Last night, ahead of the London 2012 Olympic Men's Singles Tennis Final that is just about to get underway (Andy Murray vs Roger Federer), I decided to give my previous Wimbledon cartoon a special make-over.
Instead of wearing his Wimbledon whites, I've painted Murray into his blue Team GB Olympic tennis outfit, and altered Salmond's caption.
Just 28 days ago, Andy Murray had the hopes of an entire nation on his shoulders, when he attempted to become Britain's first Wimbledon male singles champion in over 70 years by defeating none other than Roger Federer.
On that occasion it ended in heartbreak, but the emotions shown on court had won-over the admiration of many sceptic British tennis fans.
This afternoon is a near-identical rematch of that Wimbledon final: Same venue, same players, same hopes... The only difference being the awards to pick up at the end of the match.
Today, Andy Murray is already guaranteed at least an Olympic Silver medal (in both the Men's Singles & the Mixed Doubles with Laura Robson), but he will definitely be aiming for Gold in order to add to the impressive number of London 2012 gold medals already won by Scottish stars!
Here's a wee cartoon I drew yesterday, in response to the outcome of the 2012 Wimbledon Men's Singles final between Andy Murray and Roger Federer.
Andy Murray, from Dunblane (Scotland), was playing in his fourth Grand Slam final; and the first Wimbledon final to feature a British man for 74 years.
His opponent, Roger Federer, from Basel (Switzerland), was aiming for a record-equaling seventh Wimbledon title, and his 17th Grand Slam title overall.
In reaching this stage of the tournament, Murray ensured himself, temporarily at least, a legion of new fans from across the United Kingdom - no easy achievement considering previous misunderstandings between the Scot and some British tennis fans south of the border.
But his outpouring of emotion during the prize-giving ceremony may just have endeared some of those ambivalent fans to him on a more permanent basis.
It was this situation that inspired the cartoon: Britain has been waiting several generations for a new home-grown Wimbledon champion, and in the build-up to Sunday's final, it seemed we were on the verge of finally getting him.
But having just collected his fourth Grand Slam runners-up trophy, British tennis fans will be waiting until the summer of 2013 before they can hope to see Murray go all the way again, and if he fails, the wait will go on until 2014.
However...
With Alex Salmond and the Scottish National Party (SNP) desperate for Scotland to gain its independence from the rest of Great Britain (a referendum is likely to take place in 2014); and with Britain having no other male tennis players ready to make a strong challenge for the Wimbledon singles title any time soon: Britain is running out of time to end its championship-winning draught.
If Murray doesn't win the Wimbledon title as a British player within the next two or three years, there is a chance that he could win it further down the line - when Scotland is an independent nation and Murray is no longer considered a British player.
With that possibility, how easily would Scotland be granted its independence?
Feeling inspired by my stint as a football photographer, I've just completed my first watercolour painting in 13 months... And it "only" took an entire month!!!
It's faaar from my best, but what should I have expected after not painting for so long!?
Until now, I had never really understood why they say that artists should draw/paint everyday: But now it is painfully clear - without regular practice the whole painting process becomes much slower, more frustrating, and generally difficult.
I recall the days of my 12fps Film-inspired Painting Series[late 2009], when I was painting almost every day, and could easily complete a new "masterpiece" (relatively speaking) after only a few hours.
...As they say "Oh how the mighty have fallen". So let this be a lesson to any other creative types reading!
I'll certainly be trying to paint more regularly now.
Hearts (maroon) VS Aberdeen Reserves (white). 20 June 2012.
For example, many clubs are heavily promoting themselves on social networking sites; there are now a number of quality websites & reporters dedicated to the women's game in Scotland (see related links at bottom); and the mainstream media is slowly but surely getting around to featuring the sport on a bigger scale.
All this combined means that the sport has vastly grown; with bigger audiences, more commercial sponsorship, and a better standard of play on the pitch. But there is a very good reason for this rapid growth.
Glasgow City VS Murieston Utd. 10 June 2012.
