"So much room for activities!"

Tomorrow Gallery1988 is honouring the four year anniversary of the film "Step Brothers", inspired by other artists drawings of Huff and Doback I decided to draw this;

Obama and Romney

Over the past few weeks it seems Obama can't be photographed on the campaign trail without an alcoholic beverage in his hands (Romney can't drink because he's a mormon and Bush didn't drink because he was a retiring alcoholic). In this drawing I tried to capture Obama's charisma portraying him as the cool bro you can have a beer with. I tried to illustrates Romney's lack of charm, he's the out of touch, stuck up old man who thinks wearing a pair of jeans is the best way to connect with the youth vote. I've been studying the book "Force; Dynamic Life Drawing for Animators" and I've learnt a lot about improving characters by using curves to create different postures and flows; I drew Romney with his hips tilted froward and his shoulders hunched over so he looks less confident.

Reaganomics

The words of Killer Mike in the song Reagan;

"I guess that that's the privilege of policing for some profit
But thanks to Reaganomics, prisons turned to profits
Cause free labor is the cornerstone of US economics
Cause slavery was abolished, unless you are in prison
You think I am bullshitting, then read the 13th Amendment
Involuntary servitude and slavery it prohibits
That's why they giving drug offenders time in double digits" 

Breaking Bad with symmetry

Breaking Bad work in progress...

For the past two weeks the television show Breaking Bad has pretty much taken over my life. For those unfortunate enough not to have yet seen it the show is about a middle aged chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and begins to use his knowledge of chemistry to start producing the highest grade of meth amphetamines to fund his family. Everything about the show is brilliant and I'm on the edge of my seat every time I sit down to watch the seemingly mild mannered Walter White and his drug dealing, crime lord alter ego Hiesenberg. Ever since the first episode I've been desperate to draw Bryan Cranston as Walter White because he portrays the character so brilliantly but I wasn't sure how to do the show justice. One of the many great things about the show is the directing (which is really above and beyond the quality of anything you usually see on television) there are some brilliantly personal shots of Cranston which work fantastically with the shows aesthetic and the scenery of suburban New Mexico makes a beautiful setting.
As I began watching episode 1 of season 3 last night (which was directed by Cranston) I was really inspired by a wide angle shot of a landscape out in the desert, I thought that that baron terrain and feeling of isolation would be perfect as the background for my drawing and would also mean that I could include the colour scheme of the show. This is what I've drawn so far and I think this works on its own but there's more to come, eventually the whole cast will feature.

Springsteen

Here's a picture of 70's Bruce Springsteen which I drew today. I decided to go for full on Luke Dixon-style this time and I'm really happy with the results, I think I need to study his technique for drawing hair a bit more though. 

Obama again...

At the moment I'm really into Luke Dixon's illustration work and I've spent a lot of time trying to emulate his technique whilst trying to keep my own personal style. Here's another picture of Barack Obama; 

Razor Cartoon

Bane fan drawing (because it's not like there's much Batman fan art on the internet already)

(Double click to see the image closer)
Last night I finally got round to watching the "Dark Knight Rises" (I was really excited but I sort of knew it would be really good so I wasn't desperately queuing for midnight premiers or anything). Although it wasn't quite as iconic as the "Dark Knight" it was still a fitting end to the trilogy and I was really blown away by the film as a whole.
"The Dark Knight"came out the summer between my first and second year of GCSE's and I remember looking through websites of A-level and GCSE artwork a few months later and seeing that every teenage boy in the country seemed to be doing a project based on the Joker. The internet's already full of pictures of Bane but I thought that one more couldn't hurt!
I drew this on the Ipad (once again using a nomad brush) then touched it up on the computer. I made the drawing a lot darker and more dramatic than the source image (which I'll post below for comparison). I decided from the start to only use black and white  for the picture and painted onto a dark grey background and I played around with the opacity and layers to create textures. The real aim was to make this drawing about the darkness so I was very liberal with the black airbrush tool and spent a lot of time zooming in and concentrating on the most minute details. This one took a bit less than 2 hours (I'm getting really quick) and I'm very happy with how dark and menacing this turned out!

Skulls

(Click on the images to see them full size)
This afternoon I've been playing around on my Ipad and using sketchbook pro (and a nomad drawing brush) to make the pictures below. I thought it would be interesting to try and paint the whole thing using one brush and change around the opacity and radius to create textures. I then created a background layer and used a mirror tool to spatter the red paint behind the picture, this worked really well as I had painted it on a grey background originally (so the areas which needed to be really white where brightened and the red showed through). Last year I studied the paintings of Georgia O'keefe who painted animal skulls and flowers in desert landscapes and I had her paintings in mind as I began this. I like the way skulls have strange and sinister beauty to them, the lopsided symmetry, the black holes where eyes should be and the association with danger makes them really interesting to draw. I used the mirror tool on the background with this symmetry in mind but chose a brush which creates random splatters so that the shape is not quite symmetrical giving it a more natural feel.  

Obama

I'm playing around with colours at the moment and trying to create work in the style of Munk One. Here's a picture of Barack Obama I drew this evening, it's still a work in progress and I eventually want to bring in more drawings of him from different angles to create a massive collage with loads of different colours.

Ident Project Re-do

This is the my second attempt at the ident project (this time I used a lot more after effects). I composited the explosion and the smoke in after effects using fractal noise and some layers and I also composited the flames.