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Sketch reporter: CQAF Haggis Horns gig
16th May 2012
Areas: music paintings portraits sketches
Over the past two weeks I’ve been doing a sketch report on each event that I attended at Belfast’s 13th Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival.
This sketch report, the second of four, is on the awesome funk band The Haggis Horns; if you missed the first one on Shigeto you can see it here.
The sketch was made at the gig with the paintings made the following day.
Sketch reporter: CQAF Shigeto gig
8th May 2012
Areas: paintings portraits sketches
For a few years now I’ve been taking my sketchbook along to gigs and events, see previous sketchbook posts.
With so many great performances at Belfast’s 13th Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival I decided to do a sketch report on each event that I attended. The Shigeto gig, on Friday night, was the first of the four gigs that I attended. The sketch was made at the gig with the paintings made the following day.
Titanic Lockdown
4th April 2012
Areas: making of paintings portraits sketches street art
Last weekend I was invited to do a street art piece as part of the Titanic Lockdown all day boutique festival, held at T13 in the heart of the Titanic Quarter, Belfast.
Below I’ve included some sketches, photos and a time-lapse video of the final piece ‘creation’.
Crane View Kitchens mural
4th April 2012
Areas: making of paintings street art
I was recently commissioned to create a mural for Crane View Kitchens, a shipyard themed eaterie based at T13 in the heart of the Titanic Quarter, Belfast. The eaterie offers people the chance to lunch like a docker supplemented by Titanic themed live theatre.
The eaterie is enclosed on two sides by false walls that recreate the curved hull of a ship. With that in mind, I decided to create a faux one-point perspective mural that would extend the walls of the hull out into the shipyard with a view of Cave Hill and suggest that the customers are working on and eating in a ship that is currently being built.
Below I’ve included some photos and a time-lapse video of the final piece.
ReFound and Restyled
2nd March 2012
Areas: exhibitions for sale making of paintings
Next Friday night (9th March) at 6pm, The sixth ReFound pop up shop opens its doors to Belfast, showing the latest collection of restyled one-off pieces & ‘works of furniture’ by local artists and makers.
As part of the sixth ReFound pop-up shop, I was invited to restyle 4 stools comprising of wooden seats and metal legs.
I decided to utilise the rich texture and colour of the original wooden seats as the main colour and inspiration for the four designs. Each design was based upon an animal known for their brown colour, with the tint of each wooden seat directing the design placed upon it.
Below I have included pictures of the final pieces along with some work in progress pictures.
The ReFound pop-up shop will continue until 31st March at:
9 Wellington Place, Belfast, BT1 6GA
Open Tuesday – Sunday, 11am - 6pm daily; 11am - 7pm Thursday – Friday.
Portrait experiments
7th February 2012
Recently I have been experimenting painting portraits, at my Monday night painting group, using irregular shaped washes of acrylic. I love the way the washes keep the painting loose, allowing me to add detail without tightening it up too much.
The business of comics: thumbnails
27th January 2012
Areas: comics making of storyboards viewpoint
Over the past 2 years I have found that I’m doing more and more sequential illustration based upon a piece of music or script .
If I were to give myself advice several years ago on how to work in sequential illustration this would be it:
Always work out the story in thumbnails first before you even consider doing a final illustration.
This seems obvious, but for me the urge to get started on a finished illustration (to show the client how good I am) can sometimes overshadow the practicality of making comics.
Thumbnails not only conserve your effort and time for the final illustrations, but especially in the case of sequential illustration they ensure the story works visually before you get started.
For me a thumbnail takes about 2 minutes whereas a final illustration can take anything from 1 – 3hrs. Therefore for the same time frame as 1 final illustration I can have 30 attempts at choosing the right layout, composition and viewpoint for a panel.
So how polished do you do your thumbnails need to be? Will a line drawing do or do I need to spend a ton of time on a thumbnail that the client may not like?
First of all the thumbnails are there to help you work out the best way of presenting the story in the least amount of time. Once you are happy with the story you can spend a bit more time on developed roughs from the thumbnails, which you can then show the client.
If possible, I’ve found that it best to go through the roughs with the client face to face, so they can get an idea of where you are coming from. In addition I’ve found spending some time developing character sketches of the main characters helps the client visualise the characters within the roughs.
Below I’ve included a few thumbnails along with their roughs and final illustrations taken from a project I’m currently working on.
Watercolour sketches
17th January 2012
Areas: paintings portraits sketches
I’ve been experimenting with watercolours recently. I like the way the blocks of colour allow the image to be both dynamic but accurate at the same time. These are a few of the sketches I did over the past few days from magazines I’ve picked up on my travels.
Ulster Museum Tags not Labels - demonstration
16th December 2011
Areas: making of paintings sketches street art
Last weekend I was invited to do a street art demonstration in the Ulster Museum as part of the opening of Victoria and Albert Museum, London touring exhibition of Street Art and Tags not Labels.
I named the demonstration “Something out of nothing” as I like to create characters out of commonplace things. In this instance I liked the idea of creating something from the shape of a few clouds.
Below I’ve included some sketches, photos and a time-lapse video of the final piece ‘cloud monkey’.
Ulster Museum Tags not Labels - proposal
9th December 2011
Areas: making of paintings prints sketches street art
A few months ago I sent in a proposal to do some street art in the Ulster Museum to accompany the opening of Victoria and Albert Museum, London touring exhibition of Street Art - showcasing the work of some of the biggest artists in the street art community such as Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Sickboy, Pure Evil and D*Face.
The Ulster Museum was looking to showcase four of Belfast’s local street art talent in an exhibition called Tags not Labels. Whilst I wasn’t selected as one of the main four artists I was given the awesome opportunity to do some live painting in the Ulster Museum on the opening night.
Below I’ve included some sketches and the final piece for the proposal to give you an idea of the process.
