ILX Art Gallery: Tregaskin Memorial Wing (do not read if you hate me)

So in the past year or so, I seem to have become a proper "artist" and stuff, or, at least, a couple of people have been foolish enough to give me art shows and put my stuff on display.

So I'm gonna make a thread where I can stick new work / stuff in progress or whatever and ppl can go "hey that's neat" or "ugh y cant u draw?" (hopefully the former rather than the latter.) Pls be nice, tho, coz I am a sensitive little flower.

And also I can leave an interweb record of artwork that I like or was "influenced" by - or you can make suggestions of artists / work that I might like? That'd be pretty cool, too.

Stuff of mine occasionally goes on sale (for example, I designed Xmas cards for K0w3tha$ K3rnewek last year) so I might link to it here, too, if that's alright - I thought about putting this on ILX Marketplace but since I don't have anything on sale right now I thought this would be a gallery for the time being, rather than a sales pitch (ugh).

p.s. yes, it's hilarious to me that I've been given actual shows and stuff under that name but, like, by the time I'd started getting attention and publicity it was too late to point it out, so I just went with it. Please keep meta identity sniping and "researching yr life" stuff out of this thread? I'd appreciate that. Thanks.

I hope that I do not fuX0r up the formatting of this, but here's a new pic...

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7155/6819001087_f3d94b2c82_o.jpg

I've been working mostly in colour recently, which is weird for me, but I kinda wanted to go back to that stark, graphic black and white. This is kind of a compromise I hope works well.

Oh yeah - copyright disclaimer. This stuff is (c) me but I don't care if you stick it on a blog or whathaveyou (a link would be nice, obv), but if anyone goes taking one of my artwoks again and sticking it on a t-shirt without my permission, I will sue yr arse. Just sayin' like.

really love yr style.

thx!

I liked your So7B portrait. As far as identity stuff, I assumed you were just a rabid Afx fan, but what happens when the real KDT sues you?

The 'D' is crucial.

Also, more!

In the immortal words of Mr D James, 'the "D" is so you know it's me and not him' - otherwise I'm sure Rick James would have a case to have sued Mr D James' ass years ago. But let's let this one go, OK?

You want more? I got more.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7175/6819732081_24f8d793e6_o.jpg

But that actually just reminds me there's a ton of sketches I did in Portreath last year I never got round to scanning or doing anything with.

I've always been interested in how you work, in terms if materials and methodology, I guess partly because I've only seen you'd work in a screen. Can you talk us through how a picture comes about?

i loved these two off your flickr, WCC

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7166/6702684511_cf9c5fa496_z.jpg

i'd never thought of a rainbow in those terms before but it's such a great perspective on it - i love how you depict how etymology can provide such an awesome twist on something very everyday.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7024/6637556131_557cf547a4_z.jpg

this one, i just love the colour of the sea - you could lose yourself in it.

love how you make buildings seem like living things, too.

yeah, these are amazing. they are specifically evocative of a "thing" in my head, from childhood, of semi-magical articulated landscape.

The central ornamental curve of the wave in the one lex posted is lovely.

Aw, thank you all. I'm glad that you like them!

Yes, that ornamental curve amuses me, as well. I'm kind of completely obsessed with waves, and how something so chaotic and random is also so regular and ordered in a fractal sort of sense - that if you render seafoam down it turns into swirls and paisleys. I was really trying to do it with this one, that when big waves hit the end of the harbour wall in Portreath, there's this explosion of water, but also, if you watch it over and again you spot the pattern, and instead of random foam it looks almost like tendrils of filigree lace:

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5150/5617081335_e3652792fa_o.jpg

It's a very deliberate thing, trying to make buildings look like living things, I deliberately make the windows look glassy, like eyes, so you can see the "soul" of the building as it were. I love flocks of cottages perched on a hillside, like birds or sheep, you can really see the personality of them.

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6058/6362302201_26facb0fa1_o.jpg

^^^^this is totally a flock of birds, like the gulls that gather on the harbour wall.

Your work is amazing. I especially love how you use such specific, beautiful colours. Difficult to explain but they are unique, in that I rarely see these specific shades of colour anywhere else. It makes your work look very personal and cohesive.

Ha ha I shouldn't spill my secrets - but the colours are usually sampled off photos of the Cornish coast. :)

I'll have a think on trying to express materials and methodology, Sick - obviously (I'm fairly certain you saw my sketchbook in St Ives?) they are done in pen and ink on paper first, and scanned and coloured in, in photoshop. I don't know if that's what you're asking, or you're asking, like, how do I come up with them?

It's weird because when I sit down to draw, I usually have an absolute vision in my head, of how I want the drawing to look, like I can already see it, all I have to do is write it down. But I'm actually such a poor draughtspeson that by the time it gets on paper, it's usually completely warped and looks nothing *like* what I thought it was going to look like - which is sometimes frustrating, but also, sometimes the thing that ends on the paper ends up even better - because I abstracted things in a more interesting way. That that is half the trick - it's not drawing "what the thing looks like" but drawing this idealised memory of what the thing looks like, like a distorted memory from childhood.

It's the same as drawing portraits, that you never draw what the person really looks like - that's the last thing you want to draw. But you have to draw what *they* think they look like. (Or better yet, what you think they look like when you see them in your internal eye.)

Sorry, I'm expressing this badly. I'm completely shit at explaining my stuff. I'm much better at just doing it.

I am super jealous of your talent, wish I could draw like that. Would love a big print of the first one on my wall. What size are they irl?

They're tiny! That's the funny thing, when I draw them, they're like A5 or A6 because I have to have a sketchbook that will fit in my bag or my parka pockets when I'm hiking. They display bigger because I scan them at 200 or 300 dpi. I sometimes think it would be nice to make poster sized prints of them, but I worry that the mistakes would also be blown up really large. T-shirt sized is pretty much the largest I've ever gone.

Didn't you once turn down an offer for your work to be made into postcards? Do I remember that correctly?

I can't remember this at all, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. I am ridiculously forgetful.

Or maybe it was a discussion rather than a concrete offer, but I do believe you said you didn't want to have your cards in Cornish souvenir shops. I am quite sure I didn't imagine that; I wouldn't know why I would imagine that :-)

Oh wait, I think I know what you're talking about. No, that wasn't an offer - that was a suggestion, that someone said I should do prints or whatever to sell in tourist shops and I got the vapours over the idea of being one of those artists who sits in a glass box in St Ives hawking bad paintings of the sea to tourists. It was someone's suggestion as to something I should do, it was in no way any concrete plan or offer or anything like that!

Ahh yes I remember now, my bad. I was close though! :)

I especially like the first pic in this thread. It's very hard to do simplicity with that much grace and excellence.

Having a look through the flickr set, which is excellent (particularly like the pleached alley of Cornish trees), trying to work out what things I'm reminded of when I'm looking at them. One is the illustrations for Ursula K Le Guin's Earthsea books (the first three anyway) by Ruth Robbins. Hard to find a lot of them, but there are some rather small examples here.

Another element is the Age of Enchantment exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery a few, well, probably something like seven (really? god!) years ago. Beardsley, Dulac and their Contemporaries was its subject. There's some material here. I think it musts be the combination of swirling, flowing design (high gothic line?) and a sort of mysticism or immanence, frequently Celtic. Not sure how much there is in this, but it kept nagging at me as I was going through the flickr set.

Sidney Sime!

I guess Alasdair Gray as well.

great stuff KDT! another talented ilxor...

I'm not usually a fan of the gradient colours computers make but what you do is brilliant.

Fizzles! Thank you, what a lovely post! Do you think you can write my "artists statements" for me when people ask for such silly things, because you put things so much more eloquently that I ever could.

