Historischer Flachsmarkt Burg Linn

On sunday I went to an amazing Medieval festival/market in Germany.  I knew there would be a lot of old crafts and so on there, but when we arrived I was amazed how incredibly massive the market was.  We were there from 11:00 to 17:00 in the blazing sun and we still didn't see everything.  The last hour we watched a reenacted tournament and although we didn't get to see any heads being chopped off it was still a lot of fun. I also got to buy lots of cool stuff: horns for mask/costume making etc, hand pressed soaps, a free bit of fur, a tiger-eye necklace, a metal die and a very pretty Celtic-Style brooch, me-sa happy :D.

A very basic start of the mask

Yesterday, in the afternoon I started on the mask.  It was a public holiday and very hot so at first I wasn't going to do any work but in the afternoon I just felt like having a go :D  I on did the base, it's basically the shape the will fit over the face.  The next step will be to papier maché the bulk shapes onto this base.  Then I will add the hair followed by putting a layer of clay over the top to create all of the details.  Then the painting and fur attachment. I think that's the right order, I'll probably will be able to tell a bit better when I'm further down the lign.

It may see quite deep, but I really want it to slot right over the face so I can position the ears correctly and have room to add the mane. 

Sending off Hellblazer + Godmachine's suggestions

At the end of last week I emailed my Hellblazer cover to Godmachine and Ben Templesmith.  Today I saw that Godmachine had replied and he gave his suggestions in a very clever manner. He had basically taken my picture and photoshopped a few details over the top.  Sometimes showing what you mean is easier than telling someone what you mean and I could definitely see where he was coming from.  His suggestions were to add some extra highlights at the top of Mnemoth which gave the picture more volume.  I think that is one of the problems by using the outlines it seems to immediately make things flat which is also a point to consider for style development.  Maybe what I need to focus on more is a better use of light and shadow in the actual painting process.  His second suggestions was to add a green-hued underlighting on the figure and to make the smoke green as well.  This made the image a lot spookier.  They were a couple of very simple tricks which I felt bettered the image dramatically.

I am still awaiting Ben Templesmith's email which may take a while a his original email was a bit of a slower responce as well.  It will be interesting to see what suggestions he gives and whether they will be similiar to Godmachines.  I will edit the cover in the holidays as I really want to focus on the CD Cover and the Shakespeare's London project at the moment. 

TIME COUNT 21/05-25/05

+- 33 Hours

Stained Glass Window

Thursday and Friday,  17th and 25th of May

The last couple of weeks I worked on the Southwark Cathedral section.  I have doen a bit less work because the weatehr's just so bloody good but also the heat is a bit aggrevating at times especially when combined with hay fever.  I've had to work downstairs because it's been too hot in my room and I find I get distracted quicker down there than I do up here.   Luckily it's going to be a bit cooler this week. 

Anyway here's the painting...

The actual cathedral still need some extra detail but I can do that in the computer :D  Especially the three little bits at the bottom.

Lions and Tigers and Bears... Oh My!!!

...or maybe just a Lion :D

Tuesday and Thursday, 15th and 24th of May

I continued with the character last week trying to get the general body proportions right.  I had had the problem with the shoulder blade.  It strangely looked too much like a wing.  At first when I drew him again he was too enlongated, the whole body I mean.

 

So I shortened the body.  I had a quick look at some dinosaur pictures and decided to make the back bones more like the Stegosaurus plates that run along its back.  The shoulder blade still didn't work when it was enlarged though.

  

Naturally the next step really was to get rid of the shoulder blade.  Instead I enlarged the general shoulder area.

  

 

It still not being quite right, I rounded the shoulder off more, made the back legs less fat and made the chest bigger.

 

Being a lot happier with this design I coloured that one in.

 

I then did one of it running just to see if the legs and so on would work.  Apart from having drawn the head too small I think it's fine.  

 

I also did a front view.  It looks like shyte so I'll have to redo this as some point.  I don''t know it looks like it's really old and clapped out.   I'll have a better look at anatomy of a lion front on, that should help.

