Music and words

Like many people, I like music. I like a lot of different things – one of those things are American Country and Western like Tex Beneke . Like many people, I play a lot of instruments, and I like stringed instruments and I like to play Scottish Traditional music.

One day I’d like to practise up the fiddle, (my mum’s a violinist who also does Scottish Traditional music, so I’ve got a leaning) and combine with a guitarist to make a fusion duo of American Country and Western, Bluegrass and Scottish Traditional music. I don’t know what we’d call it, but it would be something sad.

Some words occurred to me that I thought would be a magnificent song/album title:

Text reads :”I’d trade ten bottles of whisky for a heart of gold”

Reworking

Having had a look through my portfolio, I’ve decided to replace some of the weaker pieces that I like less. To do that it seems necessary to totally redraw the concept, and reuse none of the previous work’s parts. Seems obvious really, but I thought it bore mention. Seems like a lot of art is reworking old ideas again and again until you finally like them

Anyway, here is a picture of a Tibetan prayer skull that I drew at work a couple of days ago, that I’ve since added lines and shade to it.

Next try

So my attempt yesterday ended up like this:

I am greatly displeased with this. I’m putting it on the blog as an effort
towards artistic transparency – even basic works of art are often revised and redone completely. Also, I wanted to show that I don’t always just chuck ideas that aren’t working, I also try to finish ideas to see if I can learn something from the effort – in this case I learned a little more about using markers (better ventilation, also using like you’re cell shading).
Personally, a good 90% of my work is tests, experiments, half-baked ideas that I play with, revisions, reworking and totally starting again. I don’t think I am alone in this, judging from the similar sentiments I have heard from other artists. For me, a sketchbook is often a graveyard of dead and aborted ideas that never quite became something, as well as a hardcopy record of old spare parts of ideas that I can recycle. It’s why I don’t throw away used up sketchbooks – if I get stuck for ideas I can mine my offcuts and old parts for the germ of an idea, and rework it with my since-improved skills.
Anyway, this morning I am starting again, with a fresh page and some pencils – the old-fashioned way. Here’s what I have already:

Semi traditional Dragon Face in progress

Like I say to my dog quite often, “I always come back”.

Sometimes I leave you for a little while , but I always come back. So it is with blogging.

Today I am drawing the initial phases of a Pseudo-Japanese Traditional dragon, and I thought you might like to see what I’m up to as I do it, so the next few posts will be the process of doing the rough work.

Waste no time

He’s a wee drawing I’ve been working slowly on amid many, many other personal projects, including but not limited to: learning how to make lattes, bathing the dog (still haven’t gotten around to it), making DIY decorations for my upcoming wedding, remembering to eat, learning how to make bread and pizza, working on my big commission, and working out.

I’ve been using biro on this sketch pad a lot more, since I got tired of friable media like pencil smudging on my page, and because, like every political and religious group, every now and then I like to get back to basics.

ButterflEye

Lately I’ve been noticing a sad lack in my work of what I think of as ‘Dark Traditional’. So I decided to do something about that.

After the line work was done over the newly dried tinted paper, I used Indian Ink to wash in some gradated tones.

Then I added some vein-like structures on the wings to make them more interesting.

Finally I add ink droplets to the painting, which I’ve been looking forward to doing since I started to think about the image

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Rose

4B pencil on acrylic paper. I think this one’s going to be in my portfolio. I’m happy with a lot of the initial line work

Further along the line.

Tea demon

Today has been a quiet day; it’s a bank holiday in the UK and there’s not much doing. So I’ve had time to sit down, and when I sit down, I end up sketching.

The Sinister Minister part II

So here is the shaded version of the Minister.

No doubt you’ll notice that the lightning strikes and flames have been left white. Partly that’s for contrast, and partly because I was going to colour them in red and yellow as an extra strong contrast. I’m not sure I want to do that any more (I’m afraid that it’ll wreck the atmosphere of the painting): it’s times like this that I wish I had a decent scanner/image editing software combination, so I could try it out before committing to changing the paper version. I really don’t want to have to redo the whole thing.

Anyway, the best thing I’ve always found to do is to leave it for a while, and have a look again in a week or so.

The Sinister Minister

So, recently I’ve been having urges. Urges, to draw dark, boldly liney drawngs with dark subject matter. I begin this one, which I’m calling The Sinister Minister, with the below line drawing.

I’ve now progressed to the inked version, at least the stage where the lines and solid blacks are in.

Next up is the shading stage, which is definitely going to be the meat of the painting . I take my time and spit-shade all the mid- and light-tones, and leave some areas white for contrast. That’s going to have to be the next post, because it’ll take me a whole long ass time.