Where Is Tim?

Illustration for a children's story I worked on in college.

Done using pencil and coloured in Photoshop. (Glazing technique)

Green Knowe Finished

Children of Green Knowe

It's been a while since my last post so here's a second one! This is an illustration for college. It's not finished yet, I've only just begun the colouring process. We've been assigned with coming up for an illustration based on a scene of our choice from the children's book "The Children of Green Knowe" by Lucy M. Boston. I hadn't heard of the book before. I enjoyed reading this one. It's about a boy who moves in with his Great Grandmother for the summer. She lives in a great big, old house. There he encounters the spirits of three children who had lived in the house centuries before and learns the magical history of said house.

This is the scene in which Tolly, the boy, finds the children inside a big Yew tree. The girl, Linnet is dancing with a hare and her dog is trying to get her attention. Here the dog is contemplating what to do to get Linnets attention. He'll soon get up on his hind legs and attempt dancing.

We're learning a colouring technique using Photoshop known as "glazing". I've attempted colouring my pencil work on Photoshop before, but i've never known the proper technique to do it so I'm liking learning this. The top image is the finished pencil work. The bottom one is where I'm at at the moment. Good bit of colouring still to go!

Caricatures

Photo references:

AY-YOOOOOOOO. Sun! No clouds! It's been a while, it feels good!

Anyway, a tutor of ours told us about this company that's in the process of getting set up. They offer a caricature service. A person sends in their photo and some information about themselves and they receive a caricature based on that. They're looking for artists so a few of us in the class sent in some examples of our work. It's not something I normally do, but I was interested to see how they'd turn out. It was actually fun enough to do.

These are the two I submitted, one of Oscar Wilde (top) and one of Leonard Cohen (bottom). I used photo reference for these sourced from Google images. I've included the original photos below. unfortunately I don't seem to be able to find the photographer's names.

"Scissorhands" postcards

Postcards! Finished pieces are 11x14cm. They had to be inspired by a film of our choice. I chose "Edward Scissorhands", one of my favourite films. The first and third ones were done using spray paint and stencil techniques, the second and fourth ones were done using traditional ink, pen and pencil. And yes, after doing the second one, it will be quite some time before I'll want to draw another pair of scissors.

Pumpkins!

I know! So many pieces are photographed, they are mounted and scanning them is unfeasible at the moment, I hope to get around that as soon as possible.

Anyway, these were done for college last Halloween. The brief was to come up with some pumpkin designs. We didn't have to actually make them, but I do want to give it a shot, maybe this Halloween.

Bounce

These are three illustrations from a series of five I did for college based on the word "Bounce".

I decided to apply the word bounce to the idea of electronic signals bouncing through the air unseen from satellites orbiting around us. Each image relates to a different way technology has influenced our evolution, if you like, or general lifestyle and thinking. It has changed our access to knowledge, how we see things, and indeed how the technology to deceive our eyes has increased in a way ( Photomanipulation, special effects, airbrushing, our manipulated versions of what beauty is etc.), transformation of our actual bodies, how we now communicate with one another, and how we listen or rather don't listen, instead depending more on visual communication.

Cycle Copenhagen

This was a poster I did last year for college. We had to do an illustration for a poster that would be used to encourage people to cycle more. It had to have a specific city in mind, but we could pick any city we wanted. I chose Copenhagen, as I had been there not long before we got this brief.

Ballad of A'lii 2

This is the cover to the book I made as mentioned in the previous post.

The text I had to come up with quite fast as the book had to be more about the actual illustrations and I wanted to put most of the time into those and the actual production of the book. I wanted to write it in a lyrical style, as I thought this would fit in nicer with the theme of the pan inspired character I came up with. It goes thustly:

Through forests and fields,

A'lii would prance.

The music he played,

made all creatures dance.

One day, though, he fell,

fell into a well,

Where he had gone to,

no one could tell.

After some time,

rumours did spread.

Soon all creatures cried

"Great A'lii is dead!".

What enough beings believe,

can sometimes come true.

A'lii's soul it left Earth,

and to limbo it flew.

Because of strong assumptions,

A'lii's soul was captive.

Back on earth the thoughts of greed,

became more attractive.

Nature was destroyed,

music became business.

Back in purgatory,

A'lii became restless.

On Earth there was hope though,

not all was corrupt.

A reaction to greed

was about to erupt.

Empowered by this,

A'lii's spirit did rise.

He fought the Gatekeeper,

It met it's demise.

Back to Earth he returned,

to reclaim his position.

Rising from the trees he loved,

salvation was his mission.

End...

And that's it. Each verse written under the accompanying illustration.

The Ballad of A'lii 1

Hello all! Yes, I've entirely wiped out all previous posts and have started afresh. Not so much a re-invention, more a kind of rejuvenation. I tend to put off setting things like this up as I have an inclination to over-think everything about it and put it off until I have everything perfect in my head, which of course will never happen, as there is no such thing as perfection, and besides, there is nothing more off putting or uninspiring as perfection. So I'm just going to dive in, It's much better, i feel now, to start something, for better or worse, and build on it, rather than to wait for everything to be just so.

Now, that's the end of my thought ramble. This series of images are from a kind of story book we had t do in first year illustration, based on a puppet we made. It was rather a short deadline for the book. The puppet (it was more a model made of chicken wire, modroc and other bits and pieces) I made and the story I wrote around it was a re-imagining of the Greek god Pan. I have another image to post that wouldn't fit in this post, so I'll post that next and also the full text that I wrote for the book as well.