Rough stuff!

It's funny: every time I let this blog go a while without posting anything, you'd think it was because I haven't been working on anything. Au contraire. It's when I get busiest with projects that I forget to update! But not this time! This time: I update.

I often get asked about my process for working on things. I've always been someone who prefers to keep my rough ideas hidden, and who waits for the finished product before I'll let people take a look. I'm the person doodling stuff in the coffee shop or on the bus who will snap the sketchbook shut if you get too close. But I'm trying not to be!

So, for the moment, I'm going to post some of what I've been working away at over the weekend. These are for a comics project that just got underway a couple of weeks ago. I'll stay mum on the details for the moment, but it's shaping up to be something really exciting, and is so far a pretty amazing collaborative effort by a large number of contributors.

Anyhow, back to my process. My process is itself a work in process. These layouts were figured out, first, as individual panels sketched out and repeatedly drawn and redrawn in pencil before I decided I was happy enough with them to sketch them into a layout template. I then scanned them and did some resizing and redrawing using photoshop and my wacom tablet. Many many... many... hours later, and they still look mostly like an indecipherable sloppy mess, but from this indecipherable mess will come finished pencils, inks, toning, lettering... and a comic is born.

Here are just a couple of the seven pages I roughed out this weekend:

Death and the Maiden

Sketched in pencil, without photo reference, so it may have some... idiosyncrasies? I'm happy with the mood though, which is the main thing for me.

Based on Gaston Leroux's original novel's description of the Erik and Christine characters. No Gerard Butler in the house here. Though I think this could potentially be a standalone piece, without the context of it being an illustration for a book.

New Black Bird paintings available!

I've produced a couple of new paintings in the last few weeks. And here they are!

Black Bird XXIII
20" x 16", mixed media on canvas
$330
Available.



and

Black Bird XXIV:
24" x 12", mixed media on canvas
$330
Available.



Coming soon: more koi, in a medium-sized format!

Upcoming event! Speakeasy Drawing and Painting Show at the Gladstone

For one evening, the second floor of the Gladstone will be filled with the artwork of 29 local artists. And I'll be one of them!

Wander through multiple rooms and hallways, each hung with a huge variety of original works, and meet the artists.

Wine and beer will be served. Admissions is pay-what-you-can.

The official site is here, with all the info:

http://www.blttogo.com/index.php

"The atmosphere at SpeakEasy is casual...
conducive to innovation and inspiration. Each month a selected group of artists from a different creative discipline displays work for the crowd. Some of our most popular shows have featured Photography (part of the city wide Contact Festival), Illustration, Industrial Design, Multimedia, Graphic Design, Fine Arts, and the SpeakEasy Craft Shows."

I've also made a facebook page for the event, here, so you can add it!

http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=129571927055432

The finished article: "Christine, Please..."

Okay, so I finally finished my fan art experiment, and probably my fan art kick, for the moment, too.

Here's the final, fully coloured and shaded version of the Phantom of the Opera unmasking scene that I had been posting at different stages:



(I also have it posted, with a description of the scene and what I was going for, on deviantArt: here.)

In other news, on a much sillier fan art front (oh God help me), I made another piece of Love Never Dies mockery, which will mean absolutely NOTHING to anyone who hasn't listened to the cast recording or seen the play, but it DID get used in a video piece by The Phantom Reviewer, so it's going to be seen by thousands on Youtube, at least! (Makes me wish I'd bothered with shading.)



And I think that's it for the glut of Phantom fan art, for the moment. (But no promises!) More fine art posts to come, in the VERY near future...

Unless I go off on a different fan art kick. Like Sherlock Holmes, or Les Miserables, or The Wicker Man (the ORIGINAL)... I don't even know. That's why this is the Sketches and Miscellany blog! Stay tuned for more random insanity.

Work in progress update: the nerdery progresses!

Just a little update on the piece of Phantom of the Opera art that I posted recently, showing the piece in progress. I've since spent many more hours inking it and cleaning it up, which resulted in the following line art:


...to which I have now started adding some colour:


I've barely started shading it at this point, but I'm certainly looking forward to getting to the finished product.

These types of exercises are good for my art in pretty much every way: I get to practice anatomy, perspective, expression, drapery, inking, colour, shading... and why not work on these things using characters I enjoy?

More to come soon!

New painting: Black Bird XXIII

After the big push for the Bazaar of the Bizarre, I gave myself a bit of a breather. However, I'm back in productive mode, and have some new things to post in the next few days!

For starters:



This piece was just completed on Monday, and is available!

Black Bird XXIII
Mixed media on canvas
20" x 16"
$330

Coming soon: an update on a couple of illustration pieces, and... some more koi!