Welcome to Sav Scatola's Website

Beware the Twigmen!

2012-02-03T11:57:00.000-08:00

This was originally one of two early concept backgrounds for a client, but we realised the brief was resolvable using the first image only. It sat forgotten for a long time until I went to inspect the storm damage at Edinburgh Botanic Garden and snapped the roots of a fallen tree which on viewing, reminded me of a stick-like creature. Actually the more I look at this photo the more creatures I see - the current count stands at five! Once I'd decided to sketch a couple of them the discarded concept seemed an ideal backdrop.
Twigmen was originally started in Photoshop, but I fancied some practice with ArtRage's Oil brush so the original was loaded as a tracing image set to automatically choose colours from that tracing image. I really liked the freedom of this stage and kept some of the original results on the background trees because it reminded me of my favourite christmas present as a child - painting by numbers kits! Ah the memory of unstopping those tiny plastic pots and catching the potent wiff of linseed oil has stayed with me all these years. Meanwhile back in ArtRage, once the canvas was covered with a layer of active oils normal painting resumed. Click on images to enlarge.

Arthur's Seat

2012-01-10T04:18:00.000-08:00

Arthur's Seat - ArtRage Pro

I grew up in North Lincolnshire, a flat
part of the world where unbroken horizons stretch for miles and skies are vast blue canvases for abstract formations of cumulus cloud. This is where the Glasgow School came to paint masterpieces like 'To Pastures New' by James Guthrie. In moments of boredom I would blur my eyes and imagine the clouds as far off mountains, places where dragons dwell and hobbits roam in search of adventure. I desperately wanted to live somewhere lumpy! Well now I do and perhaps those juvenile longings subconsciously contributed to my move north, because Edinburgh is anything but flat and all the more beautiful for it!

Arthur's Seat Texture Detail

This painting is a result of both my fascination with Arthur's Seat and a continuation of custom brush creation in ArtRage Pro. Here I simply removed the brush's ability to scale with pressure creating an impasto flat brush. I really like the built in textured marks such brushes make, they do a lot to combat that 'digital' look. This particular view is from the top of a multi storey car park in Leith, but it is a constant presence wherever you go in the city, turning even the most mundane of scenes into something more inspiring. When I next get the time and inclination I'd like to create a physical version of this on a large canvas with thick paint and huge brushes.

Cù Sìth - ArtRage Pro

In this old digital painting I used a photo reference of Arthur's Seat as the domain of the mythological creature Cù Sìth (Coo Shee,) said to be an enormous otherworldly green dog with shaggy fur and a long braided tail. Painted in ArtRage Pro with a combination of AR's native oil brush and a custom sticker spray brush. I could happily spend my days photographing or painting Arthur's Seat yet never get the same view twice because the weather constantly swings between extremes, providing an infinite number of inspiring views. Here is a tiny random selection of photos I have taken of Arthur's Seat and the surrounding area.

Summit


Moonstruck

From Calton Hill

Salisbury Crags

St Stephen's Church, Edinburgh

View of The Pentlands at Dusk

Afternoon

Blinded by the Light!

Who Needs Lords

Mundane Made Magnificent!

Edinburgh Castle From Salisbury Crags

Click on images to enlarge.

A Gift For New Neighbours

2012-01-03T04:26:00.000-08:00

Happy New year! Where did the last half of 2011 go? Ho hum, work has completely swamped my days and nights of late, so the seasonal break was hugely welcome. Along with high spirits and good cheer, I used the spare time to re-introduce myself to ArtRage Pro's brilliant Sticker Spray tool. The subject matter was not initially significant or planned, but grew from brush stroke tests while designing an impasto brush head. It eventually became a fantasy piece in which a mother and baby of unspecified species are welcomed to their new home with a basket of fish. Above them Gannets inevitably begin to gather for scraps. The image is 5000 x 3500 pixels at 300ppi which roughly translates to the imperial paper size, A3.
I've always loved paintings which make beautiful sense when viewed as a whole, but break down to abstract textured marks in close up. The Impressionists and The Glasgow boys are two of my favourite examples of such techniques and I kept them in mind when designing the brush used for this painting.

ArtRage Pro gives us the ability to create editable stickers with depth, gloss and shadow settings. These stickers can be used as single 'peel and stick' elements or sprayed out in user definable ways with the Sticker Spray tool. It is this ability to emit samples in controllable ways which gives us the opportunity to make custom brush heads. The process for this brush involved three stages illustrated in the diagram above (click image to zoom.) Column 1 is the final brush stroke. I made 3 slight variations because sticker spray brushes do not currently react to Artrage's surface and light settings - a heavy impasto, a light impasto and a reversed impasto which digs into the surface. Column 2 is the sticker sheet to which you can add data for colour, texture (depth,) gloss and metallic effects. For this brush I have simply provided colour and depth information. Column 3, the Spray Variation panel is used to fine tune the behaviour of your brush as is the Settings panel in column 4.

The first stage in brush creation is to make the actual brush head bitmap. In this case I made six variations which will be sprayed out randomly to avoid too much repetition in the stroke. Variation must be arranged in a grid on the same page so that each element lies within its own square. Later I will tell Artrage to randomly choose any of these six shapes for each sample sprayed. In order to ensure my brush can use a full colour pallet, the initial brush heads of the colour map must be pure red. This is simply because ArtRage uses pure red as the starting point in its colour processing. The colour map actually has a transparent background and is loaded as a png file. Transparency discards everything but the actual brush shape. The next map along, the depth map, is black and white where black represents no depth and white is maximum depth. This map is used to add depth to the heavy impasto brush. The depth map for a lighter impasto effect changes the white to a dark grey. The reversed brush uses a white background with black shapes.

The colour and depth maps are next loaded into a newly created sticker sheet within ArtRage (see column 2.) I could have created my sticker sheet as a single row of six shapes, it doesn't matter as long as type in the matching numbers bottom right of the sticker sheet; columns: 3, Rows: 2. Artrage now draws the correct grid showing the six shapes contained in their own squares. I also choose where to store the new sticker sheet and give it a name then press OK. Column 3 of the diagram shows the Spray Variation panel accessed through Settings. This is where I give the brush its characteristics. I want the brush to access the full colour pallet so I set Hue/Tracing H to 100%, Luminance/Tracing L to 50% and Saturation/Tracing S to 100%. Next I want the brush lay down any of the 6 available shapes in random sequence so I set both Sheet Row and Sheet Column to 100% Random. I make the brush pressure sensitive in two ways. First by increasing brush size with pressure via Scale/Pen Pressure and second by increasing the transparency of the mark via Alpha/Pen Pressure. I also set Rotation/Stroke direction to 100% to make the brush shapes follow the directions of stroke. Finally I set Luminance/Base value to a low negative value to compensate for the effect the depth lighting has on colour (er, I think!) EDIT: Wait, that last sentence is wrong. :D It turns out my colour map wasn't quite pure red (originally done in Photoshop.) To fix this I imported the map into ArtRage, coloured it up then re-exported and now no compensation is necessary. Finally I return to the Settings panel, set the Spray Rate to 95% and make sure the Auto-Flatten and Continuous settings are checked. If Auto-Flatten was not checked hundreds of thousands of samples would be editable which would eat your computer memory in no time. Continuous emits samples even when your hand has stopped moving. It is like Photoshop's Spray Gun setting.

I've realised it is easier to make a new brush than to describe making a new brush. :) Click on images to enlarge.