Obviously Beardsley and the decadents were a huge, huge influence on me. And lots and lots of illustrations for children's books - I definitely read LeGuin as a child, and those illustrations do look very familiar, it's possible they left some imprint on me. But I think of other things - there was a lovely lavish translation of the Morte D'Arthur (Roger Lancelyn Green, I think?) which I read endlessly as a child, which had these incredible illustrations (no, not Beardsley, newer ones) which I always thought were woodcuts until I was older and read the author/illo bios and they weren't woodcuts but paper cut-outs, some of them were stark black and white and haunting, while others were vividly coloured. they were amazing, but I cannot remember the artist's name.

Ah! Google says Lotte Reiniger - which is odd, as I've recently seen one of her films! (By recently, I mean, last year.)

Doing stuff in colour is kind of a new thing for me, I've only been doing it a couple of years. Most of the artists I try to emulate are, oddly, printmakers rather than digital artists - so, StanM, I've really been trying to make the colour gradients look like hand-printed washes rather than that usual glossy digital sheen.

The people I've been most into recently have been the Penwith Printmakers who I found in St Ives - esp Lee Stevenson and Carol Lander, they use those gorgeous Cornish colour palettes really effectively.

Oh and of course Chris Wormell who did those gorgeous Adnams beer adverts "beer from the coast" that just completely struck me because he does that same thing with thick black lines, then gorgeous washes of vivid colour.

This is clearly NOT one of mine, it's Wormell, but I almost wish it was?

http://www.theartworksinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/158-598x309.jpg

Anyway, this is one of mine, did this after the snowfall yesterday. Kind of mawkish, I guess, but that's subject matter as much as execution.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7172/6828681085_dd396f414a_o.jpg

Trying to get the leader colour of a snowing sky at dawn.

ADNAMS. BEER FOR PEOPLE WHO DROP LITTER AT BEACHES.

I really like these WCC, esp the row of buildings one.

the footprints look like tears at first!

gorgeous K.
I love the wording on that 'staring at the waves' piece.

i will browse the rest of your flickr work soon.

WEEPING TREE TEARS THE LANDSCAPE IS CRYING

IT'S A METAPHOR FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF TEH ENVIRONMENTS HUG TREEZ NOUW!!!

LOL no just kidding. Just got back from my power walk so I'm pretty chipper.

Hmm, maybe that wasn't the best Wormell choice, realise now it does look like litter, but it was part of a series where bits of beer bottles were disguised as bits of landscape - a beer bottle amidst a row of wintered boats leaning against a wall, that sort of thing. I am against litter, disgusting savages, obviously.

I like the Wormell stuff a lot. The secret littering aspect only makes it better (not cos littering is good - IT IS BAD - but because I expect the slightest hint of 'bad PR' to get removed from anything like that).

Pictures with thick black outlines and nice colours always make me want a 20ft stained glass version.

Feel like I'm spamming mine own thread, but here's another I did over Xmas but only just scanned/coloured today.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7171/6830066355_6e83bfa30a_o.jpg

Something I don't do much any more, put myself in my drawings.

(Irony being, of course, that I'd be checking my iPhone and arguing on a sandbox RH thread...)

after several days of looking at this thread and thinking "I like those pics" + "I'll come back and post when I think of something better to say than 'I like those pics'", I am now admitting defeat and coming here to post:

I like those pics

(seriously, lovely use of colour, as everyone else has said. what does the Cornish say on the harbour wall picture?)

'Merry Christmas and a happy new year'? I hadn't realised Cornish was that similar to Welsh.

This is great work, WCC.

Thank you! It's actually much nicer to have someone say they like my pics than to say nothing. So don't admit defeat for not being eloquent, you just made me feel rlly happy and proud! Which is a good thing to do.

The Cornish on the Mousehole Harbour one - Nadelik Lowen ha Blydhen Nowydh Da (oh god I had to check the spelling about 10 times when I did it) - it just means Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. It's like the one Cornish phrase that pretty much every Cornish person knows. It was seriously freaky - when I got down to Mousehole last year, literally I was walking to my cottage (well, not my cottage, but the one I was renting) and the first art shop I walked by had that card hanging up in the window! That was the strangest thing ever, but it felt really nice.

x-post yes. Cornish is apparently like Welsh spelled phonetically. Which should come in useful if I ever have The Welsh Dream ever again.

always liked your stuff WCC, best of luck with further shows etc.

Thank you!

Also that Cornish text thing has just reminded me. I planned on entering the Gorsedh this year in the calligraphy section. Now I just have to find (or write, though I'm still v wonky) a piece of Cornish text to write and illuminate - I think it would be really fun to do a more modern take on illuminated manuscripts. Obviously Celt it up a bit and make it harken back to the Cornish Monasterial style but of course it will come out looking like one of my drawings.

I love these. I always wonder how people colour paintings like this - on the computer I assume?

Remember seeing your stuff in the dream machine I think it was, in East Eulwich, and wanting to buy one. But i was poor then so couldn't :(

lex totally otm about rethinking rainbows

*East Dulwich

East Eulwich! I wish I'd had a show in East Eulwich, that sounds like a fabulous place! ;-) The Dream Machine but it was so inept at actually selling stuff, but it was kind of more an exercise in having a hangout place than a real shop anyway.

Rethinking Rainbows - isn't that an album or a musical or something? ha.

But that's the best part about learning another language, that idioms and the way that terms are constructed make you use a completely different part of your head, and it's really good for thinking of things in a different way, and stretching your head. I absolutely loved it when I found the word Kammneves, it was just like... whoa. Broken heavens, how do you even... yeah.

You already know I love your art, WCC, but I feel I should pop my head in and repeat: I love your art.

Pictures with thick black outlines and nice colours always make me want a 20ft stained glass version.

Very much this.

My brother was always trying to get me to work in stained glass. But, like, I just thought - heat, broken shards of glass, just too much possibility to injure myself.

I used to work in Tiffany glass, when I was an undergrad and I had time on my hands and access to a shed with running water. It's messy and burns from the soldering iron are more of a danger than the broken glass even, but it's really rewarding! You'd struggle to get the lettering though, and I do think the words are an important part of what you're doing.

My fave is the Cornish Christmas card. Beautiful colours, so cold and yet so soft.

I have said this elsewhere, but your art is amazing. It really makes me happy to see someone I know from the internet make such great work. It always makes me happy when I see a new one of your pictures appear on Flickr.

I guess Alasdair Gray as well.

Pre-empting KDT, just so I can post this again. This is the best flyer I've ever had for any show of mine (too bad the band broke up!)

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3381/3474856970_055447bb68_z.jpg

these are nice; i like the similarity to the perry bible fellowship guy's style
can i assume the watermark/copyright is added digitally and isn't exactly part of the finished piece?

xpost

Wow! That's one mean looking owl.

Hello! yes, sorry, real life intruded. Went off to ~art galleries~ yesterday to look at the David Shrigley exhibition with Lex (it was v v funny and left us very giggly afterwards.)

Yes, the copyright is digitally added, but after the whole Elephant In The Room debacle, I don't put any artwork anywhere on the web without my name all over it. Can't be too careful.

Zora, I am so jealous of you getting to make Stained Glass! I love Tiffany Glass so damn much, it's the richness and the colour and the idea of working with actual light to make things glow - you can sometimes do the same thing with digital art, since the monitor itself glows (not so much with LCD screens, that's kind of a loss since CRTs have gone out of favour) but that glowing quality is really important to me. There must be some way of getting text onto stained glass - because I have often seen, for example, bible verses and the like written into stained glass in churches - but I suppose that must be painted on, rather than a part of the stained glass process? I've watched a couple of instructional videos but I'm never quite sure which bits of glassmaking are staining/painting after the glass is made, and which bits are chemical colour mixed into the glass when it's being created. Seems a combination of both.

When is the last day?

I have very much enjoyed seeing these works. Thank you for sharing them.

Last day of what?

Streatham

Streatham will collapse in a black hole and be sucked into the sun on 22nd May 2012 when the mayan apocalypse kills us all.

