Mallorca

My first time to this beautiful island. Thanks to the volcano I got to stay for two weeks instead of one. There are worse places to get stranded. Sadly I didn't really get into the swing of drawing until the last few days. I'll have to go again - there's so much to see - and draw (and cakes and ices to eat).

This is the port of Valldemossa. Like a lot of Mallorcan ports it's quite far from the town itself on account of the pirates. Any pirates landing here would have a gruelling 5 mile hike up a cliff before they got to the actual town. Fortunately there are plenty of ice cream parlours and bars where they could stop for refreshments before they started their terrorising...


This is Portal Vells on tthe southern tip of the island. It's accessed by a dusty track which runs past a golf course with chickens roaming on it. The bays are secluded, the turquoise water is crystal clear - very picturesque...

Alcudia is in the North and has a long beach - which was covered with little jelllyfish (valella valella) which had been washed up in the high winter seas...
Deia was the next village to us and is where Robert Graves lived. This is the port. The beach here was covered with a half meter thick layer of stick-like things and seed pods - it was quite soft and made it very comfortable to lie on. Not sure what it was though...

Here's a view of Valldemossa - the hill top villages sometimes look quite Tuscan. In Estellencs the chef made us a vegetarian paella - it wasn't on the menu but it was delicious...
The port in Valldemosa again and also the remains of the well winding gear in the garden of our house...

Just along the road from us were some ancient olive groves. I was very impressed with the gnarled and twisted trunks. Sometimes sheep with bells on would be grazing in the shade beneath...
I think these quick sketches are the ones I'm most pleased with - most were done on the last day...
Here we ae on the way back home again...

Local Sketches for Local People

I got the chunky art pen out again, cleaned it and had a go at some much quicker drawings. This time they're all of things closer to home. I probably ought to have used a little less heavy black. First, some trees and hedges behind our house...


... the back of our house, and a stove in the cafe at Wrington Walled Garden...
... and Wrington itself.

Wells

Had some free time at the weekend so I went to Wells to sketch a bit. A bit rusty and got bogged down with fussy details. Should have used a bigger pen for the first ones (it dries out if I don't use it regularly). The very last pencil sketch is an attempt to loosen up a bit - I should have done more of those. I'll have another go sometime...

1924 Sunbeam - painted

Here it is, splashing across Pendine Sands. I could probably make more of a feature of the water - I'll save that for Babs...

1924 Sunbeam

Did a sketch last night of Malcolm Campbell's V12 Sunbeam. This one set the record at 146.16mph at Pendine Sands in 1924. He further modified the car to achieve over 150.76mph in 1925...

Ford 999

Haven't had a chance to try a colour one yet but I thought I'd post these pencil sketches of Ford's 999 racer from 1902/4. There were actually two. The earlier incarnation was driven by Barney Oldfield - a cyclist - and with it he won and set the course record at Grosse Pointe. It was later crashed and rebuilt - and in 1904 Henry Ford himself set a land speed record of 91.37 mph on a frozen lake. The car was very basic - just a huge 18.8 litre four cylinder engine bolted onto a chassis with no rear suspension and a pivoting metal bar to steer with...

Golden Arrow

Struggled a bit with this one - it's easier to paint the old rickety ones. This is Henry Segrave's 'Golden Arrow' from 1929...

FIAT S76

Quite pleased with this one. Perhaps one of the craziest cars of all time. 28 litre four cylinder engine. Built around 1912 in order to set speed records. Apparently it achieved 132mph - but didn't manage the return run so the result was disallowed. Only two of these were built, the history is very vague leading to all sorts of exaggerated and false stories. It was also called 'The Beast of Turin' and that was what I was trying to capture with the painting - a ferocious animal pouncing...

Renault 40cv

Here's today's. Not entirely happy with it - I couldn't quite replicate the nice brush I had on my computer at work and ended up fiddling too much. Perhaps I'll try it again. This car is from 1926 and was used to set speed records at Monthlery. It's got great proportions, the front is very interesting too...

Fiat Mefistofele

A quick and loose sketch of one of my favourite cars. I'm going to start a series of these I think - perhaps I'll even manage one a day when I get up to speed...

Step by Step Painting

Still experimenting with 'painting'. This is in no way meant to be a tutorial - I'm still trying to work out what to do myself. So if anyone has any tips I'd love to hear them.

First I took one of my pen sketches from Norway and loosely painted over the top of it using three or four different shades. Sometimes I squinted my eyes to get a stronger contrast and see the modeling more clearly...

I then added a new layer with it's blending mode set to 'color'. This allowed me to tint the value painting underneath...

