Self Portrait

It feels like it's been ages since I've posted anything online anywhere.  I suppose it has!  I'm not feeling bad about it, as there's a lot going on at the moment without the Internet being in my life too much.  It's also necessary for me to focus more inwardly on my work at times rather than putting it out online for all to see, as my way of approaching ideas can tend to turn towards crowd-pleasing, which isn't ever my aim.

For the past couple of weeks I've been in the process of designing a video game poster, and after a lot of pencil sketches, research and messing around I got into a rut.  Final layout is sorted, final character design is decided, but then the style...  My line work wasn't clicking with weak and wonky geometry and blah blah blah, so I took a step back to focus my artistic energy in another aspect towards the poster: skin tones.

I've never really stretched myself in varying light sources in my work or defined them strongly.  I knew that this would be fun but also important.  I took a few reference photos of myself with a strong upward light and set about a quick-ish painting practise.  

Completed entirely in Photoshop, my image was A5 page size at 300dpi.  I started of with a layer of the base skin tone with a layer on top of that for the background and began to carve out the figure out of the dark tones to reveal the skin tone. I slowly built layers of details and tonal values on individual layers from there.  I was pleasantly surprised with my translation of the photo to painting; despite using very different techniques and mediums it turned into a similar style to my pencil sketches for the poster.

The more I've practised and researched and practised some more I have begun to get to know myself and find my own style rather than attempting to imitate someone else's - which I enjoy doing!  And I never outright copy a style, but pick up bits here and there.  However, this time I've been relying solely on my own judgements when I get stuck for a moment.  I'm looking forward to applying all that I'm learning into one large piece of work.

J.x

Mr Little

In case you didn't see me post this on every other online thing possible...
A portrait of Omar Little from HBO's The Wire - if you've never seen the show before what have you been watching all your life?!

It wasn't quite what I'd had in mind, but I think it actually ended up better than I'd planned.  The picture I had in my head was mainly the multicoloured scratches, which I've got, so I'm happy!

I've been neglecting my blog quite a bit this year.  It's been my own fault for keeping things secret; I've not been sharing progress and processes so as to not spoil any surprises for people.
I can tell you what I'm working on though:

- 2 costume design mini-projects
- a comic strip for my other gentleman half
- pin-up style portraits of my girl friends
- quick designs of my character Andi from my Andona project
- ideas and scripting for a graphic novel (check back with me in 10 years)
- sketching and painting for fun in between
- and then there's the next TV portrait! I've not done a film portrait yet - any suggestions?!

All that on top of working full time and trying to keep up learning languages.  It is tough and slow!
I do love personal challenges though, so I'm enjoying the struggle in a twisted kinda way.
What are all you guys working on?
Do any of you keep things secret until a certain point of completion?

J.x

P.S.  I'm now on Tumblr and Society6