Huh?

Oh, wait you mean the exhibition that is currently on at Streatham Library?

That ends some time mid next week, I haven't made arrangements to pack it up yet but I'm predicting the last day will probably be next Tuesday or Wednesday.

Ah, righto. Will maybe make it over the far side of Londinium (cf Batman, this week) maybe next week...

Right. So I am continuing with this whole "draw a picture every day while you are unemployed" theme and today I could not decide which of two versions I like better of this. I went to all this effort colouring it in, but right now I'm leaning towards the BW version anyway. Sigh.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7026/6843426911_6ddcf5829b_o.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7174/6843426879_d472029db9_o.jpg

I might like the colour version better if I replaced the black with a more vivid colour but nothing I've really tried has worked at all. Except a very bright orange which made it impossible to tell what the rest of it was about.

Ooh, pretty. I think I am enjoying the colour one more, but it might just be my hungover brain tripping out.

I've been feeling a bit blocked lately, and not much like drawing. Which is not unusual, it passes if I find some new inspiration.

I think one of the things that stops me is this kind of FEAR, that I have to do something ~important~ with these things, rather than just drawing for fun and kicks. Maybe I should start a new thread for this, and open it up to other creative types rather than selfishly talk about it on a thread that's all ME ME ME. But I need to talk about this.

I find it really paralysing, this idea that I should be ~doing something with~ all this art. It makes me feel kind of unable to do anything. And obviously it strikes worst when I'm unemployed. Because when I'm employed, all this is so obviously a hobby and something I do for kicks. But as soon as I'm unemployed, this idea keeps repeating itself (both internally and from other people making helpful suggestions) that I should be making a living from this. And that expectation, that should, it's completely paralysing for me. It doesn't make me work harder, it makes me sit staring off into space.

Is it really self defeating? To never want to think about or deal with the whole "should I market/sell/promote these things?" idea. Because it makes me feel really insecure and unhappy, when most of the time I just want to be made happy drawing swirlies. It makes me feel awful, like actually physically awful (worried, anxious, butterfly stomach) when art is something I try to use to make me feel nice.

Oh, STFU and just post some pretty pictures WCC, you're stupid for worrying about this stuff.

In my limited experience, making a living from your own efforts seems to consist of 90 % of hassling people and trying get their attention and being hassled in turn and less creativity than you'd expect or like.

I really hate that kind of work: I'm not business minded or even particularly interested in business details.

The other big minus is you're then under pressure to keep producing and have to give up those fallow periods where you don't feel that creative, but are probably essential for recharging your creative energies and developing new interests and new directions.

So personally I wouldn't be tempted to try to make my creative efforts my living, even if it was viable.

Yeah, all of that post seems very very OTM and you've hit the nail on the head WRT the discomfort I feel.

I'm sorry WCC, I guess I said all the wrong things in my last email. :(

I have the same thing wrt my writing. It has become much more difficult to do it since I started hanging out with people who make a living from writing.

If you don't feel like pushing in a moneymaking direction, there's no reason you should.

No, no, don't feel bad! I mean, I brought a lot of that stuff up, because I was thinking around it, so it's obviously been on my mind. And a lot of people have encouraged me to do similar things - and that's the important word, *encourage*.

The problem is completely in my head.

But, like, given the choice between spending 75% of my time doing an awful dayjob and 25% of the time doing the stuff I love - vs 90% of the time chasing people and work and only 10% of the time doing the stuff I love. It's never going to be an ideal situation, so one has to take the less bad option.

I guess it's kind of weird, because I've done it myself to other artists, said things like "that's beautiful - if you put that on a t-shirt, I want one!" which easily gets translated into "that's marketable - you should sell it!" And then it becomes the instant reflex reaction - instead of "that's good, I love it" it becomes "that's good, you should sell it" and then you turn into my mother and my ex boyfriend and all of these people whose attitudes I have found really poisonous towards, I dunno, not even making art, but just enjoying ~lyfe~.

It's a stupid, naive attitude, I know - these things should exist because they're beautiful, no other reason. But I just want to be happy, and worrying about money all the time is the number two happy killer in the universe. (after unrequited love.)

WCC : so glad to see more of your art.

i love the colours and the styling of the text.

the whole t-shirt debacle has clearly kicked you into action ,that and the loss of the soul sucking job you had.

Are you able/happy to tell us what happened with the t-shirt thing? Just interested in the outcome because stuff like that makes me mad. I wasn't on that board but saw the initial posts about it.

Oh, it worked out alright in the end! They admitted it, apologised for it, drew up a contract and sent over a quite decent fee. Happy ending all round, it's the kind of thing that gives one faith in the power of the internet (and also that corporations can sometimes behave decently to the little guy.)

Anyway, for some reason my brain this afternoon got it into my head that there was an album called this. And of course there isn't, there's a RH lyric that's a bit similar and a Cocteau Twins ep that's a bit similar but my head was going "who is that by? is it an early Pink Floyd track? argh!"

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7050/6859136937_99124385f0_o.jpg

Not entirely happy with it - I like the trees (though I was worried they wouldn't come out) but I don't like the ripples (though they looked alright in my sketchbook) but it'll do for now. Might revisit the idea later if I get inspired.

So we went to see the Kusama exhibit at the Tate earlier this week (and it was AMAZING, anyone within striking distance of London should totally go and see it if you have eyes) but at the same time, wandering through it, I was struck quite often by - um, I dunno, it sounds arrogant to say "how similar it is" when she is an internationally renowned artist and I'm a bedroom sketcher. But we have similar motifs, we address similar issues, and I came out of the show saying "OMG, I want to paint an Infinity Net all over my walls" (so far I have resisted that urge, but I might get bored this weekend.)

So I had this worry that I was going to come away unduly *influenced* (which is usually a good thing when you encounter another artist who rearranges your mind so that you want to do new things) but more with the fear that my stuff was going to end up looking like her, and not me. So yeah, I drew this.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7040/6890372473_418448cf74_o.jpg

(Click through to Flickr for the quote/explanation if you are not familiar with the metaphor from the Bell Jar)

where in london is "like ripples on a shallow lake"? (if indeed it is a sketch of an actual place rather than an imagined one.) i'm unused to seeing such jagged drawings from you!

god, i loved the bell jar so much when i read it at age c.13, and i have totally forgotten that metaphor.

(cosign the kusama exhibition 100%)

i think A GIANT BROUGHT DOWN BY WEEDS would make an excellent woodblock print.

Ripples On A Shallow Lake is not anywhere in London, there are no hills like that in London!

it's based on teenage memories of upstate NY, the Finger Lakes and Lake George, those incredibly narrow lake valleys with super-steep hills above them, all covered in pine forest. That's not English terrain at all. (Though there are parts of Scotland that look like that, so maybe it's ancestral pining.)

It's funny coz the Bell Jar is one of those things that I read when I was 15 and I was like OMG THIS IS SO AMAZING THIS IS THE STORY OF LIFE, TEH UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!!11ELEVENTY but as I grew up, I started to think, actually, no, this is kind of teenage and melodramatic and I should really grow out of it. But now I'm thinking I should revisit it as an adult, because there are things in there that are quite profound.

I wish I'd bought the book of the Kusama exhibit now, TBH but I bet it was like £40 or something.

WCC (ack almost used ur real n8me), this is for you when yr feeling bloecked:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqZAxLqJkzA&list=FLLTIlMvmtkKWCC_QBv384Vw&index=3&feature=plpp_video
I love your arts

also god jeez that fucking fig tree has to be the #1 most haunting metaphor of my life

How did you learn to do this stuff digitally?

OK, the first half of that video I was all "WTF this doesn't even apply because this is not MY PROBLEM, this is not what I'm facing!!!" but the second half of it was just YES, this is the solution, even if that is not the problem, this is totally the solution and I need to remember this. And I'm usually pretty god with that whole disciplined "churn until stuff comes out" because I know that's the only answer. So thank yOU!

