Progress on the tree painting...

Progress on the tree painting. I have the main shapes in. After a false start and several experiments, I finally started using #liquin fine detail to get the consistency I wanted from oil paints. Not perfect, but that may be some very old tubes of paint that are very stiff anyway. Second photo shows detailing. 

Will be unified with a glaze like final snapshot.

Whole image, it's 100cm x 100cm on canvas. Have painted about 25% of detail. Really taking ages, about a week now. Manage around 3 hours a day. But not every day. Arm aches after that!

Close up of detailing. First layer, will need light/dark/underpaint in-between lines. Then glase with overall wash.

Test glaze. Needs bit more work. Struck me I could use a gold underneath or even gold leaf in a future project.

 

Christmas 2018

After much head scratching, this was the Christmas card for 2018. It's our new cat flying out with the presents. Picture was drawn with Derwent Intense Pencils, plus a little help from Photoshop. Photoshop added a couple of shadows and added the white lines which had disappeared when I got the paper too wet.

Inktense

Probably my favourite watercolour pencils. Not joking. I've tried a number of different sets of watercolour pencils - and I always come back to these. Three reasons: controllability, the strength of colour when wetted and the permanence when dry. I first discovered these a few years ago, but until now I've never had a set as large as this. The wooden case is a nice way to store them and a real plus.
When I'm using these I like to do an outline first. Normally I use the Indigo pencil, sketching lightly as I don't want to drive the colour into the paper at this point. Incidentally, I use Derwent's watercolour paper,  as it has a particularly smooth surface. Then, using a bush I hydrate the lines I want and bring them out to a wash if required. Finally I rub out with a regular eraser all the lines I don't want. As long as the paper is very dry, I leave it overnight usually, this works pretty well.
Then because the wetted pencil is dry and therefore permanent I add the other colours as required. One thing I do is check the colours, both by themselves and as over colour; Inktense pencil colours are a lot brighter and often slightly different to what you might expect so it pays to test somewhere. If you look at the sample picture you can see where I've done this along the lefthand edge.

After that, I use them like waterproof inks. Shade the areas I want to colour, use a water brush to stroke out the colour, let it dry and apply more as required. The image attached to this review is a section of one I did for a Christmas card this year and other than a few black lines done with a Derwent fine liner is all inktense pencils. I should note that this had further work done after this scan; but I think it shows the versatility and colour you can expect.
If I have one niggle, it's that the pencil is quite soft and doesn't hold a point for very long. I can work with that, but it would be nice to see these available in a mechanical pencil one day.  Until then, I'm very happy with my 48!

So I ruined Ruth...

This was a quick sketch for the Mental health book. Really just trying out pens and pencil together. But I used too much fixative and the ink -which is waterproof and permanent - ran badly and soaked through to the other side and made that run.

Was more hacked off about that than this. The castle ended up being a two hour long doodle really - and this was pure experimentation.

Still I suppose she has a reason for being unhappy now!

Designing the Ghost House

In the posting I did about the doll's house that we are building I mused about whether or not it could be automated to give the appearance of people or things living inside it.

Since then I thought a bit more and I think it's entirely practical that such a thing could be done and the diagram here gives an idea or two.

First up is using puppets - or automata - to give some motion to it. The mechanism can be hidden in the roof or floor - depending if they work by string or wire. Here you can see a ghost coming down through the floor and another skull making the same trip. Although these are shown using cranks, intact I'd probably use small servos or stepper motors to allow them two be moved individually. While the romance of brass cams and steampunk mechanisms appeals, using electronics gives more control and would allow interaction between the ghosts and the viewer in a less predictable way.

The last ghost, sitting bottom right in a chair is a variation on pepper's ghost a victorian illusion that I keep find now days being referred to as a 'hologram'  - it's not. It's a simple partial reflection that unless done live isn't even stereoscopic. In the use of the effect above, the originating image is a LCD screen built into the floor. You can see the reflective glass at 45 degrees and the ghost will apparently sit on the chair or move around.

