Work In Progress: The Gypsy And The Moon

So this is an extension and recreation of a piece I did on December 13th 2010. I liked the elements it had in it and I felt that it could be bigger and better and more colourful and detailed. So that's what I'm going for. I've scaled it up from A4 to a large board. Probably A1 height but a bit slimmer in width.

Drawn out in marker. Usually when I use markers everything goes horribly wrong but this seems to have gone quite well. Good strong lines.

Close up face.

Close up goat skull.

Started painting it. Acrylics. Like the blue.

More to follow.

January 28th 2011: Diamonds And Guns - Pin Up

 

Finally got around to doing something. Painting is good. Pin up with some tattoos, piercings and shaved head and stuff. Pretty happy with this although the left hand is a bit too small but it's not so easy to see. Loving the filligree pattern and little icons of the background. The guns pretty sweet as well. This is the first time I've done anything largeish in ages. It's been enjoyable. More to come I think. 

 

Here's a close up of the facial/gun area, also with the best tattoo bit and showing the background more. The crop looks pretty good to be honest. Better composition.

More D&AD and Launch of Professional Project

I'm still unable to reveal any information about my D&AD project but we're onto a  solid idea now. It's been knocked about and changed, tutorial-ed, changed back again, evolved, crumbled and started over but ideas are sorted, planning is well underway so we're finally at the stage where we can go into production. The illustrations are shaping up to potentially be really interesting pieces.

Professional project also launched today. It's been a day full of information and taking notes on what to do but I've got some pretty clear ideas of what I wanted to be aiming towards already. Essentially: self-promoting book design. These are the types of books that I love to own, read what artists have written about their work and their techniques and learn about them. They generally have the most imagery of any type of book as well which is great for reference. Got to write up a learning agreement first though apparently. 

My hits have gone down since I stopped doing a picture a day which I don't like. I'll have to try and post more drawings/paintings again soon. Should be finishing one in the next week or so.

D&AD Illustration/Diesel Brief

So I'm working with Eddy Mac on my D&AD brief. We've been working on ideas generation for a while now and we're getting close now. The Diesel brief is to create two pieces of work inspired by two tracks of a chosen artist. The main idea is to be stupid as this is the rebrand of diesel that happened recently.

We had our first tutorial on this today and our basic idea was received well but it was agreed that we need to push it to connect a little more with the brand and possibly also with the musical side of things as this is heavily music based as a project. At this point I would upload some visuals but since it's a competition brief you'll have to wait.

Last Touches To My Website

From the final crit earlier today there was only one issue that arose. The logo in the top right corner seemed to be superfluous to the design, a random element of useless vector, floating meaninglessly in the gale force of the world wide web. So I removed it from all pages and simply moved the title of each page across to the top right corner to fill the gap in. 

The only other problem that I had was with my contact form which was sending messages to my email that just said "submit:submit". So I've replaced the entire form with a different one which worked perfectly first time. It also has a captcha which will make the form more secure.

January 12th 2011: Always Looking Jealous

 

First draw of 2011. I'm sticking with the dates thing because I like it. It shows progress. Jealous because of the green eyes. Contrasts well with red glasses. Few mistakes here and there, that's what you get for slackig off and not drawing properly for nearly two weeks. Stupid lazy new year.

Fav Icon And Finish

Uploaded everything to the server. I'm Online. The last thing to check was that my favIcon would work... and there it is, right in front of my name on the tab, and on the adress bar. Nice. I chose to use the logo I created as that seemed to fit with the branding/style of the website, is consistent throughout and also is simple enough to be reduced to a 16px by 16px square. I've also run this through a few different browsers to make sure it works. It's a little different depending on browser, but only so that the text on the bio page moves down by a line so it's working consistently and effectively. So I guess that means I'm done for now until I create more artwork to upload. Overall I'm really pleased with the outcome of my site, I've managed to follow my plans from the beginning, making a few minor changes to get around the difficulties of java script but it definitely still resembles the original design. The layout is simple yet effective and works well with the imagery as it serves to emphasise the work. I feel that the work I chose to display on the index page was a good choice. It has a variety of styles and media which contrast well with each other but fit together through the use of a common colour: green. The colours on the index page really pop out aswell due to the plain background. The imagery on the bio and contact pages I feel also works well, I selected pieces which could be made to float in the space provided so that they wouldn't be in a box format and could fit more naturally into the layout. I'm also really happy with the typeface and how that works within the confines of the page and in conjunction with the imagery and layout. The whole thing really portrays my work/style/personality well. In particular I'm happy with how the gallerys work, the categories are well thought out, and the rollover on the selection screen adds an extra element. Then the actual gallerys themselves have an enlarge function which makes the site a little more interesting than just a basic click and replace. All my links work, all the functions work. Website: done.