Hi Ex stand in 2

Heres the second stand-in painted, ouch we've all got sore backs now!  This is 'Good Dog, Bad Dog' By Dave Shelton.  Just some varnish & then the stands to make.

Stand ins

I thought it would be a good idea to have some stuff to decorate Eden Court with at Hi Ex, So I put out a plea to some of our artist Guests for characters. Heres The first one we've painted up. A Character called Lady Tsuji from a Story written by our very own Richmond Clements and illustrated by the lovely Inko.

Next Its the Good Dog, Bad Dog ( as seen in the Guardian ) by the talented Dave Shelton...watch this space for the finished items!

'After the Snow'

Well I loved the snow... but at times we only seemed days away from the whole country grinding to a halt. But people in Scandinavia, Mongolia, Siberia, Canada etc deal with minus freezing temperatures all the time. So when the climate changes happens, when the gulf stream switches off, I figures a few years, decades or centuries on, you'd need a mixture tribal and salvaged tech to survive. It will be quite cosy underground in those buried sky scrapers. I've got my head torch and snow boots so I'm getting prepared. I guess I should have put a top of a tall building poking out of the snow, but I thought it too 'planet of the apes' obvious. sketches based on Mongolian archer women, scanned & painted in Photoshop. Did you know, a Mongolian composite bow, make of layers of wood bone & sinew, from Genghis Khans time, was more powerful in aim & range than bows of modern materials.

ink version of Biker Jane

not happy with drawing, hardly any time for art- stressing me out. Need those jobs, yet pitching for them leaves me struggling to be something I'm not & not giving myself time to be/ do what I am good at- whatever that is. When I ran my pottery I never felt like a 'proper' potter, but of course I was, now it frustrates me that all those pottery skills lie dormant and unused. I feel everything is clumsy and amateur, even my garish crochet projects.  What I did realise tho' that I surround myself with illustrators and comic artists, who all draw from imagination?  I feel so inadequate at this, but then remembered that from an early age was taught that drawing from imagination was bad, drawing from observation was the only valid method. Blimey it even took me years to get past the idea that photo reference was woeful cheating. so many rules, of course to let go of them all would result in completely self indulgent splodge of cat fur and plaster- its art darling. If I don't get some time to do any soon I shall implode- which would in itself, be art of course.

Biker Jane

Work in progress- and it has been for many years. We all have a graphic Novel inside of us, or think we do, My problem is I can't write and my drawn layouts/ anatomy/ action need a lot of work, so I've been sitting on this project until I get good enough to give it a go. This is Jane the Biker, my idea of a comic female character - I hesitate to use the word heroine . You do not want to meet Jane on a dark night. Its sort of a dark road movie set in the highlands. Strangely the world is changing so fast, aspects of the story are already looking olde worldy, smoking in public, no CCTV, people not using mobile phones as standard, different drugs being used... I'll have to hurry up & do it before we're all using hover jets. ( or set it deliberately in the past ). Figured I'd work up some versions of this sketch for colouring folio practice in different styles. Heres the start of the 1st one.

Art Class - life drawing.

Art Class- had some models today, low turn out due to snow, but good fun. Ish sat for 30/40 minutes, I made her look ancient & proportions are out.

Lukáš sat for 25 minutes, tricky light- excuses excuses. Really should practice drawing people more often.

Snow Crows.

you follow my 'pic of the day' photo blog, you may recognise these Crows which were sheltering from the blowy snow in the trees in our garden last week. mixed media on paper.29cm x 21cm

Moon Bow

31cm x 38cm, mixed media on card. Been messing about with this since last week, just trying to get last weeks night sky from memory, was it blue? green, gold, silver, pink, copper? enjoying the silky feel of paint slippy on this card.

Midwinter trees in moonlight.

A quick acrylic on card. 25cm x20 cm. ( and yes these things are always for sale )