Then Yesterday, Thursday I drew the side view on an extra large piece of paper.  I did this one really big so I could get all of the details on one picture.  Also I have been working on tiny little picture with a lot of detail recently and it's driving me slightly insane, only slightly... so I drew a nice big one :D

 I still need to add an extra front leg at the moment because it looks like he's only got three.  When I've done that I'll add a better picture.  I think Gizmo on the left looks pretty terrified.

You Spotted Snakes with Double Toungue

Wednesday, 23rd of May

This week I rounded of the Globe T-Shirt and complimentary product range designs. I started off by colouring in the design for on the back of the T-Shirt. 

I used the same colours as on the front design which both come to a total of six colours.  I then made out the template for the back T-Shirt.

 Having done that and still having time spare that, which happily surprised me I continued to apply the two designs to some of the products in the Globe's range.  The badges were quite tricky as a lot of the pictures weren't very well visible on such a small space.  I figured if the badges were made with a 3 cm diametre instead of the smaller ones they would be okay.  Some of the badges still aren't completely right, but Meghan said herself that the presentation sheet mainly to give a general idea and was all we decided on.  After having made the bookmark I figured this would also be a cool bumper sticker so I added that comment on the presentation sheet. 

I am very happy with the final designs for the product range.  I think the range works really well together as a whole and I feel I've created an original new take on the 16th century play. 

I emailed Meghan today with the designs so I hope I get a reply soon.  I also asked her about the Pantone colours and so on because I'm not quite sure which ones they should be.  If they are different I will just have to change and match them the best I can. 

Robin and his Merry Men

Wednesday, Monday and Tuesday, 16th, 21st and 22nd of May

Last week I made sure I had both of the sketches for the CD Cover ready to go.  I decided to leave out the Will Scarlett page because I didn't really feel it was a vital part of the story.  I felt that the main parts of the story/theme could be brought across with the other four songs I had picked.

The picture here shows my general proces for the Battles page.  I thought I would go for a kind of ambushy scene (combining Battles with Darkmere) so I found a reference picture of Little John and Robin doing a bit of archery.  I then just draw some people on horseback and after having looked up the soldiers in the TV series I added the correct outfits to the wee blokes on horses.  The faces aren't quite right but that will be alright once it's painted.

On this day I also finalized the Together We page.  The past week I spent Monday, Tuesday and an hour on Wednesday painting it.  Yes it really did take that long but I'm really happy with the result so it doesn't matter.

This is a quick recap of the previous sketches and here is the painted page...

Remember this painting fits on an A4 page so I can scan it,  so the fact that there's less detail on some faces is because they're one centimetre on the page.  Next week I'll be painting the Battles page.

TIME COUNT 14/05-18/05

+- 23 Hours 30 Minutes  

The count was lower this week as I had a day off with Eva shopping.  I got some cool material so I can tryout making a Tudor Waistcoat in the holidays.  They call it a waistcoat but its more of a jacket.  The rest of the shops were pretty crap but we had a nice time in the park.

No Electricity -> No Internet

You may have noticed that I haven't posted anything in a few days.  Annoyingly a few days ago the internet on the ground floor dropped out.  As our modem is set up there the internet was also down.  This all happened on Saturday and as it costs a huge amount of extra money to get somebody in on the weekend we waited till Monday.  It's all fixed now and the great romantic cooking by candlelight, basically because otherwize we couldn't see a feckin' thing, is over.  I shall now post the TIME COUNT for the previous week and then just post the general info together with what I did this week. 

Front T-Shirt Design

Monday, 14th of May

It ended up taking the whole day to get the colours right for my T-Shirt design.  I was having difficulties figuring out how to do it.  I tried doing it by colouring bits in with pen, scanning them and then rying to adapt them but this just didn't work.  I also tried using the halftone settings in photoshop but I didn't really get the effect I wanted either.  I figured that first of my actual pen drawing didn't have quite enough detail in it so I added a bit extra.

