrival I realised that it is much darker than the quick photo I took of it all those years ago.

Sadly its counterpart night scene below titled ‘Lake,’ got a little damaged in storage. You can see the two pock marks in the surface where something has pressed into the canvas and stretched it. If any fellow artists out there know a good fix for this type of canvas damage, I’d love to hear it!

Lastly the desert/sun set landscape that I hoped to work into.

Also it seems there was one painting I forgot about created around 2008 or possibly 2009. Unfortunately I am notoriously bad at remembering to sign and/or date my work so I cannot pinpoint precisely when I decided to create the following piece of fan art. The only certainty is that I had obviously watched the anime Death Note by that point.  

 

 It is an anime I love to this day, not for it’s animation but for the twists and turns of its story and small yet unforgettable cast of characters. Oh yes and Death Note knew when to quit, just about, unlike other anime that get forced to dredge and stretch over what feels like a lifetime to some utterly implausible and flimsy conclusion.

So yes I respected it enough to make fan art, twice. This first one I didn’t exactly title, so we’ll call this 8x10 oil on canvas, ‘Light and L with Tea.’

2007 – Final Year at Uni

This is the only painting I created whilst at university.

An 15.5 x 19" oil on canvas board titled ‘Snow Cottage,’ just to try and show my fellow team mates what I thought the house should look like in our film and to try and give them a sense of the snowy atmosphere.

This is a patched together scan of the painting, due to its height and again as you can see, time has not been kind to the bottom left hand corner of the canvas. I am uncertain when the corner became damaged, seeing as ‘Snow Cottage,’ spent a lot of time travelling to and from university, then from Bournemouth to Northampton and now all the way to Canada!

2004 – Paintings

This would be the year of the infamous tiger and my mysterious ‘large’ painting that I failed to photograph. Well now I have finally taken a photograph, measured and titled that piece ‘Twisted Wood’, after um, how many years? 

However another smaller painting that had slipped my mind from back then was this 8x10 oil on canvas, ‘Fruit Bowl.’ Personally, whilst I didn’t think much of it and was unsure if it was finished, I think folks liked this at the time because it was one of my first departures from painting in very dark shades. 

Ok now you get to see the woodland painting. Still not the best quality photo but then this measures a whopping 53 x 31” and I only own a phone camera - go figure. 

Anyways I recall curling up next to the flat wood laid on the carpet of several houses whilst I worked on this – my poor knees! The spiral staircase (white blob to the right of the arch/at the top of the path) as I mentioned before was an homage to an older painting, the first painting I ever sold to be precise which was in itself created with reference to a vivid dream I had.

As for the trees made of mannequins and dragon topped canopy, I was heavily into surrealist and illusionary works so painting something like this really fascinated me, enough to work on this painting over several years. Alongside ‘water tiger’ this painting has also lived in every single weird and wonderful house or room I have lived in (which is quite a lot I tell you!) spent time at a friend’s, around six months in the back of car for one reason or another and yet still emerged unscathed!

 If you noticed and are wondering about the split in the wood at the bottom right, well that was there before I began to paint, this wood was literally an offcut being thrown away in a factory, one I decided could be put to better use. :)

2003 -  Paintings

Way back in 2003 it seems I had attempted to create another painting involving water, although I will say I think I abandoned the below piece before it was complete. Perhaps I left it because I realised I had to learn more before I would be able to paint the water and reflections I imagined beneath the cabin. Again an untitled oil on canvas this piece measures 15.5 x 12".

Sadly I never revisited this piece, but I guess by that time I had begun grander projects that simply interested me more.

Speaking of grand projects, those of you who have followed this entire blog may recall that my friends and I decided to build a miniature marble bowling alley back in 2003. Naturally being the arty one and also a huge Dragon Ball/DBZ fan, I set about decorating the sides. So here is the missing half, ‘the girls team,’ featuring Akira Toriyama’s characters (l-r), ‘Chi-Chi, Bulma and Lunch.’

This measures 25" x 4.5" and was painted in gouache on wood from a dismantled drawer. The black line in the middle is obviously where the drawer panels split, waiting still to be glued in place.

2001/2002

Lastly the below image could be considered as one of my very earliest pieces. Again created on a ‘spare’ bit of wood. Now on the rare occasion I remember to sign and note things down (with regard to my art, I have hundreds on notes to do with my written projects) I usually go full hog and write a lot. So the below piece got an overly long title, ‘The boy and the moon and planet earth,’ notes on the surface ‘created on wood from broken down dresser,’ size, 'painted area = 15 x 8" approx' and materials used, ‘oils and acrylics,’ plus the date, ‘2001/2002.’ 

I’m going to assume I painted it between December and January by that, also I haven’t a clue why I would be using acrylic paint or where I might have gotten it from as I don’t recall ever using acrylics only oils and gouache!

So there you have it, all present and correct, updated and finally reunited which makes for one happy artist!