So I made another blog...

I dabbled with the idea of a blog where I would post photos for a while now. I couldn't decide whether to incorporate it into this blog or create a whole new one. I ended up doing the latter. The link should be over on the right, or if you can't see it, go to pointshootdelete.blogspot.com. Or .co.uk if you're in the UK, or .ca if you're in Canada, or... well you get the idea.

I called it "point, shoot, delete" because I point the camera at something, shoot a picture, delete it, then repeat these steps until the desired outcome is achieved*. I could have called it "point, shoot, delete, repeat" but 3 words is catchier.

Lather, rinse, repeat.
Stop, look, listen.
Please, no photos.

I also liked how there's a photo blog called click flash whirr with the pretty girl who takes a daily self-portrait, so it's a bit of a play on those types of names (I dunno if there's a car blog called vroom vroom squeal).

So, you know, stop by there as well if you want.




*I also called it "pointxshoot" for a time and went back and forth with these 2 names, which is why some images have a pointxshoot watermark on them. I couldn't decide. I may update those watermarks one day. RAW files and original jpegs are always good to have.

Plague doctor mask (WIP, part 3)

Starting to look a little creepy now, particularly with the big round eyes... O_O

 More papier mache added to the beak, fixed the eyes (kind of) so they're big and not so wonky anymore.

I need to clean up that table.

Because the cardboard structure underneath the newspaper wasn't completely smooth, I also have to build up layers of paper to smooth some of the bumps on the surface. This is the long part, pasting glue and paper strips, waiting for them to dry, add more paper, wait for that to dry... It's long but in a way theraputic too.

All that's left is building up more layers, fixing up the bumps and crooked parts, making the face part a little stronger, and finally paint!

More: (part 4) (part 3) (part 2) (part 1)

Plague doctor mask (WIP, part 2)

Just a quick post to show you that even though my first mask WIP post was extremely unimpressive (all words, no mask), it has come along in leaps and bounds.

Centre piece of scrap card (thanks, Amazon!) added and glued on, just to get a rough idea of what it will look like and how big the final beak will be. And a messy table.

Centre piece of scrap card was too wide and too short, so I cut it and added the excess piece to the end. Also added some side pieces to form the beginnings of a 3-dimensional shape. Didn't try any of those puzzles.

 More scrap card, this time thinner and not corrugated (taken from a chicken pie box, yum), wrapped around the thicker cardboard beak. Also cut eyeholes, but these are temporary as 1) they should really be round and 2) they are hilariously wonky.

Added some more card to fill in the main beaky part (held in place by rubber bands and clothes pegs while the glue dries). Glued on some card strips to hold the sides of the beak to the sides of the face. They also help to fill in the huge gap. Started papier mache on the front of the beak. Still didn't try any of those puzzles.

Still to do:

Add more card on the top of the beak where it meets the mask.
Create more rounded eyes, decide on clear or tinted eyeholes.
Add breathing holes (nose, mouth)
Maybe make the bottom part of the mask a little bit longer so it fits under the chin? I dunno yet.
Papier mache the hell out of it, to make it much more solid than it already is.
Paint it!

But before all of that:
Get more UHU glue.

There are a few more progress pics still on my camera but they really just show some more paper mache goodness, so I'll save those for the next update.



More: (part 4) (part 3) (part 2) (part 1)

Some WIP's

A couple, actually.

First one is a watercolour that I had started for Illustration Friday, the topic being "shiny", but I didn't finish it in time. It's in a bit of a state of limbo at the moment, but it will get finished. I have the reference picture on my computer (I snapped it myself :D ). I just hope I don't get too carried away and overpaint it (I do that sometimes).

If you can't tell what it is - and I wouldn't blame you, that photo is atrocious! - it is supposed to be a door knocker shaped like a lion's head. The original has a mixture of dull and shiny metal parts, hence my idea to submit it for "shiny", but now that's over I don't really have to force myself to follow that topic.

The next WIP is a lot more hands-on, but super time-consuming.

If you've ever researched the Black Death then you may have heard about the plague doctors who, in an attempt to protect themselves from the plague wore (among other things) masks with beak-like protrusions on them. This beak would be filled with aromatic substances like flowers, herbs, spices to protect the doctor from bad smells which, in those days was thought to be the main cause of infection. Think of it like an early respirator or gas mask.

[source]

It didn't work.

I, on the other hand have never really researched the plague, except one time for a project in high school, and that was focused mainly on the effect it had in England rather than Europe as a whole. As far as I know they never had plague doctors like this in England. This costume was prominent on the mainland, particularly in Italy (where the plague doctor/beak doctor mask is now a common sight in Venetian carnivals).

[source]

No, I was first introduced to this character by way of the Assassin's Creed series of video games :)

The ones set in Renaissance Italy feature plague doctors who are used to heal dwindling health, as well as to purchase medicine and poison. They don't actually help cure any kind of plague in the game.

Hah, game physics.

Anyway, enough of the history lesson. I decided to start the mask in papier mache. I was going to use a balloon to create the basic face, but that would have required me buying one balloon and they come in packs of 10 or more and I don't need that many for this project, blahblahblah. So I ended up grabbing my "V" mask off the wall and using that as a base template for the main face.

I covered the mask in cling film, glued on a whole bunch of newspaper strips, old leaflets, tissue paper etc...

I've ended up with this. I've intentionally built up and (tried to) smooth the areas of the mask which have prominent lines, particularly the cheekbones and brow. Not so much the mouth as the beak will cover that.

And because I have to wait a day or so for each new layer of paper to dry, the process take AGES.

It looks a little like the Greendale Human Being mascot from Community, without the generic facial features.

