Illustration: Paris Metro

 It's September and this is the first drawing I have done this year. I will sometimes do 20, but this year is a tough one. After losing my dad, I wasn't motivated to draw or do much, but this summer I was inspired by some work my friend Mike did based on photos he took on the London tube and some video tests another friend did in Paris.  This image is not like really any of my work in that it isn't an isolated subject (I think 18 figures in this one) and it's a "full painting," meaning, to me anyway, that it’s a fully realized environment and composition - not one plain or stylized background. 

It was a bear to get started. I bought a new iPad and the new Apple Pencil and Procreate had updated over the year a bit. This meant that nothing worked like it had, and I spent an 8-hour day swearing and being frustrated as a menu popped up blocking my work every time I touched the screen, and the pencil kept randomly switching from drawing mode to eraser mode, and I would constantly erase the work I had just done. I had to adjust the program settings and the pencil setting on the iPad end to get it all working again. 

I used a paintbrush for 90% of it and didn't obsess over making people look too realistic and instead tried to capture their expressions and body language in a looser fashion - something that has always eluded me. I drew it on a 30-inch canvas, so it's pretty big. I don't try and get all the details perfectly even on the train cabin. I did add a little refinement in Affinity Photo as Procreate is lacking in some of those features, but if I took those out, you really wouldn't see a difference. I think I captured the experience of looking into a passing train and not seeing everyone in there clearly defined. Some of the figures are sort of mysterious, and I like that. 

(detail)

Illustration: rejected book covers

 

I worked hard on these for a client for use as a book cover and they were rejected so I decided they could stand on their own as art for art's sake. Made mostly in Blender with compositing done in Affinity Studio.

Illustration: Another look at a mortuary art piece.

 This one had many o the same issues as the last one. Missing textures but also it was too harsh looking and lacked the mood I wanted. 

I was able to soften it and also make the lighting look more naturalistic and bring the focus to the death and grieving man statues. 

Below is the original.

Illustration (take 2) Death as a Friend

 

I was happy enough with my first image but since I finished it I have tried to reopen the file and becuase. I changed computers and Blender versions it was missing textures and I decided to fix that. In the time between finishing it and seeing the problem I also learned a lot more and thought this could be very much improved and I think I had been . he skeleton is much more real looking and I used cycles to render it, which is much more accurate the EEVEE. Above is the new and below is the old so you cna see the difference. It took 90 minutes to render. I could have optimized it more but it is also poster sizedin case I decide to print it. 

Illustration: Death as a Friend

 

Another in this maybe series. Made in Blender this one I had a very strong idea for based on an engraving my friend Jeannette showed me decades ago. Well, sort of... it turns out the engraving "Death as a friend." Looks nothing like this and then I thought it might be  from another old illustration, "Death as a friend to the poor" which was a little closer to what was in my head. Could be I saw something and just associated it with a title I like better. 

In any case, this is an old woman holding hands with death in a lonely room that doesn't look like it's had many visitors recently. I tried two versions: colour and black and white. They both have strengths and weaknesses. Did post-processing in Sffinity Studio and discovered that the NIK plugins now work in them, as they did in the older Affinity suite! 

Illustration: Bejamin

 I did a portrait of a friend's cat not that long ago and, after the recent death of someone close to him, he inherited another - Benjamin. Benjamin is girl cat I was told after sending this image to him. I thought both cats should have portraits and I hope that this is a positive gift that helps him through this very sad time. I can't offer much so I do what little I can. 

She's a pretty girl! 

3D Illustration: untitle mortuary art

 I have had an idea of doing something like this since the '8-s and have never found a way to get what I wanted. I t was going to be a photo then an ink drawing and then back and forth between those until recently I decided learning more Blender was a way to get an image out of my head. Of course now I might do a small series. 

I have a good amount of resources with Blender now to accomplish something close to what's in my head. I thought I would learn some techniques like depth passes and isolating parts of a scene with other passes but as I worked on this, none of those things would have been useful. 

The large cryptlike building behind the figures is based fairly closely on a structure in a huge cemetery in Budapest. The mourning figure is based on a mourning angel statue, I really liked the pose. The skeleton already had wings so he didn't get any. 

I had some buggy issues with Blender that were pretty annoying. I use a Make Human plugin integrated into Blender and Humgen to make more realistic humans but Make Human was missing some features somehow and Humgen wasn't working for the cross-legged pose. I settled on Make Human and it worked out but I need to figure out what went wrong. The skeleton and wings were models from my C4D days. I did post processing in Affinity Studio. 

Illustration: Phare Canal Lachine Juin 2024

 

This came along quicker than I thought. Mostly because I had a day (seriously almost 12 hours) with no electricity so no internet, phone calls, or other distractions. The iPad did run out of power despite having an external batter backup. 

I wasn't trying to mimic watercolours or anything this time and just used whatever brushes I thought might work for what part I was painting. The foreground, like my last painting, still seems off a little but much less this time. The lighthouse has plenty of details so I didn't skimp on that. All in all it was about 15 hours of painting. 

Icons series: Lost in Space

 I drew the three elements for this a LONG time ago and then forgot I was going to add them to my icons series of designs. I just had to make the logo and place them. Laxy I guess. Not my favourite TV show by a longshot but it does have its place in history and the robot and Jupiter Two spaceship are great designs. 

Illustration: Patate Douce pour t-shirt

 

A t-shirt design for my 2-year-old nephew. I made similar shirts for his older cousins last year so now he will have one. The ankylosaurus was fun enough to draw and I am keeping to the more details and shaded style of the fries image I just did. I will need to update the characters for the older kids next. There are lots of versions of this type of dinosaur and just mixed and matched characteristics to my linking. It's fr fun, not science! (Patate douce is a sweet potato, BTW.)

