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.

Back to the 2015 Recap Post

I still have two speedpaint posts coming up soon, one for November, and one for December, but today I'm just going for something fairly quick and easy, one of those Review of the Year things that all the cool sites are doing these days, plus some thoughts on my goals for this year.

I don't recall ever doing one of these before (I have done year end speedpaint reviews, but those paying attention will know those usually come around in May, for reasons), so here's the format - I'll give a quick overview of what I've done, and then pick my 4 favourite pieces to show again and cover why I like them, and one piece I hate.  These are ones I personally like (or dislike) - not the most popular, and my preferences for my own work might seem a bit strange.  All good?  OK, let's begin.

A Psychochronography in Chrome

Well, this is a little awkward.  Usually I write these posts and time them to coincide with the launch of the book they're about.  In this case though the good Doctor Sandifer released it on Boxing Day (That's December 26th for those of you who don't know), which is also the day after Christmas, so I forgot.  Sorry.

Anyway, we're here now, so lets get on with it.  As ever you can catch up on the previous Psychochronography posts by clicking here and working your way back to the beginning.  You don't need to do that though; the short story is that I do occasional book covers for Philip Sandifer, who writes critical analysis of (usually pretty geeky) things.  This is one of those.  The explanation for using the word Psychochronography I'll let you dig out for yourself.

A Psychochronography in Blue (Part 6)

I think, by now, you probably know the drill.  On the chance that you're a newcomer to these here shores you can read the previous entries in this series by clicking here. You don't need to in order to follow along, but the option is there if you need it.

So, new cover for a new Phil Sandifer joint, this one being the 6th of the main series of TARDIS Eruditorum, 'The Unofficial Critical History of Doctor Who' (because Phil loaths a short subtitle).  To see Phil's post on the subject, click here.

By all rights, this should have been my personal favorite of the series to do, as it lands smack dab in the middle of an era I hold dear.  Oddly though that very fact made it less satisfying, as nothing I could do would ever live up to the memories of the ridiculous gaudy graphic excesses of the mid-80's (the prime example of the theme being the 6th Doctor's much maligned coat).  I did my best though, in line with Phil's preferences, and quite like the result.

Even More Board: The Hunters

As predicted, nothing got done last week. We had friends over for the weekend, and a BBQ on Saturday with lots of friends over. A lot of fun, but exhausting (so many kids!). This weekend was a little more relaxed, so new post, even if I should have written it yesterday (I actually did write it yesterday, but Blogger had an issue so I couldn't post). Today's subjects are actually from a while ago. Fortunately my wife is building a TARDIS, so that allows us to head back to the end of April for a recap*. Told you I was a bit behind. So behind in fact that this post will cover three things at once, though they're all related. This post ties in with the previous one regarding "The Most Dangerous Game", which you can recap on by clicking the title of it. That I just wrote. Back there.

All up to date? Good, let's go look at the "new" stuff.

Just a Little Board With Pulp

No, that's not a typo in the title, I mean board, not bored.  I work, as you may or may not recall, at a videogame development company.  What you may not be aware of is that a shocking number of game developers are also lovers and designers of boardgames.  Not only that, but the city in which I live has an annual board game design competition, which is obviously popular with the staff.

One of my colleagues mentioned before Christmas that he was planning on entering a game, and would I be interested in doing a cover for the box?  Sure, sounded fun. And then I forgot all about it because Santa coming has that effect on me (or perhaps it's the copious alcohol).

Obviously I did end up painting the cover (or this would be a very short post), and you can see it, and the rest of this tale after the break below (unless you clicked through already, in which case it's right there, probably on screen already,  Look!  There!  Right there!).

Social Profiling № 10: Headphone Fun

Well, it has been a while hasn't it? This should come as no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention this year, so instead of prattling on about it I'll just get on with the post.

This is the last of this years Facebook Profile pictures, and given how long it's taken me to get through them this year I don't know if I'll be doing another set.  Certainly not next year, although I might still paint the occasional similar picture just for fun.  If you've no idea what I'm warbling about click here and work from the bottom up - all will be explained.

This latest one was one of the smoothest of the lot.  As a result there aren't all that many images in the following post, which is a shame in a way, but great for me as I've less to write.  Oh, and there's a short tale behind this one too.

Social Profiling № 9: Smile!

And here, finally, is the post I was planning to put up last week.  All the prep work on the images was done for that post, so this should go fairly quickly.