Detail

Cregle iPen

2011-11-23T11:44:00.000-08:00

This is going to make a lot of iPad artists very happy!
Sam at Cregle has just informed me of their new iPen, a stylus for the iPad with a very fine point and the option of a visible on screen cursor.
ArtRage and SketchBook Pro are already in line for support, so please head on over to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1225098940/ipen-the-first-active-stylus-for-ipad and give Cregle a hand, lets make this huge!

Loch Tay

2011-10-08T22:59:00.000-07:00

We recently went up the road to Perthshire for a few days, one of which was spent exploring the area around Loch Tay. It started as a miserable drizzly day but by lunch we were able to sit at the Kenmore end and enjoy some gorgeous views up the length of the water.
This picture was painted in a 30 x 40cm canvas sketchbook using a combination of Sennelier and Caran D'Ache oil pastels. It was finished once we got home where the pebble shore gave me an opportunity to figure out how to get fine detail with such chunky media. I don't like sharpening pastels because the shavings are wasted and they are expensive, but using a craft knife for sgraffito techniques minimised waste and enabled me to scrape highlights back to the canvas with some precision. Click on image to enlarge.

Creative Giant

2011-10-05T22:19:00.000-07:00

I was saddened to hear of the death of Steve Jobs this morning. Of course most eulogies speak of him as the most influential business man of his generation, which is true, but Steve Jobs was one of my creative heroes. I did not really take much notice of computing before enrolling on a year long creative computing course in 1995 where we used Apple's PPC 7500 and 8500s, but even before then I somehow knew computers were being used creatively and if I ever got one it would be an Apple. I eventually bought a PPC 7600 when securing 3D work for an instore marketing company in 1997 and to be honest, have not needed many upgrades since! That is because Apple's products have always been solid, reliable and extremely easy to use, like an extension of our creative brain, like an extension of Steve Job's creative brain. I watched with horror as Apple nearly went down but never believed they would (and wished at that point I'd had a few thousand quid to invest in Apple shares because they went down to pennies!) I whooped with joy when Gil Amelio bought NeXT in order to accelerate the modernisation of Apple's operating system. As part of the deal Steve also came back as advisor and I knew from then that Apple would be OK again. But they were more than OK, because Steve Jobs had the vision of changing the way computers looked and felt forever. That is bold and rare artistry, not sober business sense. From the first day I switched on a Mac I have always loved using computers to paint with because Steve Jobs, Johnathan Ive and Apple made sure my Mac was a pleasure to use while never getting in the way. It just works. Thank you Steve.
The image comes from Apple's website.

Princes Street

2011-09-13T01:18:00.000-07:00

3D illustration is a peculiar thing because in order to deliver a final image it needs to be rendered - a process which does not involve the artist at all! Rendering takes all the 3D geometry, texture and lighting data you have created and mysteriously binds it together to form a 2 dimensional image.
I mention this because if the 3D scene is particularly complex and you do not happen to own a render farm or even a 12 core mega machine, the rendering process pretty much takes over your computer's resources, so in those times I decided to paint another winter scene looking down Waterloo Place to Princes Street. Again this one uses an extremely limited oil palette, french ultramarine, burnt sienna and titanium white, with specs of cadmium red and yellow for headlights. There are still quite a few of these I'd like to paint which is just as well, because my current commercial job requires some 180 rendered images! Click on image to enlarge.

Odds and Sods

2011-08-31T09:10:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post really, very busy at the moment! Here's an update showing the re-worked snow scene from the top of Calton Hill looking down to the centre of Edinburgh. I must say after years of not really getting on with Acrylics, these Atelier Interactives seem to be the best of all worlds - I love them for their flexibility. An airtight container makes a good mixing palette which can be lightly sprayed at the end of each session to keep paint wet for the next day. The palette proved useable for a week, which was handy as I could only spend short stints on this before the the start of each working day. Chroma's claims of unlocking paint already on the canvas also hold true, so I can choose whether to let areas dry immediately, or whether to keep it workable. Marvellous mechanical mouse machines!

I did this painting some time back. Remember when we had some half decent picnic weather? Well we did you know, though it was a long time ago now! This image is an oil pastel sketch of a place we ate al fresco. Unremarkable as far as landscape subjects go, but I really love the way branches intermingle to create abstract webbed patterns. If I ever get away from my computer long enough there will be more of these!

This was a quick iPad 2 Study looking up at the sheer cliff to a portion of Edinburgh castle (I have started idly writing a story which will require such a scene.) The sketch was done during beta testing for ArtRage iPad's latest great thing - script recording, bringing it in line with the full desktop version of ArtRage. It is wonderful to bring a recorded script back to the mother mac and marvel as it re-creates paintings at print resolutions. This also marks the first time I've tried AR's watercolour brush along with pencil, crayon and palette knife for blends. Happy.
Click on images to enlarge.

White Noise

2011-08-07T09:54:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I did a quick acrylic sketch based on a picture I took stood on Calton Hill in a snowstorm. It was not very good, but I liked the idea enough to explore it in more detail. As a consequence I spent a few hours over the weekend painting this, a view down my street in a snowstorm (oil on canvas.) It is quite unnerving to work something up only to cover it in 'white noise,' but I love the way the falling snow breaks edges so that your brain needs to work that little bit more to resolve the verticle and horizontal lines. I also like that you need to look a little harder to find the solitary figure. The canvas was prepared with a Raw Sienna wash and the whole image is based around a neutral mix of French Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna. I have already started on the next in the series. Click on image to enlarge.

Bah! I Hate Summer

2011-08-01T04:26:00.000-07:00

I think it is safe to say I'm in the minority here, but I never did understand our obsession with Summer. It makes me instantly lethargic often to a debilitating degree. It makes me instantly sweaty and if you can believe it, even a little grumpy! :D Lying for hours on a beach with a thousand other over-baked sardines is particularly mystifying. Weird.Winter on the other hand gives me energy. It is a time when our dull grey cities are transformed into magical half worlds bathed in half light. A time to wrap up warm and wear silly hats. Standing on Calton hill in a snowstorm looking down on Edinburgh is an immensely gratifying experience. I used this image to fulfill three goals. 1) To get away from the computer for a few hours! I currently have a large in-tray spanning months, so sitting at the screen 24/7 occasionally becomes too much. 2) I got some freebie

A Time for Silly Hats!

Atelier Interactive acrylics with a mag subscription and had been meaning to try them out. They're great! 3) I also saw this as an opportunity to try a painting with an extremely limited palette - just three colours; French Ultramarine, Burnt Sienna and Titanium White. Summer is nearly dead. Long live Winter!
Click on images to enlarge.

Boxy Chessmen - Pawn

2011-07-20T15:13:00.000-07:00

Back in February I posted some designs for a chess set inspired by The Lewis Chessmen and Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Stories which I was reading at the time. I had always intended to squeeze this project in between work using ZBrush to sculpt the pieces in 3D, but recently Pixologic released the brilliant Sculptris Alpha 6 with support for Mac OS X. Sculptris started as a hobby app by Tomas Pettersson and dynamically adds or subtracts triangles as you sculpt which is amazingly liberating for 3D artists who are always so tethered by issues of polygon topology and other such uncreative issues. Consequently, everything starts as a sphere which you mould like clay, adding extra detail where needed and removing superfluous triangles to keep the poly count down.
I imagine the protruding sword might be an issue for a figurine. I'll probably have to bring that further in so it is up against the torso, or perhaps even replace it with a couple of smaller daggers. I'm pretty happy with the first attempt at using Sculptris though!
You can see a looping turntable movie here
Click on image to enlarge.

