Monday, February 21, 2011

Life Drawing from last week.





I was going to colour this but I quite like it how it is. It's the inside of the Shed. It has a bit of a 'Tardis' effect in that there is a remarkable amount of stuff for a Shed of this size. Even a Giant's Shed.




The final character, not a very major role; Dolf Rickman the town (garden) mayor. My idea was to have him, being so small and physically diminished, become obsessed with the Giants in a Kaiser Wilhelm type way with the Potsdam Giants Regiments of Prussia. However he's becoming more of an after thought right now.







Sunday, February 20, 2011

GARDEN SQUAD!

So what happens?

Baby boom! UH OH.
Lots and lots and lots of humans.
They over-run the "garden".
Little toddler 'Jez' wonders off due to neglect from his middle-aged crisised ex-model mother
and discovers some Giants living in a shed with their newborn.
Mug (Father), Juju (Mother), Big (Baby), Pickles (Grandad) and Giles (Uncle)
all live in the forgotten corner of the "garden" In the old shed.
They haven't had much time to garden since having a baby.
And the "garden" is infested with Humans.
So to make a new place for the baby to play they call in...
GARDEN SQUAD!
The not so hip-happening trio of muscled and tooled up garden professionals,
can create your dream Garden in just 48 hours.
Thus begins the epic struggle between Gardener and Garden Pest
as the Giants wrestle the Humans for somewhere quiet where
they can have a Sunday BBQ when the weather is nice, and enjoy the
smell of that first summer Tulip.
Oh and did I mention that everything in the "City Garden" is grown?
Yes that's right, everything. Especially the buildings.
Tune in your Television box's to channel 1 this Tuesday at 8pm.


p.s. as luck would have it, Sheila Hancock is brushing up on the art of watercolours on BBC1 right now. Thank's Sheila. :-)

Friday, February 18, 2011

The Gardener's Shed - everything you wanted to know about controlling those human pests and more! Plus an exclusive interview with Plant Marshtitch!


Yes! Winter is over, summer is just around the corner. It's time to enjoy those freshly planted Town Halls, those reaching Sky Scrapers and budding Domed Cathedrals! Unfortunately though summer also means the Humans will be coming out to enjoy the Sun. This month's issue will show you how to control those pests that live in your Tower Blocks and Fancy Flats and chop down your hard worked border shrubs, whilst still being able to enjoy the height of summer.

Also featured - an exclusive interview with TV personality and professional Gardener; Garden Squad's Plant Marshtitch!



Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Big and Small

I have come up with an overall concept nutshell...finally.

Here's the deal. It is a Garden City. Literally. Instead of flowers you have different types of fancy buildings (flashy sky-scraper type ones) instead of Fruit and Veg you have practical buildings (Town halls, Fire Stations, Power Plants...hey that's given me an idea...a power...plant. Anyway) and instead of shrubs and boarder plants you have Trees and Parks.

Instead of bugs, and greenfly and garden pests, you have us. The Humans. Wrecking all your hard garden-work.

The project would be shot like any garden program you've seen on TV; Ground Force, The Chelsea Flower Show, Gardener's World, etc.

Instead of Alan Titchmarsh and co. you have 'The Giants'. The Giants now are washed up and old, think of them as the 50's generation being hit by the 60s, they don't quite know what to do any more because of the Baby Boom of the 40s - 60s. This has increased the Human problem.

So The Giants have sort of given up and retreated to their shed. Because you know all gardens have that old creaky shed where your Dad keeps 12 pairs of shears, 23 shovels, and an odd number of mouldy garden gloves. They keep to themselves and don't tend to their "Garden" any more.

This is until little Jez stumbles across them. He's been neglected by his ex-pinup-model Mother (Stage named 'Sticky' which is a play on Twiggy) who has grabbed the 60s with both thighs and is trying desperately to thrust herself back into the limelight.

Jez (age about 6-8) is curious, and very bright. He's a lot like Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes and sometimes uses surprisingly big words.

