Doris Lessing

The novelist Doris Lessing died last week (17th November 2013). I once did a picture for the Radio Times to accompany the listing for a radio play of her story The Grass is Singing. This was so many years ago it was before I even had a computer so the hand was good old fashioned photography, printed with my own darkroom equipment, bleached and toned, then ripped and glued together before being painted over. It was in the back pages so was printed about an inch and a bit high, the original being smaller than A4.
The story concerns a white woman in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) who was killed by her black servant Moses for money.

Work in Progress: Cash is King

I've been working on this picture, intended as a large print. I shot a picture of a lion licking it's lips at a zoo and wanted to use it for something. When completed it should look like an ornate playing card, with top and bottom reverse-mirrored. Here's the piece as it currently stands, with some detail shots below, and some progress shots following those. It's a mixture of photo-reference and digital painting. The original is about 6800 pixels square, so quite a beast.

Original photo reference taken at Whipsnade Zoo

Hand detail - hairs individually painted on

Background detail
 

Painted cloth

Some camel hair, my latex-gloved hand, and some medieval jewellery

The idea for the gloves was to be that the lion is wearing human leather gloves over his own paws, so the fur is tucked under the cuff, but it didn't quite achieve that look. Here are various stages in it's evolution:

Early stages

The Illustrated Siddhartha

A project I tinker with between jobs: an illustrated version of Herman Hesse's Siddhartha. It may never be completed as it progresses in fits and starts but it keeps me active and is a great excuse to make use of some of my own travel photography. I've kept it as a mix of fantasy and modern reality (a Buddhist monk is shown reading a modern newspaper, for example). The cover has been used elsewhere (on my own brochure for one), and was previously a published editorial illustration for financial firewalls but has been modified for this.

Holy Cow

Gotama

Here's a chunk from the introduction which explains my choice:
My travels have taken me to many countries that Hesse also visited, including India, supporting the very message that permeates this novel: enlightenment is gained by experience—travel, see, do—so my first choice for my first publication was this one, Siddhartha An Indian Tale.

Illustration brochure

I've just finished a twenty-page A5 brochure to promote my illustration work. It's now off to the printers  and then winging its way to… well, who knows? If anyone would like a copy let me know.

Why go to the expense? The same reason I buy art books rather than keep folders of pictures I like on my mac—it's tactile. Hopefully any commissioning editors will also appreciate something on paper.

Contents

Back cover

B&W line work

I've uploaded some old (twenty years old in some cases) black and white work to my Behance pages. My interest in digital was fading briefly so thought I'd delve into the archives and see what was as far from that as possible. Check it out here or see below.

Interzone illustration

Interzone illustration

Comic pages

The guy who modelled for these pages (Carlos Rosas) went on to become an animator, working on the Lord of the Rings movies, and the guy who wrote this short strip (Nicholas Vince) was one of the Cenobites in the Hellraiser movies. Movie connections.

Mostly drawn with a toothbrush 1991

A biro scribbled Bene Gesserit from Frank Herbert's Dune

The Joker applying some lippy 2013

I still can't decide if I like clean line or brushed mess so it's a mish-mash of the two for now.

Watercolour

If anyone has noticed the background image of the header (shown cropped above, or more fully on my website) it's a negative version of the watercolour sketch below with a little more texture added). It was painted when I was deciding whether to execute an illustration traditionally for Lavie Tidhar's The Last Osama in Interzone or go digital. I went digital but did use some of this painting as a texture (see the blood splatters on the arm of the knife-wielding figure in the final illustration).

Creative Review

I've just had some work accepted onto the Creative Review feed pages for November 2012. I'm not entirely sure if that's an achievement as they may accept anything, and I'd rather be in the magazine truth be told, but it's there. The Last Osama—I thought this might generate some publicity since the author, Lavie Tidhar, just won this year's World Fantasy Award for best novel, beating Stephen King and George R.R. Martin. I also uploaded the Windsmith covers. You can leave comments on the page, or indeed here… somehow.