Charcoal Portrait

Sorry I've been gone for so long. Life has been crazy this past year and I haven't been doing much artwork but I am determined to change that and post a little more frequently once again! 

Here is my latest drawing. It's charcoal on butcher's paper and its a portrait of my friend Tania. This was my first attempt at charcoal and I really enjoyed it so I'll definitely be doing more!

Unfortunately my scanner is down so I used my camera to take the picture and it's very harsh in comparison to the original which has much more blending. The camera doesn't seem to see the blending while it picks out every line.

Art By Committee

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.

Ruth: finished!

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.

Autumn

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.

Texas Top Hand

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.

Just a Doodle

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.

Rustler's Moon

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.