Creative Little Monsters

2011-07-12T01:48:00.000-07:00

Green Dragon - ArtRage

As mentioned a couple of posts back my iPad 2 is a big hit and I have since discovered an embarrassment of creative riches. Some of my favourite painting apps are the 'all singing all dancing,' ArtStudio, SketchBook Pro which sports a fantastic interface, Procreate - simple but brilliant and more responsive than any iPad painting app, Inspire Pro which has a really nice dry/wet brush toggle, Brushes - perhaps the first painting app to bring mobile painting attention, Eazel - an innovative 'liquid' painting app from Adobe and last but not least, my favourite, ArtRage Pro.

CregleBook

I mention AR last because there is more to say here. Sam Jang, CEO of Cregle very generously sent me a test unit of the upcoming CregleBook which runs Windows 7. This means I can use the full version of ArtRage Pro on a mobile device, which makes transferring custom brushes, swatches, stencils and stickers a no brainer. Like the iPad, the CregleBook works with fingers, but it also has a digitizer pen with a fine nib which continues to be tracked while hovering about an inch over the screen, so you are never guessing where brush strokes will go because the position of your cursor is always visible before the strokes are made. The pen is also pressure sensitive. I like both approaches but painting with a fine nibbed pen is a very natural progression from the traditional tools we've grown up with.

Badger - ArtRage Scripting

Another huge advantage of using the full version of ArtRage is the new scripting function, which records every stroke you make while painting. The script can then be played back or even edited if you take a little time to learn the scripting language. You can choose to play the script back at its original size or a custom size. This is big. Effectively, it means I could take the CregleBook out and create paintings at a low resolution to keep large brush strokes responsive, but play the script back in the office at bigger sizes to obtain a print version without much extra effort. The results will be slightly different because the look of oil brush strokes depend in some part on the paint load and brush size etc. In this example, Badger, I played the script back at double size and though a few parts of the canvas were blank where strokes should have been, I spent maybe two minutes re-applying those areas. AR scripting will also be a huge boon for tutorial makers out there.

Green Dragon Detail - ArtRage

Green Dragon was created with ArtRage's tube paint and palette knife tools for blocking in and a fine airbrush for detailing. The paint texture of initial blocking turned out well so I elected to keep those fresh and only refine the focal points. You might think this is a simple piece of fantasy art but I think it is a testament to the preposterous volumes of self confidence humanity possesses. The tiny little human is clearly out gunned, yet he is still there with sword in hand ready for battle. Why that is almost as crazy as sending men to the moon in a rocket running computers less powerful than a pocket calculator (you couldn't make it up.) Preposterous! But then again, we now know that giant leaps are achievable. :)

A Walk in the Park

A Walk in the Park started as a doodle on the iPad 2 using SketchBook Pro. I really like SBP's interface as you can do almost everything with finger gestures. As with many of my personal 2D doodles I tend to avoid references, because the point of the exercise is to see what comes out, rather than achieving technical correctness. I decided to work the sketch up to print resolution, so I transferred the image to Photoshop and increased its size to 5000 pixels high (A3) before finishing off.

And Relax

This was the first sketch I did in Procreate as a learning excercise. It is a brilliantly constructed iPad app, more responsive than any other and features a really good brush designer. I'm already hoping a desktop version gets built because I'd love to paint really big images with it.

Click on images to enlarge.

Alla Prima in the 21st Century

2011-04-27T08:44:00.000-07:00

Holyrood Palace Cafe. iPad 2, ArtRage

If the young Leonardo Da Vinci were alive today he'd be painting on an iPad. 'Bah!' you might think, 'what a ridiculous thing to say.' We mock the idea because we have a huge (and admittedly justifiable) reverence for the ancient techniques of old masters, but back then oil painting techniques were not ancient, they were the unknown, they were cutting edge technology. No doubt many tempera purists dismissed these new fangled oil paintings as showy fly by nights whose adoption was typical of the day's wayward youth. 'Why on earth would you need more time to paint?' they might have grumbled. 'Why the sudden need for such indecently intense colour?' Leonardo was reputedly one of the first men in Italy to use oils while apprenticed to Andrea Del Verrocchio. I'm sure you already know all this, but the point I am making is that no matter what age we live in or our relative abilities as artists,

Russian Dolls. iPad 2, ArtRage

creatives are always looking for new ways to make art. That's why we display piles of bricks and dirty beds in art galleries. We certainly know of Leonardo's restless pursuit of new techniques because the silly sausage famously painted 'The Last Supper' with untested combinations and look what happened to that.

Teal Armchair. iPad 2, ArtRage

Why am I talking about Leonardo in a post about the alla prima technique? For me his notebooks truly reveal a genius' talent for quickly capturing the essence of a moment at the first attempt. The opening statement is conveyed with conviction because I honestly don't think any past master with even the smallest sense of adventure could have resisted the idea of having millions of colours quite literally at their fingertips in such a neat package. Ever since we started grinding ochres into paint the evidence for artists adopting new technology is there to see and it is overwhelming; Rules of perspective, drawing grids, canvas, lenses, the camera obscura, paint tubes, shaped

Fife in a Haze. iPad 2, ArtRage

brushes, the camera, the projector, screen printing, photocopying and finally rather brilliantly, David Hockney's recent exhibition involving a room full of hung iPads whose content continually changed as the artist created and uploaded paintings. Hockney still manages to surprise and delight in equal measure.

Breakfast at Dunbrodies. iPad 2, ArtRage

The preamble has gone on far too long, I'll come to the point. I finally succumbed to the idea of having millions of colours at my fingertips and spent the last of my emergency kit money on an iPad 2, YIPPEE! My reasons were threefold: First and most sensibly, I want to learn how to make interactive apps for mobile devices, because the potential seems huge. Second, having tried and liked painting on the iPod Touch it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out a bigger screen and more power would make for a better painting experience. Third and most insensibly, whenever possible, which is not very often, I can't resist buying myself new toys! Apparently its a boy thing. My first impressions of the iPad? Amazing. I can't believe the things it can do or indeed the length of time it does things for. A few months ago I tried taking my 1st generation unibody MacBook Pro out painting and although it was an enjoyable experience, the battery lasted no time at all, so I'm very happy to see this issue addressed with the new generation of Apple mobile products. Hats off to you Cupertino fruit heads.

Winter Chestnut. ArtStudio, iPod Touch

Of course the iPad is only half the story, you also need a painting app. On the iPod Touch my favourite was ArtStudio and that is even better on the iPad. I also like SketchBook Pro but my tool of choice for wet in wet painting is now ArtRage. The combination of ArtRage's oil brush with the iPad is in my opinion almost the ultimate sketchbook. I say almost because the one slight caveat is that age old issue still affecting an otherwise perfect setup - using today's screen technologies in daylight can sometimes be challenging. ArtRage performs well in the field and I think it is yet to take full advantage of the dual core A5 chip in the iPad 2, so we can expect an even better performance with future updates. I like to give the brush a thick load of oil paint right from the start for pretty convincing wet in wet effects. There's no room for carefully planned fat over lean techniques here, especially when I am trying to capture an effect of the

Dalry at Dusk. ArtStudio, iPod Touch

sunlight which might only last a few moments. Slap the paint down and be confident with decisions. I can decide later whether or not my choices were successful. Screen issues aside, I've only had the iPad 2 a couple of weeks but we are already inseparable.