I then added a new layer - without any blending mode - and painted a few more details in - picking colours from the painting with the eyedropper...

I then took it into photoshop to tweak the levels. Art Rage does have a basic brightness and contrast slider but it's more controllable in PS. I was surprised how lacking in contrast my original painting was. Perhaps I should have painted a scale first...

Back in Art Rage I added a few more details - adding the green grass really helped the paiting I think...

Finally I added my favourite rusty metal texture to the topmost layer - blend mode 'Hard Light' and opacity 24%. It adds a bit more texture and varies the colours a bit...

Yesterday I thought the above image was finished but looking at it again today perhaps the colour and contrast could be pushed further - or is it too far?...

Brasier repaint

As a quick experiment I very quickly and roughly painted over the Brasier using a palette from a photo I found. I think it looks a bit more 'real' when compared to the other one I did - which seems more of an illustration somehow...

Delage Painted

Still experimenting with Art Rage. Made a nice palette knife which is useful for blending today. Here's a paintover of a sketch I made a few months back...

Art Rage Plane

Still experimenting - this time with a sketch from my Norway trip...

Art Rage

I've been experimenting with the cheap and cheerful Art Rage software. It's a little like Painter and has some very nice, naturalistic painting and drawing tools. It's perhaps not quite as polished and comprehensive as Painter but in many ways it's much more intuitive. The layers are much easier to use and the palettes cleverly disappear when you draw near them. Here are a few quick doodles. The first are using default brushes and pencils and the last is using a brush I made myself - which is a bit more manageable as it doesn't lay down too much paint. I'm looking forward to trying ot out on a longer piece...

How we might drive

I got the chance to design some futuristic racing cars - for a job that hopefully might still happen so I can't say too much about it - other than it was pretty much a dream job for me, Here are a few of the many thumbnail designs I did...

... and some comedy pit robots...
... and finally a few more finished desgns done in photoshop (though I did 'borrow' the hubless wheels from the internet somewhere) The first, my favourite is a slightly retro, Bugatti inspired one...

Olympic Mascot Designs

Here's another in the series 'jobs that I didn't get or never happened'. I've got quite a lot of stuff in that category - sometimes when you get a run of pitches going down that path you begin to wonder if you're doing something wrong. Then you have to remind yourself that it's not you - it's everyone else who's stupid.

Anyway, earlier in the year I got the chance to pitch some mascot designs for the olympics. I started by doing a few thumbnails and thinking about how these mascots are usually used. They get printed on merchandise and then end up as big foam suits to be worn at promotional events. This is where I think a lot of previous designs which have looked beautiful as 2D designs in print can go terribly wrong so I thought it would be good to design something with this use in mind.

I thought about various themes, landmarks, what makes us British, how do the rest of the world think of us, stereotypes... I decided that the rest of the world think we drink a lot of tea, and it's true, a lot of us do like a cuppa. Also though, I think we like our humour, sometimes silly humour and are very good at laughing at ourselves. This is what I liked about the tea cup idea - it played on a commonly held stereotype and was funny too. I envisioned sporting events for the different cups -'It's a Knockout' style, it would have been great! Pity the judging panel didn't think so. They probably drank tall frappucinos and skinny macchiolatos or something.

Denmark

Just back from 2 very enjoyable weeks teaching at the Animation Workshop in Viborg. The students worked really hard and the standard of work was excellent (like the schools in France it puts most UK places to shame I'm afraid to say). Found it a bit tricky to get going with the sketching at the beginning - it was quite wet and this was coupled with a biting wind (and the houses were much harder to draw than Norwegian sheds). Still, I'm happy with some of the later ones...

Brasier WIP

Managed to do a bit more on my Brasier painting - I added a bit more detail to the drivers and fixed the wheels - the ellipses were a bit off before...

GT40 goes up to t' north

A friend of mine took on this rather large kit car project nearly 2 years ago. Although it looks like a proper car that might work, none of the important bits are connected to each other - so it doesn't. It's going up to Yorkshire where Ol will take it all to bits again before putting it together again. I could sit and look at that shape all day long. It'll be exciting to hear it for the first time. Here's a very quick sketch done before it was wrapped for the journey...

Citroen Ami

It's been a while since I did any sketching so I thought I'd do a quick one this lunchtime. I'd spotted this car on the way home the day before and thought it would be fun to draw. I hadn't planned on it starting to pour down with rain though...

The splotches make it look rather old and beaten up but it was actually in very good condition.

I'll be off to Denmark for a few weeks soon - I'm looking forward to sketching the interesting architecture already.