2007/2008 – For the Love of Doodling

An image heavy post this time around perhaps in preparation for the word heavy post I’m planning to drop on your laps very soon. For now however, I present the unused character sketches that fell out of my pencil during 2007/2008 and a few beyond. 

During this time, I was frantically creating characters for my novel but every now and then, something unplanned would appear. Some of the unplanned things evolved into new characters whilst others did not. Elements of them were certainly used later on in other designs.

Most of these previously unseen one-off sketches plopped onto my paper without a great deal of thought or reasoning beyond, ‘I want to draw.’

Enjoy :)

Random People

I'll say most of these have amazing file names, which I'll use to title them.

Yes that is sarcasm.

'Wormhead'

 'Random Dude'

 'Cat Anthro’s' 

A little info on this piece: the cat labelled Sar’Son on the left is based around a pet of mine and is a small bit-character that will be used in my novel. The kitty centre stage is a possible design for another character named Su’Ki, also a pet of mine however my pet Su’Ki was male, or so we found out after having him for several years ….could she/he be a transvestite cat then? :P On the right is an unnamed individual, not sure what good ‘stoner cat’ will be I just know that there is a gang of said cat anthro’s that own a bar.

 'Drummer Guy'

'Dragon Head Guy'

 'Ghoulgal'

 'Goth Fairy'

'Lotus Heads' 

These guys were based around the lotus flower, no, I can’t recall why.

 Not  a clue, this was just titled 'random.'

'That guy outside' 

I hadn’t watched the anime Bleach at this point and this was obviously some person I saw walking about and decided to sketch however my rendition looks eerily like the Bleach character Uryu Ishida. For those of you who don’t know what the character of Uryu looks like, here’s an image from the anime to compare:

Hmm Uryu looks concerned about the lady below, as he probably should be....

'Asua Riyt'

The only fleshed out character concept I decided not to use, I may see if I can squeeze her in yet but thus far there isn’t a place for this zebra lady. We named her Asua Riyt, turns out she was very wrong and got replaced, oh irony you know when to whistle your tune so well.

Elves

Lots of weird elf designs:

 'Yuni'

 'It wasn't me I swear!'

Random Chest pattern thing

'Elf Ladies 1'

'Elf Ladies 2'

Creatures

I called these ‘dragoons’ because I was being lazy, I will use this design but improve upon it and possibly give the species a better name.

 'Fat cat'

I think that's a dragon licking the cheese - who knows?

'Skull Creatures'

 Yep, no idea, I think I just wanted to draw skulls or something. That said I liked the little guy in the left hand corner enough to have a go at drawing him twice.

'Skull Creatures 2'

 'Augur'

The argur are a species of dragon already featured in my novel however this was an early concept and they don’t exactly look like this, I shall have to draw them again!

 'Batbird'

 ...........

Well that's it for now.

Although today I had to gallery sit, any guesses what I did in those two hours? 

Yep, left with pen and paper to count visitors to the Artwalk exhibition I ended up doodling this little fellow:

So for the love of doodling - may many more things fall out of our pencils, amen!

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!

2008 - Paintings

Another incredibly short post this week with not a lot to see I’m afraid but that is because I didn’t paint a lot in 2008 and I am missing three of the five paintings I did create.

Of those five; the one I will be unable to get a copy of was a commissioned portrait.

 Which I will say probably isn’t a bad thing as I was most displeased with it. 

As previously stated I hadn’t had a great deal of practice drawing faces at the time and I had certainly never tried to paint a portrait. Hopefully the buyer wasn’t as unhappy as I was, seeing as it was a picture of herself and her son that I worked from. She gave me a tiny photograph in fact which likely just made the whole job harder. I tried my best but the experience left a bad taste in my mouth. It put me off the idea of ever doing a portrait again or indeed ever drawing anything involving children. I have since overcome that fear but haven’t attempted another oil painting portrait … yet. I may have one on the cards this year but we’ll see :)

The other four paintings I made in 2008 were a set of 11 x 14” box canvas paintings. I remember the idea with them was to create something as quickly as possible. That isn’t to say I was trying to rush but more trying to see what I could produce from my mind’s eye in a short space of time. I was at this point also busy scribbling away ideas for my novel so character creation and concepts were using most of my art time in between and even during my crappy factory job hours.

Yes I wrote and drew at work and whenever there was a spare moment.

 Needless to say that my employers weren’t very happy about my persistent distracted scribbling although they did often compliment my sketches.

Back to the topic at hand, painting: here is a photo of the one I was ‘happy’ with out of the four canvas’, happy enough to take a photograph at least.

I simply titled it, ‘Ruin.’

I never really thought it was a great painting but I guess that wasn’t my intention from the outset. Perhaps when I receive it back from England I may improve upon it. I made a similarly coloured landscape involving a lake but felt it lacked depth and vital elements so put it to one side to work into later.

For the other two in the set I decided to work in warm colours. I made two desert landscapes, one at sunset and at the other at night.  I guess I wanted to express the idea of sand and fading light. Much like the lake painting however I felt they both lacked vital elements and so left them to be worked into at a later date.

I am pleased to report that the latter of the two, the night sand, eventually did get worked into!

In 2011 I decided it was just the backdrop I required for a wolf I had planned to paint and so it became, ‘Night Wolf.’

I hope when I receive the other landscapes back from England I can find a way to improve them or put them to good use as I did with night wolf, I may scan and upload the missing two images in this post once they arrive.

Still even one success thus far out of four ‘quick’ paintings isn’t bad at all in my books!