Meditation
This is an illustration i’ve been working on recently called ‘Meditation’. I’ve been doing a lot of Yoga recently as well as trying to keep fit and control my emotional state by being more positive, not that i’m a negative person but y’know, those days when you doubt yourself and your abilities and whether you’ve chosen the right path in life bla blah…so yeh this is basically part of a series based on those sentiments.
This first one is Meditation. The second will be Ambition, the third, Inspiration…there may be some more but as yet this is as far as i got. Hope you like it.
 |
Rufus Segar & Anarchist Magazine – Inspiration
From 1961 to 1970 Anarchist ran as a magazine for the ‘radical’ individual. Created by a guy called Colin Ward who worked at the weekly paper version of Anarchy called ‘Freedom’.
Rufus Segar was hired to illustrate the covers, and i presume possibly other articles within the magazine but i can’t confirm this.
What strikes me most about Rufus’ work is his ability to create an iconic image for almost every cover…i love his use of space and his layout style and in this sense he is a true modernist designer. His work is clearly great and an obviously underrated graphic designer in the field. I, would love to find more of his work and if anyone can point me in the right direction i would be very grateful.
 |
Digital Painting – Rik Deckard -Blade Runner – Re-colour
I decided that the previous Blade runner illustration wasn’t cutting it for me. It happens…sometimes you gotta go mad to be able to see what works, and for me what i had tried to do in the beginning was experiment with my colour palette to try and take my idea further. I had kind of liked where i was heading but having had time to sit back and look at the image i decided that what had happened is that i had lost the mood of the film, it didn’t feel like it captured the ambience of Blade Runner itself and therfore for me the more and more i looked at it the more i didn’t like it.
Hey…i’m experimenting with stuff so its important to me that my journey is up here so that i, and others, can see it from a different perspective. With that in mind i decided to look at it a bit differently, firstly i felt the character needed some more shading, secondly i decided that the logo and type was being lost in all the colour and i wanted it to stand out so i decided to just use one colour. This blue hue worked for me, it sets the mood of the film so much more and it also lets the logo stand out…i also added some grain to the image and felt that it looked right too. I’ve also done a black and white version too cos it looked kinda nice…had that Sin City contrast thing going on which is kind of cool.
I’d really like to know what you guys think about it and any comments and criticism is welcome.
 |
My Work – Blade Runner/Rik Deckard – Poster
This is the first poster in a series i’m working on for blade runner.Harrison Ford’s character Rik Deckard. I didn’t want to do a standard film poster version but rather character based posters.
Blade Runner is one of my most fave movies ever…ever. Nothing surpasses the Genius of Ridley Scott and his vision of a future dystopia in this movie…as a sci-fi movie this has to be up there in the top five. The mood of the film and the idea of replication and philosophy behind this movie are something i love and i may put up a post about the philosophy in the film, it has been written and talked about so much in reference to modern and postmodern ideas and is considered, and i agree, a work of art. The postmodern architecture and design were so prophetic that i’m sure modern cities use this movie as reference!!!
So anyway…there will be more character posters from this movie coming, obviously Rutger Hauer’s character Roy and after that i’m not sure, we shall see.
Hope you like them.
 |
Inspiration – Digital Portrait Magazine Cover Art – Cesar Moreno
This is the ‘How it was made video” for a project for Clase Premiere Magazine by Cesar Moreno. His work is fantastic…i love his rough painting style. His Digital Painting style kind of crosses from fine art to almost a cartoon style and his use of limited palettes is extremely cool. Cesar is an Illustrator and Graphic Designer hailing from Mexico and you should really check out the rest of his work as it is pure class. Below is the final artwork.
 |
My Work – Digital Painting – Goldie Hawn Update
Ok, so here is an updated version of my Goldie Hawn Digital Painting portrait. As you can see there are still a few bits i haven’t finished, like the hands…still need a little work, but overall i’m quite proud of it so far. I’m really liking the face and hair, i think i’ve pulled those elements off quite well.
