Some self-portraits

For lack of a better subject, I've been creating some self-portraits recently.

April 2013. Pen on paper.

April 2013. Digital painting.

December 2012. Digital painting.

There's a load of other projects that I'll be able to share soon, but not quite yet I'm afraid. Stay tuned!

What is... April

April's calendar image is of Chatelherault near Hamilton, Scotland.

It was a very large acrylic-on-card commission, completed in July 2011.

Not my best painting (particularly the vivid green foreground), but I hadn't painted with acrylics for a long time and found the process quite tricky to be honest.

I tried to take a little inspiration from Edward Hopper, who has for the longest time been one of my favourite painters.

I should really do more landscape painting, but finding inspiration seems to have been the hard part for the past few years! Got any ideas? If so, I'd love to hear them.

What is... March

A bit later than planned, but here at last is my calendar image for March.

It is a 2009 painting from my 12fp(s) Film-inspired Painting Series, portraying Grace Kelly & Jimmy Stewart in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window [1954].

That series of paintings began during the summer of 2009 - just after I had graduated with a BA (Hons) Animation degree from Edinburgh College of Art - and portrays some of the films that I found influential during my student days. The series was originally going to consist of only 12 paintings, but by the end of the year, as a result of an exhibition at the Filmhouse cinema (Edinburgh) throughout December 2009 & January 2010, it had grown to over 20 paintings.
This was one of the later paintings, and as it missed out on a place in my previous wall calendar (exclusively of the film painting series), I've included it this time around.

Randolph's Leap: "News"

My latest music video for Randolph's Leap was officially launched by Fence Records on Wednesday morning.



It is for their new single, News, which is available to download from here.

The 85-second animated video is based upon the concept of synesthesia, and inspired by the experimental film work of Len Lye, Oskar Fischinger, & Norman McLaren, amongst others (including Walt Disney's Fantasia).
Created over the past 6 weeks, it is all animated by hand with a range of materials including: Pencils, watercolours, ink, charcoal, the odd digital painting, paper, card, newspaper,and even denim!
Each hand-made frame of animation was produced at a size of either 50mms wide (mainly just for coloured backgrounds), or a tiny 18mms to help give the movements a lively organic energy.

I'll try posting some behind-the-scenes stuff about the making-of later this month.