Still on a PRB fix at the moment. There is one painting above everything else that the original members created that I just can’t get enough of – an unfinished portrait of Jane Morris as the Lady of Pity. Morris was the wife of William Morris and was out of reach to Rosetti or perhaps not really as the relationship was, as they say, complicated.
So what do you do in the dentist waiting room? Me I draw so you can decide whether the natural angst felt going to the dentist can be seen in this face. Later in the day I had turned all PRB – interesting how things change during the day.
Having just finished a massive Harry Potter film fest I have started watching the hours of bonus material. Most of it is interesting for mainly the technical aspects of making a movie (although I suspect making a Harry Potter movies is probably unlike making any other movie with the exception of perhaps Star Wars).
In one of the bonus items JK Rowling says that the actors, other than Daniel Radcliffe, were quite how she envisaged the characters appearing which lead me to think a little a bit how I imagined the lead characters. So after several minutes of thought I give you my version of Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger.
Time to sit back and relax and take in the breeze or to put it another way work out where to take this painting although so far so good…
So back to Photoshop for a bit of Digital Painting. This is really the first tip toe around my version of the girl of the moment Harley Quinn. I wonder where this will end up?
We all have this in built need to be someone else…that is if we are honest. Those dark days when everythings are going wrong. The days when there just isn’t enough money in the bank to cover all the bills. The days when life just seems too bleak…we all momentarily wish we were someone else.
Perhaps when we were young we might have had a fatuation with the latest starlet that we just had to look and possess everything he or she has produced – this includes the latest manufactured look. we just can’t help ourselves. Of course as we get older we grow out of such matters and pretend it never happened but you know what in those dark moments we know we did.
The more I look at this little caricature of JK Rowling the more I think it is just too cruel but I’m going to use it for one reason. I have just watched a year in the life documentary about Ms Rowling and whilst it did stray very close to Brian Pern territory nonetheless I did take away a feeling that Ms Rowling has been during the past really upset about how life has treated her (that was of course prior to she introduced the world to HP) and so the drawing reflects my overall impression. How true that might be I haven’t got the first clue as I don’t know the woman.
Doodles and sketches … just doodles and sketches…
Yesterday, in quite a long time, I went out and captured some images with my camera. Nothing new there you might suggest and of course you would be right. What is new is that this was the first part of project that I am undertaking with my good friend David Manley that he has been itching to do called Playground of the Midlands. The link explains what the purpose(?) of the project is far better than I can. Anyway it will be interested to compare the work he produces from this project compared to that I produce.
Over night I thought I might try an experiment to prove or disprove something I have been heard to say more than once – that I can write anything about anything without the first bit of prompting. What I write may well be totally nonsensical and possibly grammatically incorrect (my few suffering readers may well suggest that this is what this blog is all about and I guess they have a point). I may well still do that but not today. Today I have to address weightier matters and this involves where my art is taking me.
Yesterday I spent the day examining the work of Phil Noto and Frank Cho – both are comic book artists and both have a very distinct approach to their art. Noto has a very much more traditional approach to what he creates. His art has a Mad Men feel to it but because it is designed to be reproduced has a simplified approach which I love. Cho on the other hand has a far more end of the pier approach to his art saucy seaside card approach. His mark making is very much more matter of fact and most of his images are laced with teenage sexual tension. However it would be a mistake to dismiss his approach because of this as his mark making is simply wonderful.
The simple mark making is what attracts me to these two artists because I am finding traditional painting not to my liking – in truth I don’t have the mental stamina to making painting work and so I am looking for another approach. One, of course would be to return to digital painting and this is an option. However, a way around this is to take the simplified approach of all the great illustrators artists, of which Noto and Cho are but the latest examples, and this is what I was working on yesterday. In short the results were encouraging and fit into my limited attention span way of working – who said it is just the youth of today who have suffer from limited attention spans!
BTW that was 352 words.
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