Paintings
Holyrood Palace Cafe is a view from the cafe garden with the Crags of Holyrood Park in the background. ArtRage oils on iPad 2
Russian Dolls is a corner of my living room. This was the first painting I made on the iPad in ArtRage.

Tree, Roof, Clouds, ArtStudio, iPod Touch

Teal Armchair is another corner of my living room. ArtRage oils on iPad 2.
Fife in a Haze is painted from John Lewis' top floor cafe in Edinburgh, which has great views of the surrounding area. The hint of foreground architecture is the roof of St Mary's Cathedral. ArtRage, iPad 2.
Breakfast at Dunbrodies We have no outdoor space at home so when we were very kindly offered the loan of a lovely cottage in Lauder over Easter, breakfast in the garden quickly became a habit.
Winter Chestnut I loved being out in last year's snow but I didn't spent long painting on this day! ArtStudio, iPod Touch.
Dalry at Dusk Speedpaint of a sunset on Dalry Road while picking Anna up from work in Autumn. ArtStudio, iPod Touch.
Tree, Roof, Clouds A 5 minute painting while waiting in the car! ArtStudio, iPod Touch.

My tablet painting adventures are only just beginning and in an extraordinary twist of good fortune the iPad is not the only piece of hardware involved. Stay tuned for more. Meanwhile, take a look at the amazing mobile art of Susan Murtaugh and a great mobile painting blog at http://www.fingerpainted.it/ Click on images to enlarge.

A Year of Drivel

2011-04-15T02:06:00.000-07:00

Ha! I have been writing drivel on my front page for a year now. Happy anniversary. I don't consider this a blog. It came about simply because I was looking for a way to update a small news section which previously involved dipping into Rapidweaver and uploading updates via ftp. Since ease of use was the priority I went with the idea of starting up an account at blogger.com and embedding it into my front page. Once that was all in place updating the news section became a pleasure, not just because it was easy, but also because it has re-awakened a long dormant joy in writing (with acknowledgement of bad grammar and many spelling errors.) 'What's the point,' say blogger critics, 'who reads this stuff anyway?' Well actually many creative journals are amazingly well populated. It is heartening to see how well art is supported online. Indeed before I embedded the blogger I got maybe a handful of visitors a year, but now that figure has risen to hundreds a month. Hundreds of people every month. Astonishing, and I thank every single visitor for it!
The image above called 'Ticking Head, Beating Heart,' is not particularly associated with this post, it just seems odd to publish without an image. It is a simple contemporary doodle using ArtRage's oil brush featuring an often used warm/cool scheme to explore the fundamental creative assets we humans posses. How's that for drivel? :) Click on image to enlarge.

Rotring Resurrection

2011-03-08T14:46:00.000-08:00

Sweet Chestnut

After a week of intensive hydro massage and mouth to nib resuscitation, I am thrilled to get my old Rotring Rapidograph pens back in working order. Although these days you can get disposable tech pens and many other much lower maintenance drawing tools, I've yet to find anything which bites paper like a Rotring. One of life's small pleasures is to be standing in the Royal Botanic Garden on a sunny March day sketching strangely shaped sweet chestnuts with a 0.25mm nib!

Stride

Stride (left) started as a mark making test with a 0.5mm pen. I really like the way the big hair turned out and the background texture gives a nice sense of movement. Still life with chickens (below right) started as a pencil study for a
light hearted painting showing my kitchen

Still Life with Chickens

featuring those brilliant Easter chickens made by Anna, but the pencil was being smudged away so I lined the piece with a Rotring to fix it. Alder (below) was sketched on the same day as sweet chestnut but with a 0.5mm pen. I like the sparse areas where the barest minimum of lines are enough to describe the bark detail.

Figure

Alder

Figure (right) is a very quick sketch using a 0.35mm pen. The model was quickly posed using Poser for reference, a very useful bit of software if you have a specific stance in mind. I find it difficult, but very instructional to impose short time limits on sketches and in this case I was done within 5 minutes. This tends to make you concentrate on the basic form rather than homing in on details, which I am constantly guilty of! From doing these images I can see that my decision making with stroke types and direction is a little rusty. With practise this will hopefully get more intuitive. It is great to have my pens working again. Click on images to enlarge.

Painting in ZBrush

2011-03-03T06:57:00.000-08:00

These days Pixologic's ZBrush is legendary across many creative fields for its high resolution digital sculpting capabilities and as this image (left) by Tsvetomir Georgiev shows, many artists are doing incredible things with it. However, ZBrush, started out as a painting app with a twist. Instead of using pixels, the basic unit of digital graphics whose parameters are in 2 dimensional x and y (width and height,) ZBrush used pixols, which also record the depth of each unit (z.) What this basically meant was that you could paint with 2d colour using xy coordinates, but you could also record depth like relief sculpting. Natural media apps do give us impasto effects but ZBrush's pixols are like impasto on steroids.
Now, I made myself many promises this year, some of which I realise won't be kept due to time constraints, but I am determined to spend more time in ZBrush as part of an overall skills brush-up, so I thought I'd start right at the beginning, painting with pixols.

Eyrie
This image began with a plain sky background and gradually got built up in layers using a combination of tools including impasto brushes and full 3D cubes/spheres which were added to the canvas then smudged into shape. I often start doodles with trees and eventually this turned into a dead tree in a high location, which in turn spawned the idea of putting an eagle's nest in among the branches. What I love about painting in ZBrush is the responsiveness. This image is 5000 pixels wide which equates to A3, 420mm wide. Many apps struggle with depth effects at print sizes but ZBrush was designed from day one to utilise every drop of processing power for its real time 3rd dimension, so it skips along barely missing a beat.

The Accidental Tourist
The high location in Eyrie reminded me of a recent excursion to the Nevis Range which in turn reminded me I kept wanting to start a series of paintings called 'Accidental Tourist,' because I have a million shots of the back of my wife walking into some stunning scenery. Here I happened to catch her being a tourist which seemed appropriate. We were standing on Aonach Mor, looking over to Ben Nevis in the background.
ZBrush allows us to alter both the colour intensity and depth intensity independent of each other which, without getting technical, basically means you can create some lovely underpainting effects by reducing the colour opacity while still applying the impasto stroke. The grass sort of reminds me of the square brush technique utilised so spectacularly by The Glasgow Boys, who in turn were much influenced by french painters like Jules Bastien - Lepage.
It is quite interesting to note the difference in style between the two images where Eyrie obviously does not use reference, but Accidental Tourist does. I like and dislike things about both of them, but in general I get more from trying to make illustrations without much reference. This, however, does tend to brutally expose one's shortcomings! But then again, that is the point of the exercise along with having the courage to show work in all its imperfection so that posterity can judge how we progress.
I also wanted to learn about making sequential movies of an image being created so with any luck a youtube video will get embedded below.

Marvellous. You can also see an animated gif here. Actually ZBrush can automatically record this creation process but I don't know how to use that yet! Click on images to enlarge.