Last summer, the Women's World Cup Final in Germany broke the record for most tweeted-about event, and worldwide interest in the sport has since soared.
In Scotland this rising interest was capitalised upon by SWF, which took to Twitter to engage the captive audience with a call-to-action, and soon enough a number of clubs, players, photographers, and reporters, were marketing the game to an ever-growing audience.
This was followed by Glasgow City FC, Scotland's leading women's club, progressing from the Women's Champions League qualifying round, and making it all the way to the last 16, where they were eventually knocked-out by 2x former champions, Turbine Potsdam.
Making this achievement all the more remarkable, is the fact that City (like all Scottish teams) are still an amateur club, with the squad playing around full-time jobs or university studies - whereas many of the Champions League teams were full-time professionals.
Glasgow City VS Spartans. 30 May 2012.
On an international scale too, while the Scotland men's team continue to stumble their way through matches and major qualifying campaigns (now ranked 49th in the world); the women's team are soaring from strength to strength (ranked 21st in the world).
The Scotland women currently sit second in their Euro 2013 qualifying group, behind undefeated leaders France (ranked 6th in the world), and need just one point from their two remaining games to be guaranteed a play-off spot!
If you have any interest at all in Scottish football, I'd really recommend getting yourself along to Tynecastle (Edinburgh) on 19th September to support the Scotland Women in their final Euro 2013 qualifying match against France. It should be a cracking game, and with tickets at only £5/adult (cheaper for kids), it's a real bargain!
Hearts celebrate winning the 2nd Division Cup Final. 20 June 2012.
Further proof of the impact Scottish women are having on the game at international level, include the fact that several players are now playing semi-pro football in the English FA Women's Super League. Meanwhile, Glasgow City's Jane Ross is one of only 3 non-English players selected for the Great Britain Women's Olympic team: And her former teammate, Lisa Evans, has just completed a transfer to Germany's Turbine Potsdam, where she will live her dream as a professional footballer!
Jane Ross (on ball) was recently selected for GB Olympic squad.
Lisa Evans (orange) in one of her last games before turning pro.
Scottish Women's Football is played on a summer season (unlike the men who play the traditional winter season), and has two national leagues (Premier & First Division), along with four regional Second Divisions.
If you need a footballing fix while the men are on holiday, why not give the women's game a shot? You may be pleasantly surprised...
I made these trick photos quite a while ago, but never got around to posting them on here, until now.
The images are inspired by the stunning work of Thomas Allen, whose working process & images were featured on my blog a few years ago.
"Injury talk gets [Andy] Murray's back up" (from Scotland on Sunday, May 27, 2012).
"Leader Luke Donald straddles a dried-up ditch after hitting a water hazard" (from Scotland on Sunday, May 27, 2012).
"Bankfoot" (from Scotland on Sunday, May 27, 2012).
I had almost forgotten about his work until recently, but once I had re-discovered it, I was keen to make some new pictures based upon his style (albeit within a different context).
The images shown above are just a small sample of my recent trick photography work (you can find the others on my facebook page); and while some of them worked really well, I'm not sure that any worked as well as I had originally hoped for - but they were fun to make anyway!
On Thursday, 10 May 2012, Charles, Prince of Wales, became my new favourite weather presenter after giving a very entertaining one-off forecast to the nation on BBC Reporting Scotland: And soon after, he turned into the subject of my latest artwork.
Prince Charles hijacking the Reporting Scotland weather studio.
The special forecast came about during a visit to the BBC Scotland Pacific Quay studios in Glasgow as part of a week-long visit to the country; and soon enough was a viral hit all around the world.
If you were unlucky enough to have missed this TV gold, you can watch it on the BBC website by clicking here, or search for it on YouTube - either way, I doubt you will regret it!
Prince Charles was such a natural in front of the map, that I am pretty sure the regular weather presenters were getting concerned for their job security.
As a result, my wee caricature/cartoon, shows weather regular Stav Danaos trying to wrestle back the clicker thingy from Prince Charles, with Gillian Smart & Christopher Blanchett huddled in the corner bound in ropes, while former weather girl Cat Cubie makes a triumphant return by utilising her circus skills and a hoop in the rafters to come to the rescue.
