Monday, December 21, 2009

Validation

Watched this the other day, it made me cry.....just wanted to share it with you

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Sketchbook

Haven't posted anything in a while, so here's some stuff from my sketchbook :-)




















Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Troubled Poster


I had to make up a poster for "Troubled" to enter it into some film festivals.

Thanks again to everyone to help me out! You know who you are!

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Illustrated Little Ladies

Haven't had much time lately so here's some
character designs for a illustration project that didn't take off.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

St. Jerome








Here's my first academic drawing of Bernini's bust of St. Jerome. I would have never approached drawing like this before, it was a good exercise and it really helps you to focus on shapes and shadows.

Life-Painting

Here are some life-painting in progress shots. Still a long way to go but very enjoyable process. As you can see the beginning is a total mess but it somehow strung together eventually. I hope I'll be doing better portraits soon.

Life Drawing
















Some Life-Drawing I did at Rossnaree.
Still need to loosen up a bit more but I think I understand something new again, so great!

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Copying Courbet
























I decided I would go to a Classical Painting Course. It's based near Drogheda. The name of the school is called Rossnaree. It's situated beside Newgrange. It's beautiful out there.

The course is just brilliant. I always wondered how those Renaissance painters got such great life, composition and that dramatic lighting that you hardly see in any other paintings. You know that light just just makes you look great!
I think Courbet is one of those painters who recognized that some kind of lighting can make you look great.(this is a self-portrait of the artist btw) I discovered a photo of him on the net somewhere. He obviously used this technique to make himself look better than he truly is, I don't blame him :-)

One of the exercises in this course is to copy a painting from the great masters. The technique of painting is totally different to what I'm used to doing, I'm not sure which is better. I stood in the darkest part of the room so I hardly had light and my colours became a bit muddled at one point. So that's what my copy looks like. Next week I'll work with a life-model and I am interested to hear his critism this time. His critism on my painting was : " I like your style of painting, close by it's a wreck - far away it makes sense, Courbet would have made sure that it made sense both ways.

I'm tempted to go to the National Gallery now to set up an easel and copy a few more now, just to learn from them.

Another thing I learnt was using the limited palette. I'm still impressed by the colours you can mix with black, white, yellow and a tiny bit of red.

All the materials we used are just of great quality. Adam Markovic (the tutor) makes his own sun-thickened linseed oil which you can only buy from him. I'm lucky because that stuff is probably the best thing I've worked with so far.
The paints we used are from that brand "Old Holland" - I bought a tube of blue there the other day nearly 50 Euro - not cheap!

Right, I won't carry on anymore. I'll have more to post next week. It's all been an interesting and inspiring weekend for me - also tiring. Some days were about 11 hours long of drawing and painting.

Monday, August 3, 2009

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Paintings continued...


This is the second sitting for this portrait. I kinda like where it's going but it'll change obviously. I'm still learning and painting from life is so challenging but lotsa fun!

The other portrait will come soon and after that I'll ask Volodya if he'll do a full body pose for me.....

Friday, July 17, 2009

Paintings continued....

Here's photo after another session painting Volodya, he's been away to many conferences and been too busy to sit for me.
I might get him to sit for me tomorrow night again, so I'll have update YAY!!





























Vince offered to pose for me too, hopefully we'll have another session soon. He chose this serious pose.

Would anyone else like to pose? I'm asking everyone!

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Dublin Sketchers....


Well....I arrived a little late but I made a sketch anyway. Just throwin' this one up on the blog so I can monitor my progress :-) The drawing was made in Temple Bar, near some construction site....I like the uglier parts of the city......

Thursday, July 9, 2009

It's been a while.....



I'm working on some other stuff at the moment, but here's some test animation I did for my short "Troubled".

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Knitting! ! !

A few new knitted pieces, a beanie type hat, scarf and a pair of chunky finger-less gloves are a birthday prezzie for my friend Vince.
He's 30 years old today!!! Finished just in time. I gave them to him last night and he liked them!

It took me a long while to get my head around to knit the gloves, they are so DIFFICULT to knit if you're not going to sew on the thumb but I invented something new for myself to make that seamless look! A funny fact: the number of stitches I used for the scarf is 30 for the width. I don't know how many I used for the length...I just played by ear for that, also the gloves are a 30 stitch circle! I don't know, thought that might be funny....I forgot to tell him that though!

Happy 30th Birthday Vince!!!

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Shaun Tan
















Nearly forgot to post this little lovely drawing. The amazing illustrator Shaun Tan made this little sketch for me a couple of weeks ago at the Children Book Ireland convention. I have to admit going mainly to listen to him talk about his work, where he gets his inspiration from, the way he describes his process, how he views his own work and mainly how he is so down to earth about it all. (I have to admit I got a little more out of this talk because, the following day when I sat for coffee, himself and an interviewer sat down on
the next table talking about art. I admit it, I listened in, I had to!!!)

His way of drawing, I would say, hardly differs from one artist to the next. It was good to go the talk and actually hear him talk about his sketches and paintings. I think every artist should talk about their work a little more, how they integrate their inspiration and experiences into their art is terribly interesting to me and I think helpful for others. It was VERY reassuring to hear him talk about his work because it made me realize that I am handling things well enough, just because it feels right. Feeling good about your work, it probably more important than anything else.

The talk from David Almond was just great as well, he makes writing sound so easy. Another down to earth person as well. His notebooks look like my sketchbooks, lots of writing in various places, lots of ideas floating about and somehow he manages to make something just great and pristine from the messy notebooks. Whenever you read a book, you'd think that a writer just sits down and literally just writes all the perfect verbs, adjectives, pronouns etc perfectly on paper, well not David Almond anyway! What I found particularly admirable from his talk is his experience with some agents. You'd think he'd just give up, but it's great that he didn't! ! !

