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.