Illustration: Patates frites

 
Since my first grand-nephew, I have been calling him and those that followed as "Les Patates" (the potatoes). The first was the big potato, the second little potato, and the third "patate douce" (sweet potato).  With a fourth coming in January, I am seriously running out of types of potato! I thought it would be fun to make little cartoons to put on t-shirts for them as they got older. Christmas last year they got shirts with them riding dinosaurs in thier potato form. 

Four the 4th in this expanding series, I went with "Patates frites" or french Fries. The earlier ones were very simple and more like a child drew them but since they are getting older I wanted to make versions more finished looking. I don't how I will use the drawings so I used Affinity Designer to make this one and with vector art I can resize it as I need to and it has a clean look the kids will like. So, yes, I will be remaking the other three so they look consistent and also to represent where the older ones are now. 

Illustration: Piccola pour keamy

 I drew this for my friend Keamy, it's his new cat. She is a little darling. I had done a portrait of his previous cat, Olive. Procreate ink with a little colour added for interest. 

Poster: Earth VS the Flying Saucers

(Image was updated after getting some feedback)

 
Another in my sci-fi series of posters done with affinity designer and publisher. I watched it the other night and thought it would be a quick and simple project and it was. The saucers are pretty basic and the alien didn't have much detail. 

Illustration: Trinity Church reflected on Hancock Building

 

This was a longer term project... over 6 weeks. I am not sure how many hours but it was 40-50 maybe. I didn't realize until this was done that is part of a series of 3, really 5 that started in 1989. I original took a black and white photo of the reflection and then years later used it for a pen and ink drawing. In the drawing the reflected parts were all done with stipple work. I gave that drawing away. something I regret since I gave it to someone I no longer have any contact with. I don't even have a photo or photocopy of that drawing. Then I did a drawing of a crane reflected on the Hancock which was fast and easy. That encouraged me to to try a large one of the old John Hancock reflected in the new one. Then I sort of forgot I did all that until I came across the original photo and decided I should maybe redraw that illustration for myself. On a visit to Boston I took all new reference photos and then... forgot about it again! Finally I started but instead of a pen and ink I went full colour. 

This has about 20 layers, the window frames are on one, the interior lights we can see through the reflection are on another and then a couple for the sky etc. When It can time to paint the church I went window by window. Since each panel had 3-6 layers I had to merge them down as I went or maybe crash the iPad with literally 1000s of layers open. I would draw for a few hours and then look at the illustration overall and see I still have something like 87 window panes to do. I kept pugging away until finally it was done. 

Below is a closeup of the part of the drawing. A both complimentary and frustrating part of doing something like this is when I send it to anyone they think it's a photograph because they are almost always looking at it on a phone and never realize the work that went into it. The other image is the original 89 photograph. I could not get the exact angle matched up because there is a lot more stuff going on there now and that angle just wasn't available and other things were blocking the view. 

Illustration: rue de la Visitation 04

 

Another house on the the way to my gym/pool. This was not in the best shape for a long time and a few years ago fell victim to fire. After the fire there was a major renovation that kept most of the original details and restored it to perhaps more than its former glory. 

This was a rare case I didn't hate the drawing until the end when it was near finished. It came along much more smoothly, thought slowly. Lots of bricks. I think before the fire it was all painted pink! 

Celluloid Slammer blog catégorie icons

 My other blog, Celluloid Slammer, talks about films and related subjects. for the last few years there were banners for  a couple grouping subjects into their own specialized month... Silent Summer was in July and all about solent films and October Horrors is pretty self explanatory. The banner thing wasn't working for me so I decided to make icons to put at the start of each pot categorizing the subject matter instead. More versatile and more fun to look at and make. It was supposed to be "after the new year" but I started using it to see how it looked and figure what I needed to make. Above are what i have now, there might be more... or less depending on how it works out. 

The Slammer has been something I am constantly thinking about not doing but it get more views than anything I do here and it IS cathartic and fun to write about movies. There isn't much interaction there, possibly because i had to restrict comments, The amount of trolling happening all the time and much was very sexist and just plain dumb. I might open it up to be easier to comment next year and see if it's better. 

Illustration: Super 8 Movie camera

This is based on my Super 8 Bell and Howell movie camera from the 80s. Might be the 70s to be honest! I LOVED that camera. It could do 18 and 24 frames a second, record sound and do single frame. So it was what I first started film work and animation with. 

It only took about 6 hours to finish and I left out some details, mostly the text and numbers on it but it still came out much more photo real than I was aiming for. It was black but I added a brown tint to the plastic body when I realized by looking at reference photos that the plastic often had a brown tinge to it. The Xray view that shows the vectors always make these things look much simpler than they seem when you are making them! 

Illustration: Loretta

 

My nephew has an every growing number of dogs these days. I was at his farm for his wedding and sure enough, a new one! She was so cute! She was also really active and getting clear shots to work from was a little challenging. I think this has some life to it and movement. 

Illustration: 1915 rue de la Visitation

 Finished another building I see on my walk to the gym. I will do the one next door as well soon, it's more interesting building. As usual, I HATED this until I was almost done. Then I was fine with it. maybe it says something about not giving up or maybe I'm just not looking at the process of doing these in a positive way. I like the end results and I guess that is what matters. 

Illustration: Acrobat de la rue 02

 The last acrobat drawing in a while unless something weird happens. Didn't get much in the way of references this summer. There are a few acrobatic acts I would love to draw but unless I can get acrobats to perform for me I don't think I'll see any of that in the wild as the free shows get shorter and less acrobatic as the years go on. 

Drawn in procreate, I added some tone to the pants for not real reason but I like how it looks. The curly hair was fun.