Tale & Teller.

A private commission for Danske Bank - based on the poem “The Wreck of the Hesperus” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

I’m working on a picture book right now, but I wanted to take a short break to paint something else just to keep the creative juices flowing. Just a simple speed painting of Sean Connery’s James Bond - it took 3 hours in total.

This is a tonal study of a photograph (I’ve no idea who the photographer is to give props). It took about 6.5 hours to do - I started it late last night and finished this morning.

I learnt a lot from this exercise. It requires a lot of patience to render a drawing this way, just constantly bending and considering values.

You might be wondering why I haven’t updated in a while? I’ve designed a brand new web site for Tale & Teller and I hope to launch my freelancing career with it! Exciting times, the site will be live within the next few weeks.

I was watching Goodfellas yesterday and wanted to paint a wise guy. Eh?? Eeeeeehhhh!? This illustration started out as Mr. Robert De Niro himself but it had a change of direction and I went freestylin’ yo. The purpose of this illustration was to experiment with the Photoshop brushes. I wanted to try and replicate the traditional palette knife look.

I’m slowly developing my style. If you look down the page at all my illustrations, you might think that a different person did each of them! I feel that it’s important for me to work on an aesthetic that is personal to me, rather than to try and be a ‘jack of all trades’. It’s useful to be able to illustrate in many different styles, but I think it’s more important to develop a refreshing and individual look.

‘Truckin’ Away’ - an appropriate title for times like these. I’ve been struggling with creativity lately. I think the only thing to do is keep truckin’ away and be patient that it will come together. This was illustrated in Photoshop, from the mind of yours truly.

A very quick painting of Mr. Miyagi from Karate Kid. This guy was a rockstar! Experimenting with a similar style to yesterday’s Joker painting, this one took about half the time though. I went for a more stylistic approach to the clothing, not worrying too much about detail but focusing on the overall impression. Learning a lot about value and technique with these posts!

I painted The Joker today. The usual Photoshop / Wacom Intuos combo. I tried to capture detail with texture and colour - it took about 4 hours in total. Heath Ledger was fantastic in this role, this is my tribute to his performance.

I might put together a short tutorial later this week (possibly a video?) about how I go about painting these things. I find it really helpful to see the process of other artists, so hopefully I can help other people on my journey too. If there is anything you would like to know just shoot me an email, I’d love to hear some feedback!

A speed painting of Harrison Ford in the classic Blade Runner movie! All this illustration practice is starting to pay off, I’m getting a lot quicker and more confident with every piece. 2 hours for this one.

If you want to improve your painting / drawing skills, there is no substitute for good ol’ fashioned practice. Do something every single day, even if it’s very small - keep moving in the right direction.

Here is an illustration I did earlier today of Mr. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. His books had such a massive impact on me growing up, I really admire what he accomplished - a truly remarkable man. This took about 3 hours in total.

I haven’t really done many portraits and so I found it difficult to get an exact likeness. I didn’t want to spend hours worrying over this so I just kept it moving. This was a lot of fun to do. I scanned in pages from ‘The Fellowship Of The Ring’ to complete the illustration. I’d really like to experiment more with collages and mixed media. Cheers Mr. Tolkien!

Tale & Teller