Jez is out exploring one day when he finds 'Big'. The Baby Giant (age 1-2) who has also wondered off exploring. The Giants find Big after a worried search and thus find Jez. Jez persists and follows them back to their shed to the Giants annoyance.

Through Jez and Big's inquisitive nature the Giants rediscover their love of gardening and vow to re-do their Garden and claim it back from the human 'pests'.

When the Giants reveal themselves to the Humans this is were 'Arky' comes into play. Until now most Humans had accepted the wonky buildings because they were all, 'doped up' (this would be shown as hippies etc going heymaannn coool rather than showing drug-taking). Arky though, being a nerd and intellectual avoided drugs and always knew something was up. He becomes fascinated by the Giants and befriends Jez. Through his relationship with Jez, he finds Sticky (Jez's Mother) and becomes her love interest because she starts to see that she's been a bad mother and neglected her son. She also falls for Arky because he doesn't take her at face value like everybody else.

The conclusion would be a happy ending where the humans and giants manage to live together in harmony. Much like Humans and Bees (which can be seen as annoying but are actually quite useful, as are most bugs). So the Humans help tend to the garden and they don't litter quite so much and they reduce their pollution.

I envision this parodying the start of environmental awareness at the start of the 70's were the theory of Global Warming really began to formulate after the economic boom of the 60s were commercialism really took off.

























Friday, February 11, 2011

Life Drawing.

This one I think is one of my best to date. It hasn't come out brilliantly when photographing it though, I think it's the black paper. I like using the white chalk on black paper, it sort of makes you focus a lot more on the shapes and tone of the light. You can also do more with less, like at the bottom I haven't really drawn her left leg or right foot. You can just hint at it. Sure you can do it with white paper, but I think it's easier and looks better on black paper. Anyway this was about 20 -25 minutes.


These were 30 second poses, all done in sequence, the model was continuously moving but pausing every 30 seconds for 30 seconds.


These are a sequence of 40 second poses.


I'll have to re-photograph this as I did draw her feet. However I did cut her head off but I think in some ways feet are more important than the head. This was for about 25 minutes I think.


This was for half an hour.


100! Yay! Inbetween: A Fable

So this is what we have been up to. My job now has evolved, given that in Photoshop the lines were looking kind of stale, not very fluid and not able to replicate the quality I could get from hand drawing. So I was entrusted to draw the below scene just to see what I could do. Thankfully Jacob liked it so I am now drawing all the linework for the backgrounds and settings. Kat then scans in the hard copies and colours them digitally.

This is a much better setup I think because I really like drawing architecture and Kat is much better at digital painting than me. It's been giving me confidence too because they've all been saying they really like what I've been doing and I'm being given more freedom to improvise a little;
So what I mean is, I'm given a layout which is just has things like, buildings here, buildings here, moon here, cloud here, or whatever. But I've been given the freedom to draw whatever kind of buildings I like, as long as they're Gothic and Medieval type architecture.

It's been bringing me back to my History of Art days and I'm remembering all the things like the different types of columns, cornice's and all that. I'm taking a little bit from Renaissance as Jacob likes arches and they were very prominent in Ancient Greek and Roman architecture, as well as French Gothic.

The good thing is I don't have to be 100% accurate, and I can mish mash all these styles of architecture together. As most of the film takes place at night it's dark anyway so I don't have to worry about getting a precise architectural style. Obviously the key things are sticking to the layouts, and keeping continuity with the art style.

I have done about 3-4 more today but they are in the process of being scanned in and coloured so I can't put them up here yet.

I'm really getting into this project and am gaining confidence from getting good feedback from everybody. The best thing for me is that they've basically entrusted me to draw the massive Castle at the start of the film which is going to be mine and Kat's Sistine Chapel probably. But I'm looking forward to it because I like drawing Castles and I'm being given a lot of freedom to create.

So it's all good. Also I'm assured work on 1/3 will commence next week so I look forward to that too.