Northward Bound

2011-02-23T13:51:00.000-08:00

I found two images this morning which have been sat on my hard drive so long I'd completely forgotten about them. I guess that ultimately means they were a maybe, maybe not, but I read somewhere you should also post failures so here goes!
The premise is simple. A centurion leads his cohorts out from Hadrian's wall to engage in combat with the fearsome Picts, a race Rome never conquered.
I imagine the Picts also had a reputation for devilry, depicted here as serpent cloud trails summoned up to match the Roman draco. The serpent is a Pictish taunt because Romans believed snakes falling from above spelled disaster. These snakes would of course symbolically fall as rain. In the second image the horse is also unsettled by a large skull carved with a Pictish crescent symbol thought by some to represent death (bottom left.)

As a child I was obsessed by the Roman empire, a fascination lived out through my favourite toy of the time, tiny little grey Airfix soldiers whose even tinier shields were removable - the very pinnacle of technical sophistication in toy design! The fascination went dormant for years but then came that amazing TV series, Rome, which I eventually bought on DVD last year. I imagine these pictures were created around the same time.
The first image was painted in Photoshop. I liked some things about it but when one thinks of Hadrian's Wall, it is always snaking across the landscape, so I tried another composition, this time in ArtRage, which depicts the wall following a curve.
By the way if any important HBO bods are reading this (yeah right,) please please please make a third series of Rome! Click on images to enlarge.

FanArt Magazine

2011-02-17T23:39:00.000-08:00

A couple of posts ago I published a piece on a small selection of inspirational artists and at the time I half thought there should be a magazine which does this. Well I have since discovered there is, FanArt. Even better, it is being put together by a friend and fellow ArtRage user, Stefano Fiore aka Misterpaint, along with Azzurra Ponti (Azure) and Alessandro Canale (Alexen.) Even better, it is free! Now there may be one slight caveat for some of you - the magazine is currently only in Italian, but for me this is a great thing as I get to practice my more than rusty other mother tongue. Besides, you know what they say about words and pictures and ratios of 1:1000.
The mag is beautifully designed, informative and packed full of great imagery. I urge you to support this excellent enterprise.

Boxy Chessmen

2011-02-15T13:45:00.000-08:00

One of my favourite presents last Christmas was a beserker replica from The Lewis Chessmen. There are 11 pieces in the National Museum, Edinburgh and 82 pieces at The British Museum in London. Exquisitely carved from walrus ivory or whale teeth, thought to have been made in 12th Century Norway and discovered on the Isle of Lewis in 1831 amid mysterious circumstances.

Doesn't all that inspire you to design a chess set? It does me, so over the last couple of weeks I've been sketching some first draft line drawings of The Boxy Chessmen. Coincidentally I am also just about to finish Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Stories, which are all about the amalgamation/clash of Saxon Christianity and Danish Paganism, so the design of my first piece, the pawn, came about as a result of these influences. The helmet shape alludes to the corvid beaks of Odin's messenger ravens Huginn and Muninn which in turn connect with the name we now use for the war fortification, rook. I liked the beak shape so much it became central to my design. Some pieces will inevitably get changed as progress continues but I'm pretty happy with them for a first draft.

Next I'll create high resolution sculptures in ZBrush and eventually they will become the pieces in a realtime 3D chess game. I am also tempted to send the high res sculpts to a 3D printer so that I have an actual physical set. This has been a very fulfilling project so far.
Click on images to enlarge.

New Virtual Gallery!

2011-02-10T10:12:00.000-08:00

Virtual Gallery

This is brilliant. I have always been fascinated by the process of 3D game creation so when version 1 of Unity came along I jumped at the chance to own it. Due to work commitments though, I have only just started easing myself back into learning the beast and thought a walkthrough gallery seemed a simple but effective opportunity to beta test some of Unity 3's new features such as lightmapping and occlusion culling. Next up will be standalone versions for Mac and PC, then an iphone version for the millions of you desperate for mobile versions of my work. I'd best insert a smiley here in case anyone thinks I was genuinely being inappropriately arrogant :). I'm hoping to grow this idea as I learn more about programming in Unity. For example, you might notice a couple of virtual 'sculptures,' which are actually characters taken from the paintings of genius Hieronymus Bosch. Once I figure out how to give them artificial intelligence they'll be crawling all over the gallery. And what if someone liked an image so much they wanted a print? No problem press this button to order sir... possibly getting ahead of myself a smidge.

New Tab, 'Motion'

So once it was done the question then became where to store my new virtual gallery? Eventually I decided to add a new tab to the website called 'Motion,' a home for interactive, animation and motion graphics experiments. I have also added an old tester scene which explores the possibility of turning my picture book, 'Piggotty Wood' into an interactive app. I'd love to know what you think of either project so please do use my contact page to - er - contact me. Click on images to enlarge.

Piggotty Wood Tester

Inspiration

2011-01-26T05:47:00.000-08:00

I suspect every creative has a bookmarks folder containing links to artists who inspire awe. I have just such a folder and thought it would be good to start the year by highlighting some of my favourites. It would be easy to get lost in the genius of past masters, but in this post I specifically want to focus on the effect those masters have had on 21st century artists and illustrators. There are so many amazing people out there this is inevitably a tiny selection listed in no particular order. Except the first one which was very deliberately placed.

VLADYSLAV YERKO
If you do not find Yerko's work astonishing then you are probably dead from the forehead down, in which case a visit to your doctor is highly recommended.
Vladyslav Yerko (also spelled 'Erko' by some) is a Ukranian illustrator who perfectly captures the crucial ingredients of folk tales which have amazed, enthralled and downright frightened us through the ages. His art speaks for itself, which is perhaps why he does not appear to have an official online presence, but here are a few links to his work.
orpheusandlyra.tripod.com
estetica-design-forum.com
trendland.net

RON MUECK
I am a friend of the National Galleries of Scotland because I happen to believe it is important to support creativity in society and also because I get to see every exhibition as many times as I like for no extra cost! One of the perks of being a friend is the receipt of invites to opening nights, and it was just such an occasion which first introduced me to Ron Mueck's work. Photographs really don't do his sculptures justice but they at least give you an idea of the impact his work has in real life, particularly the ones where people give a reference for scale.
Ron Mueck on Wikipedia

MICHAEL KUTSCHE
From the first time I saw Michael's work I thought there was only one way his career could go and I hope he does not suffer from vertigo, because there is no height restriction for such talent. Michael recently did some concept work for Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland and the results are dazzling. He manages to make an image look both painterly and 3d rendered at the same time, which is down to pure artistic ability and a complete mastery of theory.
Michael Kutsche Deviant Art Gallery

NICK HARRIS
It takes a lot to make us smile in such times but Nick Harris' work can guarantee joy at every viewing. He really should think about canning and selling that gift because it is like gold dust!
What I initially loved about Nick's work was that it reminded me of the luscious illustrations in those classic ladybird books like The Elves and the Shoemaker, Jack and the Beanstalk and yes, even The Enourmous Turnip!

Nick is also a dab hand at making very moving imagery, demonstrated by this one shown above depicting the aftermath of some carnage at daybreak.
Nick Harris' Website

SIMON DOMINIC
Brilliant and imaginative are two good words to describe Simon's art. Awe and jealousy are two good words to describe my feelings for his talent! His website is called painterly which is spot on, you can almost smell the virtual oil paint. The image Big Blue (left) is a particular favourite of mine, as are Kelpie, bottom left and Dreams of Pan, bottom right. I guess the bleak moor theme hums a tune I like to hear.