I decided to purely colour it in digitally.  This is very different to the general illustration style I am trying to develop, but my general style just unscreen-printable.  I really enjoy doing T-Shirts like this, it is in a similar manner to the manner in which I designed my Symphonic Sci-Fi T-Shirt.  The colours are all blocks so they can easily be screenprinted onto material.

As you can see I changed the colours a lot.  I couldn't really find the right colour to go with red and green for the faeries which would allow them to stand out enough.  I love purple so I tried that out and I think the blue looks really cool.  I decided the background splodge was too flat so I used the texture of a tree stump to make it look more interesting.  I decided to add the detaile on the faerie wings as well because I felt they were lacking.

To round off I put the picture on to my T-Shirt templates.  It doesn't work at all on a white sheet as it gets completely lost but I think it looks wicked on the black one.

TIME COUNT 07/05-10/05

+- 27 Hours 30 Minutes

Of course I missed out some of the weekly time as I had to go to school on Friday.  But since I fought through a couple of moments when others would have just given up for the day, I feel I did really well. 

Mr Liony Wiony

Thursday, 10th of May

After feeling pretty depressed the previous week about this project and just really not getting into it, I had a lot of fun on Thursday.  After having decided to use a skeletal theme I did a quick study on the general skeletal anatomy of a lion.

I felt the body was too long so I shortened it in later pictures.  I decided to sketch in ballpoint because it's a lot faster than pencil as I don't sit there rubbing everything out and being really bloody pedantic about everything.  I was about to carry on down another bad track with drawing and quickly stopped myself.  I quickly grabbed my portrait from last week that I did at the end and set out to fix this.  When I had drawn it with ballpoint I really wanted to see it coloured.  So I could do this quickly I used ecoline and indian ink.  I had a lot of fun :D The paper was crap so it puckered because I couldn't be shagged to stretch the paper. 

I think he looks really cool.  I then carried on doing different angles and expressions, not loads but enough for now.  I mainly did this to check that the face still worked, which I think it does. 

I also had a crack at the body this day.  I tried a couple before I had done the side angle.  I just removed bits of the flesh basically for now to see what I got.  

 

 I then wanted to figure out the feet because as I had mentioned right at the beginning, I think they're visually important.

 I then had another crack at the body.  I wanted enlarge the shoulder blade but it didn't work it just ended up looking more like a wing.  When it this small the head looks bird-like which is weird.  The back legs being exposed it not good at all, he looks like he'd fall over if you nudged him slightly. I will carry on this week by combining all the different bodies I've done and changing a few bits here and there to get it right. 

As final designs I'll be doing two A1 illustrations (on thicker paper), one front on full body- the other side-on full body.  I'll probably do a few more smaller portraits as well of different facial expressions and photoshop these all together to make a sheet.

Along with the bust, which will be done in the summer holidays I've also decided to make a mask of the creature.  After having done the first portrait I realised it would be a real shame only to do the transformation bust.  I did some research on materials and found a website that sells loose hair in numerous colours so I'd be able to make the mane out of that.  I've found some fur for the fluffy bits but I'll keep looking just in case.  For my Birthday I got a seriously cool book from my parents and brother, "The Alchemy of Mirrormask".  Mirrormask is a film created by Dave McKean and is one of my favourite.  Masks are one of the themes :D, so there are loads of images of those.  They said that the bases were mae out of paper maché and clay, which I think left them with this amazing raw feeling.  I'll be doing that as well as I think it will be suitable and of course I have no knowledge of prosthetics.  The mask will be wearable but not something to be worn in the rain :D Really looking forward to making it in the holidays.

Shakespeare and the Gatehouse

Wednesday, 9th of May

This day was Shakespeare in London day.  I started off by doing the Shakespeare statue in the Westminster Cathedral.  To be honest I got a bit bored doing it and I was also concentrating too much.  When concentrating too much, which I was also doing on the Hooded Man picture, it just doesn't seem to work.  I decided to put a movie on and this worked a lot better.  While busy listening to Christopher Lee in the guise of Sherlock Holmes solve a crime I managed to finish it off quite nicely.

