Summer Sale!

It's Summer time and the livin' ain't so easy so I'm having a clear out. These paintings are all up for sale and I've slashed my prices.

If anything interests you, do contact me at stevyncolgan@mac.com. Prices include postage and packaging. I'll take cheque, Paypal, bank transfer ... anything except credit cards really.

 

Dead Astaire - Acrylics on 20" by 16" box canvas - £150

 

 

Arrr Pod - Acrylics on 20" by 16" box canvas - £150

 

 

But is it Art? - Acrylics and Mixed Media on 20" by 16" box canvas - £150

 

 

April Showers - Acrylics on 35" by 27" box canvas - £175

 

 

Lord of the Rainbows - Acrylics on 39" by 27.5" box canvas - £200

 

Also these signed digital art prints are available for £6 each, or £15 for the set of three. 

Cosplayers 1, 2 and 3 are all 11.5" by 15.5" and printed on heavy acid-free art card.

 

 

 

The Fractal Portraits of Ben Heine

Wonderful portraits made entirely from differently sized coloured discs. It reminds me of those Mandelbrot sets that appeared when fractal geometry was first publicised.

Visit Ben's website here. His blog is here and he's on Twitter as @benheine.

Five contemporary artists whose work I admire

There are many more than five but these guys particularly float my boat. They are, in no form of order whatsoever, Jonathan Edwards ...

Do visit his Website and his blog. Also, he curates a fantastic blog called Draw Serge to which hundreds of artists - myself included - have donated portraits of the late Serge Gainsbourg. He is also the partner and artistic collaborator of Louise Evans, better known as Feltmistress, who I have featured on this blog before.

Next up is Joe List whose Annotated Weekender site is a highlight of my Sundays and whose blog is always bulging with explosive invention.

Third on the list we find Hammo whose clean illustration style appeals to me greatly whether on canvas, on a wall or as a digital illustration. And he draws cool robots.

Fourthly we find Robert Ball who produces deliciously angular work that nonetheless captures the essence of the moment. And he's wonderfully adept at capturing a likeness in just a few geometric shapes. I am envious of that skill. His blog is here.

Lastly - but only for the purposes of this blog - we come to MapMap aka Matthew Plater. Matthew works in traditional paint, digital and on 3D projects and his individual style comes through strongly in each. Here's his website.

365 Doodles - Day 284

The finished piece: The Ghost Collector.

365 Doodles - Day 283

A work in progress for today. I'm doing a digital artwork called The Ghost Collector. Tomorrow I'll add him to the picture but, for the moment, here's his collection.

How the geek was done ...

In recent years I've had a play with digital art as well as painting. Being the hairy old dinosaur that I am, any meagre art training I ever had was pre-computer so I didn't grow up with Photoshop and Illustrator or any other art package and am therefore fairly ignorant of them. More importantly, they are so big and complex that I never seem to find the time to sit down and learn how to use them. I can do a bit here and there but I'm a long, long way from reaching any level of industry standard of competence.

The digital art I do tends to be quite clunky and old-fashioned but I kind of like that. I like that the lines aren't smoothed out or tidied. It looks more 'drawn'. In fact, despite owning a graphics tablet which I do use for some things, I've reverted to drawing with a mouse as it gives a natural, wobbly line that mirrors how I draw with a pen or pencil. I also use an older piece of software - Paintshop Pro 7. It's pretty much obsolete (the current version on sale is X4 and the company is owned by Corel) but it has very few bells and whistles, isn't at all complicated and does everything I need it to do. Most software seems to me to be 10% function and 90% distraction so the lack of fancypants gimmicks keeps me focused.

Here's how I work. Firstly, I'll sketch out the image and then scan it at 600dpi. This gives me a nice big image to play with. The example I'll use here is my cosplayers print Wonderwomen and Sith Lords. Next step is to drop in the background colour by adding a layer, masking areas off and using the fill tool.

Next, I mask off different areas and fill with flat blocks of colour to create the overall look of the piece before adding outlines in black. This is done by a combination of drawing in freehand and masking off small areas and filling with black.

I then begin shading by masking off areas and using the lightness/tone tool to drop the area by around 30% for darker and up %30 for lighter. I also try out changes to the composition; in the case of this image I first added a cloak to Darth Maul (which didn't work) and changed the leg positions of Wonderwoman (which did). The joy of digital work is the ease with which changes like this can be made. There's no excuse for wonky eyes any more.

I know it's clunky and old-fashioned. I know that if I learned the industry satndard software I could probably complete a piece in half the time. But do I want to? The answer, for the time being anyway, is a resounding no. I enjoy taking my time and I like the finished results I get. Far too much digital art, it seems to me, looks the same. The individuality of the artist has been swallowed by the software 'improving' it.

But that's probably just me. Colganosaurus Rex. Grrr.

Oh and before I settled on Darth Maul as my representative from the Star Wars canon, I had intended to use a bloke called Derek dressed as Han Solo. I think I made the right choice.