Category Archives: Colour

Variety, part 1.

Posted on by Soulcraftcandyman
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“Do you draw anything other than bikey stuff?”

It’s an often asked question and the answer is, yes I do. Currently the focus is very much on the bike stuff but, there is increasing feeling that a bit of diversity wouldn’t go amiss every now and then. Looking back through the admittedly rather scant archive here serves as a constant reminder that other subjects do indeed come under the Soulcraftcandy spotlight every so often.

Admittedly it’s not very frequently but, now and again I am asked to do a small commission, or an upcoming event such as a birthday prompts the creation of something different. Providing there is enough time to get things done, including coming up with the right idea, doing small commissions and gifts can be a lot of fun and very rewarding. Not being a pro artist or illustrator means that engaging in these things is less pressured and remains fun.

Peoples reactions to them are often very positive and complimentary. If you are lucky enough and they are giving you some money in exchange for your labours, then usually this more than compensates for the ocassional hour or two you’ve spent burning the midnight oil to get it done in time. The rewards are also emotional, they feel good about receiving something unique, and you get a big buzz out of that and receiving the compliment. Lots of great Karma is shared.

So here are a couple of things retrieved from the archive which aren’t focused on big bikes, blokes and big engines. The one above was done some years ago for a charity auction. A very old friend, who ran a gallery at the time, asked a number of people she knew to donate or create a work to be sold at an auction to raise money for a charitable cause. If my memory serves me correctly it was called The Yellow Brick Road Foundation, a children’s charity, hence the subject of the picture. I don’t remember how much it raised, but it was very satisfying to know that it sold and the proceeds went to a good cause.

This second image is one of a number done over the years for my brother who runs a veterinary practice and likes to create a new brochure every now and again. Once the images have been scanned for printing he has them framed and placed around the surgery to add bit of light hearted interest to the place. It’s a nice touch and pleasing to know that many others get to enjoy the pictures on their visits. Here I was making a comment about the old adage that owners sometimes look like their pets, and vice versa.

If the archive is holding any other nuggets these will be posted too in the name of variety, which is the spice of life after all.

Both of the above were created using colour pencils and ink on cartridge paper, which was  pretty much my default setting for many years and remains a strong favourite.

Is it now a painting?

Posted on by Soulcraftcandyman
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Finally got around to putting the finishing touches to this one the other evening and so wanted to get it up on the blog as soon as possible. As much as I like the final result, it’s proving difficult to decide what to say about it today other than to ask the question, “is it now a painting?”

Certainly the character of the image is completely different, the starkness of the ink drawing is replaced by a softness afforded by the colour treatment. What’s also interesting is that even though a stronger connection to reality is forged with the addition of colour, it has also brought a stronger emphasis to some of the more comic elements.

The purpose of the exercise however was not to set up some kind of competition between the two images, more to explore how colour would effect the final outcome and to get my rusty painting hand back into action. Some details proved easy and enjoyable to do whilst others remained a challenge, so there is still work to do before getting to that point where one is confident in creating what your minds eye can see, on the page in front of you. They say that in order to truly become an expert at something you must practice it for something like ten thousand hours, quite a way to go if expertise is the goal. Thankfully it is not, well not yet anyway, re-learning to play with some colour media is. So there will be more of these.

Enjoy the view.

In the pipeline.

Posted on by Soulcraftcandyman
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As mentioned previously there is a small queue of stuff which is patiently waiting to get onto the blog. It all needs scanning and fiddling with slightly to get it into the right shape to do that. This process seems to take more time than it rightfully should but, then again it’s worth making the effort to get them all looking as good as possible, even the sketches. So here are the first couple of recipients of a bit of tinkering.

This first one, above, is a half done colour version of a biro ink drawing which was originally posted back in October. That was quite a popular post, so encouraged by that and another watercolour picture which featured in September, it seemed like a good idea to see what this one would look like if given the same treatment. The base image is a scan of the original pencil sketch printed out onto a piece of plain fine grain watercolour paper. I paint straight onto this without bothering to stretch the paper or anything fancy. Filling out the detailed areas of the drawing first, the bike is then followed by the rider and finally the background. As this one is somewhat of an experiment, a black rapidograph pen (a Rotring 0,35 remember those?) was used to emphasise some of the outline stuff at this stage to see how it would look. Most of the above is done in a combination of greys. Oddly the solid block Payne’s grey in the paintbox, and the liquid Payne’s grey that comes in a tube are completely different colours, but this provides a nice choice between one which is quite blue in hue and one which is much blacker in character. I avoid using pure black as much as possible, which goes way back to being “informed” by an old tutor once that nothing in daylight is actually ever really black. Hoping to complete this very soon.

This second image is a detail of a drawing which is taking shape on the A2 Cartridge pad which spends most of its life leaning against that wall here in the micro-studio. Having talked about scribble sketching in a post before Christmas it seemed like a good idea to see if that technique could be explored a bit more and the jump up in size from A3 to A2 felt like the right thing to do. In all honesty there is a little bit of cheating going on here, there’s a very rough pencil layout underneath all the ink. Essentially though this is drawn pretty much off the cuff using my previous small sketch as a rough guide. This slightly rougher paper lends itself well to leaning the biro over almost to the point where it won’t make a mark, and scribbling away. There are some bits still to do to finish it off. Apologies if the image is a little dark around the edges but it’s too big to fit under the scanner so out came the camera. Really looking forward to finishing this one and then I can put both finished images in the gallery.