Before I begin though, I'm going to digress and mention (for my own future reference, as much as your general interest), that in the last week one of our cats has gone missing, and we have a large hole in the house boarded up with plywood from where the new sliding door was supposed to go in, but couldn't because of rot in a support beam.  The frustrating thing about the later being that the former could have come home, but would have no way of letting us know because his usual entrance is now covered with boards.  Bugger.

Oh, and a stray cat showed up at one point (possibly to relay a message from the missing one, which was useless since we don't speak cat), stayed over night but ran away when it was time to call animal control.  One of those weeks.

Anyway, enough about me, and on to the wonder of fake paint!

Social Profiling № 8: All in the Eyes

Well, this was embarrassing.  I'd started prepping for today's Social Profiling post, when I realised I hadn't written the last one! So now this is that and I'll write the new one later.  How did I miss one? Well, I painted it way back at the end of February, and as you may recall March was, well, a little full, so I honestly thought I'd already written the post, when in fact I'd not even prepped the images for it.   It's been that sort of year.

So, anyway, I'm getting to it now, just over 4 months later.  Oh, and I didn't post last week because it was a choice of painting the latest Social Profiling picture (not this one, remember?  I just mentioned that, try and keep up), or writing a post, and painting won.  Then I hurt my back, so that painting took longer than planned (in terms of days from start to finish, not actual hours spent).  OK, all up to speed now?  Good, lets look at this picture then.

A Four-Colour Psychochronography

I 'complain' that I'm busy a lot.  This is mostly because I am often busy.  I'm not always busy with art, or with my day job (although of course these two things combined account for the vast majority of my time breathing), but other things as well, like relaxing in front of the TV, trawling Pinterest for references, keeping on top of my messages (in various places), video games, reading, eating, and sleeping.  You know, life? It tends to add up. Fairly low on that list of priorities, but still a priority, is writing blog posts.

Phil Sandifer on the other hand, has blog posts as one of his main priorities.  Blogging, and subsequently making books from those posts (with many additions and edits of course), is his day job, so he blogs a lot.

Previously I've done book covers for his collections based on his still ongoing TARDIS Eruditorum series of blog posts, and also on the book he wrote about Wonder Woman (A Golden Thread), which didn't appear on his blog.  A series of books and a blog covering every episode and a huge amount of tangential material of the 50 year history of Doctor Who (with some of those episodes being covered in 12,000+ word essays) is not enough for Dr. Sandifer though.

Yes, he actually is a Doctor, in English, and possibly in awesome.  A doctorate of awesome would be a useful thing to have, come to think of it, I wonder where you'd get one.

With his blog rapidly approaching the present time of the show he's cast around for something else to cover when he catches up, and found it in the form of the passive feud between writers (and self proclaimed magicians) Alan Moore and Grant Morrison.  Now I can't pick sides there as I'm an enormous fan of both their works (though not enormous enough to have read everything by them), and Phil doesn't pick sides either.  His work is presented as the history of a war distant enough that there are no stakes in the winners.  Not dry and dispassionately though, but with a wink and some dry wit and humour.  The 'war' is really just a framing device for a vast and sprawling canvas; the actual chapters covering topics as diverse as the influence of J.G. Ballard, Robert R Crumb, and Edward Blake, to the narrative structures of aristotelian literature (and so on), as well as the works, and influence upon them by 'the war', of other writers, such as Neil Gaiman.

It sounds insane.  It is insane.  The good Doctor is a self proclaimed Mad Man With a Blog after all.

Writing blogs doesn't make money though - as a Day Job it's pretty low income stuff, unless you have a huge and sprawling readership and lots of ads.  Phil's blog has minimal ads, and a moderate following among a certain type of intellectual nerd (as well as less intellectual nerds like me, who just like his writing style), so he's running a Kickstarter to fund it.  And since (to paraphrase C3PO) he's worked with me before, he asked me to knock him up a nice banner for the jam-jar shaking.

Just a Couple

Hello, good evening, and welcome, to another enthralling post.  Yeah, I had trouble keeping a straight face over that too.  Anyway, despite the title there is only one picture for your perusal today, but there are two people in it - plenty of step by step stuff though, if you're into that sort of thing.

I still haven't compiled all the sketches from October to December to show, and now of course I have January's to do, and then February's in a couple of weeks.  I'll get to it, and probably not all in one post either, but this weekend I'm working on another painting (digital), and then there's another facebook portrait to do, and I want to get a traditional piece done and work on my perspective skills and speedpaints too, so as you can imagine, things are a little cramped for time right now.  Also, TV show season, not helping...

