SFX Sci-Fi Awards

SFX are shouting about their Sci-Fi awards and what's more they're giving us (Us! have they run mad?!) the opportunity to vote on it...check it out: http://awards2011.sfx.co.uk/

How to figure out the space/time continuum

Why is there never enough time? I'm sure many people have asked this question thousands of times before, but as far as I know, no-one has come up with a satisfactory answer.

Let's face it, it can hardly be beyond the wit of man to fully grasp the mysterious complexities of the space time continuum - we came up with velcro after all. Frankly, it's a bit of a let down.

Even a rudementary grasp of primary school problem solving can get you pretty far down the track on this one - break the problem down into bits. Seems obvious, but bear with me.

Space / time continuum. Firstly, ditch the 'continuum' bit. I have no idea what it means, I'm pretty sure it's just there to make it all sound too complicated to deal with and it's therefore irrelevant. So, let's go with 'space / time'. I'm not designing a frikkin' people-carrier here so why am I bothered about space? I'm not, so I'm ditching that too.

Now we have something we can work with - 'time'.

Right, astro-quantum-temporal science dudes, I've done my bit, it's over to you.

FS

Something contemporary...well, at the time anyway

Here's something I did a while ago as part of an exhibition I had in Bristol.


I guess sunsets are a perennial subject for artists and why should I be any different?!

Actually, they aren't so tricky I guess although when you see a painting of one it's easy to think "what the heck is that? There was never a sunset with colours like that...!" But the bizarre thing is, if you take the time to look, the colours are often incredible - more varied, vibrant and intense than you would believe if you weren't actually looking at it.

Anyhow, I'll probably do some more sunsets - why not eh?

Paid work for New Internationalist magazine

Hey, guys. Here's an opportunity to russle up some visionary art of a zero carbon world for New Internationalist mag - I'll post this on DA too so more people can see it.

Contact is Jess Worth, the mags co-editor: jess@newint.org You can also Tweet her @jessnewint

I know some of my top artists could nail a brief like this...I'll send to you people directly...

Rolf Harris exhibition

At the weekend I visited an exhibition of Rolf Harris' work at The Art Room in Taunton (that's in Somerset, UK in case you were wondering).

Like everyone else my age, I remember Rolf slapping paint on a huge canvas with a 4" brush and creating the most amazing images live on TV in the 70's. Since then, I've seen quite a bit of his work in various places but never actually got to see an exhibition of his work 'in the flesh'.

This great little exhibition has some really nice pieces from Rolf and even includes an original ink sketch and an original oil. The guys in the gallery are really friendly and were up for a chat when we visited so if you get the chance, head for Taunton and check this out.

You can get directions and other details here: http://www.artroomgalleries.co.uk/

Back to the grindstone

I've been on holiday for a couple of weeks so no posts...sorry about that.

Actually, we went to Germany and whilst it was great to see our friends as always, I realised that they are all about function - which is fine of course but they seem to see the aesthetic as very much a secondary consideration (if a consideration at all in fact) so I figured I'd cheer us up with a look at some cool art.

Here's a great little portfolio on Imagine FX's website (the greatest art magazine of all time incidentally...)

http://community.imaginefx.com/fxpose/ashess_portfolio/default.aspx

Slek...

A while ago I did this sketch of a character I names Slek - it was a sort of response to some fantastic stuff in the sketchbook of a guy called Brett Bean (featuered in the awesome ImagineFX July '09 issue). You can see his stuff here:

http://www.2dbean.com/

Anyhow, he had a couple of bounty hunter characters in there and I did this as someone who would maybe partner these guys or even go up against them in the race to bring bad guys back to justice. He's a kind of a shoot first, ask questions later (if at all) kinda dude.

Here's the sketch...


...and here it is coloured up.


Colouring is nowhere near as easy as some people make it look. Here are some totally awesome artists whose colour work is totally cool...

Joshua Middleton http://www.joshuamiddleton.com/ (top quality work - one of the best)
Toshinho http://toshinho.deviantart.com/ (great tutorials here as well as artwork)
Warren Louw http://warrenlouw.cgsociety.org/gallery/ (skin tones to die for)

As always - enjoy.

Kasai = Dude!

Kasai is an awesome artist - you have to check out his gallery on DA. He has heaps of fantastic linework which is really free and loose but looks so cool. His women aren't stick thin either which is a nice change.

http://kasai.deviantart.com/

Incidentally, don't be put off by the name of the website - I know Deviant Art conjures up all sorts of dodgy images but really, you don't need to worry. Everytime anything is posted on the site it's content tagged and contributors are pretty responsible for correctly labelling their stuff. The content filter defaults to on so no worries. Also, to encourage you to register some images may be blocked even if they aren't 'mature'.

This site is fantastic and time spent looking through the artists that are there will reap rewards...trust me. I'll post more links to other people soon.

He also has a site of his own - pretty much everything on here is on DA but the showreel is easier to find...

http://www.signalburst.org/rejean/

Just as a little homage to his work, I redrew and coloured one of Kasai's pieces, Cheyenne. Here it is.

It isn't as good as his work by a long way but it was great fun to do.

Enjoy.

Monster Post-its

John Kenn is a writer / director of TV shows for kids but his imagination has a darker side!

Check out his cool monster post-it notes blog...

http://johnkenn.blogspot.com/

Digital work

A while ago I started trying to get to grips with using a tablet and my PC to paint and draw...it's not as easy as Xia at idrawgirls.com makes it look!

I'm trying my best to figure out what I want my paintings (I mean digital ones here incidentally) to look like. I don't mean are they going to be of a tree or a girl or a monster or whatever, I mean are they going to be manga, phot0-real (chance would be a fine thing!), comic etc etc etc.

Anyhow everytime I see some art by one of the many artists I follow, I think, yeah that's the style for me. There then follows a period of frantic activity which results in me concluding that the particular style in question perhaps isn't for me and I go back to looking through cool portfolios of other artists work...

So, in the end I thought, I just need to get better (quite a lot better to be honest). That means practice. Practice, practice, practice.

I'm going to let you in on it...I normally would never show anything I didn't think was good enough for public consumption but this is meant to be cathartic so here goes...



Comments welcome...(be gentle!)

Check this out

This blog is all about art - sometimes it'll be mine but more likely it'll be loads of other amazing stuff for you to look at and enjoy. Hopefully we might even learn a thing or two on the way. So, on the theme of learning, let's start with this...

http://idrawgirls.blogspot.com/

This is an awesome blog by a guy called Xia Taptara (not sure if that's an aka to be honest) who's a concept artist in Seattle. He has fantastic artwork, step by steps, and video tutorials for you to soak up! Wacom's out - let's get busy guys!

number 1

I've been thinking about which of my stuff to put up here. To be honest there isn't that much of it and even less of it that I have decent images of so I guess we'll just have to make do, right kids?

Anyhow, here we go. I thought i'd start with stuff I;ve done as commissions for a few people over the years...

Forest Light

Seascape01


African Sunset

So, not bad I guess. Mind you, they were painted over a period of about 5 years so I can't profess to be particulaly prolific / good / patient*

*delete as appropriate

I think that'll do for now...

this is somewhere else...

So, (after a little prompting) I thought I should start another blog. It's been about 9 months since my last one so I reckon I'm due another. There are those who would disagree of course (mostly people who actually read the last one), but hey, you can't spend your life pandering to the masses...

Not really sure what I'm going to put up here but it will be all about art...mostly...