Tag Archives: illustration

Version 3, did it work?

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The third version of this sketch is now complete as far as the main subject of the image is concerned. So as not to reduce the exercise to one of exact and complete copying I elected to change a couple of features about the central picture in an effort to try rendering certain details differently as much as to maintain my interest in it. So you’ll see that this time the main body of the engine is made to look black, the bike has taken on a two tone colour scheme and the rider figure has taken to wearing a check shirt amongst other small changes.

 

Third time around this was still a fun picture to create and the inclusion of a bit more detail in these small areas, such as the shirt material make it much more interesting to look at. It is often said that both God and the Devil live in the details and this is utterly true, ones treatment of detail can make or break a drawing or design, so a cautious approach is always a watch word when trying things like this. Is it successful? I’m not sure that success is the right word to describe it, though I would say that working at a larger scale, this drawing is only six inches wide, would help in depicting the finer points and relieve the need to try achieve things with a very small brush which is still too big.

 

This buff background arises from necessity as much as choice. I wanted to post the image before departing for a long weekend away so time is short. Some careful trimming of the scanned image and a block fill, with a little shadow, was the solution to time pressures. Judging ones own work is always tricky but in this instance I’d say it works quite well. The colours are suitably contrasty to give the drawing some “pop” and help it stand out. What really ticks the box though is the contrast offered between the very hand made nature of the painted image and the utterly smooth, flat nature of the machine made background. It would be interesting to see how this looks in printed form, something I’ll experiment with later perhaps, and equally, it would be interesting to see what happens when this flat colour is applied by hand using Gouache or Acrylic paints.

 

There is some black and white pen work which desperately needs attention lavishing on it so messing about with colour may have to take a back seat for a time. The challenge is whether this exercise has committed enough to memory for it all to move forward again the next time I pick up the brush.

 

Go easy with that colour.

Posted on by Soulcraftcandyman
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CB based CR, first sketch.

The water colour paints that I have been experimenting with in my recent forays into the world of colour fall into three easily discernible groups. First there are those which come in small block form in a handy painting box. These are what you might call “classic” watercolours and although offering apparently quite vibrant yellows and reds, they are generally rather earthy in nature. The box I have here contains eighteen blocks, quite enough for most things. The second group are in liquid form, like toothpaste, and come in small tubes. My small collection of these covers some Payne’s Greys and some tinting greys of various hues. The third group are those Radiant Liquid Water Colours that look more like inks and come in small bottles with a pipette in the top.

 

The first and second groups are reasonably easy to get along with although there are moments when certain paints do weird things when applied to certain papers. I’m yet to get to the bottom of that one. The third group, those radiant fellows, are where all the danger lies and one must approach them with some caution. Through their vibrancy they tempt you to get a bit over excited with their application. One finds oneself forever walking a fine line between creating an image with a lovely glow to it, and utterly overdoing it, ending up with a riot of colour that could almost make your eyes bleed.

 

The “sketch” above, to me anyway, is one such moment when I stepped over that line. Thinking I’d go for a simple vegetative backdrop I piled on the colour like there was no tomorrow. Once I’d started I found I couldn’t stop myself. What was meant to be a rather subdued background ended up being furnished with nuclear powered bushes. The scan almost doesn’t do them justice and I had to go and do something else for a while rather than attempt a sky. It remains without said sky, the white mimicking the grey overcast look of a typical english day. It is stuck to the studio wall now, where it serves as a reminder to take it easy.

 

I do like the way the bike turned out though, which is what the sketch was all about in the first place. I traced this drawing off on the light box a couple of times so that I could monitor more what I was doing through working on the same picture a number of times. Version 2 will feature in the next post.

 

Finally, if you are reading this Larry, you can see that I’m using the pictures of your bike to inspire some images. The Honda CB750 is a handsome beast and serves as a great starting point for some future images. There is still work to be done but the process has started and you will be able to follow my progress here on the blog.

 

Play with your paints.

Posted on by Soulcraftcandyman
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To those of you visiting the blog it looks like nothing has been going on for some time. In some ways this is true and, in others, nothing could be further from the truth. We are all, at some stage or another victims of things that are beyond our control. Sometimes they are things which require our immediate attention, are complex problems that need solving, or often purely connected to the mundanity of modern life. In this case it has been the latter, the need to go out and earn a meagre living. This unhelpful chunk of freelance work, because I’d rather spend my time at home drawing, has been a bit of a distraction, one of those monsters with lots of problem solving thrown in to leave you drained at the end of every day.

Creative image making has not ground to a halt though, it has merely slowed a bit and this is mainly due to me getting my water colour paints out and having a play. Keeping any colour work and the monochrome stuff going concurrently is quite a challenge as they require you to switch between knowledge centres in your brain all the time and I find that quite tiring. But the colour experiments have been fun so far and I’ll get the results of this fiddling up here as soon as possible.

In the meantime enjoy the latest of my “bikeheads”. These are always quite small and so serve as a great way to warm up or practise a particular technique. Returning to the brushes even after a couple of days exposes some rustiness unless one is a consummate expert, and I am certainly not, so it’s a good way to get back into the swing of things. What is interesting about playing with the paints and inks is that the outcome is still often a surprise, invariably unexpected, both good and bad. The good ones prompt you to commit that small action to memory, putting it in the “do that next time” folder. The bad ones go in the “don’t do that” folder and usually make your eyes bleed. I’ve got one of those to show you next time.