Old post short title

First an apology, I have been neglecting this blog and my art of late. I haven't been able to finish things or follow through with ideas and its been really frustrating; there has been a personal matter that has been really stressing me out recently also. I'm trying to follow Neil Gaiman's advice that I should use the bad times to "make good art"  but so far I've only managed pretentious scribbles and other rubbish.

thanks for taking the time to look :)

Sketchbook update

I didn't like how the design for the White Walkers and tried to get my image from the books on paper. Something like the figure above. 

Miscellaneous sketchbookery. I got some cheapy fibre pens so I could add a bitta colour into stuff. Limited palettes show I'm not a master of colour choices lol

Visual Diary

Hopefully I'll be able to get into school to get proper photographs of the exhibition this week, but for now, I've polished up my visual diary on tumblr so its nice to look at! http://www.kitesail.tumblr.com is where I post up to keep a record of, all the art pieces and animations, games and films- everything visual that I found inspiring and interesting.  

In the mean time, here are some doodles from my sketchbook!

 

Akropolis final state

I've not had much time recently to update with all of the preparations for the exhibition and between that and working on the visual diary/extended essay...well Time has been short indeed. Ive decided to name the three towers Metrolpolis, Cosmopolis and Akropolis/Acropolis- Im not sure which spelling is the English and which the Greek. Chosen because they're all general terms for types of cities and my images for this each have  certain type of city about them.

I've got the moon from Majora's Mask stuck in my head reminding me that time is growing short. :I


still to do

• Essay
• visual D.
• Portfolio [got plenty of things d.w]
• name cards for each print
• business cards
• sort out mounts
• If the chance to work on the Aluminium plates presents itself, seize it. :I

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Checkpoint!

Tower Plate #1 

I've finished drawing/etching this plate.(the 2nd picture) All I need from it now are some good prints I can fill my portfolio with and get one excellent one for the exhibition. It was certainly a pain though, the first time I drew into the ground, my needle wasn't sharp enough and it was only after i had etched it and taken off the ground and printed it, did I realise the lines weren't deep enough. So I redrew it twice and then went through the process of; draw line art> etch 5mins>draw foreground in>etch 10 mns>draw and detail center tower>etch 15mins draw background walls+details > etch 10mins.  

Tower Plate #2

The other plate. It ended up not really being so much a tower as a towering castle. But all the same, I kept the same sort of line-only style so that it would look something similar. I found myself thinking in this one "mmm....heres the market" and then "no, that size of hourse is impractical to the peoples means!!" haha Perhaps thinking about it far too much. The last photo of this is a bleed print - a print taken by putting down pieces of paper which are smaller than the plate so that you dont usually get the embossed border around the print. I was mostly just trying out colours on tan paper.  The drawing process of this one was somewhat different. I researched a ton by looking at various concept arts; Guild wars 2, Prince of Persia, Lord Of the Rings (Minas Tirith/helms deep) and just generally trolling about the internet for related images-Can you say "tower of babel"? And I grounded/drew it all up as one. then gradually added details like the rocks and roofs of houses. The water and shadows to the right (on the prints) were left til last. 

I have a third plate in the works with me over Easter, hopefully I'll get into the studio in two weeks and get it etched and finished. And along that, I have a selection of small aluminium drypoints.

In non-exhibition and more about after university news, I've found an MA course I'd like to pursue- Concept art for Animation and Video games at Teeside University, Middlesbrough. I'm not sure if I've missed the application deadline for it though, as I only found it recently.
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A quick update with what I've been doing

The Tower IX- 3rd proof

The tower plate is coming along, slowly but I'm definitely making some kind of progress with it. Tutor would rather I avoid aquatinting all together. So that means I have a lot more linework to be doing. Oh well.

The Hermit - Time

A quick drypoint a did a few nights ago. I've not done aluminium drypoint in a year and a half at least. So this was just me trying to remember what worked and what doesn't. I quite like how the lines come up so chunky and almost smoky.  I plan to do a bunch more of these, if not for the exhibition , just for the experience.

Finally heres a few pages from my sketchbook recently. I had a bit of a regression to looking at Avatar: the last airbender concepts and stills, so these few pages are mostly martial arts poses.

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Tower proof

Just to show the Tower as it stands in it's first proof. My scanner isn't large enough for this, (the plate alone is about A3 in size) so I had to take a photo. 

Also, I didn't etch it long enough to get the background details in as much as I wanted. So I'm going to re-ground it and try again tomorrow. Hopefully more progress on this to show then.

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