Photoshop Self Portrait

A few colleagues at work have just started up an evening drawing group, which got me thinking that I haven't done any drawing from life for ages! So I thought I'd have a go at a Photoshop self-portrait.


For this one I filled the background mid-colour, and then started painting the negative areas to define the overall head-shape, then I went in with some linear drawing of the features, and finished with the tonal paintwork. The whole thing took about 1 hour 30 mins.

I thought I'd been fairly accurate, but I still had to spend 15mins at the end tweaking and shifting features [a heck of a lot easier with Photoshop than real paint!].

Mummified Astronaut

I won an art competition at a Science Fiction Convention in Liverpool with this piece [EasterCon 1990?].

Location Painting -- Syon Park Motor Museum

A gouache colour study - not sure which car this is? The Heritage Motor Collection is no longer held at Syon Park, it's now in a purpose-built museum called The Heritage Motor Centre.
http://www.heritage-motor-centre.co.uk/index.html

ALIENS -- Drew Struzan Style !

This was my first attempt at painting a poster in the style of Drew Struzan - one of my art heroes at the time.


And this is another 'Struzan style' attempt. This was a flyer illustration for a BBC TV movie called Losing Track - my first storyboarding job out of college!


For any other Drew Struzan fans, I recently found this site with tons of examples of his work...
http://www.impawards.com/designers/drew_struzan.html
and obviously there's always http://www.drewstruzan.com/

Location Drawing -- West Middlesex University Hospital

I'm currently taking digital photos of some artwork from some very old portfolios that I recently retrieved from my parents' loft. The quality of the photos aren't the best, but it sure beats scanning the larger images in parts and stitching them back together again in Photoshop!














The colour images were painted with gouache used as watercolour, and details added with pastels.

The final one was done in ink with grey tissue glued-on, and tone added with black & white pastels and white acrylic.

Willy Wonka Illustration

This is an illustration from Roald Dahl's 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' that I painted whilst at college [around 1990!].

It depicts the captured spy who had been after Wonka's secret 'Everlasting Gobstopper' recipe, and was the ultimate event which made Wonka dismiss his entire staff and close the factory!

The sinister design that I chose for Willy Wonka is interesting in light of the recent Tim Burton movie going down a slightly more sinister character route -- but I think he would terrify the kids !
























As far as I can remember this was ink & gouache on watercolour paper.

One a Penny, Two a Penny... Hot Cross Buns !

After our second attempt at baking Hot Cross Buns, last night Honey and I finally succeeded in getting the 'crosses' to stay white! The solution... Honey's instinctive mixing method of flour and water succeeded where my 'we must follow the recipe book exactly' approach failed ;)

Tasting will commence this weekend!

The TES 'ID Card Debate' Poster.

The original concept for this was based on a Saul Bass style movie poster.
[This project was also for the Times Educational Supplement]

Below are the rough and final poster...

Write Away 2006 Cover Illustration

Here's the rough and the final illustration...

Write Away 2006 Illustration

This is a cover illustration for the Times Educational Supplement 'Write Away' Competition