For my flyer I thought it would be fun to illustrate a tense stand-off moment from each movie. Hopefully you can pity the guy who brought a knife to a gunfight. I wanted to keep the illustration pretty loose to help suggest motion and action, and then juxtapose this with the blocks of strong colour for the type. Font fans, the headline font is Kvant, with the rest set in Garage Gothic. I felt that the former was perfect for the angled, striking composition I had in mind.

Tickets can be bought here.

But hey, I’m back now so let’s get on with things. So, first up for 2012, It was very nice of Planet Pulp to invite me to their online gallery. Even though in general I’m planning to do less ‘fan art’ this year, their February theme was Indy, so basically I just ‘had’ to create something for it.

With their monthly themes, Planet Pulp feels like it could be a good way to satiate my pop culture desires, so keep an eye out for more contributions in the future.

Rather than illustrating the man himself, I was just thinking that as a kid, when I first saw Temple of Doom, while Indy was cool and everything, to be honest I just wanted to be Short Round. He could drive (with just the help of a brick), do kung-fu, and got to go along for the whole adventure with the man in the hat. So below you’ll find my portrait of him.

I really brought out the darker tones on this one so it almost feels a bit Sumi-e in the shadows on his jacket and neck. Essentially this piece was colourised in Photoshop following the Painter sketch, enabling me to just concentrate on the tones, and go for a fairly desaturated palette, balancing the green/blue tints in the background with the pale oranges and browns of the portrait.

At the moment I just can’t get enough of duplicating some of my Painter calligraphy strokes in Photoshop, setting them on a lower layer, displacing them slightly and tinting them with a solid colour. I just find that it enhances the overall energy and unites the colour harmony. I guess I’ve been doing this for quite some time now and it’s become a bit of a signature thing, but it’s interesting because these kind of things are never planned – they just evolve. Anyway, here’s a bit more of a close-up.

Oh, and thanks to Alex Amelines for supplying me with a 3D curtain ring I could manipulate in Photoshop at short notice!

I must have been around 12 when I first saw it on television in the UK (with one famous scene in particular very obviously dubbed!), and although it was many years before I knew anything much about John Hughes in that pre-DVD era, the film definitely left a strong impression on me. In fact when Hughes passed away in 2009 I had actually planned to create a P,T and A poster as a tribute, but I simply ran out of time, so getting commissioned suddenly brought back all the ideas I’d been running through.

Steve Martin and John Candy are both in top form as the irascible advertising executive Neal Page and the irrepresible shower-curtain-ring salesman Del Griffith respectively. As with all great comedies, it’s the strength of the characters which draws you in, and Candy in particular brings an unexpectedly touching performance to bear on this simple story of getting from A to B with great difficulty.

Anyway, enough chit-chat from me. On this post I’ll be collating work in progress on the piece.

Updated November 24th – Neal Page is a tad frustrated, but at least he’s now been painted:

Updated November 23rd – I guess it won’t come as a huge surprise to learn that a grumpy Neal Page (Steve Martin) will also feature. Here’s the rough sketch:

Updated November 21st – Here’s Del in digital paint (I had planned to keep the hat flaps, er, flapping, but decided that it wasn’t going to work best with the overall composition I have planned):

First up, here’s my initial pencil sketch of Del Griffith:

Approximately 2.5 hours of illustration time (using Painter and Photoshop) compressed into 2.5 minutes. This portrait of Nathan Drake from the Uncharted series is a personal piece from a set of videogame inspired works that I’ve been working on.

The music used is ‘Drake’s Theme 3.0′ and ‘The Settlement’ by Greg Edmonson from the official game soundtrack.

For a while now I’ve been waiting for official clearance on the project, and I’m really pleased to be able to share the work with you now. I strived to instil as much energy into the artwork as possible, playing with the positive and negative space, contrasting angular cuts with flowing brush-strokes, and creating a sense of movement and dynamism throughout the composition. I’m not exactly sure where the piece will be used just yet, but my understanding is that it will feature on merchandise which will be used as Elite prizes. Needless to say, I’ll share information about this when I know more. In the meantime, enjoy!

And in other exciting housekeeping news, eagle-eyed pedants may notice that I now have Facebook and Twitter share buttons next to the titles of my blog and portfolio pages. Thumbs up if you like it!