A Psychochronography in Europe

Note: This post has almost nothing to do with Europe.  Bonus points if you can spot why it's called that.

Here we are again, with another Philip Sandifer cover*.  I can't claim to have done the artwork on this one (for a change), rather I did the design, but the actual art was by Mr. William Blake, a gentleman who's been dead for just shy of 200 years.  Pretty sure the copyright on it has expired then, (fortunately, because I didn't pay for it).

This cover is for Neoreaction A Basilisk: Essays On and Around the Alt Right, which as you may have surmised, is not a book about Doctor Who.  This one is a standalone, and presumably features some strong words and takedowns of the Alt-Right.  I don't know for sure, as I haven't read it yet, but I think it's a safe bet.  If you're interested in checking it out, you can find links to various ways to purchase it on his launch post, over here.

*If you're new to the blog, or the cover series, you can read the entries on the previous ones by clicking here.

Sol Right

No, it's not your imagination, I've returned to make a post.  It's like Christmas in December!  No excuses, and if I'm honest posts are generally going to be few and far apart for a while longer yet (though I'm hoping to do another before the New Year - we'll see how that goes).  That said, I haven't been doing much in the way of art either, so it's not like I have much to post.  Eventually I'll get to explaining why, but it's going to be a while yet before I can.

OK, so this post is tangential to the Philip Sandifer cover posts, because Phil introduced me to Alex, of the group Seeming.  I have to admit I'd never previously heard of them, but after looking them up they're really good.  Not entirely to my taste, if I'm honest, but I enjoyed what I was listening to well enough, which is impressive for me as I'm a right stick in the mud when it comes to music.

So I did an Album cover!  Well, that's not true; I did a small part of an album cover that was laid out by somebody else - but there is an album, called SOL, and my work is on the cover (huzzah!).  It's a good album too - I'll put how you can buy ot at the bottom of this post.

Fassinating

Hey, didn't I say I was going to post more, right before I vanished for 4 months?  Yeah, sorry about that.  Won't Might happen again.  I'm not going to go into why it's taken me so long to write a new post, mostly because I'm not entirely sure myself.  I have a fair bit of catching up to do though!

So, what's happened since I've been away?  Well, I presented at GDC, got a new position at work (I'm an Associate Art Director now), which also means I completed the project I was working on, and did an album cover (sort of - I think I was working on it when I wrote the last post).  More on some of that next time.

This post focusses on something that I did before all that though, even before the last post.  Last August in fact.  I thought I had posted about it at the time, but I guess I hadn't since there isn't one.

Social Profiling № 11: German Shepherd

It's not just blogging that's been the victim of my tardiness over the past year (and by tardy I mean being too busy doing other things), it's also been the art itself.  Yes, I did a reasonable amount of stuff last year, but one thing that suffered was the occasional social media pieces I do.  that is, every two years I put out a call for people to put their name in a random draw, and those that get picked (4 of them) get pieces done by me, for free, within a set of parameters.  Last year the theme was 'fan', and people could say what they were a fan of, and then I'd paint it (for more on those, click facebook profiles at the bottom of this post).

This did not go as expected, with people being big fans of their kids, their dad, their potted plant, and so on.  Still fair's fair, so I threw them all in a hat and drew them anyway.  A year later and I have only finished the first of the four I drew (though I have just started on the second): A German Shepherd.

Speeding into '17

Happy New Year!  Hopefully.  And with the New Year comes the inevitable New Year resolutions.  One of mine?  Blog more, as I've been terrible at it over the last 12 months (you may have noticed).  'Blog more' is a bit vague though, so perhaps 'Blog at least once a month' works better.  Other ones are 'draw more' and 'draw/paint worse' (I'll explain that one in a future post, but it boils down to me doing more quick experimentation to improve, without always worrying about the end result as much, so it's more enjoyable).

So, here I am blogging, with actual art, for the first time since July.  Ugh, that's terrible!  Some of the upcoming posts might be about things I did a year or more ago, because I didn't mention them at the time, and in some cases I'd almost entirely forgotten about them until I stumbled across them on Facebook (or whatever).  Since the blog is as much for my memory as for your (possible) pleasure, I should probably write a post covering them.  This is not that post - this is a speedpaint post.

Whistle Stop Tour (Part 2)

Two rather long months since my last post!  No, I didn't forget to post, I just got busy.  Yes, I know I always say I'm busy, but apparently I didn't know what busy actually was before, because things got a lot busier.

But I'm here now, and not busy (partly due to being sick, and thus not at work; and partly due to my Son's friends being over, ruling out having some quiet recovery time on the couch).  Things do seem to have calmed down generally, but there are still some busy weekends ahead, and of course I usually post on weekends.

Anyway, on with this post, which is taking me all the way back to July and my trip to the UK.  I go on trips to the UK semi regularly of course, but this time I promised some friends I'd take pictures so they can see what my hometown looks like.

I didn't actually get to go into the city center (except once, when I was drunk), so there's a lot of 'suburban' stuff to follow.

Whistle Stop Tour (Part 1)

This will be a rather unusual post, in that there will be photographs, and no paintings.  It's possible there will eventually be paintings based on some of the photographs, but if that happens it will be unrelated to this post.
It's also a rather late post, because, as has been pretty standard this last year, I've been busy, or distracted, and sometimes both at once.
Finally, it's going to be a boring post, at least to the vast majority of you.  This is the blog equivalent of looking at Auntie Ethel's holiday snaps, except instead of photos of the Taj Mahal, she took pictures of a tree in the Mughal Garden.  I didn't go anywhere near India though, and the photos that follow are from Mexico.  If you're still daring enough to see what follows, read on.

Faster than a Speeding Bullet

It's all about the speed right now isn't it?  That should be sort of funny, since very few of them are terribly speedy of late.  Still, here I am with another update.  Next post I'll (probably) cover where I've been for the past two months, and for a change there will be photographs, rather than paintings.  Yes, I'll be doing a dull as hell travelogue... sort of.

For now though I'm going to try and catch up on all my speedpaints at once (there aren't that many compared to last years pace), with minimal blathering about them (more because I've forgotten in all the excitement than just laziness, but some laziness too).

A Hot Mess of Speed

The last month has been pretty bad for art.  My art that is, not art in general, which trundles on just the same with or without me.  So far this month I've done a mere two speedpaints; one of which was bad, and the other took 4 hours (so not technically a speedpaint I suppose).  Last month though, last month was pretty good.  Six speedpaints (though two were more sketches than paints), two of which were pretty good in my opinion.  Let's go have a look.

Speeding to Catch Up

I've decided to stop giving reasons as to why posts are few and far between lately, and just post when I can.  Eventually things should calm down enough that I can make them more frequently.  Until then, I have some catching up to do.

To simplify things a bit I'll just post the images of the last three months of speedpaints, and only comment when there's something of particular note.  For the most part the methods used are very similar to previous ones I've posted about. There's quite a few of them (10), so this might be a long one.