Like Nick Harris, myself and many others, Simon is a big fan of natural media software, ArtRage Pro.
Simon's Website

MARK BANNERMAN
Mark is a Scottish artist who took up digital painting through his discovery of ZBrush, an amazing piece of software which allows us to virtually sculpt polygons as though they were clay. I really like the quirkiness of Mark's work. There is a rawness to it which prods us at a primeval level. His paintings fly in the face of the highly technical beast which is 3d imagery and the light, mood and texture he achieves are second to none. If anyone asked me to describe how dream sequences should feel I would send them to Mark's website.
Mark Bannerman's Website

More to come soon! Click on all images to enlarge.

Happy Christmas!

2010-12-18T01:01:00.000-08:00

Happy Christmas

If you were on my Christmas Card list this year you will no doubt have already received a card. I had originally intended to make it a very busy scene with ladders leaned up against the snowman and lots of people enjoying the weather, inspired as I was by a recent viewing of Breugel's 'Hunters in the Snow.' However in the end I deleted most of the population in favour of something much simpler.

Intial ArtRage Sketch

3D Reference

An initial sketch using ArtRage's chalk and oil brush tools was used as a background over which I traced some basic 3D geometry to check the perspective of other elements. Something I enjoy doing occasionally and for the 15 - 30 minutes it takes to put a simple 3D scene together, you get an awful lot of reference information back. Relevant reference material doesn't always present itself, but you can always make your own. Cinema 4D also provides a basic artist mannequin which is useful for quickly posing and placing humanoid figures. Happy Christmas one and all!
Click on images to enlarge.

Oil Pastels

2010-12-09T15:43:00.000-08:00

Luca

I do love oil pastels, they might just be among the most flexible art materials in existence and I quite honestly can't believe how little we see of them in the public arena. I realise to make such a statement is to invite derision from certain circles, but please allow an indulgence...
Although I had previously dabbled in oil pastels and noted their potential, the image 'Luca' (left), a portrait of my lovely Godson, is the first oil pastel painting I ever completed. It was painted with what I now know are considered 'student quality' pastels, usually characterised as containing more wax and less pigment than artist quality pastels - you can see the hard waxy marks, which I think actually add something positive to the painting, so their lack of blending qualities isn't necessarily a bad thing.
The image used up my supply and the search for replacements unveiled other brands. In the UK the three most popular art shop brands I found were Royal Talens Van Gough pastels, Caran D'Ache Neopastels and Sennelier Oil Pastels. Although there seems to be some confusion, I would consider the Van Goughs student grade simply because their colour chart states that all pastels are marked either +++ or ++ for lightfastness. The first equates to 100 years lightfastness under gallery conditions and the second 25-100 years. Although a century sounds a long time, I'm guessing anyone considering an art investment would prefer a little longer. After all, if you are mixing ++ with +++ you are surely not promoting ++ to +++, but rather demoting +++ to ++, which could mean there is a chance your artwork may disintegrate within the lifetime of the buyer. Probably not good.

The Senneliers and Neopastels, however, are in a different league. You can tell just by using them and perhaps the best way I can describe both types is to say they feel more like oil paint in stick form, particularly the soft buttery Senneliers. Where the Van Goughs blend into mush when painting white over dark, for example, the other two brands are beautifully opaque and most of the time the white sits atop any colour like oil paints. But even where this is not the case, because oil pastels contain wax, they never dry like paint. This means you can rework an area simply by scraping off parts of the painting or use fixative over areas you want to amend. It also means you can employ really nice sgraffito effects.

Sparkle - Senneliers

There are differing opinions on whether oil pastels should be fixed or not. Some people prefer to keep them unfixed but mounted behind glass. Others use fixative spray such as Sennelier's. I like to rub slightly watered down acid free PVA glue over the finished work with a finger. Slightly unnerving as it is white when applied, but very quickly dries clear with a satin finish. The pastels are stable enough not to be disturbed by the light rubbing action.

Backlight - Sennelier/Neo

Although they never dry, oil pastels are also never wet, which means they are perfect for open air painting (en plein air.) Not that I'm an expert on the subject, but lately I've been trying to make a point of going out to paint on the spot because it is both good practice and good for the soul. There are no levels of abstraction to wrestle with such as paint tubes/pans, brushes, pallets, water, rags, oil or turps. No time spent pencil sketching, applying or removing masks, no pre-mixing colour since it is all done directly on the painting surface, no waiting for layers to dry. All I need to pack is a multi medium sketchbook, an old crayon tin full of pastels, a craft knife, a blending stump and a sheet of kitchen paper. The image 'Backlight' (above left) nicely demonstrates the medium's directness. While walking through Edinburgh Botanics I wanted to catch the low Autumn sun. I only had perhaps 15 minutes before the sun moved

One For Sorrow - Sens/Neo

behind the background building, so speed was an issue. In the time it takes to pull a sketchbook and a tin from my rucksack, maybe 10 or 15 seconds, I was painting. 'Backlight' and 'One for Sorrow,' also an open air painting finished in studio, both demonstrate the opaque nature of artist quality pastels where light colours are overlaid on dark. Applied pressure and a twist of the wrist creates really nice impasto strokes. The finer branch, leaf and grass highlights are the result of scraping away pigment - sgraffito.

Self Portrait - Sennelier

On the subject of speed and convenience, for various reasons I quite often find myself waiting in the car for small amounts of time. You can wait and do nothing or you can wait and sketch. Sometimes that means whipping out my ipod touch and firing up ArtStudio, but that is another subject for another day. On this occasion I started sketching the car mirror with grey pastels and soon realised I was in fact drawing myself. I really like this image, don't know why.

Self Portrait 2 - Sens/Neo

On yet another occasion I just could not sleep. You know, lying there in the dark, restless, brain won't switch off and legs won't stop twitching. Well eventually I just got up and started sketching Self Portrait 2 (right.) The light source was a single bedside lamp. It isn't an exact likeness, but I like the fuzzy sketchy quality, particularly around the eyes, which are normally the first point of contact for viewers and therefore rendered sharp. The whole thing nicely sums up that restless quality our friend insomnia sometimes brings.
Click on images to enlarge.

The Apple Agency

2010-12-01T09:27:00.000-08:00

Apple Agency Screenshot

This week, my agency have been kind enough to put a sheet of my work on their front page. By way of thanks, small gesture though it may be, I thought I'd write a potted history of The Apple Agency.
Simon Burr started out as a traditional illustrator over a quarter of a century ago. I've seen his work and it comes as no surprise to learn that his business soon flourished despite the considerable hurdles. To put that in context, before the digital age an illustrator would have to travel the length of the country to meet with clients, travel all the way back to carry out instructions then do the same thing over and over again until the piece was approved. When fax machines first came out he jumped at the chance to own one despite their phenomenal cost and terrible output; it at least meant the client could approve work without an all day journey. The workload became so huge Simon began sharing projects with fellow illustrators and eventually went on to set up The Apple Agency. I'm sure all his artists will agree Simon's illustration knowledge is an invaluable part of the process! Soon after the agency was established, he realised he needed to expand and enlisted the help of an old friend, Iain Blenkhorn, who also quickly became an invaluable. It is a rock solid setup!

Simon Burr

I first came across the Apple Agency about 7 years ago while looking for work online and noticed they were based in my home town, Scunthorpe (up the iron!) Luckily, Simon and Iain saw a chink of potential and gave me a chance. We have since worked on hundreds of projects together. Bizarrely their office turned out to be within walking distance of my parents' house so I always felt fate was in a philanthropic mood that day. Long may it last!

