Sunday 13 November 2011









It's been ages, so I'm going to stick a few photos up of (some of) what I've been up to. Firstly, above, life drawing (painting).

I had a few months when I wasn't doing it regularly, and I've picked it up again now I've moved back to Brighton (here: http://brightondrawing.tumblr.com/) I felt pretty rusty starting back, but I feel I'm getting back into the flow a bit. My favourite at the moment is the blue one cuz of the skellington.

Also this <--

The very first thing I posted on this blog was
a variation on the same theme. Basically, I once drew a large picture, compositing Brighton landmarks which I called 'On A Clear Day You Can See Forever...' (hm, I must update the image on my website with a better quality one).

It was a million-hours (or so) well spent, because I've been deconstructing the image and using various bits of it in various ways ever since.

This <-- and this are where I've cut apart the elements of the drawing and used them to form layers in papercuts set in deep frames. Sounds relatively straightforward, but requires an awful lot of fine craft-knife work, as well as lots of work where you need to fill in gaps that are on show in 3D form, where they weren't in 2d.


In fact I have (just about) done two cut-outs recent based around elements from 'On A Clear Day...' and this is the second:

Actually a good 70-80% of the image is stuff drawn anew for this project. Partly because it's rather larger than previous variations - the biggest cut-out I've ever done. I was lucky in coming across a large deep-set frame. This piece has a theme: Brighton Rock. One of my very, very favourite books, and also a great film/s, Brighton Rock references crop up pretty frequently in my work.

I'm feeling pretty smug with regards to this project so far, I frankly think it looks pretty awesome :)

However I can't work out whether I should leave it monotone and just finish it by adding in more black areas - or colour it. And if so, how? For original 'On A Clear Day...' I was looking at 30s railways posters, and the limited palette of ice-cream colours they employ so effectively. The same palette suits Brighton Rock because of the period, and because it's nicely ironic for the town to be so pastel and innocent, in a way that echoes the novel's lines about 'cream houses like a pale Victorian watercolour...' and so on, that I've quoted within the picture. On the other hand I don't want to retread the same ground, it's boring. So, stumped.

Anyway, what with these, creating cool stuff for our Christmas Open House (pictures to follow, I hopes) and updating my showreel and website, that accounts for the past couple of months' creative output... I might also have a illustration-type-picture to post soon of Alanna from Tamora Pierce's books if I am not successful in keeping my nose to the grindstone of Open House oriented work in the next few days. I started one last night, you see...

1 comment:

  1. I love this work. It so captures the elements of Brighton. Have On A Clear Day on my wall. Would love versions in other colours, maybe reflecting the seasons. OACD is definitely summer.

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