birth of venus

after planning on doing a post for

6months i eventually did. here is the birth of venus

avec some sexy modern lingerie. ;)

Modern day Banshee

This is an idea I had for the August Collective thinking. I looked into Irish Myths and was interested in doing a piece on a banshee. So this is a modern day banshee in a bar screaming at her date when he starts to fall asleep.I wonder who is going to pass away that night. I also did an animatic of the short just for fun. I spent most of my time working on the background as I enjoyed doing that it still needs a lot of filler but its ok.
                   

Athena, Goddess of War

So I had a few ideas this month. I decided on Athena, Goddess of War, since the theme is all over the news at the moment. I just wanted to do a strong, unafraid woman engrossed in battle. I thought it was a simple way of depicting real women playing a role in war and being heroes in their own right. It didn't turn out anything like I had envisaged, but its still ok!

Mythology with Modern Day Twist - Lady of the modern day lake

Mythology with a Modern Day Twist- Cuchulainn

Okay so it's another collective thinking blog post and it's another new style im trying out. I tried it with Spidey last month but I couldn't really get my head around it, I think it's starting to click with me now though.  As soon as I started painting over mistakes rather than erasing them it all started to work out. I'll definitely do a few more of these, I really enjoyed it, and it's always great to learn a new style. Lots o fun to do and pretty handy to have professionally.

Here is Cuchulainn. I freakin Love Cuchulainn! I've been drawing him and reading about him since before I can remember. But I've never drawn him like this. Actually before I drew this I would have thought it to be near blasphemy to produce something like this about Cuchulainn. Well here we are, the piece is finished and I actually kinda like it, so it cant be that blasphemous.

My original idea about this was to have a close up on him sitting down with "Gae Bolga" ingraved into his gun.  Gae Bolga was the name of his spear,  it was a weapon that pretty much killed whoever and smashed through whatever got in its way.  I really wanted to involve it in my painting and since I've been looking at a load of Ashley Wood lately I thought what a better way to involve it than as a big honking robot. And with the Ashley Wood influence so to came the Steampunk style.

Hope you like it!Until the next post, laters!

Ben

Maid Marian

This took far too long to pull together but I'm glad I finished it. Nothing terribly profound or clever, I just ran with the basic idea of the '89-'94 kids' show 'Maid Marian & Her Merry Men'. In a nutshell, Robin's a dimwit & Marian's the leader. Gave Marian a bit of a costume update 'cause she's cool, y'know ;P Originally I had the pair of them side-by-side, with Marian looking bemused by Robin but I couldn't get it to work so this happened.

..and yes, I did re-use the sketch I did at the first 'Collective Gathering' haha.

Saturn

The children of Saturn were devoured by their father, who sought to preserve his power and the universal status quo. Zeus escaped, and eventually returned to avenge his brothers and sisters and overthrow the old order. Sound familiar?

BIT late, I know...completely missed the boat on the end of month thing for July but still wanted to post it! Battle of the Planets did it for me! :)

This Months Theme - Mythology with a Modern Day Twist

Alright I think its my turn to pick. Pick a favourite story/character in mythology and give it a modern setting or any modern addition in any form or way. Enjoy!

Childhood Heroes

Spent most of childhood with this guy, taught me a lot things in life.

Collect a lot of gold and jewels, run as fast as you can and smash tvs.

Childhood Heroes - The Movie

Loved the theme for this month and I always knew it was going to be tough to pick my childhood heroes and I immediately thought that a montage was the way to go and since I'm a huge Drew Struzan fan I thought why not do a homage to him too.
The short list included the Six Million Dollar Man, Batman, Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon who made the cut, but others who didn't quite make it but could have included Captain Kirk, Starbuck, and Bo and Luke Duke... Would have been tough getting them all in.
I didn't get as much time on this as I'd like, but that's the way it goes :)
Hope you enjoy!

Childhood Hero

Super Grover!

...and so began a lifetime love for Super Heroes.

Roald Dahl & Quentin Blake

My favourite author as a kid was Roald Dahl. I re-read all his books over and over and over again. The books were made all the more magical by the illustrations of Quentin Blake. They are still both heroes of mine!

Childhood heroes

In a distant time
in a distant room.
The planet New Texas a dream of freedom.
The country of free people so it could be.
But mingled always with an evil.

BraveStarr!

A man of the law came from somewhere
He had the strength like a wolf and a bear
Protector of the weak, he defies every danger
upholding the law Marshall BraveStarr

Bravestarr!

Eyes of the hawk, ears of the wolf

Bravestarr!

Strength of the bear, speed of the Pumas

Bravestarr!

BRAVESTAR!

Childhood hero

Alright so i figured yesterday that my main idea for the this months post is taking me a little longer to crack, so on the odd chance that it takes me a little longer to figure out than the months deadline here's something I knocked out this morning.