I don't really remember how I learned how to do this stuff digitally. My housemate back in NYC bought or pirated a copy of photoshop back in about 1994/5? And I read the manual and just started mucking around with it. Mostly through trial and error, admittedly. I'd scan in my drawings and at first I'd just want to colour them in, then it was, clean them up and colour them in, and then it was, do half the actual drawing in photoshop - but I still don't even know what half of photoshop does! (I only learned Select - Modify - Smooth like, last year!) I don't use my bamboo pad, either, which I should, I've just got so used to working on a Mac track pad. Just trial and error, mostly and seeing what works.

Not that anyone asked - or indeed cares - but I'm actually in the middle of working on a piece right now, and I remembered that I took a photo of it last night to post to twitter to go "LOL" at. So I'm actually going to document each stage as it happens, to show the stupidly convoluted process I go through to get from start to finish.

Anyway. I am drawing Jonny Greenwood because I am a sad Radiohead fan, yet, oddly, I have never even attempted to draw him before because he has such a strange face.

So here is the first step. You can see I've sketched out everything in pencil first (the paper is actually white, it's just a shitty iPhone picture.) Because I'm drawing a human face, I put down a grid first, to plot things out on and make sure everybody's nose is in its right place and people don't turn out like Picasso paintings, which is what happens if I don't grid it out. If I'm drawing a building or a person, I usually use some kind of grid, but if I'm not, I'll do the pencil work freehand. (Swhirlies are always freehand, there's really no way to grid out a swhirly, even with Fibonacci's help.)

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7186/6892166777_694ff5b0d3_o.jpg

Despite the grid, I've still managed to get the eye on the left to be bigger, and lower on his face than the eye on the right (you should see how bad it would have been if I didn't use the grid) but I'm really happy that I've caught his melancholic expression, so I'm going to ink it as it is, and correct that ~eye problem~ in photoshop (if only Thom could have been so lucky) so I'm going to Rolf Harris off out of here and be back in a couple of hours to show you the next stage and see if you can tell what it is yet...

wheeee, isn't this fun? (probably not for anyone but me)

step-by-step behind-the-scenes stuff re: art (and music, etc) is always interesting imo

... waitin' for the ink to dry* ...

(just to give you some idea of the timescale of these things)

The next step is gonna be painful, it's gonna be sort of like I imagine it's like for women who post pictures of themselves without makeup for the first time ever, or things like that. I don't like people seeing these things until they're perfect so this is slightly embarrassing.

*If I don't give the ink good drying time, I'll get horrible smears when I go to take the pencil off with a kneaded eraser. Which I can fix in photoshop, but I'd rather not.

I've now inked it and scanned it. THIS IS NOT SO BAD! Like, it's pretty ugh and I feel weird about posting it to the internet like this, but... there's no massive inking errors (like when a line jerks off somewhere it shouldn't be, or the two halves of a curve don't meet up) and I haven't smeared anything or spilled wine all over it

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7040/6892564943_9175a8a07e_o.jpg

The only thing that really bugs me is those eyes, but that is what photoshop is for.

But I will spend hours playing with it (first off, boosting the contrast so the lines are perfectly black, then cleaning out the felt tip marks) and possibly erasing the whole face and starting again digitally (I do this embarrassingly often) and this will probably take up the rest of my night, tra la la, this is totally my idea of fun.

(I've also decided to do the background separately, so that will be another job, repeating the process for the pattern that will go in the background, I want to do a sort of halo of plaited tree branches, Alfons Mucha stylee.)

Love seeing this sneak peek into the creative process of your work!

Stupid question maybe but the (c)KDT thing is only on the digitized images right?

some flyer/poster/sleeve work I did over the last few years.
http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/226283_10150182520595047_30650290046_7338074_3849046_n.jpg
http://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc3/14566_171818390046_30650290046_3391868_1062871_n.jpg
http://a2.ec-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/127/079815d151364d1da4fc4e775fa630f2/l.jpg
http://a8.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/59442_426499630046_30650290046_5530017_3061144_n.jpg
http://www.societyofrockets.org/ff_cover.gif

pretty much done with this style, movin on to other stuff recently

and I haven't smeared anything or spilled wine all over it

haha OTM
I don't like working digitally but it's so much easier to fix mistakes and not have my Pigpen nature ruin a pic
plus sometimes the results look so crisp
tbh I like sketchy grid Greenwood much better, what an uncanny shot of his sad wan essence

whoa wait I didn't realize you were hand-inking these and then scanning them
fuck you're a good inker!!

^^ otm

"sad wan essence" is the first thing I've seen on ILX that has tempted me towards changing my display name.

It's really interesting to get to peek in on the process, WCC

Also, that is great work WCC! You're not the first artist I've seen say that his face is almost too strange to draw, but I think you captured that weird gaunt alien E.T. he had in the 90s really well.

you are a very talent artist

shakey's stuff was nice too, like the OG SF psych feel

I need to do more arts, it just makes me a better person.

I've definitely slowed down in terms of finished pieces lately (been focusing on doing a stop motion animation piece primarily)

WHOA Shakey Mo! I was gonna shout at you ask you nicely if I could keep this thread for just my stuff, but flipping heck, those are lovely! Post away! Thank you so much for sharing them. I really enjoyed seeing those. I do love that 60s SF poster feel - but you're right, there's only so far you can go with it. What's your technique - are they hand inked, digital or what?

yes, the (c) this is only on the digital image as obviously the sad wan man essence sketch hasn't got one because it was taken with iPhone so I couldn't watermark it.

Haha, Abbotttttt I am so glad I'm not the only person who ends up destroying her own artwork through simply being a slob. Rings from teacups, flakes of chocolate that I don't realise it's chocolate until I try to flick it away and there's a brown stain on the edge of my sketchbook. And I used to draw in bars, a lot, but I had to stop after one too many beer flood disaster taking out an entire sketchbook. (ARGH.)

Thanks, I have always been quite proud of my inking skillz, I used to ink other comic book artists' stuff when I was at art school, I love doing it so much.

"Sad wan essence" fucken LOL.

I'm kind of annoyed, because looking at the pencil, I realise that I must have done something to the left side of his hair, which actually brought it more in line with the original source photo - but the slight curve of the line of hair makes it look much more Jonny-like for the simple reason that that hair is usually in motion, flying over the top of a telecaster or a theremin or something. (I love this original photo because he is holding a pair of scissors and is actually hacking the shit out of Thom's hair without even looking at it, which is why Thom had such terrible hair for much of the Pablo Honey era.)

And yeah, Melissa, he is SO strange looking. Obviously, he is not unattractive, in fact, his oddly composed features come together in a pleasing way to create a very handsome man. But individually, the pieces of his face are just so odd they're really hard to draw. His jaw is completely disconnected from what is going on in the rest of his face.

Once I do the shading, and put the pupils of his eyes back in (it's amazing how just adding that white dot in the pupil turns a flat picture into a portrait) he'll come back to pale and wan sad life.

This not the actual reference photo, but it's from the same session. I just love the expression on Thom's face so much, like "what have you DONE to me?!?!?"

http://www.radiox.ru/pics/mag/1994-patpope/1994patpope04.jpg

Sorry. I will not phangurl out. I will get back to drawing.

no worries WCC wasn't sure if this was just a new version of other ILX0r gallery threads or what. oddly we seem to rely on fairly similar techniques for the most part - I do the pencilling and inking by hand, scan it in and clean up stray marks etc and then lay in the colors digitally in photoshop.

although when I'm sketching or doodling I tend to just stick to ink. a lot of the pattern-y stuff above was all inks/no pencils once I had the general layout worked out.

