Scribble of the week #009

My sketch books are forever filled with random mind-scrawlings and scribbles that will otherwise never be used for anything or be seen by anyone, because of this I bring you "Scribble of the week".

Scribble of the week is a weekly feature(well, bi-monthly at best at the moment) where i'll be posting a random sketch, scribble, design or element from one of my various sketch books. These will always be unfinished pieces of work and will often, most likely, be very random.

This "week's" scribble is just a quick character concept.

I recently watched a video about doing quick "brain-stormy" character concept art.
It's all kept very simple, colours are just blocked in, line-art is messy and shading is very crude until a final concept is nailed down. Most details are totally absent and it gives me an excuse to totally disregard feet which is always nice :)

It's a fun exercise and keeps me scribbling so I expect I shall be working on other character concepts for a while now.

Scribble of the Week #008

My sketch books are forever filled with random mind-scrawlings and scribbles that will otherwise never be used for anything or be seen by anyone, because of this I bring you "Scribble of the week".

Scribble of the week is a weekly feature(on and off probably) where i'll be posting a random sketch, scribble, design or element from one of my various sketch books. These will always be unfinished pieces of work and will often, most likely, be very random.

I'm not too good at keeping up to date with my Scribbles of the week in comparison to my photos but that does not mean i'm not scribbling. I'll try to get more on the ball in the coming weeks but no promises. :)

For now though, my current work-in-progress is actually an extension of a previous post. This is apiece of art depicting my boy and his awesome mount and travelling companion the Alphabetepillar.

As always with these pieces it's very much a work-in-progress. The background is miles off and more shading/highlighting/details and such needs to be done with a splash more colour but still.

ID

This image is meant represent multiple aspects of the sort of things that go through my head at any given time. I'd say the end image represents maybe 50% of that but still, the image serves it's purpose and was a bit of fun for a friday night. :)

To do this all you need is a tripod, a remote trigger (timer will do though) and a modicum of talent at using whatever your image editing software of choice is.

I've always wanted to do somehing like this. I didn't really have any reason to do it as such but I did have the time and with no other inspirations to hand on a friday night I just had a play about.

"Life has a way of opening up..."

This week i've been working on a very quick project with a three day deadline for a new client by the name of Monks Secrets. A site offering various tools, advice and knowledge on how to meditate properly and most beneficially.

The project involved the creation of appropriately themed graphics to be used for logos, banners/banner ads and an e-book cover. We went through various types of fonts to get to the one decided on in the end that both gave an impression of where teh techniques draw their inspiration and knowledge from whilst also implying a sense of mystery or secrecy. Two fonts were used to serve this purpose, to form a distinction between the two.

The colours used are purposely meant to be calming, variants with high contrasts in the sunset contradicted this intent however, often giving the impression that an explosion or mushroom cloud was erupting in the background.
However the sunset background lends itself perfectly for the purpose of putting the foreground elements into shillouettes. Again the advantage of this is to invoke a sense of mystery whilst simultaneusly not drawing any attention away from the text.

The design process threw up several concepts, here are some fo the tidier/tidied up ones;

And the final images that made the cut.

To check out their products their website can be found here.

"I put you in that darkness, and i shut that door"

Two years or so back I started work on a project for the cover of a book called Claire's Ghost. The book was not yet completed at that time but it was clear what some of the highlights of the story would be, which was more than enough for me to start work on the cover design.

The cover design is a very simple composite of various photographs I went out and shot of obvious locations with additional editing here and there to tidy the images up. I worked entirely in CMYK and at a resolution of 300 dpi as this is a project intended for print, with that much detail there isn't much room for error. Among other things the image has had work done on it to add emphasis on certain features, give a more dramatic mood and sky, remove tourists and traffic, boats etc.
The novel has now come out and is available to buy, so pick up a copy and have a read.

Author's website: talia-blakely.co.uk
Amazon link:        http://www.amazon.co.uk/Claires-Ghost-Talia-Blakely/dp/1780030525

Of autumnal leaves and the scent of mystical doings...

Up next is a piece of work from one of a couple of projects i'm working on currently. It's very much a work-in-progress so befitting the title of this blog.
I don't want to talk too much about the project at this early point too much as it's still in it's early stages but the project will involve a lot of "fantasy" artwork. Very much with a dungeons and dragons theme in so far as there will be races such as Elves and Dwarves and monsters and classes such as Warriors and Mages, all of which need illustrating in one way or the other.

So below is my, current, cooncept for an Elf mage in what I consider an apropriate setting. It's still fairly early in it's design, the character itself might actually be completely removed and is mostly there for reference at the minute. Her lines need cleaning up significantly and i'd like to play more with her shading/lighting on completion, not to mention her left hand is a little gnarly, I'm not currently getting the right feeling from her trousers either so I might change that up aswell.

