Found Art

I found these photo's discarded and scattered about in an outdoor parking lot.  As an artist, a cheapskate, and an obsessive hoarder I find great joy in picking things off the floor.  Images, metal objects and bits of wood are high on my list right now.  

I always justify my collection by telling myself about all the amazing art I will eventually make with it.  In reality it just sits under my bed gathering dust.  Until now!  In an attempt to clean my room I stumbled over these photos.  

Originally they weren't that interesting.  And after finding them in the carpark I washed them off, stacked them together tightly and stored them away.  Photographs and water do not mix.  Years later when I unearthed them they had glued themselves together into a little brick of stiffened card. 

I peeled them apart and the resulting mess is what I've posted.  I will be attempting to paint them later down the track but right now I'm just loving them as photographs. 

Attempts at colour pencil

I have never gotten along very well with colour pencil. Even now I am not able to beat a 5 yr old on terms of shading and blending colours.

I'm not even comfortable changing B/W into colour. It always ends in tears. Mine.

But I've had a year of my Uni teachers telling me: Have you thought about adding colour? ...just a bit, how about a wash? a pale yellow? You could just try one colour...anything.

So I decided to give colour a try. Especially since my friends bought me expensive colour pencils for my birthday.

Illustration Friday...almost

Above is a 'final' drawing I made for Illustration Friday, the concept was "climbing". Sadly my computer imploded and I wasn't able to add on time. But I'm still glad I got off my ass and did some Illustrating.

This is my final sketch for the concept, I kept pretty tight with this image. I particularly liked the pencilling and just tried to replicate the marks I made in this in the final.
Tracing paper helped.

This is just an earlier sketch where I was trying to figure what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to include snakes and ladders for the climbing concept, as well as monkeys. So I just tried various little compostitions till I was happy.

new faces on the block

I have various conversations about art and whatnot with my friends who are in the similar field. Nicky O'Byrne in particular. We have both decided that majority of our people end up looking the same. Caucasian, young and fairly good looking. For me I can trace this back to my first attempts at drawing: which was copying from comic books. (Pre-Jim Lee, Essential X-men sort of stuff.)

Now I'm not blaming comic books, I love them too much. But I do get used to a particular way of drawing and/or making art. And I get lazy and repeat stuff I already know and am familiar with rather than trying new and possibly bad things.

So these are some attempts for the new and unfamiliar.