I'm getting kinda sick of the sight of the dude at this point, but carrying on the experiment. Here is the retouched version, wherein I have fixed the wonky unevenness of the eyes. Slight fear I might have moved them too far in the opposite direction, but it's definitely looking better to me, and I've fixed his hair, too, so it has more movement, more like the pencil sketch.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7182/6893818699_a45c6e25b8_o.jpg

that def looks better - alignment of the eyes was off in the original, I think

I knew the eyes were off in the original - seriously off - but I liked the expression in them, so I knew I could just go with it and fix it in retouching.

If I'm feeling kinda insecure or not sure about a sketch in the line art stage (and it often looks weird and two dimensional because, well, it's line art) then I'll do some basic colour blocking in black and white (usually with 25% or 50% fills in grey) to build up an idea of how it's going to look when it's coloured in.

Because it's a heck of a lot easier to fix something like a badly angled eyebrow or a lopsided lip when it's in black and white, and you're only dealing with two colours, than once it's coloured and has gradients in it and everything has to be colour matched and corrected if it's changed. And this is the thing that always strikes me - how completely you can change the expression on someone's face just by adding, removing, angling or thickening a single line in the face - especially in the eyes or lips. Faces are amazing like that.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7056/6893818705_3062e8ec79_o.jpg

It's also funny because this is when I notice that I really have to accentuate the adam's apple, because if I don't, he really does look like a GURL.

Now I'm going to bed.

yeah faces are incredible - if I don't have a photo reference to work from I end up with some really bizarre looking people

This is why I swear by using grids to get eyes and noses in approximately human proportions! (Obviously this doesn't always work, as evidenced by the pencil sketch)

I once did a Julian Opie style moving portrait in a gif, where the guy blinked and kind of twitched his nose a bit, changing his face with just a few tiny lines. It's really amazing how expressive a single line can be.

kinda one of the things I love about cel animation, so much done with so little

It's that abstraction process - on both sides, what the artist knows to put out/leave in - but also how the human brain fills in emotion based on very minimal cues. It's amazing, I love it.

Anyway, Jonny is looking hilarious today! It's like Carter the Painter's Cat when he was only half painted and had to go out without a tail. Or, a mouth in this case.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7042/6896396763_858b04cdb3_o.jpg

You can tell what bits I work on, and in which order. I usually do the hair first - not just because I love hair, but because it provides the frame for the face, and sets the colour palette - especially if the person is a brunette, it makes the colours of the face "pop" against it - if I do hair last, I always tend to end up making the face too dark simply as a reaction against the white of the page. Every new colour and new bit you add ends up affecting the colour composition of the whole thing, and I'm constantly adjusting to make it all harmonious. (I suppose I really should block out the lips in colour on another layer so that he doesn't look so alien, but I want to adjust the pink of his lips to the colour of his face, not the other way around.)

I use the blobs above his head as a palette - I usually sample the colours directly off a photograph of the person, but often have to brighten them, so I need a record of the processed colour I'm using. (Shadows are not black, they have colours, this is the most important thing I ever learned, and I learned it from a novel, not a painting class, oddly enough.)

I do a basic gradient on the face to get it blocked out, and a few bits of shading to make it look curved, the go straight in to the eyes - once you've got a person's eyes right, the rest of them really kind of falls into place. Really wanted to capture Jonny's bright-eyed, alert expression, but also get the wan sadness. But it is funny to see his eyes looking v v realistic and his nose and mouth so flat. LOL.

Aaaaannnnnnndddd... a bit more airbrushing to give him a MOUTH and a proper nose (ugh, I hate drawing noses, why are they SO hard?) and heeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrre's JONNY!

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7046/6897361733_f8a2870a8b_o.jpg

I did some colour blocking to add a background because it looked so unfinished against the white (I will at some point put in a proper background, maybe, but I like it the way it is right now.)

is wandering greenwood eye grid-sketch for sale?

Not that you'd know it from an old 90s scan of him, but his eyes are that sort of hazel color where they're very green around the outer edge with a red-gold ring around the pupil. But I really love how this is coming together so far! The colors have really brought it to life. x-posts

And the fully colored version is stunning, sorry I didn't see it before I posted!

Yeah, I know about the Greenwoods' amazing hazel-gold-green eye colour (I mean, I'm not that bothered about Jonny, but his brother - ::SWOON::) and I tried to make it more pronouncedly green-gold but it just wasn't working with the light, so I made them more brown-gold. (they were at one point purple, which was... interesting. Colours in drawings don't always look right if they're completely naturalistic, it's weird.)

Sorry, Philip, if you mean the pencil sketch, that's long gone, the pencil gets erased during the inking process. I tend to discard the paper as soon as it's scanned, because it's not that important to me. (I mean, I keep them, they're usually floating somewhere round the flat) but they're not what matters.

Really tempted to draw a Thom to go with him but jesus christ, I think I drew Thom approximately 40,000 times between 1993 and 2001, I think it would be ridiculous.

I have some photos I'd like to see you attempt!

What, photos of Thom? You could ... share them ... and I could have a go. But, y'know, because you asked me to. Not because I *want* to or anything, you understand.

Of course.

Let me look around my files for a second.

...

tee hee hee

...

OH GOD I AM SUCH A WHORE FOR THOM YORKE WHY AM I GOING TO DRAW HIM YET AGAIN?!?!?

(I think my favourite drawing I did of him is that one of him at 18, in the beret, it was called "if I should lose my faith in art" but I'm fucked if I know what happened to it. Actually I might look for that...)

Wow I really really love some of these. Nice work WCC.

http://i.imgur.com/HnWV4.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/rIvDf.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/88QmO.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/zUo5z.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/9SEiG.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/sVthK.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/aJRSf.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/8dbIS.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/hBXtZ.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/29Vxa.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/FugLG.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/tos4D.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/5Jbnh.jpg (more Colin than Thom)

Oh sweet Jesus, so many Thoms!

(What on earth *is* he doing in that last one?)

I have no idea, to be honest.

1) masking his face so that he can sneak up on Colin unseen? (like that hedgehog hair isn't a dead giveaway)

2) Ed just told him "christ, you smell, mate" and he's trying to figure out if it's him or his clothes?

...

......

..........

Either way, jesus, Coz is hott.

He looks more like he's pretending to be some sort of shirt monster.

Bonus Jonathan - http://i.imgur.com/RgrSE.jpg

Sometimes I pull my t-shirt up like that to wipe sweat off my face.

Really enjoying this thread.

rrrrroooowwwwrrrrr it is the Yorkeian shirt monster! BEWARE!!!

I'm trying to figure out which one of those already looks the most like one of my drawings. Probably either the first one, or the one of him under Southwark (??) Bridge?

How is someone so completely weird looking and everything I find unattractive (short! balding!) so absolutely amazingly beautiful.

I'm going to go and get some wine and try to decide.

Aw, what a sweet Jonny! Since drawing him, I've decided he looks less like Alex James and more like Brian Cox, but honestly all three of them hatched from the same pod.

(oh dear this thread has abandonned any pretense of being about art and is just all about LUST now tee hee hee)

I think the degree to which he's balding is often overstated. He has had the same terrible hairline since he was 20. x-post

Do you think Cillian Murphy also hatched out of that pod?

I mean - http://i.imgur.com/PzGCn.jpg

Yes, Cillian Murphy was definitely in that there pod with them. He got that same weird jawline that Jonny did. HA HA HA HA HA x-post I agree.

And Thom's hairline comes and goes and always has (I mean, the worst it ever was, was the Karma Police video, but I suspect that was partially post hair extension damage, the way the hair is in clumps like that - and partially pretty much anyone's hair falls out after spending two years solid on tour) but there was that recent photo from the HUGE Magazine fashion shoot where he was leaning against a tree (Thom? A tree? Imagine that) and pushing his long hair out of his face, and you could see that yes, his hairline has actually run quite a lot further back than it used to be.

AND I STILL WANT TO LICK EVERY INCH OF IT.

What is wrong with me.