Then the background itself which is taking me a significant amount of time but should be cleaned up in the next few days, I was going for a slightly different take on a wood elf sort of theme, it's not a terribly new concept though but a lot of elf artwork will tend to wards a lot of greens and browns and I thought there could be some advantage for going for more dynamic colour schemes such as the autumnal ones i've gone for below. Currently i've just blocked out where I want different colours to be down the right hand side and bottom of the image whilst the left handside is probably nearly there.



As this project develops there should be a fair number of images to post up here and a recent history of concept artwork as well that might be posted in the near future to show my development process.

With a Huff and a Puff...

Brother Grimmer update!

I've been playing around with the shots from the Brothers Grimmer shoot and cobbled a few things together. It's all rough pieces of concept art still at this stage and i'm just fooling around with the resources I got from the shoot whilst trying to conceptualise some really professional looking artworks for the band.

As per the name of the website and very much in the name of the this blog I should point out, These pieces are very much works in progress.

Once again do check these guys out;
http://brothersgrimmer.co.uk/
http://www.facebook.com/brothersgrimmer

"Talk to meee! Tell me pleeeease!"

Had a whole lot of all-sorts and sundries on my plate as of late but i've got several Brother Grimmer pokers in the fire at the minute which I need to get finished up to pass along to the guys.

For now though here is a little concept piece I've thrown together recently, trying out some ideas.

Do check these guys out;
http://brothersgrimmer.co.uk/
http://www.facebook.com/brothersgrimmer

'Cold Contagious'

I was hoping to make a slightly different post today as I was meant to be doing a photography shoot for the talent Brothers Grimmer this afternoon. Disapointingly a sickness has taken me and my family and so the shoot has not come to pass. Hopefully I'll catch up with the band later in the week or so.

Not wanting to waste my time feeling sorry for myself however I wrapped myself up in a blanket, grabbed a hot water bottle, a pile of medicine and suitable supplies of tissues for blowing my nose with and decided to catch up on some work requested by All Animal Rescue to design the wraparound graphics for their collection tins.

I went with a couple of fairly basic concepts, layout and content is still to be discussed but these are my two intial concepts(before criticism and change requests.)

In response to these designs a further request for a banner design was made based on the second design from above.

Skull Logo Design Phase 3

Final design finished, this one was a little bit more ambitious than the last few, the feathers took a massive amount of time and it wasn't untill i'd finished delicately painting in the buffalo fur that it's not actually traditional on a normal indian headress. I was working from memory of a head dress i'd seen once.

I'm pretty happy with it however and the entire series of hats has been a fun run of concepts, there may be more in the future.

Skull Logo Design Phase 2

A scribble of the week should be following in the next coupkld of days. (A few weeks late)

In the mean time however is a further four more variants of the same skull logo design from my last update. There are still a few more variants i'm considering toying with before drawing a line under the series but i'm enjoying it so far.

Skull Logo Design - Phase 1

A little bit more time than i'd've liked has past since my last update. Work has been most demanding of my time as of late.
For this weeks scribbles I shall be posting three variants of the same piece of work i've been working on. Essentially these designs are being made with a plan to have them printed on t-shirts. Though it's likely I will reduce them down to far far simpler graphics before then.

The work itself is an exercise in developing further the techniques I used with the recent portrait "painting". There are to be several more variants of this design by the time I've finished, some of which are already sketched out and waiting to be coloured/toned/etc.

Portrait painting

The past week has been spent practicing my photoshop skills and painting one portrait everynight for the week. With every portrait I think i noticed an improvement in my technique but there are a few mistakes here and there that i'd fix up if I were to finish these images up but I'm happy with them currently as a working experiment.

*Click* I'm stealing your flash *Click*

So the shoot is over and the hand-in of the first few shots is iminent.(As of this moment)

The shoot itself was tremendous fun and the Constellation guys were a very patient and entertaining bunch to have as models. Due to poor weather we decided that "studio" shots were likely to be the best bet to start the day and after a short set-up period we were storming through the shots.

Having seen the shots now it's easy to see where the "studio"(Setup in my lounge) could've been prepared a little better. Certainly the muslin sheet that formed a background wasn't the perfect material and the lighting in some shots wasn't setup quite right, however when it was setup right the lights performed well, which is reassuring.

Anyway, as soon as the studio shots were more or less done and hunger pains were getting the best of us all, the weather seemed to clear up a bit, so we all decided to give some external photos a quick go with the remaining daylight and time we had left. So we legged it down to Throop Mill.

... And I keep time inside of my head...

I've just started a part-photographic part-digital project with an up-and-coming indie band called Constallation. The Goat and I have been out scouting for good locations for a photo shoot.

In the meantime I have played around a little on my computer and created some related band name banners... In retrospect they're a bit too "electro" for the band in my mind, would rather add a dash more "indie" to the mix... also the font could be a bit better.

Click either image to go to the band's current myspace page and check out their music.