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.