Now stop distracting me with pretty Radiohead boys, do you want a drawing of Thom or don't you?

:-P

;-)

Goddammit I still want to lick his bald patches. I don't care.

http://www.radiox.ru/pics/mag/2011-huge/2011-taro-mizutani-06.jpg

I don't know, this is from that same photo shoot and his hairline just looks the way it has for years and years. Anyway, with you on the licking.

And it is up to you whether you're distracted or not! x-post

Yes yes yes, but look how it has been styled! So that that careful landing strip of longer hair from his forehead is held in place with the sunglasses to cover the receded bits? He's very good at this, he has been doing it for a long time.

What I really REALLY want is that Pablo era photo of Thom, and Jonny bending down to rub noses, and they're both in profile? I found a scan of it on a Japanese website but they'd javascripted up the page so I couldn't d/l it and my god I NEED that.

It might actually be cuter and more homoerotic than Mark Gardener and Andy Bell sharing bubble-blowing.

screen capture! alt+prtscreen or whatever it is!

Yes, or ctrl+U to go to the source, search for .jpg. Pretty good chance you will find it.

http://i.imgur.com/Qm6VK.jpg - Here you go, WCC.

My screen caps aren't very good and when I tried to look at the source, there were like 500 jpegs on the page and all the text in Japanese and it was just impossible but...

YAY!!! thank you so much, Melissa. I knew if anyone would have that, you would.

Jesus, how hott is that. It doesn't hurt that Jonny looks so much like his brother in that picture. Wau.

(God, this is going to be so embarrassing if anyone in the future ever goes googling for my art looking for information about my technique and they get 300 posts of me going alskfjkljslkdfjsdj lsdfjlkjkljlskdjfsjfds over Thom Yorke's bald patch.)

believe me the more and more you draw faces (from real sources) means you will soon have no problem drawing your own made up faces.

Only because Melissa asked me to so nicely, you understand. Naught to do with me! ;-)

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7195/6899658433_15e6c4ea46_o.jpg

1) his hair took FOREVER to draw. Freaking hours.

2) Nothing on his face is symmetrical. NOTHING. Not even his nostrils. It's not my fault, that's just the way his face was made.

lol his hair is amazing. It is alive! But oh my god, thank you. btw do you mind if I post the result of my eye color experiment on your Jonny drawing?

If you like!

(I'll probably do a proper colour version of Thom tomorrow, but i thought you'd like to see him tonight.)

http://i.imgur.com/soeXl.png - lol subtlest of differences, I just wanted to see if I could get the color right. I have not your photoshop skillz, so eventually I just achieved this by literally cutting one of his eyes out of a close-up picture and putting it in a color layer. x-post

And thank you for posting it tonight! I thought for sure you had gone to sleep.

Wow OK, yeah, that really works. I think it's because the green catches the green of his jumper (I didn't have any colour blocking when I did his face.)

His hair in that drawing has a Studio Ghibli vibe –– like it would puff up to match his emotions (just saying probs bcz I saw ARRIETTY last night). Another good draw! When I used to draw pics of Yorke in the '90s I was really quite mean about his eye and he always looked like a dying baby bird.

OMG Abbbbs, I LOVE YOU because of those two images you have put in my mind:

1) Yorke's hair like actual hedgehog (or is it porcupine?) spikes that puff up and lay flat again depending on how ~defensive~ he is feeling

2) The second half of yr post just got me singing "She used to comi-i-cs... of Yorke in the Nii-iiine-ties... but gravity always wins."

and both of these are the best. thing. ever.

(One of those things I should totally not confess in public, but I'm going to take advantage of my newfound ~anonymity~ - one of the section editors at Plan B - he was another one of those small, perfect, beautiful boys with total hedgehog hair, I used to have *such* a massive crush on him, it wasn't even funny. But you could always tell when the magazine was getting close to print deadline by the state of his hair, at the beginning of the print cycle it would be perfect, but as deadline loomed, it would get more and more perpendicular until approaching vertical, so you knew not to bother him if he was in hedgehog mode. But aaawwww.)

"Taking the Darwinian naturalist's approach, in order to understand a creature's plumage, one must observe the natural habitat where it evolved..."

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7055/6908910249_08ea3719b3_o.jpg

I mean, really.

I think I'm feeling that spikey right now. Like, feeling utterly incapable of communicating with other human beings without it turning into a total disaster, which makes my hedgehog spikes go all defensive. When what I really want is the intellectual equivalent of a hug, and to be told that it's all alright. Portraits of other people are always depictions of mine own mental states. I'm going for a walk in the Great North Wood until I feel better.

I didn't think there was any left? Or are you wandering the streets of Norwood? Can't seeing it being quite as soothing for yr inner hedgehog tbh.

No there totally is! There's bits of it still scattered in Biggin Wood and bits of Sydenham Forest. A Giant Brought Down By Weeds was drawn here! I'm sitting on a log in a patch of woods with Julianna Barwick in one ear and birdsong in the other and my inner hedgehog is rolling in a pile of dead oak leaves to diffuse spikeyness.

Sounds a lot better than sitting in a cubicle in Dartford, and all the blinds are closed so you can't even see *sky*, oh well. Glad you found birdsong and oak leaves.

Still on a Dreaming Spire tip, this is the stuff I did from the architectural walking tour that Cis was so lovely to host last month! Finally!

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7179/6777880164_1e67922772_o.jpg

I wanted it to look proper fierce. ROWR. Keepin' all the knowledges in.

haha that is definitely the impression i get - fortresses. also my immediate thought was a political one, libraries and universities defending themselves against the current coalition attacks on them

I thought more fortresses to keep the Camerons and Cleggs of the world in, and the rest of us hoi polloi out. That they're not defending against cuts, they're retrenching for the old guard.

Could go either way, though! Ambiguity!

More Oxford!

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7061/6925340499_97d569896a_o.jpg

I am so rubbish at tourism type drawing, I haven't drawn one recognisable quad or cloister or college, but then I get all excited about "ooh, look at this amazing lamp post!"

I got very very lost in that particular passage once, if it's the one I think it is. The right-left, right-left angles turned into a labyrinth of back and forth. I should add that I was off my head perhaps.

The lamp posts are excellent tho, especially on foggy nights. For that reason and others, hard to define, but equally today with an MR James sort of vibe, I think that is one of my favourite locations in Oxford.

I wish I could tell you where it was! It was towards the end of the day and we were... on our way to the train station?

It's terrible. Although Oxford is, outside London, the city I've spent the most of amount of time in (because of family, relationships, gigs, whatever) in England, it's also the city I have the *least* amount of intuitive understanding of how it's all laid out.

Because of touring so much, you could drop me in the city centre of Cambridge or Manchester or Exeter and I could probably find my way to (whatever venue we played) fairly easily. But the only way I know how to navigate Oxford is basically, find a local and demand "please can you take me to X?"

This does not bode well tomorrow, but Grandpoint Genie has promised to meet us at the station and escort us to the right bus. Wittenham Lumps drawings will follow soon! I'm so unreasonably excited about the Wittenham Lumps, I know, but, you know... Paul Nash and all that.

I hate going to Paddington and getting on a train that is not going to Cornwall, it's so hard not to make a run for the Penzance train. But I can't afford to go to Cornwall without a job. ::cries::

I did not know about Paul Nash. They're excellent - oh wait, I saw the Ypres Salient at the British War museum, very memorable.

It may not be Cornwall, but it looks a fine place to go, particularly if you get those tattered scudding clouds we're getting and sudden moments of sunshine at the moment, should make it all look great.

Oh god I've just drawn something SO RONG I'm actually afraid to post it to ILX. I'm sure you can find it if you really want to look for it.

Melissa W, I think you'll be *very* interested in this one.

I'm going to go die of shame now.

Now I'm going to go and wash my mind out with soap and go and draw the Wittenham Lumps.

http://i.imgur.com/toswr.jpg - contribution to the hairline debate. Same as it ever was, even pulled back tight!

