29 October 2021

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! 

24 October 2021

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. 

21 October 2021

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. 

15 October 2021

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.




11 October 2021

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. 

08 October 2021

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. 

02 October 2021

Illustration: Diver 02


 Done in Procreate. The drawing process was fine but exporting it was a nightmare. For some reason neither Procreate or Affinity Photo will save to my Dropbox account and that is normally how I get things off the iPad and into my storage drive. In the end I had to use a USB drive plugged into the iPad to transfer it it. Not sure if it's because of the new iPad IOS update or not. Seems likely.