Then I carried on with the St Bartholomew's Gatehouse, front and back, while watching Anchorman :DThis is the first time I've actually used the blue in the paintings for this.  I'd imagine the majority of the blue details will be added digitally.  I still feel that this is the right colour scheme to use, as I showed in my visual mind-map.  I know I seem to spend a lot of time and only have few pictures, but painting like that just takes a long time, there'nothing I can do about that to be honest.  I did manage to fix this the next day though :D

Robin, The Hooded Man

Tuesday, 8th of May

Today was pretty frustrating.  I started off okay I realized that the head and the hood on the picture were too big so I fixed that then the painting was fine as I started with the clothing, then I got to the face and it just wouldn't bloody work.  I did numerous different layers and I couldn't really get there.  After lunch I decided to carry on with the rest and did the hands.  I was a lot happier with those.

I actually ended up removing the face completely casting him into shadow and making the figure alround more mysterious.  I think that's one of the exciting things about Robin Hood, he really is a "Legend" we have no idea whether he was real or not.  I think by actually leaving him anonymous he fits in better with the whole legend theme.

I made the contrast quite high on this version, not quite sure if that's right yet, will see when I finish off the page.

I also quickly tried out printed on tracing paper with the ink jet printer today to see whether it would be possible to use it for the tree page.  It did smudge a bit but I think if I can keep the paper straight it should be okay.  I prefer this to using sheets because it's got a slight whiteness to it which obscures the next page a bit more adding to the mysteriousness (is that a word? :S).  Also normal printers of course don't print white so it will make the images look a bit less odd.  Obviously also this is the distance get paler so it should help add depth.    

T-Shirt Drawing etc.

Monday, 7th of May

Obviously first of all I had to finish off the design for the front of the T-Shirt.  (I was thinking also if it would make the T's too expensive to do both sides they could also be two seperate designs.)  It took me a wee while to get it right and I tried out different thinks with the text which I have no record of as I rubbed them out, oops.  As I drew it on A3 I then had to trace the lines with pen onto two A4 sheets of tracing paper.  Because they were seperate it took me quite some time to get a good digital image.

I then played with it in photoshop purely to try and figure out the colours (I'll be finishing that off today, as in the proper colouring) as I can only use eight printing colours.  It with be on a black T-Shirt so then the outlines can simply not be printed just the body colours.  Can potentially also be on white but black will look more wicked.  This is as far as I got last week colour-wise.  The faeries still aren't right they don't really stand out enough.  Obviously all the shadows are really rough because it was just for me to get an idea. I still have to figure out the wings too.

 It still needs a lot of fine tuning but that will happen today, hopefully also the second image will be completed today.  I just realised this image underneath isn't the adapted one, if you look at the 'd' in midsummer at the top picture then you'll see the right one :D

TIME COUNT 30/04-05/05

+- 38 Hours

Plans for the coming week:
I would say I'm pretty well on track.  Now that the Hellblazer cover is finished that leaves an extra day in the week to work on the other larger projects.  I hope to have the T-Shirt Design and colouring near finished this coming Monday to send to Meghan.  Then after that I can adjust things and make the A3 presentation sheet with the other products on it.  The CD Cover and the Shakespeare in London project are cases of plowing on.  For the character I want to have a pretty solid idea of what the body, face close-up etc. should be so I can start colouring them the next week.  I'm glad I got the Cover finished this weekend also as of course Friday will have to be spent going to school for the check-up.

Hellblazer Cover Finishing Off

Saturday, 5th of May

I did the last bits and bobs today for the Hellblazer cover.  I started by lloking up cicarette smoke. I am very rarely around smokers so I wanted to be sure.  The photos confirmed my thought that I would be hard pressed to paint it.  What I did notice was that it looked a lot like ink in water so I thought I'd try that out.  At first I just wet paper and dropped the ink on but that didn't work.  Then I got a photo developing basin and filled it with water.  With the camera standing by I droppe din Indian ink and whooshed it a bit.