Talking about my own work, I find it a little difficult because I have so many sources of inspiration and ideas, weird and crazy ideas, half ideas. It's strange in a way because having so much of this can work against me at times. I have that notion that every time I don't draw it either gets stored away or totally forgotten. Does anyone ever have this experience or feel like this? If so, what does one do about it? Sometimes what also stops me from drawing is that I feel my work isn't good at all....but I just do it because I have to...something needs to get out...good or bad.

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Knitting















Here's a photo of my latest creation. I thought since Moni ( a colleague from Boulder Media ) is having a baby, I should try to challenge myself to make a baby's jumper. I hope the colours are okay, I tried staying to neutral colours since I don't know if the baby is a boy or a girl !

I had to start over just once for this one. Since I don't know how to follow any patterns I just knit and see how it goes. I think it's the trouble if you haven't learned knitting from a professional or in school. Nevertheless I enjoy knitting and all of my mistake-knitting goes into making a large blanket. I sew all the pieces together, God knows what it will look like when I'm done with that :-)

Monday, April 20, 2009

More Life Painting

















This is probably the final stage of this painting. I loved painting her. It's a bit weird dealing with changing light when you're painting. First you can hardly see high-lights and then 5 minutes later the model has loads of high lights.


For home-work we had to paint a friend in Acrylic. Volodya(Vlad) sat for me really still (which I'm so grateful for), I thought I'd post this one up too so you can see the progess.
I think next time I'll do a full-figure painting of him in oil. <3

Sunday, April 5, 2009

TCD Life-Painting

Been busy doing some painting in my free time as you can see. It's been really fun to go the second-sitting of the pose. I hope next sitting I'll be able to capture the model's face in the painting, she has such a great face for painting, it's very sculptural. God, now I'm sounding like the teacher....someone help me. LOL



















This is a portrait of my friend Jurgen. I know the eyes aren't done so well but I really enjoyed painting this portrait. Usually when I draw I make sure that I capture the eyes and try to make it look like person but this time I had more fun playing around with the colours and expermenting on the painting.




















Our next task for homework is to do a self-portrait in acrylic and anything else of our choice. I'll see if Volodya will pose for me our else I'll take a trip to the botantic garden paint something there....I was supposed to go to Howth and paint there but I don't think that's gonna happen.
:-)





















..... and last a warm up drawing....I just liked this pose.

Friday, March 27, 2009

Bologna Bookfair!




Back from Bologna, it was an educational trip more than anything else. The most important things I've learnt at the bookfair was that you gotta ask, keep asking....and twist and turn your questions around so you get all the info you need. They don't hand it over to you. The response was all varied. A few people liked my work, a few LOVED it, one or two people looked like they hated it and then the rest didn't think I could come close enough to what they do. I think I could probably fit in anywhere but of course, they wouldn't know that...it's probably a good thing though, I don't think I'd like to do someone else's style...I'm still figuring out what mine is. A lot of people liked the animation edge I brought to the illustrations but they all ALL ALL said they wanted more real paintings. So, I'm gonna do some of that now. I think it'll be good for me anyway. Of course you know as soon as my folio is filled with "real" paintings, some genius will come around with totally cool photoshop painted stuff.
I saw so many different styles....it's a shame that most people don't work on their presentations....they have lots and lots of loose papers and original works with them.
I saw one girl's illustrations there, oh...they were beautiful...all over it was a very inspiring trip. Very intense, lots and lots of people and I'm SO going back next year! The illustrator's exhibition was just great as well...hopefully my stuff will be there one day as well (ahhh wishful thinking :-))

I'm posting up some of the recent work I've been doin...I'll have a go at water colouring them some time and post them up! If you have an tips on watercolouring and oil painting, do send me a link or leave a comment :-)





Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Week 2 in Life-drawing




So, I posted one of my home-work assignments from the life-drawing classes already. Here's the last one I did on Friday night. I'm actually really proud of this one because after watching "Secret of Kells" (which is so beautiful, go and see it!!!) I had a pint with some friends I met in the cinema and went home to do the assignment. I thought that was pretty good of me, I could have easily stayed for 2 more pints - actually I'm a little bit intimidated by this life-drawing teacher. He teaches in NCAD and is kinda strict (let's just say I don't want to get on his bad side ;-))

The other two are from the model. It was pretty intense....only 3 poses in 3 hours. Phew....of course I'm not used to drawing with a paint brush - does it show?? LOL I thought painting the background in red was a strange thing to do, but the teacher said that classical artist did so to give a better comparison to dark and light, red because it's vibrant and portrays blood in the veins of the model. Thought that was pretty cool!

Friday, March 6, 2009

Jaysus!!!!




Here's one of the home-work assignments done, tonight I'll finish off the other one in pastel...I'm awful looking in this..ah well! LOL

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Life-drawing


Started a 10 week course to learn how to paint with oils. We started off with pastels, next week there should be more...oh we also have homework - self portraits using a mirror...have to get started on those!

New Harp!!


Here's a pic of my new harp. I love it, love it, LOVE IT. Did I mention to you that I love it??
Got it second-hand. It's made by one of my favourite Irish harp makers Colm O'Meachair. He should have a website, all of his work is just gorgeous!

I'll definitely be practicing more!

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Birthdays


A birthday card I made for my Mom.
Still plugging away at animation here in Boulder Media. Finally gotten into the swing of this project. (Who knows when I'll be getting retakes again!) I've got this major dance animation animate....it's tough! I'll try to make it look good so I can throw it in my showreel.
Tim:-)

Sunday, February 8, 2009

A BOX



Here are two old drawings I found.....thought they were nice :-)
...working on some designs for two children picture-books :-)busy busy!!