It was drawn with pencil on A5 paper, and coloured with Photoshop, using a style reminiscent of many classic animations from my time at Edinburgh College of Art.
One week after Prince Charles made his weather debut, I posted the finished picture to my facebook page & profile, where it has proven surprisingly popular, and even received a comment from the one and only Cat Cubie!
As if that wasn't enough, I later discovered that she had shared the picture (and my website) with her near 4000 followers on Twitter, which made my day!
A screenshot of what Cat said on Twitter about my cartoon
Hello everybody, sorry for my long absence and lack of updates.
But here's the good news: I've recently re-ignited my creative spark, and occupied myself with a number of new caricature drawings over the past week!
Only a couple of them are completely coloured so far, but you will soon be able to find them all (including "work in progress" images) on my facebook page - please "like" it if you haven't already.
My favourite caricature so far, of 2012 World Snooker Championship finalists Ronnie O'Sullivan & Ali Carter, is embedded below.
I'll add a whole load of in-progress images to the facebook page tomorrow, and hopefully have a load more work posted soon.
Stay tuned, (I promise it won't be as long a wait as last time)!
Here's an amusing sport highlights video that I made over the festive period, but forgot to post on here (until now).
It was filmed one afternoon at my place of work, Kinross Curling Rink, while two of my colleagues played in the Grand Final of our little one-day tournament (following a long pre-Christmas maintenance week).
The full video required about 2 weeks for all the voice recording, graphic designing, editing etc, which is a lot more time than I originally planned to spend on it, but I think the end result was well worth it.
If you don't follow the sport of curling, you will likely have no idea what is going on! So here's a little guide to help:
- There are two players, who will both use a cue (stick thing) to propel heavy rocks down a sheet of ice towards a target at the far end of the ice (similar to shuffleboard, or vaguely like golf).
- Alternating after every stone, both players will throw a total of 8 stones each, before any points are scored.
- Points can only be scored by having stones in the round target (AKA: the House) at the far end of the ice.
- Only one player can score at a time, and they will get one point for each of their stones that sit closer to the centre of the House than their opponent's stones (therefore a player could potentially score anything between 0-8 at a time).
- In this competition, the Grand Final is being played to a distance of 2 Ends, meaning that they will throw all the stones down the ice once and count the score from that End; then they will throw all the stones back up to a House at the side of ice they started from, and count the score again for that second End: Whichever player has scored the most points will win the overall game.
- In the case of a tie, both players will do a Draw Shot Challenge to decide the winner, whereby each player will throw only 1 stone (down the ice to the far House), while aiming for it stop as close to the centre of the House as possible. The smallest distance from the centre wins.
This guide is specific for our tournament only - regular curling is played for about 2 hours (about 8 ends of play), and the cue/stick is only used as an aid for players with knee or back problems... For an idea of what regular/professional curling looks like, watch this short video clip (don't let the amazing shot fool you into thinking it's an easy game!):
I've got a couple of wee video projects currently in the works, which will be written about soon. But in the meantime, I hope you all had a lovely Christmas, and have a good New Year!
Last month there were a couple of big events at work, with the 21st annual Kinross Junior Curling Classic taking place from 7th-9th October, and the Kinross Wheelchair Curling International Invitational from 18th-20th October.
On top of my usual Ice Tech duties, I was also the official photographer & webmaster for the Junior Classic. This involved creating, maintaining, and editing a blog/website for relevant news, scores/results, and photos throughout the weekend; as well as perching myself rink-side for between 30 & 60 minutes per session to photograph the sporting action (with 13 sessions & about 48 games - if I remember correctly - over 3 days)!
Two-and-a-bit weeks ago I returned to work at Kinross Curling Rink (after a long summer away) in order to help get the ice constructed and ready for a new curling season, which started yesterday.
