Through His Dark Paradise...process

This is another piece for what I aim will be part of an exhibition idea I have. This is the 4th one in the theme, although they don't necessarily run in sequence. This was fairly slow work at times, but it's satisfying to see it finally come to fruition. As always I've included the various stages to illustrate its progress. It's graphite and coloured pencil on toned paper.

Behind Beauties Darkness....process

This is another personal piece to go with 'Gnarled' and 'Master of Carrion'. They're all part of a series I'm working on, and I should be adding to that soon, as I've got another one lined up. Yet again, I always had a pretty clear idea of how I wanted this to turn out. The initial sketchbook drawing is very close to the final image. Although you could argue the hand crushing the butterfly is a significant addition to the narrative.

Gnarled process...

This is another personal piece, loosely based on a prose poem. I enjoyed this, as it's so refreshing to do work unrelated to a commission sometimes. Another piece that was clear in my mind right from the start.

Master of Carrion process...

Sometimes ideas just come into your head and you've got to get them out and onto paper. This was one of those. It's graphite and white charcoal on toned paper. Nice birdies....

Horse Head study process....

I'm not entirely sure what inspired me to do a horse head study in the first place, but I'm glad I did. It was a great challenge and working on the toned paper lent itself perfectly to capturing that added sense of depth in the values, particularly when applying the layers of graphite powder. I worked from a photo of course, but added my own subtle embellishments so as not to just 'copy' it directly, which would be no fun at all.

Tattoo design process...

I was commissioned to design a tattoo recently. The bones of the brief was- a woman's face, with tentacles and flowers. Well, here you go. The original finished drawing seemed a bit stiff, and the girl looked too young, so I ended up doing another (the top one). I'm glad I did as I think the second attempt is looser and compositionally better.

Roman bust process...

I've been getting some decent direct observation practice in recently, which was continued in this study of the Roman bust. This is graphite on toned paper, with some white charcoal for the lightest areas. The light source (from the window) changed many times throughout this drawing, but I stuck closely to the initial shadow shapes all the way to the end to keep it pretty consistent and believable. For the most part.

Sketchbook drawings part 2...

This post is not specific like the last one, in fact it's a proper mish-mash of randomness. A lot of this stuff is out of my imagination, or I've used reference photos of myself as a starting point. Some of these ideas were supposed to be converted into finished paintings, but for whatever reason it didn't happen. The colour studies were prepared first with a layer of Clear Gesso, then painted in oil. If there was one piece of advice I'd give to art students, at any level, is keep a sketchbook. They are often at least as interesting as an artists final pieces.