I am a professional illustrator who has done work for game companies in the UK and USA as well as the Canadian Armed Forces. All the art in the Gallery section is for sale as open edition prints. To purchase prints click on the 'Buy Prints' link on the right hand edge of the website. To commission work contact me through email by clicking on the 'My Profile' link found on the right hand edge of the website.
Every month on
Gurney Journey there is a group sketch game called Art By Committee where James Gurney provides a clipping from a manuscript which you illustrate and submit to him, then he posts all the results on his blog. I decided to take part for the first time this month. When I read the clipping; “The harper began to sing. His deep voice was fine and sweet, eloquently expressing his intent. He sang of the bitterness of defeat and the gut-wrenching carnage of war. He sang of boys…” the image popped right into my head and it turned out very close to how I imagined it.
The original is 15"x11" which is big but I try to work at about twice the size the reproduction will be. This was done with coloured inks.
Oil
24x36
Well it took me quite awhile and I didn't manage to carry on doing a WIP after all but here it is finished at last! The painting is a portrait of my Mother-in-law when she was around 15 years old. I painted it as a Christmas gift and it was deinitley a hit.
9x12
Pen & Ink and Photoshop
Here is my most recent piece, something very different from my usual. I really like Art Nouveau and for a long time I've been trying to do something in a similar style but I've never been able to get it right. Well I still haven't quite got it right, I put too much into the girl in this picture but it's close and I am quite pleased with it. The picture is titled "Autumn" and was drawn in ink with a nib (HUNT #66 and a mapper of unkown manufacture) and coloured using Photoshop.
Pen & Watercolour Pencil
8 1/2"x 11"
I just got some water colour pencils yesterday and I couldn't wait to try them out. Water colour pencils are really neat, they are basically pencil crayons but the pigment is watercolour so when you add water you can get all kinds of interesting effects. For my test run I decided to keep it simple and just use water washes over the colour and I am very pleased with the results, they turned out as I expected which is a good thing. Now I feel pretty confident and I'm ready to try some more complicated effects for the next time I use them.
The picture itself is a Texas cowboy all duded up for a night in the redlight district of a Kansas cowtown after a long cattle drive. He's pretty well to do having the money to afford a watch, two guns and a fancy mexican jacket so he must be a top hand, perhaps he's even the foreman of the ranch.
First is the finished drawing and in the second image you can see the same picture before the washes of clean warm water were applied.
Life has been crazy over the last few months and I have got very little artwork done. Hopefully the pace at my day job will slow down soon because I have a whole book to write and illustrate on the Canadian wars and skirmishes during Queen Victoria's reign. The proposal was accepted last week by the publishers and now I have a ton of work to do but very little free time to do it in!
In the meantime I've just recieved a book on J.C. Leyendecker, who is one of my top three favourite illustrators of all time (Howard Pyle and Fortunio Matania being the other two) and it is excellent. It's a large format book in full colour entitled 'J.C. Leyendecker' and it's by Laurence S. Cutler and Judy Goffman Cutler. This book is highly recommended for anyone with even a passing interest in "Golden Age" illustration, you won't find a more comprehensive collection of Leyendecker art in a single book anywhere else, at least not that I am aware of.
The accompanying sketch is a doodle I did while reading 'Nero's Killing Machine: The True Story of Rome's Remarkable Fourteenth Legion' by Stephen Dando-Collins. The book is a very readable and entertaining history of the 14th Legion and it has a lot of inspiring tales. This picture is of Thusnelda a German Princess and the wife of Herman the German (the German general who wiped out two Legions in the Teutoberg Forest). When Germanicus led his legions across the Rhine for a little payback a few years later Herman's father cosied up to Germanicus by turning over Herman's pregnant wife Thusnelda to Rome as a prisoner. Apparantley Thusnelda was very beutiful and very hauty. The sketch was done quickly with a ball point pen as I read the story. I may do an illustration of the scene or I may not, I've got a lot of work that I should be doing for that book.
Gouache
10x15
This is a small guache drawing I did really quick as a study for a possible oil painting. It depicts a cattle rustler moving his stolen herd down into a draw on a moonlit night.
I enjoyed doing this picture, it was my first time attempting a night scene and it's a departure from the stuff I usually put up on this site. While I do mostly military history illustration that isn't my only interest. I am a huge history buff and the so called "Old West" is just one of my favourite historical periods.
Now it's been a few days since my last post and things are moving along nicely with this painting I think. I've added more glazes to the flesh areas of the figure but I have so far been ignoring everything else, which is not good. I told you I tend to get caught up in the progress of one area of a painting I'm working on at the expense of the rest of it and here I am doing it again.
I glaze each part of the area I am working on in a different colour and I blend the glazes together, more or less as I think is appropriate at the time. Unfortunatley my camera is flattening the image a bit and isn't picking up on the glowing quality of the skintones which the galzes are creating. At this point I have 10 or 12 glazes on there and I think I'm just about where I want to be. Once I have worked on the rest of the painting more I'll know if I need to do more or not. I don't want to over do it.
Every month on Gurney Journey there is a group sketch game called Art By Committee where James Gurney provides a clipping from a manuscript which you illustrate and submit to him, then he posts all the results on his blog. I decided to take part for the first time this month. When I read the clipping; “The harper began to sing. His deep voice was fine and sweet, eloquently expressing his intent. He sang of the bitterness of defeat and the gut-wrenching carnage of war. He sang of boys…” the image popped right into my head and it turned out very close to how I imagined it.
