Back soon

Much love to anyone following this space.

I'll be taking a few months out to work on some new projects, but in the meantime hit me up on Twitter.

@mr_diddles

Homage

My favorite piece by Downton. His use of straight and erratic brush strokes to define contours and characters I'd something I've tried.. and failed at a hundred times!

Using a soft edge on the brush gave the piece an aura, but couldn't beat the thick wet brush strokes of the original. 

Homage

David Downton has been a personal hero since Uni. Phenomenally technical and methodical selection of colours and brushes in his work. Descriptive but simple. I love beautiful simplicity.  

Here I used his pieces to replicate on the IPad. The brush and color selection seemed perfect for SketchPro plus..

Smokes

Traveling back and forth on the train a lot have me a chance to hot up the iPad again.

Nothing mind blowing here but it showed a huge leap from the last piece worked on.

Italiano

Couldn't resist this little guy.

I'm not a big fan of overly boney dogs, but it's a great bit of practice for tones and shades.

Blobs testing

"Planet Peel" had been left behind while I'd been perusing different avenues, finally coming full circle.

Doodling blobs for a year before I could muster the effort to break through my fear of paints left me with sketchbooks full of .. well .. Blobs.

I'd been meaning to come back for a while, this being the first shot.

Jane Krakowski

Birthday piece for a buddy of mine. 

Krakowski is a fantastic actress and a pleasure to draw, sketching took about 40mins - paints about 3hours.

Grape

Again using artist Gretchen Hancock's work as a strong influence, still life fruit will allow me to focus on broader, more blocky, strokes.

Lacking detail, fruits can be manipulated significantly with the brush.

Michael Shannon - Final

Once the eyes are balanced, the whole piece comes together a little better. The light on the left side was something new.

Again usually capping my work at 2 hours creates mistakes but also pushes for broader strokes.

Tina Fey

One thing I've noticed, my accuracy stinks. Producing a life like painting is always fun, but to accurately convey the personality of someone is still out of my grasp.

Fingers crossed the Acylics will bring her to life.

Cherry

Looking at artist Gretchen Hancock's work allowed me to loosen the flat edge a little.

Achieving the blocky but descriptive simple strokes is where I'm looking to be.

Michael Shannon

Whilst lookin over portrait photos, this one of General Zod popped up and I couldn't resist.

Previously working predominantly with acrylics, a few failed pieces convinced me to go back to penciling firstly.

One problem is inconsistency in my strokes. Using the flat edge brush should lend itself to more blocky images.

Pixelate - Wink

Applying the pixelation during the first draft is much more difficult.

Requiring planning and awkward application of paints, it should create a unique look and a more incorporated colour scheme.

Sonic stop-ani

Step by step the running animation is getting closer to completion.

I hadn't realized what a huge task it would be, but keeping it as a side piece is helping keep the momentum.

Roughly each cell costs about 2500 yen "/

Pixelate - Portrait

Looking at different approaches to pixelating the pictures.

2D pixelation will be a good way to practice balance in composition and colour - what extent the piece can be pixelated.

Tetris - next

Far from perfect but became comfortable with these tetris kinda visuals.

Now to apply these to portraits.

Inu - 犬

First attempt.

Love cats and dogs to bits but painting realistic/semi-realistic hair is something I'd been shying away from. More to come!

Scrunching

I'm always pleased with whatever comes after scrunching paper.

Crude and simple but I love the shapes and emotions made from contorted paper.

I took a shot at origami a while back but found I just didn't have the patience..

As prep for the sonic animation I'll be making some stop animation using models like these.

Sonic - Stop Motion

2 weeks in and I've got 0.2 seconds down.. Loving getting hands on and doing my first animation but at the same time neglecting the paints.

It's going to be slow progress. Each piece costing a bunch of time (and money), mainly due to fingers getting glued to various things (and places).

Future pieces will have blocks used repetitively, but with this being my first, wanted to hang on to each frame for lighting experimentation.

Subsequently if anyone is looking for a frame of Sonic, hit me up!

Tetris Blocks - Experimenting

Some color combinations and experimenting.

Trying to improve my perspective work with some simple block / tetris themed patterns.

Although not perfect, the practice got me where I wanted - time to introduce pixels to the next pieces.

Wrinkles - Tones

Really enjoying spending time on varying shades, adding definition and depth to wrinkles.

Plenty of misteeks but can feel the transition from getting lucky with the acrylics to actually controlling and understanding contours.

Tetris - Perspective

Pretty chuffed to find these in Tokyu Hands, really going to come in handy with the perspective work later.

Ultra realism is a little out of my league, but focus on detail is crucial. 

Drawing something as simplistic as a smooth wooden block, foreground sharpness and background blur are going to need attention.