This is another of my book bags.
Take one cute Megacity Judge.
Lightly beat
And serve...
Until next time
Adieu
Wednesday, 31 May 2017
Wednesday, 24 May 2017
Crow Rising
Another in the ‘letting my subconscious out for a jog’
category.
I worked on this one for a few weeks and quite a lot of
things got painted out.
It finally settled down to this image. If you look closely, you'll see that the crow's body is made up of lots of figures.
Until next time
Adieu
Wednesday, 17 May 2017
Now the gloves are off
The found fashion photo I based this acrylic painting on
showed a young man with a very intense gaze.
This led me to reinvent him as one of the Psi-cops from
Babylon 5.
They were meant to keep their gloves on to damp their telepathic
abilities and they did, until they had a reason to take them off...
I am also quite pleased with the texture effects on the uniform ,contrasting the wool jacket with the inset leather sash panel and the metal Psicorp badge.
Until next time
Adieu
Wednesday, 10 May 2017
Stone Carving
On 5th May I went to a craft fair at Hatfield House.
I had ordered a medieval tile (based on a mitre tile I had seen in the V & A) at one of the reenactors markets and ,unfortunately, it hadn't been ready for collection at the next market.
The lady who made it said she would be at Hatfield and would bring it along in case I could get there.
As I found out the event was from Thursday to Sunday and we had a guest over the weekend, I went along on the Friday.
After a bit of wandering around, I found her tent and collected not one, but two versions of the tile that she had made me. She had done one as a modern thickness tile and one as a full medieval floor tile. I thanked her, carefully wrapped the tiles in bubble wrap and newspaper and put them in the satchel I had brought with me for that purpose.
I then wandered around the fair a bit more and found that there were several places doing have-a-go courses in things like paper making, wood working and mosaic.
Then I walked past one of the sculpters' stalls. I was just admiring a beautiful angel commissioned for Westminster Abbey and a marvellous five foot high heraldic dragon, when I saw that there were people working at tables in front of the stall.
The sculpter, Simon Keeley, told me he was running a one hour beginners course. and asked if I like to have a go. It was a tenner including a five or six inch square block of Maltese limestone.
I signed up for the next class.
He asked if I need a book to look at for inspiration, But I said I thought I'd be OK.
First we had to Try chiseling a straight line on the back of the block, Which I achieved fairly easily, Then we had to chisel a line round the top of the sides of the block as a 'stop' for removing the background.
I drew my design onto the block and was shown how to start removing the stone around it with the chisel. After a while I decided to use a sharp scribe to set my design in, as the pencil was becoming blurred.
Then he showed me how to remove larger amounts of stone in layers by first knocking of pieces at the corners and then working inwards with a four pronged claw punch, leaving a cordon round the
edge of the design.
I then worked back outward to clear the cordon and started to use the small chisel as a gouge to work into the design. The stone was very easy to carve, but that also meant that details were quite fragile and you had to be very careful not to chip off anything you wanted to keep
Simon was a good teacher and was quick to show people how to handle the tools and even how to mistakes could be corrected.
If you want to see Simon's work you can see it at www.simonkeeley.co.uk.
My piece was clearly a mitre by the time I stopped working and I was pleased with my progress.I had left the background with the claw marks on it as I quite like the effect.
The process was rather like a mixture of wood carving and carving into a dried plaster model. I found it very satisfying.
I got it home without damage (I had gone up by train) and have spent a few hours doing some more work to it with a steel pick, fine sandpaper and very fine grade wire wool.
As you can see I changed my mind about the background.
This is how it ended up:
I had ordered a medieval tile (based on a mitre tile I had seen in the V & A) at one of the reenactors markets and ,unfortunately, it hadn't been ready for collection at the next market.
The lady who made it said she would be at Hatfield and would bring it along in case I could get there.
As I found out the event was from Thursday to Sunday and we had a guest over the weekend, I went along on the Friday.
After a bit of wandering around, I found her tent and collected not one, but two versions of the tile that she had made me. She had done one as a modern thickness tile and one as a full medieval floor tile. I thanked her, carefully wrapped the tiles in bubble wrap and newspaper and put them in the satchel I had brought with me for that purpose.
I then wandered around the fair a bit more and found that there were several places doing have-a-go courses in things like paper making, wood working and mosaic.
Then I walked past one of the sculpters' stalls. I was just admiring a beautiful angel commissioned for Westminster Abbey and a marvellous five foot high heraldic dragon, when I saw that there were people working at tables in front of the stall.
The sculpter, Simon Keeley, told me he was running a one hour beginners course. and asked if I like to have a go. It was a tenner including a five or six inch square block of Maltese limestone.
I signed up for the next class.
He asked if I need a book to look at for inspiration, But I said I thought I'd be OK.
First we had to Try chiseling a straight line on the back of the block, Which I achieved fairly easily, Then we had to chisel a line round the top of the sides of the block as a 'stop' for removing the background.
I drew my design onto the block and was shown how to start removing the stone around it with the chisel. After a while I decided to use a sharp scribe to set my design in, as the pencil was becoming blurred.
Then he showed me how to remove larger amounts of stone in layers by first knocking of pieces at the corners and then working inwards with a four pronged claw punch, leaving a cordon round the
edge of the design.
I then worked back outward to clear the cordon and started to use the small chisel as a gouge to work into the design. The stone was very easy to carve, but that also meant that details were quite fragile and you had to be very careful not to chip off anything you wanted to keep
Simon was a good teacher and was quick to show people how to handle the tools and even how to mistakes could be corrected.
If you want to see Simon's work you can see it at www.simonkeeley.co.uk.
My piece was clearly a mitre by the time I stopped working and I was pleased with my progress.I had left the background with the claw marks on it as I quite like the effect.
The process was rather like a mixture of wood carving and carving into a dried plaster model. I found it very satisfying.
I got it home without damage (I had gone up by train) and have spent a few hours doing some more work to it with a steel pick, fine sandpaper and very fine grade wire wool.
As you can see I changed my mind about the background.
This is how it ended up:
Until next time
Adieu
Wednesday, 3 May 2017
Judge
I have been reading 2000 AD
for almost as long as it has existed
Here is a pencil study I did based on a Megacity Judge.
Until next time
Adieu
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