Wimbledon caricatures

I've been working on a number of projects recently, but until they are ready to unveil here are some caricature experiments inspired by recent tennis tournaments (Roland Garros, Queens, Wimbledon).

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.

Rafael Nadal.

Roger Federer.

Despite having a little tablet pen for about a year now, I've only just got around to properly installing it on my computer and personalising the settings. It doesn't work quite as perfectly as I'd like, but it's nice to experiment with every now and then...

These caricatures started off as quick, loose, pencil sketches that I had planned to paint with watercolours (as I normally do). However I admired the 'unfinished' quality of the first few drawings, so I decided to scan them and try painting digitally to see how they turn out - and I'll return to traditionally finish the original drawings at a later point.

Experimental Promo

On Monday I was filming live-action footage for a short promo about an upcoming collaboration between myself and Edinburgh-based sound engineer Chris Bathgate.

We previously worked together on my 2009 graduation film, Pigment of Imagination, and this second project is the result of several ideas that we have since developed.

Embedded below is the 80-second Experimental Promo made from Monday's footage:



The above video should serve as a bold taster for the kind of work that we are currently developing: It is very abstract (which I'm intrigued with), however the upcoming collaboration will be a bit tamer with some kind of narrative background.

The plan now is to devise a bizarre script and shoot/edit the film before Chris creates a new song specifically for the film.

Music video: "Counting Sheep"

On Sunday afternoon I was filming a quirky music video with Glasgow-based band Randolph's Leap, who have just released their new double A-side single "Counting Sheep / Deep Blue Sea" on Olive Grove Records.

I spent 2 hours filming the band (using both live-action and stopmotion-style photography) while Glasgow University Trampoline Club performed in the background: The result was a vast compilation of amusing footage, ready for editing.

After roughly 10 hours sifting through the footage and editing it all together, the video was complete. Today my finished video for "Counting Sheep" was released on both YouTube and Vimeo; and the news posted around the internet, leading to over 150 views within the first 12 hours of getting promoted.

So without further ado, here it is folks, enjoy!

Around The World In 6 Clicks

A couple of weeks ago I started a new painting project, basically to help get me back into the practice of regular painting.

I'm calling the project "Around The World In 6 Clicks", and through the use of Google Maps I'm going on a virtual painting tour of the world.

Working process:

- From the Google Maps homepage I zoom-out until the whole world is visible;

- I close my eyes before click-and-holding my mouse cursor anywhere over the map and vividly moving the mouse around in order to spin the map to a random location;

- I release the mouse button before again vividly moving the cursor around the screen (so that it finishes over a new random map location);

- Once I've stopped moving the mouse I use the scroll-wheel of my mouse to zoom-in as far as possible and pin-point a painting location;

- Finally I select the orange Google Streetview man and move him over the exact location that I ended-up at in order to get a photo of that location, which I proceed to paint in my sketchbook.

It's been an interesting journey so far, and I've even learnt a few things about some of the locations after doing research on them (out of curiosity)!

You can check out the first 5 paintings on my facebook art page by clicking here. (The series won't be limited to 6 paintings as the title may suggest - 6 is actually the number of clicks it usually takes to arrive at the source photos).