It was a busy but highly interesting process - and to enlighten curious curlers (plus anyone else that may be interested) I have photographed the many different stages of construction...
For the past 3 Sunday's I've been doing match photography for Scottish Women's Football (SWF) to help promote the sport. It was an interesting experience, and culminated with me getting media accreditation from the Scottish Football Assocation (SFA) to photograph the Scotland Vs Belgium women's international friendly match at Falkirk Stadium, which was an exciting new experience for me.
Jane Ross (blue no.13) plays the ball to a teammate while hounded by opponents.
Despite growing steadily for many years, the status of women's football in Scotland remains rather low-key, but following the success of the FIFA Women's World Cup a couple of months ago, SWF has been looking to capitalise on a growing global interest in the sport: So when I read that they were looking for a helping hand from some photographers I was keen to get involved.
I've avidly watched major women's football tournaments (ie: World Cup, Olympics, European championships, etc) for several years now - having first been impressed by the skill and flowing gameplay of the 2007 Women's World Cup in China, which (if I remember correctly) was extensively covered by BBC3 - and this years tournament, despite restricted coverage, continued to impress.
Timelapse experiment.
Although I was not too familiar with the game in Scotland, I was curious enough to spend time at some matches and do photography for the SWF website.
The game in Scotland is certainly far from as developed/commercial as the men's version (at this time), but I have found the few matches that I have so far experienced to be full of promise for the future; and considering the current state of our men's game (following last week's early exit from European competition by our top 3 men's clubs), I think the women's game is in a prime position to boom in popularity over the next few years.
The mainstream Scottish media focuses almost entirely on the men's game, and often spouts despairing headlines about the poor quality of our leagues, so for some positivity Scottish football fans may want to start looking towards the women's side of the game...
Glasgow City FC is the leading women's football club in Scotland, and despite being a part-time club, are into the last 32 (knockout stages) of the Women's Champions League - having progressed from the group stages undefeated against several professional European clubs!
They now face Valur (from Iceland) over 2 legs in September, and if they progress will equal the furthest any Scottish women's club has previously reached.
And while the men's national team have a tense battle against Spain, Czech Republic, Lithuania, and Liechtenstein, to qualify for the 2012 European championships (for the first time since 1996); the women's national team is currently riding high, having recently won their warm-up matches against Switzerland & Belgium as they prepare for the 2013 Women's European Championship qualifiers against France, Israel, Wales, and Ireland.
Teammates congratulate Julie Fleeting after opening the scoring within 3 minutes.
A trio of influential Scottish women, including the supreme Julie Fleeting, play for Arsenal Ladies, which at the weekend won the inaugural FA Women's Super League title, and with the core of our national team playing together with Glasgow City, the Scottish women have surely got to be strong contenders to qualify for Euro 2013.
In hard financial times when hefty attendance costs and dull quality of play repels fans from men's football in Scotland, women's football makes perfect sense: Attendance is cheap (if not free), matches are very competitive, unlike their highly-paid male counterparts the female players are reluctant to dive or feign injury; and most importantly at this moment in time, the women's game in Scotland is both growing in status and becoming evermore successful.
Last weekend was the annual Stirling Summer Skins Curling competition at The Peak sports centre. It is a light-hearted event that attracts curlers from around the world, and I was there to film some of the fun.
My video, below, contains lots of colourful highlights from Day 1 (the Friday), in which every team played two games. You can expect to see plenty of crazy Loudmouth trousers, folk dressed like they're in the Caribbean (despite the rink temperature being rather cold), lots of fancy dress, and an appearance from Batman, Robin, Catwoman, and The Joker!
Days 2 & 3 of the competition were played on a knock-out basis, with the Final being contested on Sunday afternoon. I went back to the rink on Sunday to film the Final, which was a closely contested game, played with a bit more seriousness than the Friday - but as you'll see from Bob Cowan's photos, it wasn't completely serious!
I filmed most of the Final, but I am yet to edit a highlight video of the game: One reason being because it'll take a lot more time, and secondly because it won't be as colourful/fun as the Day 1 video. However if there is a demand for the Final video then I could be tempted to go ahead with it...