Click on image to enlarge.

Random Creation 1

2010-11-20T16:26:00.000-08:00

You know how it goes. After weeks of punishing deadlines, the current crop of jobs are finally done and all is quiet in the office. The last thing you'd expect after endless eons sat at the computer is more of the same. Yet once the deadlines are gone your first thought is to do what you were going to before work came in - for example, play with those Painter brushes. So you start doodling. Nothing in particular, but sometimes the image becomes a little more coherent than abstract scribble. Occasionally you might even finish it in a sitting or two, but more often than not other work comes in and the doodles sit on your hard drive for months until they eventually get backed up and erased.
Then one day some time in the future, you're searching for something and come across a dvd full of unfinished doodles. 'I'll copy those back to my hard drive and work some more on them,' you think. And so the cycle continues.
Well, recently I came across a couple of said doodles. They are nothing special. In fact their existence is utterly meaningless other than to get filed under the heading, 'Random Creation.' When enough of them get filed I will put together another Blurb book called just that, 'Random Creation.'

Trust Me, I'm Your Dad!
Quite obviously, there is only one story I know of where an apprehensive boy has an apple balanced on his head. I'm not sure why this came out toon style because it is actually a very serious tale which ultimately lead to the birth of modern Switzerland. Then again, neither style or subject matter were planned, which is why this post heading contains the word random!
Needless to say the image depicts that infamous moment in 1307 when William Tell, crossbow hotshot, was forced to split an apple on his son's head or face execution of both by newly appointed Austrian overlord, Albrecht Gessler.
This composition should follow the balanced rule of thirds by placing the focus of the image (a human face) in the top third of the frame, but instead it augments tension by placing the boy's head at the centre of the image; my intention was to simulate the bullseye of a target. Furthermore, all the major limbs reinforce the effect by leading the eye to the centre. Not that your eye needs leading there; we will always look at a human face first no matter where it is placed in the composition.
As is my want, the tree also has character. It looks frightened because the apple is exactly in line with its heart.
This image began as a simple excercise in using Corel Painter's oil brushes, which are simply delicious.

Parley
Oh dear, the leaders of two tribes have agreed to parley for peace but things are not going well. How familiar does that sound? The little guy has lost his temper and used the mano cornuto - horned hand, a gesture which can mean several things, but in this case aimed squarely at an enemy is a curse.
Mano cornuto is a gesture I grew up with. Any Italian of my Parents' generation has probably used it as protection against malocchio, the evil eye. I believe many cultures have the same thing, but Italians inherited it from the Romans. I can't quantify that statement with irrefutable scientific proof, but Romans used it, Italians use it. Heck I still use it now whenever I see a lone magpie screaming, 'one for sorrow!' There is something very powerful about mano cornuto and this will not be the last depiction of it!
Parley was sketched in ArtRage with its gorgeous oil brush.
Click on images to enlarge.

Them Were 't' Days

2010-11-01T10:51:00.000-07:00

I'm a bit rubbish at this online networking lark. Tweeting? I still haven't found an answer to the obvious question, why? My Facebook page is forgotten for weeks on end and I somehow never get round to learning its conventions. So, for example, when someone is nice enough to post a gift on my wall, I have no idea what to do with it or how to respond in kind.

I do know why this is though. Time is speeding up. That's right, you heard it here first. Time is not uniformly linear. There's probably a beautifully powerful yet astonishingly simple mathematical formula which perfectly describes the relationship between accelerated rate of passing time and age of the entity measuring that rate. In other words, I really can't be bothered learning this stuff because I'd never get the time back. Better to spend it creating.

Having said all that, I did recently remember to check my Facebook page and was pleased to find a greeting from Sarah Godsill, who happened to be on a little 80s nostalgia trip. I met Sarah on the fine art course at Newcastle Poly, but perhaps my most vivid memory of her was as unofficial artist in residence at the legendary Jumpin & Hot Club. She would feverishly sketch acts as they did their turns and sometimes that meant sketching me as part of a busking jazz band called 'The Bats.' I love the expressiveness of these sketches and they are somehow more intensely nostalgic than photographs. That is what happens when artists draw and paint people; an extra sprinkle of magic.

These days Sarah is still capturing the spirit of occasions. For example, the brilliant images below are the result of time she spent with cast members rehearsing West Side Story. You can also find some more events illustrations here: http://www.weddingillustration.co.uk/

Click on images to enlarge.

Anna Keren Scatola

2010-10-17T15:10:00.000-07:00

In a blatant and unashamed act of sheer nepotism, I'd like to announce the launching of my wife's website, www.annascatola.com

Anna is a Costume Cutter and Soft Furnishings Maker. She's not much of a braggart but I, on the other hand, get positively bloaty with pride whenever I see her work in the public arena. The complexity of some of her creations are mind boggling and many of my personal favourites were interpretations of Neil Murray's fantastic designs at Northern Stage (Newcastle Playhouse, UK).

However, the sweet stuff doesn't stop there. Working from home as a freelancer has its benefits, but also its downsides, the worst being lack of feedback from creative contemporaries. Internet forums do a great job in that respect, but they're no substitute for face to face chat with someone who has a natural creative eye... before you ask, no, she is not standing over my shoulder with a baseball bat!

If the website design looks familiar, it is because we used mine as a template! I admit I'm no web designer but this aside, we both agree that despite the plethora of flashy bling which can - and does - furnish virtual abodes, we both prefer simple, elegant unfussy interfaces which easily guide users to the actual content.

Click on images to enlarge

Publication Across the Nation

2010-09-20T23:05:00.000-07:00

Recently I unexpectedly came across four of my images in publication. The first is in this month's portfolio section of one of my favourite magazines, Artists & Illustrators. I'd submitted the Dalkeith Oak a while ago and completely forgot about it, only to open the page with a whoop. The other three came with my purchase of Maxon's recently released Cinema 4D R12. If you can love binary, then Cinema 4D is the most huggable collection of ones and zeros I could hope to encounter. I, like many quite literally owe my current career to it! Well now I love Maxon even more because on flipping through the Quickstart Manual I found my Squirrel, Hedgehog and Zebra renders, all using their amazing hair simulator. Click on images to enlarge.

Catching the Rays

2010-09-09T14:56:00.000-07:00

Computer generated imagery is just
plain fun sometimes. Recently my agent, Simon Burr, gave me a great job collaborating with artist Nick Veasey. Nick specialises in x-raying everything and anything to astonishing effect. His images are endlessly fascinating and I guarantee if you click on the link you'll not leave his website in a hurry.

Some things however, are simply not solid enough to capture, so we were given the task of creating an impression of how the eye, ear and brain might look x-rayed. The images were made and rendered in Cinema 4D; fresnel effect and transparency are your best friends!

Click on images to enlarge.

Posion Diaries: The Mandrake

2010-08-17T01:41:00.000-07:00

I've recently been creating a series of plant characters for the Poison Diaries project which are planted in groups of 4 at the poison garden - poisondiaries.com.
The first batch has been up for a while now so I thought I'd highlight some of my favourites as we go along, starting with the Mandrake.
Atropa Mandragora has a rich historical relationship with humans and was used for both good and bad. Medicinally, it has helped people sleep, soothed pain during operations, cooled skin complaints, calmed the mad and warded off demons. In the wrong doses Mandrake causes nausea, rapid palpitations and madness (quoted from The Poison Diares by the Duchess of Northumberland.)