I think I was only kid to prefer Leo over Raph, I just thought he was the best. and when i thought about it as I was drawing this, there are some Leo and Spidey character similarities, that maybe the reason why I love both those guys. But if anyone ever aks i'll say its cause Leo had swords! :)

Tried something new with this as well. I like  the ink spatter and roughness of it all  i reckon ill do more of these in the future and also go on to take em a lot further, watch this space.

The other post im working on is obviously Spidey (there's no way I'd be leaving him out), he'll be done in a different style alltogether


"Remember what master splinter thought us" - Leonardo

Childhood Heroes: Jungle Emperor

I think my earliest memory is of being amazed by Kimba the White Lion (1965).
After a horriffic beginning when his mother drowns in a cage on a sinking ship, Kimba manages to swim to shore and return to his fathers kingdom. (I remember crying on many occasions during the series)
In his fight against his evil aunt and rogue lion, Claw; Kimba feels beaten and useless. He finds and hides away with the skinned remains of his father...which rather than causing him more grief inspires him to fight for his friends and his fathers land....wearing his fathers skin...ew.

This was pretty hardcore exciting when I was 5, and I was lucky enough at 24 to be able to visit a museum in his creators honour (Osamu Tezuka) and buy some of the original books and music. I know Osamu would have been delighted to know his story inspired someone as far away as Ireland. Its still an inspirational story to me, and was weird for me to find out the year Tezuka died was the same year I was so enjoying his story about a little white lion.

Uh...anyway....this washed-out picture was inspired by Kimbas speech to his father as he lay with the remains. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0LiFZUIaHs Excuse my bad Japanese.

UNJOY!

Also because I am a jerk here's the ones that didnt make the cut while I made up my mind:

Childhood Heroes: 80s dream team.

 

I guess I probably watched too much tv as a kid, but these were (are) my personal favourites.  I reckon there ain't a problem this team couldn't fix.   Penny gadget with her book containing all knowledge, Rainbow Brite with near godess-level powers of life and death, Papa Smurf with his gnomic wisdom and leadership, Ullysses for diplomatic/seduction missions, and of course Optimus Prime for situations that require sheer blunt force trauma.

Incidentally collective thinkers, I found a resource on DA that you might find useful (or at least fun to look at).  It's a mine of old model sheets and concept art for animated tv series and movies.  Here's the link:

http://art-reference-vault.deviantart.com/

Jon.

how's about we meet up?

Gary & myself have been talking about meeting up and working on some concept art, would anyone here be interested in joining us? How's Tuesday or Friday of next week sound? and then from there we can make it a regular thing.

Here's some Doodles from last night

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Now for my crop o sketches, approximately in order of execution, near as I can recollect:

Joker by Ben. To my mind seems reminiscent of the early, "friendlier" Joker, before he was recast as a sociopathic monster.

Cornerface by Elaine. Nice Kirby-esque vibe off this, I feel.

Broody guy by Gary. If you look closely, you'll see him looming in the background of Elaine's sketch, above.

A sketch that may or may not be based on Elaine. If you think that's bad, you should see the ones I did of Andrew and Gary. On second thoughts, maybe you shouldn't.

Some kind of Troll featuring my "default nose" - something I didn't realise I was guilty of till Ben pointed it out!

This is Peter Parker if he had been bitten by a cricket instead of a spider, by Ben. I particularly like the strap-on abdomen. I imagine its sort of like a batman's utility belt. Who knows what delights lie within!

 Gary here... here a few sketches from the other night. First up is a warm up pic that is as badly composed as can be... drawing off the page with loads of room behind. Rookie error.

 Batman sketch, straight marker work so no hiding the mistakes.

 So there was this weird Gerard Depardieu type dude staring at us all night so I just had to draw him... Not really of course... Just a weird sketch out of the ol' imagination.

Ben gave me this excellent brush pen to try out and this is what I did. Again, ink straight on page means all mistakes are forever...

Ben did this brilliant sketch of Spidey in my pad. Loves it! What can I say the boy's talented.

Elaine did this lovely sketch in my pad too. Now this is how to draw a female! Love it!

Indiana Jones

My childhood hero, Indiana Jones. :D For anyone who has seen my hat, this wouldn't be much of a surprise.

For The Honour Of Greyskull!!!

I know I am very early with this but, as I have quite a bit of free time at the moment, I figured I'd start drawing and see what happened. Took a while but I managed to decide on She-Ra as my childhood hero. I've meant to draw her before (countless times) but I've never been happy with the result. Anyway, simply for the fact that when I was little (and blonde haha) and my Dad would be blow-drying my hair, I'd make him send my hair all over the place a la She-Ra when she transforms, she's my childhood hero :)

Edit: Fixed the title 'cause I'm pedantic like that ;P