Here is a large painting commission that I completed a couple weeks ago.
It is an acrylic on card portrayal of Chatelherault near Hamilton (Scotland); and measures roughly 80 x 40cms - making it by far the largest painting I've done in several years.
Of all my recent tennis caricatures, this Novak Djokovic caricature was the third (of five) to be drawn but is the last to be coloured.
Second seed Novak Djokovic met Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in this afternoon's first semi-final match: Despite defeating the mighty Roger Federer in his previous match, Tsonga was today knocked out in 4 sets, so Djokovic progresses to Sunday's Final. Djokovic would play the winner of this afternoon's second semi-final match between defending champion Rafa Nadal and fourth seed Andy Murray: British hopes were raised when Murray won a hotly-contested opening set, however Nadal dominated the following three sets to secure his place in yet another grand slam final.
I'm making slow progress on the largest painting I've done in about 5 years. It's an acrylic on card commission, and measures roughly 80cms x 40cms (32" x 16").
The photo below is a wee teaser, showcasing the painting and my re-arranged work space (which is temporarily set-up to accommodate work on this painting).
Apart from my animation work, this music video is probably the biggest personal project I've taken on to date. The entire video consists solely of band practice footage, with no parallel storyline (as you see in the majority of music videos) therefore I had to spend a huge amount of time synching/editing all my recorded footage in order to create the video you see below.
Because the editing process for this project was unlike anything I've done before, I've decided to write more about it for anyone that may be interested...
As you may have read in my previous post about the music video, I had spent about an hour filming the band while they performed the song multiple times (so that I could film different takes and camera angles), and ended up with over 90 pieces of video footage.
After downloading all the footage from both cameras onto my laptop I went through a lengthy process of watching every piece of footage so that I could delete the rubbish/irrelevant pieces while renaming/labeling any pieces that I wanted to keep for possible inclusion in the final music video.
Some of the 90+ pieces of footage renamed for easy identification.
Once all the pieces of footage were suitably renamed and easy to identify, I opened my editing software (Sony Vegas Movie Studio) and set about synchronizing all the different bits of video footage with the band's pre-recorded music track. Having not really made a music video like this before (with each band member filmed separately and getting edited together later) I was unsure of where - or how - to start editing all the footage. The first few minutes I was almost aimlessly jumbling bits of footage around the timeline hoping I could quickly figure out how best to proceed. Soon realising that this would be a very time-consuming project, I came to the conclusion that there were no easy shortcuts, and that the best way to proceed was by taking a simple, albeit long, route...
My instinctive approach was to just work my way along the timeline, adding and editing all the relevant pieces of footage as I went. However my aimless jumbling of footage around the timeline (as mentioned earlier) made me realise that it would be far easier to work on footage of just one instrument at a time, rather than working on all four instruments simultaneously. As a result I only ever needed to work with a small percentage of my overall pieces of footage (which is easy to keep track of) and the number of video layers I was working on was also of a lower quantity.
I don't suppose that the order in which I edited each instrument matters much to the final product, but at the time it seemed as though the drums would be the best place to start. The drums had the largest quantity and quality of video footage to choose from, and therefore seemed like the best instrument with which to find my feet and build upon.
Working with the longest pieces of drum footage first, I added these to the timeline on various layers and synched each of them with the dubbed version of the song. Once all the long pieces were added and synched to the song, I began editing them all down into one video layer by snipping and deleting all but the worst pieces of overlapping footage. This allowed me space on the timeline to reduce the number of video layers I needed to use, and meant I could start adding new smaller pieces of drum footage without worrying about mixing up the existing edit.
Example of longer video pieces at the bottom, and new short pieces above.
The idea of building up all this footage for just one instrument at a time was that I would end up with a full music video of nothing but that instrument: Afterwards I would do the same for the other three instruments, and then all I had to do for the final edit was layer up all four videos and cut away small sections from each to create the conventional editing you see in the finished video. (It was perhaps simpler to do than it is to read or understand!)