The difficult elements are really the hands and clothing…cloth is hell to paint and get right.Digital Painting is also a real time eater…i would love to get to the point where i can knock a portrait out in a day or even a few hours but right now it takes a hell of a lot of time…time to step back from it and take a break and to come back to it later with fresh eyes etc…anyway, i’m determined to get this digital painting stuff nailed…i’m working on something that is more towards the style i want to achieve, which is more along the lines of 50′s – 70′s film posters and magazine art so i’ll hopefully have something up soon…meanwhile i hope you like the evolution of Goldie Hawn.
 |
Inspiration – Hajime Sorayama
Hajime Sorayama is amazing!!! Fact!!!! and slightly perverted!!!! Jokes!!! No, but really… he is a little perverted.
Hajime is obviously famous for his ‘Sexy Robot’ series from the 70′s, for which the term was coined for, but i didn’t want to put those images here as they are widely distributed on the net, as are these above, but slightly lesser known images. The guy is straight up amazing at figure drawing yes, but even more amazing at drawing women…c’mon…these women are amazing and the painting beautiful…pure male fantasy, but so realistic looking they could be photographs…true talent at work…if a little perverted. In saying that though, to be truly honest, if i could draw and paint like Hajime i’d be painting sexy women all day too, in fact its one of my aspirations, to be able to draw women like this, not necassarily with all the bits hanging out and stuff but…there is a definite lineage back to the old illustrators of the 40′s, 50′s and 60′s here where illustrations of beautiful women were in all the magazines and advertising and this is part of what i love about that style and what i think has somewhat influenced our man above…that and sci-fi porn.
 |
Ralph McQuarrie – Illustrator – 1929 – 2012
This may be said a lot at the moment and i’m sure these images will pop up a lot too but there is no denying how much we designers/illustrators and certainly any of those of us who’ve done any concept illustration, owe to Ralph Mcquarrie.
To have even been involved at an even miniscule level in what was to become Star Wars (in fact this goes for numerous film projects that RM was involved in) would have been every boys dream in the 70′s/80′s, but to have come up with the concept look for iconic characters such as Darth Vader is pure genius.
Lets give him a round of applause boys and girls (probably a few more boys) nerds and geeks for a life that helped make our lives, certainly mine, more enjoyable and more full of exciting and imaginitive images that are positively burned into our memories and imagination.
May the force be with him (ahem).
 |
The InnKeepers – Poster Design
This is my favourite poster of 2011…created by Tom Hodge(AKA Dude Designs).
There is so much to love about this poster…i love the Art Nouveau decorative elements that frame the illustration and kind of flow into the image of the ghost bride and he has the two main characters spot on.
The Balance in the imagery is great and the typography is really nice to adding to that turn of the century vibe that gives you a little insight into some of the elements involved in the story, along with the ghostly bride…which doesn’t really give anything away because this is part of the story you find out from the beginning of the film.
The film though, is so much scarier than this poster gets across, there truly are some creepy moments in the film and i guess the fact that the poster doesn’t include all those moments could be seen as a good thing, though i do think the poster comes across as a little…i suppose teenage friendly is the right word…more the Goonies than the Crazies…but that doesn’t take away the fact that this is an awesome poster.
Whats also great is the poster does invoke those posters from the eighties for films such as the Goonies, Back to the Future, Indiana Jones and the… etc, so i guess its pretty Drew Struzan in style which is so a good thing cos if i was a kid of today this is exactly the kind of movie i would be smuggling into the house to watch when my parents were in bed instantly putting it into the ‘classic cult’ movie category along with its poster, which also puts it into the Evil Dead, Night of the Living Dead and the general batch of awesome horror movies from the eighties that i used to watch unbeknownst to my Mum & Dad.
But the thing about all those old horror movies that got me excited to see them in the first place was seeing the artwork for the posters or video covers first and thinking they just looked so cool and scary…just from the artwork…and thats the power of the art right there…and truth be told, sometimes the artwork was better than the films.
In this case (The Innkeepers) the poster fed my desire to see it and the film didn’t let me down either so you get both…which makes a change.
 |
