The Bears

I never properly titled this painting, which is why I never posted it up. I've ended up calling it The Bears. I hate titling artwork.

 This was done as the 2nd of the 3 creature paintings. I love their faces, but I'm not 100% on the piece as a whole.

 In progress:

 Watching Game of Thrones on my iPod :)

 Trying to get the bones looking right - more like bones, less like a fleshy scorpion.

The end

IAMTHELAB feature

If you didn't know, I have joined twitter... properly.. I've had the account for quite awhile, but never used it because it really confuses me. I still don't quite get it... But it introduced me to IAMTHELAB, which is an awesome site for everything handmade. I thought they might be interested in some of my stuff, so sent them a link.. and 3 days later a proper feature:

click for full profile & interview

I am quite happy that they choose to focus the feature on my Russian Owls, instead of a mix of everything from my phone cases to illustrations.

The end:)

Free Art Friday Returns

I sort of stopped doing Free Art Friday.. I think because I got so busy before Christmas last year that it got pushed to the side.

Thought I would get back out there and drop 3 prints on Friday. 

2/3 were gone by the next day. Hope they are being enjoyed!

The end. 

ThrowbackThursday

I have been trying to remember to do a throwback post of facebook of an old painting or something. I went super far back today and had a browse through my work from university. And this old favorite caught my eye.

This is 'The Kiss' and is my very 1st painting of my 1st year of University. I was 18 and had just come back from backpacking around Europe, seeing loads of amazing graffiti characters in barcelona and loved a particular painting on the berlin wall and wanted to put it all together, and by that I mean slightly alude to it in a very vague way without being obvious about anything. Here's a little secrete, there is a red skinned jesus on a cross painted between the 3 characters in the underpainting. Is that weird?

As you know, I keep my files super organised  so going back through old folders of artwork it's sort of weird that 3 years of university produced maybe 6 or 8 pieces at the most that I am still a bit proud of. Whereas the last 6 years of my art making adventures have produced 2.5gb of images of my artwork, which I am mostly proud of (there are some onions in there). Maybe 6 years from now in hindsight I will hate everything. I hope so, that will mean I will be doing new and (hopefully) better things. Right?!

The end.

Creature #3

As I have talked about before, I'm a bit of an image hoarder... Since about 2005, I have been saving every single image I have seen and liked.

This picture came into my pinterest feed, and looking at it from my tiny ipod screen it looked to me like some creepy creature with weird hands. I saved it.

(found @ http://www.sfgirlbybay.com/)

A few months later I sketched out a little character and this weekend decided to paint it.

My sketches are usually pretty vague. I have this idea in my head that I don't want to waste my creativity on a sketch, like it can run out or something. I make notes and decide the color palette... Then begin.

In progress

One important lesson I have recently learned: 

On previous paintings I have spent ages drawing out the details of the face on the paper, only to paint a base coat over everything, loosing my ideas. New technique: I get the basic shapes down, then draw the rest of details on tracing paper so that after the paint is down I still have an exact reference of what was where, and if necessary can use graphite transfer paper to put everything back in place.

I'm a genius. 

'A Bad Moon Rising' 

42x60cm

The end.