3 Months later!

I cant believe it's 3 months since I blogged, and what have I achieved in this time? when i sit down and look at the work I've done I see a massive growth in my ability to deal with commissions. I have to question the way in which I interpret these commissions, but one of them is quite tight on what they specify. Although this is challenging it can be very restrictive when your trying to visualize something from some Else's imagination. Which in my case has lead to me spending hours and hours working on pieces just to be told I've got it something wrong. Then its back to the drawing board !!
February the family go to Antigua loaded with my art gear, and managed to do almost no painting, took 1700 photos instead. While I was there I came up with a plan to paint the people and living accommodation of the island, with a view to having a solo exhibition the following year. Haven't started yet - got home armed with a to do list that would require me to hand my notice in for one of my jobs so that I can concentrate more on the commissions and get some time for the exhibition work. But hows this -the week we  come home the phones ringing and I've picked up another commission, yet another from the world of fantasy! Love these kinds of things. 12 of them to be exact. With the other long term commission still running and all the titles for it needing painting I've had to work flat out to create 12 little people with wings and with only a month to do them in. It was my fault that it was only a month- i had  some stupid idea that I could just knock them up from imagination and that would be that. FOOL!! When I'd started drawing them, some appeared on the paper quite naturally but the majority of them required some development, the characters hadn't really come out in them in the first few sketches and more time was needed to get them come to life. Thank god I didn't have to do them in oil I'd never got them dry in time, as it was I didn't complete all of them on time and need an extension.
Add to that I have agreed to demonstrate at a craft fair on the 9th of April, so I need to work like stink to make enough work to take with me to sell and decide on a topic to paint while there. Check out http://www.thecreativefair.com/ come have a look, lots of demonstrators  and stalls full of wares.  Perhaps I should stick with the fantasy art as i don't own a lot of my art of that genre. Thanks for reading! feel free to comment on any of the content.

Next stage of commission

Hi All
For all those who know me you'll probably remember that I've been working for over 2 years on a commission for a group who work in the gaming industry. Well last week I have been given some more work to complete the project. Although I cant tell you whats it's about nor can  I show any of the drawings I've done, due to copyright, I can discuss the process with you!
As mentioned before you will all find your own process by which to work by, but I find with most professional artist's - we all start in our sketch books..
So in mine there is now experiments with the formats for the final pieces as well as the first sketches of creatures that require some dynamic gestures. As you can imagine if you don't understand anything about anatomy then your going to struggle with doing any believable figures whether they be animals, humans, android's, aliens and beasts or what ever you think of . 
While doing my first few sketches which should have been relatively easy, turned out to be more time consuming than expected, why? because i didn't have a firm grasp of quadrupeds and their anatomy.

Moral of story?? study the basics first! - bones and muscle are probably the most you'll need know as an artist. This will give you some aspects of perspective to.There a number of good artist anatomy books out there, find one and take your time to draw each section, and another thing don't just draw these parts just once it's not enough to help you learn properly nor is it helpful in using what you have just learnt in other pictures. So utilising what you have learnt wont be evident in your later works!

Michelangelo

Leonardo Da vinci 

Leonardo da vinci

They did, so can you.

New challenge fill those sketch books with anatomy!!