My film at the "Another Hole in the Head" festival! December 1 - 15th online!

 My film "A Vine on a House" is selected for presentation at the "Another Hole in the Head" film festival.

My film will be streamed online as will much of the festival so anyone can watch. The festival runs from December 1-15th, 2021

Festival link

Link to my film

Please support my work and the festival, they are a great group of people! 

Illustration: Flex 01

 I knew this would be a challenge and it was. The model was a good friend and a really wonderful guy. He started yoga and had transformed his body into something muscular and ripped. Not that he was anything but adorable and sexy before, he just took it to another level. He posed for a good number of photos and drawing this really let me appreciate how defined he had become. This reference photo was taken as sort of a laugh. Its a typical muscle magazine pose in many ways but I sort of love that the underwear isn't skin tight but loose and comfortable. This is actually taken from 3 reference photos, one main and then I used the others for details. One was nude but I think the underwear humanizes his ideal physique in some way and says something about him other than "hottie".  

Illustration: Pride dancer (2017)

 

More inspiration from old photos. This time it was a dancer in the Pride parade in 2017 I thought might be a good challenge. To make it more interesting, I decided this would be my first colour Procreate painting. Procreate is missing dodge and burn tools that I use to darken and lighten areas, particularly with clothing and I had to work around that. How round can I make those butt cheeks look? Pretty round it turns out! I have to say the new Procreate update didn't help much in this project. The stabilization was nice but I didn't use the colour cards and while the 3D additions are interesting, they seem gimmicky for a drawing and painting program. It does show that higher end 3D files can be put on the iPad som maybe someone else will pick up in that and I can do 3D work on the device someday. I found the small previous update that allowed me to go from 4 to now 88 layers on this sort drawing much more exciting and useful. 

Back to the illustration. Despite missing a feature I use a lot, I still got some roundness and dimension I think. Procreate blending is all done with the smudge tool and it's workable but nowhere close to the multiple types of blending brushes I have in Krita. Despite the limitations I will do more colour work on the tablet without a doubt. The portability of it outweighs the inconveniences and I hope this proves I can get similar quality while on the run. 

Illustration: David dance o2

 This was different sort of challenge. The reference photo was a scan from a session I did almost 30 years ago of a print that had been damaged by water. The negative and the prints are long gone and the paper used was textured so while I loved the pose, it wasn't something I could use anywhere. So I thought turning it into an illustration wit Krita might be a good way to "resurrect it". 

Another challenge was that the reference was black and white and I wanted it to be colour. Luckily the dancer was a good friend and even rented my spare room for a time so I had other photos of him that showed off is skin tones to work from. 

The graphic element in the background seemed make him stand out more than just a solid colour would. 

illustration: pont pour Katherine & Julianna

 

My niece (and godchild) asks me to do illustrate the bridge she and her girlfriend see from their new apartment, so of course I did! It's an 11x17 inch piece and will be printed that size when/if she approves it. 

I have not done a landscape painting since... not sure when. I might have been a teenager the last time. Have one a couple pen and ink landscapes but only a few of them filled the canvas completely. Most were of a single subject with some scenery and most overall are of old barns. 

Painted in Krita and it was a challenge. I have been using very organic subjects  like people and the precise curves and straight lines for something this large were not working out. I ended up using Affinity Designer to sketch out the bridge part with vector art and then import it in sections as png files to paint over. 

To be honest, I have no idea what I think of this as it is so far out of my wheelhouse these days. I tried not to choke it with details and simplified the water and sky to keep the attention on the bridge itself. Hopefully, they wont hate it! I did respect their very odd request to NOT have giant tentacles coming up over the bridge. Kids today! 

Illustration: Michael stretch

 Procreate, digital pen and ink with digital white pencil. Another from the vaults. I went back and forth over keeping his tattoo and decided it added to the drawing. There are many more little dots in this than you can possible imagine. I also tried the smudge tool in procreate which I have had issues figuring out. It's good for blending colours as I have found out and that was the missing piece for me to try a colour painting in Procreate. So... I guess I should try that soon. 

Illustration: Sterch 02

Another inspired from my catalog of old images sitting in folders. I think this has a more natural paint look to it. I added a more "studio portrait" backdrop than I usually do. 

Next year's big project: Artbook and prints for sale

 

As work becomes harder and harder to get, I have to try different ways to pay the bills. Over the years I have sold a 1 or 2 prints a year of some of my drawings. It doesn't add up to much but it makes me feel good and i think shows there is potential to sell more if I can figure out how to go about it.  With that in mind I made  plan to produce and sell a book of illustrations on Amazon and tie it in with selling prints. I plan to sell with an online service that will handle the printing, shipping and taxes. I have several places in mind but any advice is more than welcome. 

The book will feature illustrations of acrobats, athletes and dancers - my most popular subjects. This won't be a retrospective or "best of" collection but include only images I will be selling as prints and ones I think will sell the best. I think having a book out there will help sell the prints and vice versa. I won't include any explicit nudes because I think that might be forbidden on Amazon even for art books and will limit who can see the work. I have a large catalogue to choose from and the idea is to not try and put it all out there at once but see what happens and add maybe an image a month to the print site so there is always something new and if things go really well, produce a second book in future. 

This is plausible but is it possible considering I have zero social media presence and I am not exactly a household name in the art world? I might have to break down and open "Behemoth media" accounts in Instagram, Facebook and whatever else and hopefully convince some of my friends who already have accounts to like and help promote my work to get it out to more people. 

Here is the design layout, the inner title page looks good to me and I decided the full images on the right and a close up of that image on the left would be visually interesting and give the potential buyer more information on how detailed the pieces are. 

So the plan is to finish some new drawings... I have about 15 lined up and most are hopefully for this project if they work out. Picking the right ones is no easy task. This will take months to finish so I am hoping to get it going for real after the new year. The text will be both English and French.

illustration: David 01

 

Procreate ink and white pencil. The reference for this was from a series of photos that I took almost 30 years ago with my friend David who was dancer and taught colour guard to high school students. Sadly most of the negatives disappeared before I could scan them so I only have scans of finished photos printed on textured paper so they don't look so great. I have at least one more that might be better now as a drawing and "redeem" my old photos somehow. We had a lotto fun and he was so great as a model, I wish I knew what happened to him. 

Illustration: Tony 06

 
More inspiration (desperation?) from my collection of photos. This wasn't ever meant to be a drawing, but I really liked the photo and thought it might be a challenge to get his shiny skin right. To my surprise, I did the sketch and basic colour fill of the form yesterday and the rest today with only about 5 hours of work. I think it is because this is ALL skin with very few little details to worry about like folds in clothing or textured or wrinkles in the skin. Not a complicated hair style either. I feel oddly proud of this, something I never feel when just finishing anything. In some ways being forced into my old catalog of images has been a big plus, though I would still like the chance to take new images with new subjects sooner than later. 

Painted with Krita.