Month: January 2011

The taxman cometh…

Arghhh! Its that time of year again when the taxman comes knocking at the door and i hide behind the sofa hoping he goes away. Anyway, nearly finished it, as usual left it till the last minute, trying to forget it exists but as always comes and bites me on the bum. note – i must get more organized next year!!! Cocked up all my plans for getting lots of artwork done, was hoping to finish the Britt Ekland black and white last week but i’m about half way through that now, also midway through an airbrush illustration of Bones (Dr. McCoy) from Star Trek to go with Kirk and Spock i did a couple of years ago, i think that will be the first to get finished and will post it on here as soon as its ready for sale. Also going to start doing some black watercolour pencil sketches when i get a bit of time… HAHA!! when i get a bit of time…

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2 on the go…

Currently working on 2 new pieces of artwork (both hopefully should be finished by the end of the week). First one is a caricature of pop band Take That which includes Robbie and will be trying out a new style with this one, going for a more realistic look rather than cartoony as ive been doing recently, see how it works out. The second one im working on is another black and white piece of Britt Ekland star of The Wicker Man and The Man with the Golden Gun. This will be the penultimate one i think for the hammer horror/classic horror stars, was going to do Ralph Bates but decided against it as he wasnt that well known and the last one slated will be the Collinson Twins from the horror film ‘Twins of Evil’ just basically because they’ve got nice legs… (cough!). Anyway, work to do and will post when ready…in the meantime heres some great comedy with the one and only… Alan Partridge!

Impressive, most impressive…

Often have a look at other peoples amazing artwork (i think the idea is so i push myself to get better but it often has the opposite effect) and came across this amazing black and white photoshop airbrush piece of Bono, singer with U2 I thought i’d share with you. Don’t know the name of the artist but looks like its signed ‘dave’ at the bottom right but this is very very impressive, you’d almost think its a photo…. but it ain’t!!!. I think i need to brush up again on my photoshop skills…

Tutorial – Designing Your Own Brush Shapes In Photoshop

Learning a bit more on using the various brush shapes in photoshop so i thought i’d write a few handy tips for all you budding artists out there who are using photoshop. You can get to the brushes palette in 2 ways, 1st way is the basic palette and its what i always use when working on a piece of artwork by clicking on the brush tool in the side menu (see 1) and then the little down arrow in the top left (see 2).

It will bring up a number of different shapes to use, but to get a better idea of what the brush stroke will look like when you start painting you can click on (3) and then click on stroke thumbnail which will bring up this palette, and these are what i use when choosing different brush shapes during colouring, when doing a simple outline i just go for a simple round brush and alter the diameter or the hardness.

There is a 2nd palette which is more advanced by clicking on this brushes icon (1) next to all the floating palates on the right. This brings up this and in here you can do alot more than alter the diameter and hardness, you can alter the shape of the brush with roundness and angle, the spacing, pen pressure, jitter, scattering, noise, wet edges, texture etc, basically you can design your own brushes.

Heres a few examples of the kind of brushes you can create and some of the brushes preinstalled with photoshop and the kind of effect they give when drawing with them.

When your done designing your brush you can then save it as a preset by clicking again on the downward arrow (top left) (1) and then clicking the page icon below the rightarrow (2) which brings up a box asking you to name your new brush (3). Put in a name and then as if my magic it gets added to the list of different brush shapes in the palette which you can easily access.

My advice when you design you own brush shapes is just keep playing about with all the different shape modifications because many of mine i came up with by accident, this one for example which i use alot is great for creating a watercolour effect when colouring in and it just came about when i was messing with a couple of sliders in dynamics and texture.

One of the best modifications is to combine 2 brushes into one with ‘Dual Brush’ and also the texture modification can create some wierd and wonderful brush shapes. Have fun!

Holidays over…

Happy new year! hibernation is officially over and it’s back to work for me. Over the festive season i mananged to fill my belly with lots of chocolate and baileys and its now back to the gym to burn it all off, watched most of the crap that was on tv (wasnt it a pile of ****) and got hideously drunk on quite a few occasions. Did however manage to do a quick sneaky wedding caricature for an anniversary present for my mum and dad which i’ve posted below. You probably noticed ive used parts of the caricature from another caricature i did earlier in the year but it was rush job… Anyway, its now back to work, going to be doing a couple more black and white pieces this month of the late Ingrid Pitt as Countess Dracula, maybe a Britt Ekland and maybe maybe Madeleine & Mary Collinson who only starred in 1 hammer horror film ‘Twins Of Evil’ but is one of my favourites. Chin, chin!