Anyway, on with today's performance.

After the Radio Times

I thought I'd already written this post. That's a weird way to start a post you have clearly yet to write, but I'm guessing it was a weird dream that led me to believe that it was the case. That or I'm a time traveler, which is a nice segway because this is another Doctor Who image. I thought it would be a fun and interesting thing to paint, thought it might be a little challenging, but it wasn't - it was very little fun and incredibly difficult to do. But we'll get there soon enough, or perhaps we already did...

A Psychochronography in Blue (Part 2)

Okay, before you go any further you need to click THIS LINK in order to get some background on this post, because I'm lazy and it saves me typing up a "Previously on Back to the Drawing Board..."

All caught up?  Good, then I'll continue.

Philip emailed me at the beginning of August asking if I'd be interested in doing his second volume of TARDIS Eruditorum since his original artist had seemingly vanished.  If I said yes I would get to do any other books in the series (on the assumption I don't also vanish presumably), including a reissue of the first volume when they finally release the newly discovered Galaxy Four footage so he can write about it (don't stress if this means nothing to you, but it's a big deal in terms of Doctor Who history).

Well, I said yes didn't I?  I mean obviously I did or there would be no post, but really thee was no way I would turn it down.  So here we are about 18 months 6 weeks later and it's finally gone live on Amazon and Phil is about to announce it, so here it is...

Bouncing Baby Boyn

Life has been keeping me a bit busy of late. Not with huge and taxing things like "Move House" or "Build Moon Rocket", but with small things that add up, like "Play with Son" (He needs it more than usual right now since his best friend just moved away), "Ensure kittens aren't eating power cables" (We just got two kittens - I think I mentioned this last post) and "Paint a baby" (which this post is about, eventually).

Usually I manage to cram in some video game playing, some TV watching, some sketching and some reading into an average evening. Maybe not all of those things in one evening, but averaged across the week; with some speedpainting on the weekends. Right now this is not the case. I've played for 6 hours since the middle of July, I've managed an hour of TV a night (tops), I've spent a fortnight reading the same book (I usually finish them in 3 days) and this month so far I've done a bare two pages of sketching and not done a speedpaint for two weeks.

Those little things eat up a colossal amount of time I guess. Anyway, Onto the baby!

Children of the Apocalypse

Despite the title of this post it should be noted that the two boys in the picture that follow are actually lovely lads.  The reason for the title is something that's not even apparent in the images, yet it's been the planned title ever since I got the commission for it back in April.

So why was it always the planned title?  Because the original brief required the two boys to be standing in front of a nuclear explosion with an innocent look on their face.  The idea was that they unintentionally bring chaos and destruction with them wherever they go.  They're boys, this is standard operating procedure :)

Okay, let's get to the chase and we can review afterwards.

Grave Yard Haunt

There is a saying, allegedly of Chinese origin, that goes "May you live in interesting times." It's thought to be a curse rather than a blessing. I've had an interesting month.
Nobody has died (yet), or ended up in hospital (well, once, briefly), or lost their job (That I know personally), or have gotten a divorce (thus far) but a great many things have occurred to lower my priority on updating the blog. I can't go into all of them, so I won't go into any of them, but this is the reason I've not updated the blog so far this month, and why I've barely sketched at all recently.
That said, I have painted a second commission and I'm working on a third - This entry covers the second. It's not a particularly mature subject, but you should be warned that zombies walk below.

One Little Pony

No, I failed utterly to make a post about the Blog's birthday. I would say I'm rubbish (but you already know that), but instead I'll point to the slightly hectic couple of weeks I've had with dental work and surprise birthday parties and Mother's Day (which we did bugger all for, as usual), and my Son's best friends planned move to Canada (and his sister's utter terror of my very presence)and my wife's car breaking down, and her entrance exam things for College in the Autumn, and so on and so on... What do you mean that sounds like an average week in your household? You need to lay off the caffeine dearies.

Anyway, so I got a bit swamped, but I also got a commission. Have I mentioned this before? No, I have not, if I mentioned anything it was an entirely different commission that I've not started yet (I need to schedule a photo session).

Now I think anyone who commissions me has got to be a bit bonkers, but lucky for me I know a lot of people who are ever so slightly off their rockers. After the last commission I sort of decided that I wouldn't do any more for a while (because it was hard), and so of course I've taken on another two (because I am thick, or at least a soft touch). So, I present to you the first commission I've ever done for which I will get paid (actual job work not withstanding).