Experimental stuff {and scribbles} and other pieces

Continuing with my examination of art media I've used, [and have a 'postable' version of], see the following.

To start, occasionally I scribble and doodle [though my doodles are a tad different, often reflecting what I'm listening to and often used when I had to attend droning meetings, to stay awake]. But I digress, as I often do, from the main point which was to start with some experimental bits.

These were done primarily in pen, felt pen and fountain pen ink [a medium that delights in interesting results after being exposed to air], and produced much like a 'Rorschach test', that is starting with a few interesting marks and then 'looking' for the picture within. It's a method as old as the hills and first mentioned I believe by Leonardo, although, in my opinion, Cave Art owes a lot to this method of working.

 They were done [in two stages] as a demonstration for some of my students a few years ago. The idea being to show them how if they felt artistically 'blocked' then ideas can be 'found' if one is prepared to play with materials and an 'open mind'. Stage one saw the initial beginnings where 'we' searched for something in the initial blobs and marks accidentally created. Stage two was the follow up - the tightening of the image to elaborate more details. Of course using such a method can lead to a lot of 'dead ends', but occasionally...  So from such, a more developed piece of work may yet evolve.

Occasionally doodles are more traditional as these next pieces.

I have found that somebody had collected a few pictures of mine on the Internet from Steve Jackson's 'The Trolltooth Wars' and other similar works. The Trolltooth Wars' was a short lived series of books meant to accompany the FF games books, and the first, 'The Trolltooth Wars', was itself an interesting book for me in particular in that, for the first time, I was allowed to not only choose what was to be illustrated from my reading of the manuscript galleys, but also to be allowed to create the layout of how the illustrations would 'fit' the pages in the book. It was a one off experiment by the editor for the book at Puffin but was never [in my case] repeated.

My intent, as I believe all good illustration should be, was to try to enhance the reader's experience. So I sought to create a more interesting visual experience with the limitations of a small paperback format. I split some of the illustrations across two facing pages, I ran them across the top, across the bottom and even was able to create a double page spread.

Not all of it succeeded. It was a noble experiment in my mind, which saw me put a lot into the pictures [sometimes too much ], but I felt seriously let down with the reproduction and paper that was used, which in my opinion, was very poor indeed. In short - it was shit. Or would crap be better? Never mind, here are three examples, plus two other pieces.

That's about it for now folks but more coming soon including some never before seen work [or nearly ]

Update: Quick link to FightingFantasist who has posted an old 'The Warlock of Firetop Mountain' illustration that proved quite controversial at the time. Oh Happy days, He He.

Worlds 2

It had been my intent, in this post, to show examples of different types of pen and brush work, but I came across some more visuals that I did as background to the world of The Shadow King and thought it sensible to post these first.

My task, outlined by Dave Morris, was from his original scenario, to [roughly] visualise images to represent London at the turn of the 19th Century, not of our timeline, but one where the world had been changed by a series of events resulting in a city not as written about by such as Dickens, or Verne, or seen by that master of line Dore but a darker world one where our legends and myths have some credence. This ultra-Gothic world, as envisaged by Dave, is a place of death and dread, its background one where a vampire blight had hit the world with it's 'centre' in London - this was to be the world of the Shadow King.

Most of my visuals are fairly crude, drawn in felt pen with added wash, my intent was to give atmosphere as much as 'show' different aspects of the place. 

But as I became immersed in the idea of this London, I began to imagine the world beyond, what methods of transport, by rail; by river; by sea; and by air would apply - what differences would have come about, especially as a result of vampire domination?

Where possible, it was my intent to rationalise this world, and to make links through scientific and engineering progress that had their historically similar antecedents mirrored in our world. But here, in this timeline, where the date is roughly 1896, things had, in some areas, progressed faster and in a grander scale. I suppose it's really a variation on steam-punk, thus we 'see' the development of airships, which stuttered to a halt in our own world. It's hard to read [sorry] but the airship docked in the picture below is named the 'Santos Dumont' an early enthusiast of airships.

Of course their had to be costumes: next - a couple of example 'pages'.

 Those of you who love gaming might wonder why you've never seen this game, especially as it was conceived nearly twenty years ago [how time flies], though I've seen similar ideas since. Dave Morris, is the man to ask, and if I've got anything wrong Dave, such as when we worked on this, I apologise.