Snow White maybe?

Sooo there was a competiton on Juxtapoz a little while ago for the new Snow White and the Huntsman movie.  Basically, create a poster promoting the film.  Oh, and you had to make sure the characters did not resemble the actors in the movie (I love image rights).  So I start working on it, only to find out the closing date was in two days.  I knew I wasn't going to finish in time but had been wanting to experiment with ink washes so I decided to do a quick ink wash drawing.  I had my reservations about the quality of the ink drawing but I liked the potential in the composition enough to scan it in and work it to completion in photoshop.  Here is the original drawing:

As you can see, very rough.  I wasn't too fazed, partly because I had used brown paper and knew I would have to tweak the pic a lot.  Sometimes it helps having an average drawn image as a starting point.  It stops you becoming too precious about what you've done and makes it easier to be more open to changing the image and going off in unexpected directions, as you'll see in this pic...

As you can see, it's quite a departure.  I really wanted to emphasize the overall shape of the composition.  It's a simple idea and a simple composition, so the shape had to be really strong to hold it all together.  I still need to finish the figures, which is tricky.  I'm trying not to get too obsessed with detail (the original idea was to use pure silhouettes anyway).  It's at a stage where I'm leaving it for a few days, then working on it a bit, then leaving it.  I find it helps me to spot problems when I view it with fresh eyes and stops me over committing to anything too much.  Even though it is close to completion there is still lots of room for deviation from where it currently is and while it may end up staying close to this, there's no point closing off options.

Hopefully this will be completed in the next few weeks...

Another belated update

Jeez, I'm becoming terrible with this...  For the record I have been working on my figures and hands.  Unfortunately, being involved in a business startup takes a lot of your time.  It's very hard to sit and do sketches of hands at your desk when you're worried about month end and money coming in.  I'm spending so much time on invoices, admin and trying to keep all this shit organized that I'm struggling to balance building my portfolio and improving my skills.

Lately I've been getting more involved with my company website www.twostones.co.za and it's been quite interesting.  We (me and my business partner Chris) spent a long time initially uploading images, setting up pages and galleries and just basically trying to make a presentable website.  But as we've moved along and gotten more comfortable about getting a certain amount of work per month our focus has shifted to getting more work (we're surviving month to month but it's not like we're living the dream).  So we're moving into marketing ourselves seriously now.  Personally, I think starting a business involves surviving (whichever way you can) while setting up maintainable business systems that will help your business grow.  That means getting all the admin organized (our hope is to get a database system to handle much of this for us) and setting up marketing strategies and implementing them (in our case cold calls, e-mail lists and our website).  We're getting the cold calls organized (albeit slowly, mainly because who likes cold calling?) and slowly building mail lists.  But our website and social media is going to be very important.  Facebook seems to be the equivalent of sending out a press release to your friends.  The great thing about it is it is very easy to generate interest in your business amongst your friends and family while directing traffic to your website.  SEO (search engine optimization) plays a big part in it too, Our hope being that if our site is placed well we can get an edge on other design companies and freelancers who use a website but haven't bothered to set it up right.  We'll take any advantage we can get.

On a more artistic note, I recently had a piece accepted for a show in China.  It's a really interesting concept and I'm stoked an image was selected.  A lot of my work in my portfolio is geared towards editorial and children's illustration.  It's quite simple, with flat colours, simple linework and simple cell shading.  I'm very influenced by comics and guys like Frank Stockton and Tomer Hanuka.  And while these pieces are certainly more simplified and don't really resemble their work, I think that comic influence always sort of shines through.  That said, I'm also a huge fan of Dave McKean and Andrew Jones.  I like incorporating textures and unusual effects into my work and the piece that is being displayed in China is very much a digital painting that uses textures and unusual effects (hopefully to good effect).  The piece is titled "Return" and I hope you enjoy it...

Progress

Well, since the last post quite a lot has happened.  I landed two illustration jobs.  They're not really dream jobs, more like learning the trade jobs.  Basically I ended up doing about 15 illustration over a two week period.  Now the quality may be questionable on some but a lot of them either had great potential or were pretty close to being as good as you'll get in that time from me.

Interestingly enough, my business partner (Chris Green) timed ourselves at taking on average 8 hours for a full colour illustration.  Some of these were quite complex with 4 or 5 people in a scene.  So on easier one we'd take less time.  But we both agreed that we need to be doing it in 4 or 5 hours max.  It's the only way our hourly rate will be anywhere near what we need to survive comfortably.

I have mentioned before that I wanted to work on my figure drawing and hands.  Well, these sort of jobs give you paying opportunities to do this.  I have also been practising figures and hands on my own and it seems to be getting there.  My hands aren't great but are starting to come a lot easier to me and my understanding of how the torso works with the rest of the body is improving.

An interesting thing to note about the work we have managed to complete is that it took me six months to prepare 20 images for my portfolio.  I managed to turn around 15 in two weeks.  Maybe that in itself represents progress. 

The way forward

I kind of touched on this in the last post... But who read it anyway?