The roots often split to resemble
human limbs and some believed new people could literally be grown from the plant. When harvested, the mandrake was said to scream so loud it killed anyone nearby. The solution was to tie a pet dog to the plant. When the owner ran clear of the scream, the dog ran after its master pulling the plant up, therefore killing the dog instead. They don't farm like that anymore!

Most subjects require a few options at the concept stage but the mandrake was pretty much accepted at first attempt. We decided to change the shape of the scream for the final 3D image.
I like sketching concepts in ArtRage, usually on a canvas texture with a thinned oil brush, but there are so many other options in ArtRage it makes me giddy. Another nice touch is the ability to load, resize and rotate reference images which float over the canvas.
The sketch is then brought into acclaimed 3D package, Cinema 4D and 'traced over' with 3D geometry. The 3D model is textured then cameras and lights are set before the final shot is rendered.

Click on images to enlarge.

Bounty Hunter

2010-07-24T13:27:00.000-07:00

Chiaroscuro. What a magnificent word. Charged with drama, substance and history, chiaroscuro literally means light-dark or contrast.
Andrew Graham-Dixon is to blame for this image. In a recent repeat of his excellent documentary, 'Who Killed Caravaggio?' I was reminded of the genius painter's sublime work and immediately set about creating a dimly lit image without any plan or idea of its contents. Eventually the painting grew into this. A bounty hunter brings his vampyre prey to you the viewer, who is prepared to pay handsomely for every one delivered alive. Why? I have no idea, you'll have to ask yourself that question. The gun is, of course, loaded with a silver bullet.
Having finished it though, I realise there is another chiaroscuro painting fighting to get out and its title is already known; "Who Killed Caravaggio?"
Click on image to enlarge.

Lair of the Firehorse

2010-07-09T15:16:00.000-07:00

This image started as a series
of abstract brush marks using Corel Painter's impasto brushes. Eventually this delightful creature grew from the flames. I don't know what a firehorse is, though having just googled I learned that in the Chinese horoscope, a Fire Horse is 'highly strung, powerful, inconsistent, alluring and motivated by strength of will.' So downright pigheaded then...

There is something I really like about natural media software oil brushes.
Of course logic says it shouldn't matter whether you can see an impasto effect because content is king right?
Well, maybe, but software impasto does seem to affect the way we make marks, and just as with traditional impasto, the texture adds another layer which is inexplicably compelling.

One of the most exciting things about creating random images is that they can quickly develop into bigger ideas and taller stories. This one stands out as a myth well worth exploring further and rest assured I will dear reader, I will...

Click on images to enlarge.

The Wigtown Martyrs

2010-06-29T17:28:00.000-07:00

In 1685 during a period known as
'The Killing Time' in Scotland, two women were tied to stakes driven into the sands of Wingtown Bay and left to the mercy of incoming tides. The eldest, a sixty three year old widow called Margaret McLachlan was set further out; doomed to drown first in the hope it would make her young friend, eighteen year old Margaret Wilson, swear an oath to the recently restored King Charles II and renounce the Covenant. The teenager held fast and drowned along with her comrade. The pair were buried in the local churchyard where they still lie.

Some accounts say Margaret Wilson did recant, but her executioners heartlessly decided to 'let her rot' anyway. Nice.

Though I love all things historical, it wasn't the history of religion or politics which inspired this image; my motivations were threefold:

1. John Everett Millais
I've always admired the genius Pre-Raphaelite, especially his most famous painting, Ophelia. But it was this image, 'The Martyr of Solway,' which first introduced me to the subject.
From wikipedia: 'Painted in 1871, it hangs in Liverpool's Walker Gallery. Although the painting today shows Margaret wearing an open-neck blouse, when conservators x-rayed the piece, they found that the figure had once been a nude looking sharply to the right. In fact the head and torso had originally formed part of Millais' 1870 painting The Knight Errant, which portrayed a naked rape victim tied to a tree. A medieval knight is depicted cutting her free, having killed her attacker. The painting received negative reviews, leading Millais to cut away the head and torso section and add a fresh piece of canvas to paint it anew, with the woman's head turned distinctly away to the left. The original figure section was added to a new canvas for the 1871 Martyr painting and was repainted with chains and the more modest blouse.'

2. ArtRage's Oil Brush
Or more accurately, Simon Dominic's enthusiasm for ArtRage's Oil Brush. In a recent tutorial for digital art magazine, ImagineFX, fantasy artist extraordinaire Simon eloquently reminds us just how much fun ArtRage is. The oil brush is simple, elegant and allows anything from realistic impasto effects to thinned washes through a simple 3 dial settings panel. Mighty fine interface design!

3. Cormorants
Cormorants are a feature of Scottish Coastlines which I'd wanted to paint for a while. This particular one regularly stands on a small pile of debris in the middle of the Water of Leith drying out its wings. Wigtown Martyrs seemed like a good opportunity to include the little fellow; perched at the top of Wilson's stake wings outstretched, it gives the mood a brooding mythical air and is reminiscent of that most iconic symbol of martyrdom, the cross. In Norwegian myth it is said the Cormorant comes with warnings from the underworld.
The image actually looked more balanced by removing the bird and extending the stake upwards, but in this case I felt this top heavy unbalacing suited the subject matter.
The sharp eyed among you might also notice the Union Jack is in fact a 1606 'King's Colours,' version, which did not yet include St Patrick's cross.

Click all images to enlarge.

Old Oak Tree

2010-06-05T11:10:00.000-07:00

Perhaps I shouldn't say this out loud - I love trees. I've always loved them, but while recently making illustrations for Piggotty Wood I became just a bit more than a tad obsessed.
As a result every tree I see now seems to possess some kind of humanoid feature, so I decided to get it out of my system and paint of few of my favourites, beginning with an old craggy oak. This fellow sits alongside many of his brethren in the grounds of Dalkeith Country Park near Edinburgh. That pesky badger charged me a fortune in modelling fees. I say painting, but this image was actually created with Sennelier oil pastels. If they were good enough for Picasso... Click on image to enlarge.

Coincidentally, I recently saw a programme on The Glasgow Boys which featured, among others, a young artist called Jack Frame, who heroically hauls his full kit around to paint the most magnificent paintings of trees. I'm hoping this means we tree geeks are about to get tree chic. See Jack's work here.

The Poison Diaries

2010-06-04T06:21:00.001-07:00

I literally could not believe my luck when recently picked to do some illustrations for The Poison Diaries flash website.
Over the last few weeks I have worked with the Duchess of Northumberland, Zoë Watkins of FourteenFiftyFour and Chris Minett of 20:20 on what has become an all time favourite job.
Work continues on plant characters so keep checking the site for updates.
Visit poisondiaries.com.

If you can get hold of a copy, I must also recommend the stunning original graphic novel by the Duchess, featuring outstanding illustrations by Disney animator, Colin Stimpson.

The Ballad of Piggotty Wood

2010-04-28T14:43:00.000-07:00

Badger cub Joe was born to a world where good folk are cowed. The subjugation seems impenetrable until one day, a chance encounter with an ancient tree triggers the fight of his life.
Huge thanks for continued support of my personal project, a picture book, 'The Ballad of Piggotty Wood.' I am delighted with the overwhelming positive reaction it has had and am currently thinking of possible scenarios for a sequel. Piggotty Wood also played its part in getting my current batch of work which will be announced shortly. You can order the book in hardback or softback from blurb.com