Show me the other side - the bald patch is on the other side. He is the most asymmetrical man in the world, he's always had enough to make a convincing fringe on the left hand side, it's that chasm on the right that has been generating my licking impulses.

OH GOD SHUT UP WCC.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7204/6939622119_62fe68de8e_o.jpg

Mr Tregaskin, and trees. A winning combination!

(Mr Treegaskin?)

And this is me realising that I haven't drawn the Wittenham Lumps yet because I've spent yet another week sat in my bedroom staring at a computer screen. This is getting ridiculous.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7189/6944736055_04d75c8a06_o.jpg

So I've drawn no recognisable buildings, or landmarks or anything after that Wittenham Lumps walk, but ooh, lookit these lovely thistle things:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7208/6957237655_5658e9360d_o.jpg

Laptop in bed: story of my life. The thistles is the one i'd put on the wall, though.

It looks a bit like a Liberty print. I would totally wear it on a shirt from made from fabric like that.

Oh! I think I forgot one!

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7045/6950261747_9c9ecf6c4f_o.jpg

This is my favourite patch of woods at the moment, eating some suburban Sarf London houses. Om nom nom nom.

I'm gonna link this one instead of post it, because, erm, it's just getting embarrassing how much I'm drawing this man

http://www.flickr.com/photos/masonicboomk8/6959886739/

I seriously need to get off my arse and look for a job, this is getting ridiculous. (It's too bad that no one will pay me £££££ for drawing hott boys. Sigh.)

haha i love the way that in the laptop photo, the duvet reminds me of the sea and the furniture of cliffs - have got used to seeing those patterns in your seaside drawings.

suburban homes is awesome too - whereabouts was that?

Ha ha, I was trying to go for "Londonhole is grey, Oxfordshire is beautiful and technicolour green" but now you point out the sea/cliffs resemblance of my room I guess Cornwall just creeps into everything I do.

Suburban Homes is Biggin Woods, this little forest sandwiched between Streatham, Norbury and Norwood.

ha, it's kind of like when you haven't left your bedroom in a bit too long, and it begins to seem like the whole world, in both the stir-crazy need-to-get-out-of-this-disgusting-grey-hole way, but also in the way you begin to imagine surrealities amid all the quotidianness...

Totally heart the thistle painting (especially the green/brown/blue palette)

I have so much trouble working with brown/green/blue as a colour palette, which is terrible considering how many forest paintings I've done lately. I think it might just be the Mac interface (though, that said, I had the same trouble on an old laptop, so it might just be photoshop.) Like, in all other colour ranges, I can completely see the difference between very small shifts of like 3 or 4 notches, but where green flows into brown I have to nudge it, like, 20 to 30 ticks before I can see any change. Hate photoshop for that. That's why I tend to use blues/purples so much more - they're so less tricky in photoshop.

I don't know why I keep drawing woods, considering I have such trouble establishing where green ends and brown begins, but I do.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7180/6970770963_d6e2288398_o.jpg

This is not Great North Woods remnant, but a reforested area of Streatham! Where there used to be a dairy, but animals don't graze the trees back any more.

More Biggin Woods, now that the wild cherry is out. (Keep typing "wild cheery" by accident which is kinda appropriate, too.)

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7189/6977144765_4f71ee549d_o.jpg

ARTSS

Been one of these recently.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7044/6980121525_bd33f19849_o.jpg

Made me think of Kay Neilsen's Gloomy Thick Wood painting. The girl in that looks like she could really use a duvet.

These make me think of Emily Carr, Canadian painter.

http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/canadian/images/EmilyCarr-Indian-Church-1929.jpg

I had not knowingly seen those Kay Nielson pics before, but they are awesome.

http://www.artsycraftsy.com/nielsen_prints.html

They have the kind of fairy tale quality I really love.

And I like the monumental slabs of evergreen foliage in the Carr painting. Like concrete sheets of foliage.

I had a hard-backed print of the gloomy wood up in the bathroom in Manchester, my ex husband kept it, I do not know if he still has it up since he moved in with his new ladyfrend. My mother was a huge stan for Kay Nielsen, also Dulac.

Man, I would like to start a fund for "replacing beautiful things that we lost in the divorce" so that you could have your gloomy woods print, and I could have the dirty Egon Schiele at the bottom of the bed.

Dulac, I know well! I had fairy tale books with those prints when I was a child. See also Arthur Rackham, my mum had a book that she cut all the pictures out and framed them and hung them up all over the house where they could scare the shit out of me, but also, I secretly loved them, even though they were scary.

I think Lex will remember the origin of this critter...

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7197/6836750106_f39d1ae6bc_o.jpg

I don't even know what this plant is, but I kinda love it.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7238/7047563975_414dc80b23_o.jpg

Looks like a castor (bean) plant.

(Pic may be too big)

http://dtirp.dtra.mil/images/RicinusCommunis.jpg

From which the poison Ricin is derived (as well as castor bean oil).

No, that is completely the wrong colour, and the things on top are berries, not flowers.

I will never know what it is.

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3205/2707518620_6ebc0d2180_o.jpg

Just got reminded of St Hildegarde and this rlly old drawing fits in with the forest theme of late, Penderecki Oak and all... (except this is so clearly the Salty Forest in Northamptonshire...)

!!!!

yo your stuff is legit fantastic, nice nice work

Thankee, thankee...

Yeah, I wish I could remember the exact passage that inspired that drawing because it was o_0 amazing but like St Hildegarde is out there, and something about divine breath / inspiration (that is the etymology of the word) that really caught my imagination, and Grimes brought up St Hildegarde in an interview that was posted on that thread, and I just thought "yeah, my homegirl." Or, erm, something.

Now I really have to stop mucking about and get back to my animation project. I've become a woman obsessed. I wish I had a better tool than just Pencil (because it just will not synch to music, and won't export with music, which makes it very hard to get the drawings and the music... *together* in the way I want it to.) But I also kind of like working in very basic low-tech, it forces you to be creative to get around the limitations.

I am in SENNEN.

It is so beautiful I am surprised mine EYES have not popped out of my skull from all the looking.

This is what I see from my windows. It is HEAVEN.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8012/6955259630_08b1620dd6_o.jpg

Awesome.

Even when it rains. Especially when it rains.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7248/7108901253_95a4588cf5_o.jpg

I could paint this every day, the way the colours keep changing.

i love the window effect on that - that's exactly what i love about storms, when you're indoors and simultaneously feel in total awe at nature's power but also so warm and cosy.

also i only just saw the hayward gallery one upthread! lol, fantastic.

Indoors, with a good strong double-glazed window (window seat optional, but I has one) and a roaring fire (I has one of those two but I can't be arsed to make it go) is just about the best thing in the entire world.

Hmmm. This fire looks like a gas powered one but I can't find the off switch. If I have to go and fetch wood and kindling... LOL rustics.

Please be kind, this is my very first attempt at animating anything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG5S9LGGnlM

God, it just takes forever. The song is like 4 minutes long, but it took me over a month to animate a single minute. (OK, I had many interruptions in terms of holiday, new job, etc. but still.)

It's v v rudimentary. There's a ton of more stuff I'd have liked to have added (I'd have loved for the trees in the background to move as if in the wind) but it was just too damn fiddly. I think you need a lot more patience to do animation than I've got.

Wow, very very nice!

You realise it's too good to stop now?

this is all digital I assume...? you wanna talk slow, I've recently embarked on a stop-motion animation project ayiyiyi

At my current work rate doing the rest of the storyboard would take about 2 years. Which is sad coz I liked the story line.

I started it the old fashioned way, with tracing paper and ink! (the bit where the curtains blow open is hand drawn) which was actually quicker than digital but scanning it and digitising was just completely infuriating.