As I said I'm going to be cutting back on my personal projects and even my Illustration Friday submissions for a while.  I feel like all the images I have been making have definitely helped me progress a lot more then I anticipated but with other commitments and interests coming into play I need to start balancing things a little differently.

Currently I have 3 projects on the go.  One is a pinup commission that won't go away, but it is looking good.  The other two are illustrations for a book my dad is writing.  I'm going to try a different approach on the last two illustrations.  They will be developed with the intention to be used purely as black and white images.  If colour works with them then that's great but I want these images to be able to stand on their own in black and white.  I will also be approaching them in a fairly planned manner, coming up with rough comps digitally, then pencilling from those comps and then inking (traditionally).  I really want to get more traditional mediums into my work and if I can bring more pencil, pen and ink into my work to start with, then great.

It seems like some paying illustration jobs will also be coming in which is fantastic.  I'm hoping that more actual "jobs" will speed up my development by challenging me in new ways.  I think a combination of tight deadlines, working with a brief and drawing point of views that I wouldn't normally should do the trick.

Although I won't be doing as many personal pieces or Illustration Friday submissions for a while, I do want to use some of the time it frees up to work in my sketchbook.  I feel like my faces are good but the rest of my anatomy isn't up to scratch.  Drawing dynamic figures is killing me and  hands are also an issue.  So I'll be pulling out the anatomy books (Burne Hogarth, Andrew Loomis etc) and getting to work on those in my sketch book.  I'll be working mainly with pencils but do want to end up working in my sketch books with ink only for a while.

Going through my portfolio, I have noticed that there are two or three "styles" that seem to recur over a few different pieces.  I'd like to refine those a bit and get them to a higher level of finish.

Well, that's basically where I'm trying to go over the next few months... Let's hope it works out!

Two new pictures

Wow.  It has been a super crazy time lately.  I have been busting my ass off for a while trying to get my portfolio somewhere near complete.  The good news is I have succeeded, so hopefully I get signed by an agency. 

What I can say about the experience is you definitely learn more about image making nailing one or two images a week then when you work on one for a few months.  I think it is a case of we all have a certain amount of shitty images to get through before we start striking gold.  And the more you do the more often you strike gold.  It's like hitting on girls, sort of.

These latest two are actually slightly longer running projects that have been hovering in the background while I've been busting out quicker works.  It actually works pretty well.  I learn something from each fast image I do and often get to apply it to the longer images.  These longer images also benefit from me getting a chance to tweak them more and look at them with fresh eyes, more often.  As I said I have finished these two.  There is another I have been working on which is becoming a bit of a white elephant.  But I will get it done...

Just a quick blurb on a few artist's I have been looking at a lot lately... Adam Hughes, JH Williams and Ryan Sook.  The connection with my work may not be obvious but there are a few things I really like about these guys work. 

Firstly, there is a real sense of depth.  Their figures are usually detailed and take centre stage, the middle ground falls back a bit because it is less defined and their backgrounds sometimes border on abstract.  It's a nice way to play with depth and stop your picture become too dense with detail. 

Another thing I have noticed is that it seems to be done at a larger size then what it is printed at.  This isn't a brilliant deduction on my part, it is common knowledge that comic artists work bigger then what the final piece will appear at.  What I have started to appreciate about this method is that if you zoom in on Adam Hughes or JH Williams III's work you will notice jagged, sharp edges in the more defined areas.  It looks almost pixelated.  These aren't pleasing on the eye close up, but when printed at a smaller size it looks fine and the human eye can't pick it up.  The moral for me is that details don't have to actually be accurate down to the tiniest detail, they just have to seem that way...

Here are the two pics:

Twirl

Alright, so this is an image for Illustration Friday.  The them was "twirl".  I found this picture enjoyable to make but the end result is a little off the mark to me.  I really enjoy the colours and texture.  But with hindsight I think the way I rendered the clouds doesn't quite fit.  The tonal pattern works but I think the motion blur I tried to get with the figure distracts a bit.

My Mom

My mom passed away on the 16th June last year of a heart attack in her sleep.  It was totally unexpected.  I've been reluctant to post it on the blog, it seems a bit impersonal and fake.  But I don't think anyone looks at this blog, so I'll write this anyway.

I've had a crazy time with it the last seven months.  I've been super busy with personal issues, work issues and building my illustration portfolio.  There's not been a lot of time to dwell on this event, which is probably a good thing.  Life carries on with or without you.  Thankfully my girlfriend, family and friends have been great. 

But there is no denying I've got a lot of pent up energy as a result of it.  A lot of the illustration stuff helps get it out in some way but it would be nice to devote time to more personal pieces dealing with this tragedy more directly.  I've got words I'd like to write and paintings I'd like to paint.  And I'll get round to those soon.

Recently I got in touch with an illustration agency and it looks like they want to sign me in Feb when my portfolio is big enough.  Really cool and some good encouragement at the right time.  I remeber my mom told me a week before she passed away that all she wanted for me was to have the confidence that I could do what I wanted to and be successful at it. It's been tough but it looks like things are coming together.  As always she knew what she was talking about...

Rest in peace Mom.