Framing

This painting of mine will appear in the Ruth Borchard Self-Portrait Competition exhibition at Kings Place Gallery in London, from the 14th October to 25th November.

Pat with Mooham

Started this from life ages ago but only finished recently. Mooham ("ham") is Pat's pet sugar glider.

Mugshot

Face

Portrait Sketch

From a magazine. I think it's Robert Downey Wossface.

Pat Sketch

Horsey

Portrait commissioned as a surprise Christmas gift for the steed's young rider. I don't really paint a lot of furry things, so it took me a while to get the technique right. Fairly pleased with the finished piece though. Acrylic on illustration board.

I've posted a little work-in-progress montage on my olde Facebook page.

Post-it Sketch

These are some little thinky-scribbles from when I was planning out the Jackie Chan painting. I like this board of post-it-type labels- it gives a ready-made selection of different picture formats and orientations to think on.

He wins with just his hands...

This is the first in a series of portraits I've started, featuring people I admire. 'Heroes' it could be called. I conceived this Jackie Chan image in context of an article about him in a magazine. I wanted the text & image to work together more effectively than the usual rectangle spot or 1/2 page illustration, although I could've pushed this a lot further.

There's a lot of dichotomy within JC and his films: 'East' and 'West', violence verses pacifism, the fact that his US-made films are beloved of audiences yet strongly disliked by Chan himself. I tried to express the contrast between, on one hand, the fighting and shooting in Chan's films and on the other his distaste for violence and love of comedy, hence the pistol becoming a water pistol. The talisman is from the Jackie Chan Adventures cartoon, in which Chan is tasked with preventing these 12 magical chinese zodiac charms falling into evil hands. The tiger talisman has the power of dividing the user into two people: a good side and a bad one, ying & yang. That seemed very appropriate. 

The cartoon is awesome, check it out if you haven't seen it. At the bottom I've posted up the ending theme, which is possibly the greatest song EVER. Even if it is a Wheatus song with the lyrics changed...

Tipping

I needed a break from something else I was working on today, so I painted another quick portrait, this time it's the writer Malcolm Gladwell. A bit wonky, but never mind.

Faces

A couple more portraits, again just from photo reference. I'm really trying to get into painting portraits again, as it's something I've neglected for a long while. Just playing around with the technique and trying to get the tones and features right. I added a still life alien toy to the top one.

More on the way.

Geezer

I painted this quick portrait from a magazine to test out my tasty new Spanish paints. They feel nice so far.

A pic for a friend's birthday card.

Scott

This is an old portrait of Scott, my housemate of the past 3 years, painted while the two of us were having a bit of an artistic painty session in our tiny back yard on a glorious sunny day way back in spring or early summer 2008. The painting stayed displayed on that spot where it was born, braving the worst elements, until we moved out a couple of months ago, at which point I took a few quick pics of it for the first time, before snapping him up. I realised I'd become quite attached to it, possibly more so than to any other image I've ever produced, come to think of it. I guess this is purely sentimental, due to the painting's link to the two great years spent in the house, but it's also partly, I think, because it's one of those very rare pictures of mine that was produced in a completely unconstrained, unselfconcious situation: splashing a bit of paint around on an old bit of wood just for the fun of it, listening to a bit of Taj Mahal in the sun.

The white outline on the figure is not my doing, but rather an inevitable vandalistic result of leaving an old piece of wood in the back garden for 18 months. However, it was annoying me a lot so for my own satisfaction I've crudely photoshopped the spraypaint out in the top image. Much better.

I recall that Scott and I vowed to have a painting session like this every week or so from then on, and Nathen, jealous at our paint-date, was going to join us next time. Inevitably though, 'proper' work and such took over and the time never came round again.