After 14 hours of editing the drum track I began work on the vocals because they feature for only a small part of the music video, and I felt that it was important to know how much of the vocal footage was useable before committing to the project any further. (There wouldn't be much point editing the rest of the footage if I'd have to re-shoot much of it).
For the vocals I started a new project in my editing software, so that I could go back and edit the previous drum track if I needed to do so later. But rather than work on a blank timeline I imported a copy of the finished drum track so that I had some sort of reference material that didn't make it feel like I was editing a near-empty video (cos remember that the vocals feature for less than half the song). Once complete I rendered out the footage as a new video file of vocals only, meaning that I now had full-length video files for both the drums and the vocals.
By a late stage in the second day of the project I had started a new project for the bass guitar footage. This consisted of only two full-length pieces of footage and a few smaller pieces, so compared to the drums was a breeze to work through. I saved the bass edit as another full length video file, and was now roughly three quarters of the way through the full project.
On day three I was finally working on footage of the last instrument - guitar. Again footage consisted of only two full-length pieces and a few smaller pieces, yet the guitar solo and many varied camera angles made editing a bit trickier than the bass guitar footage.
After three days of synching and editing (equating to roughly 30 working hours), I had complete video files for each of the four instruments: So for the final time I opened yet another new project, and began the final stage of editing.
At this stage I had each instrument video edited in what I regarded as the best way possible, and all four complete video files were now layered up in the timeline ready to cut for the final music video.
This is definitely where the simple yet long working method that I had selected at the beginning of the project began to pay dividends: All I had to do now was use the beat and rhythm of the song to edit the video in small sections, and then choose the best instrument to display for each section while deleting the other videos from it. (The image below demonstrates what I was doing - notice how all the video layers, bar the bottom one, are cut into small sections with few overlaps between them all)...
Screenshot of all four instrument videos layered and cut for the final edit.
Once all the layers were cut into small sections and I was happy with how the full video now played, I considered the project complete, and rendered out the finished music video ready for publication. Overall I'm pleased with how the project turned out. It was certainly more work than I anticipated, but it was good practice, and I learnt a few more things about the editing software that I bought late last year.
The positives to editing with this method are that: + It's relatively easy to keep everything under control; + It allows for a mix of synching and editing, rather than a huge amount of tedious synching prior to any fun editing.
The negatives of this method are that: - You tend to spend loads of time editing nice little sequences for one instrument, forgetting that it's likely to get hidden by the editing of other instruments later on, which ends up being a waste of time. - Although I say it's easy to keep everything under control, I'd imagine that if you accidently delete a few video or editing files before completing the project and can't retrieve them, then you'd be in big trouble.
A couple weeks ago I filmed and edited live-action footage for my latest music video: Fear Is On Your Side by Kill The Commodore, a melodic metal band from Perth.
We filmed loads of footage on two Sony Handycam video cameras during little over an hour in the small practice room of Clearwater Studios, Perth.
The compact size of the darkly-lit room with a large bright window presented some challenges during the filming process, however we managed to overcome these to a good extent.
I always knew it would be difficult to imitate the professional sheen of the music videos that we were using as inspiration (Slipknot's Before I Forget and The Eyes Of A Traitor's Come To My Senses), but considering our equipment and location I'm pretty happy with how the finished video looks.
As part of my current tennis caricature series, here's Wimbledon home favourite Andy Murray.
The colouring here, in much the same way as the Nadal caricature previously, is very different from my 'normal' caricature painting style - which is all part of my ongoing experimentation.
Nadal was painted in quite a colourful style, vaguely inspired by the illustrations of Edwin Georgi.
Murray on the other hand, I tried to paint in a monotone style patriotically inspired by the blue and white colours of the Scottish saltire. Unfortunately this caricature has simply ended-up looking dull, as if a plain blue tone has been placed over a greyscale image... Perhaps I will re-paint it later with a bolder blue and white style that uses less midtones to see how that looks - that would certainly be more like my original intentions.
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.