 I took numerous photos, this is the one used.  I then turned it negative in photoshop to get the right colour for smoke. 

I then added it to the picture.  It took a bit of playing around but I think the way it is now works well.  I used the lighten Layer Setting to add it to the picture.

I then tidied up the rest, the edges were quite rough and were showing those horrible little white/grey lines on the edges, the tell-tale sign of a lazy photoshopper.  I copied the text and logos from the original cover and placed them.  I changed the names of the writers a little bit, but it's still prtty close.  I did a few other other little fix up jobs and now I'm happy with how it looks.

As I said I'll leave it week before sending it off in case I spot something wrong. 

A Lion-Like Creature

Friday, 4th of May

I had to look up a few Lion Source pictures in the morning because I realised I hadn't done that yet. After that I did my usual study drawings.  I had a look at lions from different angles with different facial expression.  I also drew to lion portraits from the photos I took at the British Musuem, the large Assyrian Lion and the seated Egyptian Lion. 

 After that I really wasn't too sure what to do to be honest.  I doodled a bit and nothing too productive came out.  I had liked the look of the sketch of the Egyptian Lion so I traced that and changed it a bit so it was less stony and added a headdress. Result: too bloody Narnia.  None of it was scary and I ended up with a range from beetle-lion to camp-lion.  I hate having to put some of them on here but ah well...

Right so the lion wasn't working out.  What is scary and something to do with creatures.  Well when in doubt.. draw skulls :D.  Keeping Eddison in mind ("If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is often a step forward...."), I went back to the drawing board.  First of all I drew two skulls as a base to start figuring out a creature. 

I then traced the top skull and added some bits to it to make it bordering on alive.  It's actually quite terrifying when I look at it like this, I might need to tame it down a little bit for Doctor Who.  That put aside I would say I'm definitely a step closer here than the earlier sketches of the day.  The mass underneath his left eye is supposed to be chain mail by the way not frog spawn, quite tricky to draw actually.  Anyway I thought it would be quite cool to do a kind of zombie-ish monster lion. Only appearance-wise obviously, it can still run like the wind.  Although the eyes look really scary like this theyy do have that I'm so insane and will never hestitate kind of look.  I made the pupils human because they kind of looked like breasts otherwise, but that could just have been my mind playing tricks on me :P  I'll carry on with this concept next time.  The mane really doesn't look like it's coming out of his either more like it's behind him.  

Here's a cool head I found at the good old British Museum by the way.  It was very cool, can't remember if I have posted it already or not so will post again now.  I mention this as I was thinking about the head when I thought the lion could be more skelletal.  I could add more flesh to my lion face like this head here, it wouldn't be so terrifying then.  As this head is quite close to the LOTR orcs and my nine years old brother loves LOTR that should be closer to the correct Fear Factor Level.

Skulls, Abbeys and Theatres...

Actually only one of each :D

Thursday, 3rd of May

The day was started by painting the Abbey and the skull from the V&A.  I did the building quite roughly as I knew if I did it with painstaking detail that I could possibly die in the long process, obviously a slight exaggeration there but it wasn't really necessary either to do that much detail.  I did the building first then the skull.

I then added black outlines to the building in photoshop, this took annoyingly long compared to doing it with pen.  As I mentioned earlier I can't do the pen straight onto the painting because the black doesn't scan black.  After having done the building I suddenly thought, duh just put tracing paper over the top and draw the black lines like that.  This way they'll match perfectly and I still be able to enhance the layers seperately.  I shall do this from now on. 

I might change some of the outlines on the Abbey because I'm not very happy with it at the moment.  All it's done is make it look more wonky.  I will me doing it again when I doing the skull by hand. 

I also painted the Globe Theatre, exterior only.

This too will have the lines added by on hand by using tracing paper.  I hope to make the thatch look better as well.  I know it's not completely perfect perspective-wise etc. but I very rarely draw buildings, I avoid them in fact.  So I think so far I'm doing pretty well considering.