I don't suppose I will ever build this, at least not in this form; but it was a good think through and design.I also quite liked the drawing that I did - at the moment I'm still into grunge and imperfection in a big way.

SS April 2015

Day Three: Setting the grids.

The grid is the structure behind a page. Designing the grid in a multiple page publication, along with setting the styles is a big part of designing it.

Often, for a new publication this will take me as long as the layouts themselves take. If I have got the grid and styles right then the pages will almost (almost!!) take care of themselves. 

Everything will have a place, each item of copy will have an associated style and other than jiggling it all around to fit in, it should get to a first draft fairly quickly.

Which is why I've gone through this process throughly - so that I can hammer through the remaining pages fairly quickly.

In this publication there's three main layouts plus a couple of minor ones. There's the listing pages that are four columns - like the one here from last year. 

Then there's the feature pages, these are signified by being three column pages - wider to let the text breath a bit. Also I've been a lot more casual about the positioning of pictures on this page. Even so, the underlying structure is still there, but the "random" placing of images makes for a more interesting page.

Finally there's some six column pages for indexes and small listings. The type is also smaller here as well.

This year's changes

To be honest more evolution here than revolution. Generally the styles and the four column grid worked well. Getting the right sizes and weights of type took a lot of work last year and while I've tinkered with it, I don't think I need to make whole scale changes. 

One thing that I have tried however is a five column grid. I mocked up a page using some of last years listings - it's the one on the bottom here - and I have moved the date to the centre top of the page. Largely I kept the styles of text the same. They worked last year, so they will work again.

This year it'll all be a bit more formal. There's whimsical images to add that match in with the front cover that will add some texture and contrast to the pages. I'm keen however to avoid the blobby look from last year, so they will be kept sharp.

I have to invent some appropriate icons for the free events, the special events and anything else the client wants to highlight. And once I've done that there's the trivial job of turning around 40 pages in 16 hours or less.

FAB (Fringe Arts Bath) Pages.

These are almost a magazine within a magazine. The client said "Make them very different from the rest of the guide". I think there's a feeling that last year they were not sufficiently differentiated from the guide as a whole.

The blue page here is a FAB page from last year. You can see if you compare it to the four col. grid at the top there's a lot in common. That was partially deliberate and partly accidental. Accidental because basically I ran out of time to work on them and they had to be artwork very quickly.

This year I'm trying to make amends. I have opted for a six column grid, although the major pieces occupy two or there columns. I have also use a large number of round frames and run the show titles along the outside.

Finally I have used the device of laboratory equipment to link things together on a textured background.

The design you can see here is a rough. there's bigger image you can see by clicking the separate picture below. In the final - if it's approved (hopefully you and I will know later today) the lab equipment will be 'proper' drawing and the layout will be better. Incidentally this is last year's pictures and copy. I did that so there's some basis for comparison.

Reflecting on the design, I have issues about the background texture; is it too busy? Is there something else I could use? How experimental could I go? I don't like the lab equipment drawing - but I think that's because it's a quick lash-up in Illustrator rather than being a duff idea.

And the grid. Is six columns too symmetrical? Should I try with seven or five? Right now it's three AM and perhaps I should give up thinking for a few hours...

Starting the Automata - work in progress.

Pu

This is a project long in the thinking stage. Basically it's an animated, interactive display, modelled on the animated tableau that used to be in seaside amusement arcades. They're all gone now - although there's a fine collection in Rye at the Heritage centre.

The plan for this one is to make a working fortune teller, although if it looks anything like these pictures then it will be a surprise. The visible part will be an animated puppet, and the hidden controls will be based on servos and probably controlled by an Arduino or a Crumble - I like the Crumble because it's simple and cheap, although it may not have the versatility to do what I want it to do.

These sketches are just trying to work out a prototype. Brought some balsa wood yesterday to make one up and trying to decide what it should look like. Was going to use ceramics for the puppets, but clay is just far too heavy.

In case you're wondering how the puppet will tell your fortune, you'll have to wait for a later blog post when I've worked out some technical details.