That Thing About The Storks Is Total Rubbish

There have been quite a few lovely, whimsical and serene images of hot air balloons being floating gently being created by a variety of artists.

Though an innate fear of heights, or rather, plummeting to earth from a great height will probably stop me ever actually going up in one, they have always mystified me, and i have always thought they are a wonderful form of transport for exploration.

In allowing nature to dictate direction I can't help but see it as very exposed and vulnerable, and strangely organic.

The tale about the storks delivering babies to the door has always seemed  interesting, if not mildly annoying in it's bullshit factor; why a bird would carry a baby to a human never made any sense to me as a child.

This idea has been around for a while in my head; large organic balloons netted with sinew and blood vessels, gently carrying, nurturing and sustaining the life of their precious cargo across an unkind landscape.

It became a play on the stork story that, while equally misleading to children on "where babies come from", is closer to the truth, and would be infinitely more mesmerizing.

It was also an opportunity to try something stylistically new (for me) as i couldn't imagine capturing the look i wanted painting the way i normally work, and being invited to submit a work into a show being organised by Fire was the catalyst to attempt it. Thanks go out to Chris Oatley who has offered up a selection of his own photoshop brushes on his website, and it is probably the main reason this work didn't end up being a frustrating churn to complete, if it was actually completed at all.

The show is the official opening of The Copper House Gallery (off Synge Street, Dublin 8), on Tuesday 27th Sptember 2011 at 7.30pm.

Same Thing Every Year

Another pencil in sketchbook piece.

Not sure what the thing is on his head is - possibly a leech, or a hat with teeth.

Terrible scan though. Will have to try it again...

Submitted for Illustration Friday topic: Perennial.

It Is Not A Toy.

Taken as far as i can in the small sketchbook i have, the next step is possibly trying to colour it up some how.Kinda like it like this though....

Submitted for Illustration Friday topic: Toy.

Beneath

Submitted for Illustration Friday topic "Beneath".

I had worked through a few idea for this one, intending to go with the main gist that something would be partly submerged, one thing on the top, and beneath it turns out to be something else, eg, an island that is actually the shell of a turtle, sort of thing....

I had a sketch of an 'island' and the water line, then moved down and it ended up looking a bit like a body floating backside up. Then it got tied up in ropes. The i added a weight to it. Then going back to the 'island', i drew a palm tree, coconuts and a monkey.... it all got a bit stupid  - looked like the tree was sticking outta the date -  so i pulled back to just the body completely submerged.

Decided to try a new 'medium' of Painter 11 that i haven't used, the Airbrush. I quite like it , but it'll take some getting used to! Might need to look at getting one of these if i want to keep using it....

Acrobat

Submission for this weeks Illustration Friday topic "Acrobat".

Chance to try Painters Tinting brushes - i quite like them!

Blacker Pastures

I've been playing with image ideas to go with the name of this blog. The name Blacker Pastures came from the idea that where greener pastures might be better than where you are, blacker pastures might be worse some how.

I found after 4 or 5 years living in The Emerald Isle there was a few different aspects that made me think that perhaps i'd moved to blacker pastures, which is in a sense why i started this blog - to pull my self out of a rut, and find something positive to focus on, and drawing and illustration has generally been has always been something that i enjoyed.

So in a somewhat literal translation of the phrase this image was produced.

A field or pasture - plenty of those in Ireland.

Lashing rain - plenty of that in Ireland, and on of the things that had begun to kill me.

Black ink and simple, chosen to make it kinda blocky and 'logo'.

Originally i was thinking of a making the animal a sheep, as it's what i think of when i think of pastures (possibly cows too), but i've had a few run ins with goats driving in the country, and i like the silhouette more. Besides, they're horny...

Submitted for Illustration Friday topic "Proverb", after finding the proverb "When rain fall, sheep and goat have to mix" (Trinidad and Tobago).

I stopped at the goat....

Still Life With Frock

I once hear a man lovingly refer to his annoying wife as pear shaped woman. It was at my wedding i think, and no, it wasn't me....

Alternate titles for this might have been:

"A pear, even in satin, is still a pear"

"Yes, but it looks good on"

"Satin 1. Pear 0."

There's something about this shape, and it's need to be draped in satin, that has a similar allure as a flame might for a moth.

Why? I have no idea.

A study of reflective cloth, and fruit skin. That being said, i didn't actually dress up a pear in a delightful lavender number, rather the scars on my brain, from witnessing outfits such as this, on nights out in Limerick, provided all the reference i needed.

Submitted for Illustration Friday topic Artificial -

"Sick of the artificial women in the media? Behold: the real shape of things to come."

Used in local rag's New Year's Resolution article.

Breakfast: Ten Week Old Perspective

For Illustration Friday topic 'Breakfast'.

I have a 10 week old, and this weeks topic triggered the thought that this must be what she's looking at fairly regularly.....

In Event Of Emergency

Ever run out of toilet paper?

Every so often, through practical experimentation, over the past 20 years, this technique has proved it's self to be relatively reliable, if not quite time consuming. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of steps 5 and 6, and urge any who need to adopt this technique when the time comes not to rush. Take all the time available to you. Trust me.

Just felt that some knowledge needs to be shared, in the interests of surviving various otherwise potentially disastrous scenarios.

Submitted for Illustration Friday topic Satelite - When a fresh roll might as well be in space....

Ripple (Watch That Flubber Fly)

This is another Illustration Friday piece - a quick Oil Pastel sketch of what i initially thought doing of after hearing the topic - "Ripple", but before i read about the oil spill fund raiser thing....

A fat man slapping his flab. I have done this myself.

This was just for the laff - the proper one is here....

Ripple (Death By Oil Slick)

New one for Illustration Friday topic: Ripple.

The word was chosen to coincide with a fund raiser to help with the Deepwater Horizon Catastrophe (Oil Spill), other entries can be found here.

My first response to the word Ripple was, as usual, puerile and mildly perverse, but then I figured it could give me a chance to do something that I hadn't done before, which was using the Water Colour brushes.

It was also nice, as they requested a particular size, which gave an added limitation to the piece.

What began as doodling away with the pencils, ended with some subtle colour washes and fiddling around, and I'm kinda happy with the way it turned out. Makes me feel all arty....

Extol The Virtue

First illustration for Illustration Friday, this weeks topic was Slither. It's open to interpretation, but i found myself seeing the word and it's connotations in a slightly different way....

Update: I might just add here - i'm living in Ireland, where a report into the shocking child abuse, sexual and otherwise, of male and female children alike, was released recently.

Girl And Bear

Saw some pencil work recently that reminded me of how wonderful pencil work can be. I particularly like pencil for soft toys and children so, in an attempt to get away from using Painter's Artist Oils brushes and have ago at the Pencil brushes, I went with doing a bit of both.

But as i have been doing a lot of fairly straight ahead nice work, I couldn't help adding a little bit of blood to this one...

Update: Submitted this for Illustration Friday topic: Trail.