Alberto Mielgo

From Neil Ross' blog i found a link to Alberto Mielgo's page. His work is similar in appearance but Mielgo has produced work for within a variety of contexts in Illustration. I really like his animation work as his Illustration style transfers well over to this. The animations look very polished but when asked he said he uses only Adobe Photoshop and Adobe after effects to produce his films. I was thinking of trying to make some sort of animatic from the final painting i am currently working on. I have been building the painting on separate layers so i have the ability to animate objects. I want to see if i can take the technique that Jeff Rowland uses to simulate rain in his painting and insert this into an animatic.

Beatles rock Band Ad

Like in the work that i just recently completed for the Olympics animation, original pieces of artwork are inserted into the animation as backgrounds.

Rubbish atmosphere

Sat in the studio today i decided to do a digital painting of what i could see from the window. Being indoors and provided with a desk meant that i could paint comfortably with my laptop and tablet. As much as i try to improve this piece it just seems to remain a little boring. The sky was overcast and the lighting not very dynamic. Everything in the composition appears to have the same tonal value so nothing really stands out. I tried making the lamp in the bottom left corner a focal point by painting in more detail to contrast with the looseness of the buildings behind but the image feels flat. It was nice to paint the hills in the background because they contrasted with the sky, on the other hand the buildings just seem to blur together.n Its not a very interesting scene but it offered a good sense of depth to try and capture. The atmosphere was hazy and glum, the opposite to the studies i did of the Christmas steps in Bristol.

Aesop's fable Illustration

After much deliberation i decided to go ahead and do this Illustration just to be on the safe side. Was a fun little painting to do. I referenced an iPad painting of the lion that i had done in one of the drawing sessions and placed it into a scene.

I decided to render this illustration in the style i have been using for my observational drawing. Emphasising the warm colours on the lions body and applying strong shadow to give the impression of a hot climate with the sun high in the sky.

Final Image

Reference

Artists and Galleries

I also visited a few of the galleries that Bath had to offer to see some artwork based on the city and other locations. The artists that caught my eye were Hannah Cole, Claire Henley and Jeff Rowland.

Hannah Cole

Claire Henley

I was particularly interested in this artists work because they use quite bold and contrasting brush strokes. The appearance is quite graphic using blocks of colour. Areas of colour have been reduced to singular tones removing graduation of colour. The pieces are made in mixed media, this is what gives the definition between colours and textures. Reminded me of the work i am doing for this project. Looking at the work close up you can see each individual colour used in the piece but at a distance these colours merge together.

Jeff Rowland

I liked Jeff Rowland's paintings because he used the rain to distort objects in the scenes and to push them back. Structures in the far distance are reduced to a single tone. I would like to see if i could adopt this technique into my digital paintings. I am currently working on a painting a scene of rooftops of buildings in Bath and i am referencing from a photo that i took on location. It was raining when i captured the picture and i would like to show that in the painting and i thought Roland's work was a good example of how to do this.

Drawing in Bath

Went into Bath for the day to do some more drawing and to try out my new set of watercolour paints. There weather wasn't too good and there were heavy rain showers on and off all day so drawing outside was a little difficult. I managed to get one drawing kind of finished and the rain hitting the page caused all the colours to flow together, making the drawing seem wet. Started to go real loose on drawing objects in the distance, and began to remove the line. The cars in the background are just blobs of colour but the position in the composition should hopefully communicate what the marks are representing.

The paper i was using was not very absorbent but this gave me the ability to influence the paint for a long time after it was initially applied. The colours spread all over the page and the fibres of the paper has created a texture that looks like rain or mist.

Christmas steps

This is another digital painting i did of the Christmas steps in Bristol. I decided to exaggerate the crookedness of the buildings to emphasise the the 'cramped buildings in the relatively small space.

I hit a barrier with this painting where at one point i thought i was creating utter rubbish, but i decided to carry on and i am now very pleased that i did. The early stages of a painting can be quite frustrating as it is so far from what you expect to see in front of you, but have patience and confidence in your own skills and it will improve. This is a problem that i had had for a while as i will tend to rush paintings towards the end. I still have a ways to go in developing the techniques i am using and applying them to a final image but with every painting i complete, and make sure to take my time over, it gives me the confidence to move on and develop.

I am beginning to see an interesting quality coming through these paintings that really excites me about the work i am doing. This art is completely artificial through the medium it is being created with but i seem to be capturing a sense of realism in my painting far more effectively than i have done in the past. I again have to make the point that i have made in previous posts that this development has come about through a better understanding of how to render the lighting in scenes.

In comparison to ILLUS 240 i know that i have not done as many drawings but the artwork in this module has been changed to a slower pace. I have more time to study stationary buildings, where as when drawing people, sketching was quick paced to capture movement and direction.

[Initial layout sketch on sketchbook pp. 25 - 26]

Art Rage

Think i am going to give the 'Artrage' software another go and apply the new things i have learnt this time around. Will have a go at painting a few of the locations i visited.