I can't imagine how long stop motion would take!

yeah we've been working out the technical kinks for months, I think we have like 30 seconds of test material lol

here's the first thing I've finished in awhile

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8006/7243419170_3f2756ac3f_z.jpg

Mayan synths! I love it!

If I'd done the animation properly (I put an image every 3 frames instead of every frame) I'd only have had 30 seconds. But I reckoned the jerkiness looked alright as it was in time with the music.

Is yr stop motion thing a music video? You might try that to stretch it out.

yeah I'm working with one of the other band members who's a film editor/animator, we have a dope sheet and everything. turns out I just have really complicated ideas tho lol. at this rate we will be done in 10 years

what animation app did you use...?

I feel really dumb now coz I didn't even know what a dope sheet was before I read that. I suppose because I'm drawing it all out rather than shooting it, I don't need to worry about camera angles and things. That sounds so complicated. Your drawings are so detailed I would love to see your animations, but I can imagine it would take forever.

I used freeware called Pencil, which I don't recommend. It's crashy as hell, it won't seem to load more than 15 seconds of animations at a time, it likes to lose layers and move things about without asking you. I ended up doing all the actual coding in TextEdit and just using it as a compiler. I then had to chuck all these 10 second blips into iMovie and add the soundtrack, and iMovie just destroys the quality - it was originally done in HD, but you can't tell that by what iMovie export. I don't think I'd do another project in Pencil, I'd like to find something more reliable. If I ever did anything again, which I'm not sure I would.

Then again, maybe I should be less ambitious and do 10 second blips that are just animations of regular drawings.

ugh that sounds pretty irritating :(

stop-motion's gonna be a lot of collaged elements for the most part, but there are some things (people/characters, primarily) that I'm going to need to draw and figure out how to animate, we'll see.

hey beautiful art-making ilxors, i am no pixar, but if you need custom software for labor-saving on the animation, please say what would be handy, and maybe i can throw something together?

Oh! I did not see your kind offer. Basically, I don't need software, I need an army of about 300 poorly paid Korean animators, or the approximation thereof.

Anyway, here is an SEA ARCH. I'm sure you know how happy SEA ARCHES make me, there was a whole thread about it once.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7109/7427541022_54156c8a18_o.jpg

I HAVE THE HIRETH TODAY, REALLY BADLY.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8446/7908323658_db8bfa51d2_o.jpg

I do not know when I will be back in Kernow and this makes me unspeakably sad. I am craving the sea so badly I can almost taste the salt on my lips.

are those salt columns? i was just reading about them

No, they're just granite that's been really really eaten away by wind/wave action. That's near Lands End, which is sticking right out into the Atlantic with nothing to take the blow, so the granite ends up getting carved into these really strange shapes that look like odd pillars.

nature is so cool.

Wow, I wasn't aware of that area at all but the columns look very cool. Easter Island meets the Stone Forest of the Lena River.

Did the animation ever get closer?

Lovely, soul soothing blues.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8448/7973523842_ba7cb1a601_o.jpg

CYMRU.

Look I can draw places that are not in Cornwall, see?

i love that

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8177/7986515520_e5368d1d3a_o.jpg

MEGALITH.

(Stanton Drew stone circle, near Bristol.)

maen hir

cymru looking kinda escher-esque

sea arch one is also v nice

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8182/7989564525_b2df139627_o.jpg

Basically, I can't stop reading Fuck Yeah Fluid Dynamics and learning all about the crazy psychedelic swirling patterns generated by, like, Karman Vortex Streets and stuff.

(I made a little mistake in the physics at the bottom of the flow but I'm just going to have to live with that.)

ILX Art Gallery: Tregaskin Memorial Wing (do not read if you hate me)

al the ships in darkness

whats the mistake?

whats a karman vortex street?

Tomorrow I'm going to try to draw Kelvin-Heimholtz clouds which are the most trippy and insane weather formations that look like fractal waves.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/KHI.gif

These things break my brain, like, the physics behind them is so simple and yet WOW happens with them...

http://andyrussell.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/kelvin-helmholtz.jpg

The Karman Vortex Street is the pattern of oscillating turbulence formed by a flow of wind or fluid over a stable object.

wow that's crazy

looks kind of like the julia set

That is BEAUTIFUL work!!! It really evokes nature. I like the one with the rain in it.

Thanks, glad you are enjoying them. I love rain, I should probably try to draw it more often.

yeah they're all awesome, you should publish this

wow @ the kelvin-heimholtz gif, hypnotised

love the cymru painting - love how it turns something so solid in the stone into a building that's so crooked and unstable-seeming that it could be made out of bits of wood...

Orkney is full of mountains and sea lochs and megaliths and sea arches and I think I love it here, with its misty purple islands lurking in the background.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8312/8018789178_75c06867cd_o.jpg

I DON'T REALLY KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH ALL THESE LIGHTHOUSES.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8322/8022764218_2cccf14eae_o.jpg

(Also I drew the most amazing sea arch yesterday but I do not have a scanner up here.)

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8032/8033395239_dd81b6d62a_o.jpg

THESE ARE THE MOUNTAINS THAT TRIED TO KILL ME.

Going home on the last ferry tonight. Don't really want to. ;_;

I DON'T KNOW HOW SOMEONE MANAGED TO TAKE A PHOTO FROM THE INSIDE OF MY HEAD. AND YET THEY DID.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m38zolOIFs1rsvop4o1_500.jpg

Zowie! Is that some sort of Bridget Riley installation?

It's PS1, so who knows.

I think that's my new inspiration for interior decor

Not included: the man with the ginger strawberry blond ponytail.

Well I don't often find them at the thrift store, I'll say that.

They're apparently two for a penny in the thrift stores of Cornwall.

Can I show you my favorite wacky psychedelic piece of bs I found at a thrift store? It's this embroidered flower tiger, hidden under plexiglass

http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg407/scaled.php?server=407&filename=img2956o.jpg&res=landing

Wow, that tiger, too, he is trapped in my dreams.

I like that pic var 2: liked it when it was b+w, now the colours suit it yeah!

and now my phone has stopped crashing...

not the last one, obv, the cliffside one, you know

I'm confused.

But here, have a sea arch. Orkney has a sea arch pretty much every 500 yards or so.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8042/8044130623_d24dab6543_o.jpg

I like your new no outlines stuff.

It's 100% digital is why no outlines. I kinda miss the thick outlines, I need to scan some of the outliney sketches I did while sitting on sea walls and stuff.

I saw this and thought of you:
http://www.wqed.org/birdblog/2012/10/10/making-waves/

That is a really beautiful blog, actually.

random question for people here who go to art galleries/museums and know a ton about them:

what is the formal name for the info cards that accompany photos/paintings/sculptures/whatever?

i need to find an standard or example of one for a project i'm doing, if anyone could hook up a photo i'd be very grateful.

I think they're called placards. I called up a museum once hoping they'd tell me how to make them properly but they said they just did whatever on foamcore. This was one of the MOMAs.

So I did a book cover! For an exciting Science book about the physics of foam.

http://www.amazon.com/Universal-Foam-2-0-Cappuccino-Cosmos-ebook/dp/B00SE2JR64/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1421595707&sr=8-2&keywords=perkowitz&pebp=1421595716668&peasin=B00SE2JR64

(it's funny that this is being published before mine own book, but there it is.)

We're contemplating doing an A4 poster of the cover artwork (with the text more the way I normally do text) if I can work out how to sell it online. Would anyone at all be interested in buying such a thing if we did one? (Or, better yet, does anyone have any experience good or bad with the myriad ways there are of selling posters / artwork online?)

ahhh that is great! I would buy a poster.

lovely... congrats, branwell! I too would buy a poster. (I secretly want posters of a lot of your artwork tbh.)

nice work.

Thank you! Thank you! I'm v v pleased with how it turned out. :)

I will see what I can do in terms of getting a poster done, and update this thread with details when we have them.