I didn't plan out how I was going to make the mask, I'm really just doing it on the fly. Next I'll probably look for a big piece of cardboard, cut out a rudimentary beak shape and fit it around the mask. I'm pretty sure there will be some trimming of the mask involved, as well as yet more papier mache goodness.


I'm also thinking about making another blog, this time for photography, or at least posting photos on this blog. I mentioned in my last post that it's something that I'm sort of interested in, despite being a complete noob at it. I'm the kind of person who takes a whole bunch of photos then bins most of them. I pixel peep (bad habit, trying to break that), I don't know all the technical jargon, I probably know about a tenth of what my camera can really do, I'm not the greatest at composition (I get lucky most times). Having said that, it's fun. I like having a camera with me, even if I don't take a picture. And like I said, it appeals to my desire to create true-to-life images (something I don't always want to do in a drawing/painting, but often end up doing anyway).

Now where should that go?...


=====
update: WIP part 2 here!
update update: WIP part 3 here!
update update update: Final(?) part 4 here! (a.k.a. whoops, I totally forgot about that watercolour in part 1!)

Destroy

(Update, 6th August, 2011: Also submitted to Illustration Friday for the topic 'imperfect')

Kinga's and my personal illustration project is a little overdue, but I'm done. This time it's my topic of choice. I decided to break the pattern of monosyllabic words thus far and chose 'destroy':

(acrylic and pen, A3)

This was a weird one. It started off with a photo of a swan that I'd taken a while back. I thought to myself "it looks too clean...".

I started off in a painterly style, and the water leant itself quite well to it. Part way through I was watching a TV documentary about Impressionist painters, notably Monet and Renoir. I was inspired by it and made the water even more brushy-looking than my usual style normally dictates. The swan didn't really lend itself too much to a painterly style however. I wanted the appearance of fine details so I drew them in with white Posca pen. This gave the swan's body the suggestion of feathers, rather than looking like a milky, washed-out blob. It also made the swan pop out from the watery background, which was a nice after-effect.

After the first pass it looked like this:

I could have just finished here and called this something like Swan #1, but seeing as the topic was destroy and this had no kind of destructive quality about it, I had to go on.

The next step was to sketch a rough piece to overlay. I had a few choices for what word to use. I could have just went with destroy but that was way too obvious (and too long). I could have gone the corny route and used something like style or urban, but those feel like buzzwords used by the media when they portray or describe graffiti. Instead I went the more 'intelligent' route (sure...) and went with mute.

Why 'mute'? Because the swan I painted is commonly known as a mute swan. Makes sense now, doesn't it? I used the typical "dub" style of chrome in black. It's simplicity is in contrast to the complexity and roughness of the painting. Opposites are good.

Silver pen. Shiny.

Nothing like the juxtaposition of a majestic swan with a line of graffiti on it's side.

New banner

This blog has been bannerless since it's creation. I've just been using a simple text dealy, and it's only now that I decided to make one. Long, I know. I wanted to draw something today but I had a bit of a creative block. I ended up playing around with photoshop instead.

Look at my awesome handwriting!

The background is a photo that I took of some Staedtler Triplus fineliners, tweaked to death in Lightroom and Photoshop. I haven't even used these pens yet, they're still fresh!

Colourful!

I may end up changing it as looks a little bit sombre, as if this blog is about death poetry or something equally dark. But for now it stays because I'm tired and I can't be bothered to change it. Using PS was fun though, even if half of the time I didn't really know exactly what I wanted.

Also the "My world is blue" bit is from the song that I referenced in the very first post of this blog.

Dope song.

I am not a vandal (Happy birthday, Morgan)

I made this as a birthday present, not because I was raging against the system:

(spray paint on... a wall, derp)

The closest I'd ever gotten to writin' my name in graffiti on the wall was when I was a teen and did a few simple tags here and there, but that really isn't in the spirit of graffiti, or writing (if you're a graffiti snob). Plus that spirit involves hitting spots at crazy hours of the morning, hiding from the law and racking your paint, none of which I really fancied doing. I'm still a huge fan of graffiti and it's place in hip-hop culture, so for the most part my graff has been kept on paper, until yesterday.

My cousin and his partner pretty much asked me to draw a little something on their daughter's wall for her birthday, with the words "lil' star" incorporated into it. I normally do the usual greeting card but with an unusual design on the envelope (a la keeping it on paper). My cousin suggested that this would be an extension of that tradition but on a bigger - and vertical - surface. I'm pretty sure he wasn't thinking the whole wall but I already was.

from the paper to the wall

I ended up having to stack the words on top of each other as it would have been too long to fit on one line. The funny thing is that they will be rehoused in a few months as the council are supposed to be demolishing their building to make way for a new development, which means that this will also fall into a big pile of rubble. Kind of sad to do something like this only for it to disappear down the road. But I guess that's one of the things about graffiti, that it's never supposed to be permanent, even if this was legal and not going to be buffed out by anti-vandalism cleaners :)

I like that the time-and-tested combo of chrome and black really stands out. I did have a few problems with it though:

• I have NEVER drawn anything as big as this before, in any medium... ever, so I got a bit excited with the size of it. It's a little too big.
• The paint kept dripping. This was most likely due to the wallpaper not wanting to take the paint properly. Wallpaper isn't a very good surface to spray on unless it's matt and super absorbant, which this wasn't.
• My white spray can kept sticking and clogging. How annoying is a can that splatters instead of sprays? It also made adding the highlights harder, and made my fingers hurt from pressing down so hard.
• I got tired at the end and my fingers were starting to cramp, so the final simple details kind of went a bit wonky.

Fortunately the pictures hide most of the drips and smudges. It probably is best admired from afar. Maybe if I had more than a couple of hours, a better surface and much more practice it would have been cleaner and crisper. But for a first attempt at anything more than a tag in about 15 years I'm pleased with how it turned out.