F-Block Portrait

After quite a hectic month I've managed to find some time to make in-roads on a private commission. Waaaaay back at the Sunday Times Watercolour Competition private view I met a very nice gentlemen named Wilson Cotton. A few days after our first meeting he got in touch with an offer for me to paint a portrait of his son Nick. Turns out Nick is a young DJ who has recently performed on the BBC introducing stage at Glastonbury Festival under the name F-Block and he is making quite a stir on the dance circuit. Click here for his video.

Below you can see my initial sketches based on photographs from his BBC set.

Selected Thumbnail

Detailed Rough

Perhaps you can see in Nick's shirt various bits of text. These are the song titles from his set list on the night.

Tomorrow I'll post the final pencil and the first stages of colour. Until then try and survive the night Muhahahahahahaaaaaaaaa!!!!!

Happy Halloween!

Reviews Of The Bath Prize

Here are a couple of links for you. Both are reviews of the Bath Art Prize, one by Katherine Tyyrell on Making A Mark (click here), the other by Linda Kasmaty on Swindon Open Studios 2011 blog (click here). Linda's other half popped into the shop I work in part-time yesterday and I told him what had been happening. In almost no time Linda was on the phone asking me permission to do a write up.

Tonight the Bath Art Prize Winners Were Announced...

And I was the shocked to discover I received first prize!! Below is the winning piece. You can view my progress by visiting my previous post (click here).

May I say thank you to the organizers of the Bath Prize at Art Ventures and all the judges who had a tough time whittling the entries down. I've just got back from the private view which is a must for anybody who likes art and lives in the South West of England. For more details click here.

The Elephant & Castle

I have recently completed an unusual commission - artwork for a musical theatre poster. So far in my short career this type of thing hasn't been requested of me so I went into this all guns blazing which possibly explains why I became too excited and stretched an enormous piece of paper to work on. A week into the final painting and I was flagging. Apart from jumping between another project and this one, it was taking an age to get the rich dark tones I was after. When you have a deadline looming and watercolour is your choice of medium this can sometimes be a problem so any normal person would work smaller but not me, I like to make things difficult for myself it seems.

So after grumbling and losing sleep I decided to scan the unfinished painting and drop it into Photoshop for a bit of computer wizardry. I quickly had multiple layers of rich dark colours zapping from my wacom tablet. Something that would have taken days in watercolour was digitally knocked up in an afternoon thus saving me time and helping me reach the slightly (by then) extended deadline.

What have I learned? Plan painting timescales based on the size AND content of the projected artwork. It makes sense that large scale works which contain loose details or light pastel colours are generally less time consuming than those with rivers of dark hues and mountains of details. Also another lesson to keep in mind is Photoshop shop can cover up a multitude of sins, great for illustration, not so great for original art exhibitions.

Rant over, I'm still best friends with my watercolours but now more aware of my limitations when using them.

Regarding the musical, hopefully it will be on stage next year in London. When I get hold of dates I will post them up for all to see!

Children's Book Rally Update

Illustration Rally have posted my entry (above) into their Children's Book Rally Competition. You can view quite a few of the entries and mine in more detail by visiting Illustration Rally.

The finished artwork is watercolour wash on Bristol board then pencil crayon on top of that to flesh out the colours. I then scanned the originals into Photoshop and built up the shadows and highlights using a brush on multiply layers. When I completed the images I placed the speech bubbles using tracing paper and then inked in the text with a fine-liner pen. These were also scanned in, cleaned up in Photoshop and then added to the artwork as a separate layer.

The story is of my own creation based on a boy called Walt and a whale who visits Walt's town to try and get his bones back. You can see the bones in the top image.

Agnes Sloan Memorial Prizewinner!

 
This was a very nice surprise, I can tell you!!

I have won the opportunity to illustrate a new children's book titled 'Momo And The Totobrats' with Birkbeck Hauxwell Publishing. At the moment I'm waiting for the manuscript to come through and to start liaising with the author which is frustrating because I can't wait to get started.

Now, so far I have managed to avoid posting a photo of myself on the blog (you can see why) but a photo was requested for publicity so I thought I might as well add it here. Perhaps I should add a health warning - 'Beware! Viewers may unexpectedly turn to stone. Chris Dunn Illustration will not be held accountable for masonry side effects, gouging of eyes etc etc...'

Children's Book Rally

Short synopsis of 'Give Me My Bones Back' by Chris Dunn:

Walt is a small boy who lives in Shacottiby-on-Sea with his mum, his father died in a fishing accident involving a Blue Whale. The story begins with the appearance of a Blue Whale in Shawcottiby harbour who demands to have two bones returned to him. His bones are part of a large monument erected on a cliff top overlooking the town and are very dear to the towns people so they refuse to return them. A stand-off between the whale and the town ensues which last weeks. Walt is the only person who sympathises with the whale and decides to help him. He dodges the local bullies to loosen the bones from their brackets but has to stop to avoid being caught. He fails in his attempt to free the bones but that night there is a storm and lightning strikes the bones popping them out of their brackets and down into the sea. Walt doesn't find out until the morning that the bones and the whale have left Shawcottiby.

The above is a synopsis of a Children's book I have written. I have also finished two double page spreads which are the first four pages of the story. Why have I done this you ask? Because the blog Illustration Rally are holding a competition which ends this Friday that offers the chance to meet with some Children's book heavyweights. All you have to do is enter two DPSs of artwork and a synopsis of the story if it is an original manuscript.

I'm not going to release any of the finished artwork but for your viewing pleasure here are some quick sketches which I used to transfer onto Bristol board when working on the final pieces.

Shawcottiby is an anagram of Whitby Coast, somewhere I have regularly visited since I was young enough to be pushed about in a pram. Whitby's fantastic cobbled alleys and steep cliffs are a perfect setting for any kind of story, no wonder Bram Stoker first thought of Dracula there.

Sunday Times Watercolour Competition 2011 Mini Review

This time last week I visited the private view for the Sunday Times Watercolour Competition. For me this was a lot of firsts. For a start it was my first private view, the first exhibition in London I have taken part in, my first entry in the competition and the first time I have seen a contemporary exhibition dedicated solely to watercolour.

The standard was very high, I still can't believe I was part of it especially when I saw the exhibition catalogue front cover. However walking around the room I quickly realised there was a distinct lack of figurative work. Maybe a large amount of portraits and such like didn't make it past the initial selecting stage or perhaps figures in watercolour paintings are not fashionable or don't sell? Who knows and who cares!? Next year I'm going for something with lots of figures - not too sure exactly what but there will be humans none the less.

Regarding the prizewinners, John Hunt won 1st prize (a pleasant landscape done in the purist watercolour tradition but not the best in show), Jonathan Pitts received 2nd prize (an arresting atmospheric painting of the river Avon, a worthy winner), Dennis Roxby Bott won the cityscape prize (a cracking name and an equally cracking watercolour similar in style to David Roberts, solid draftsmanship with a superb limited palette) and Philip Ciolina won the vintage classic cover art prize (not a lot of painting went into the piece but it suits the poetry book it will feature on). To view the winners and a much better write up click here.

A few other artists that stood in my opinion were Paul Birkbeck with his The Amorous Newt, David Forster's A High Wind Blew Over The Land, And The Colours Flew (Edinburgh) and Janet Kenyon's Manhattan. I should have taken photos but I'm afraid I was more interested in the free wine!

In other news I'm working on a couple of things which have to stay hidden for the time being, however I will post some of the loose sketches associated with these projects.

'It's Raining, It's Pouring...

I finally completed my RWA entry over the weekend. The final artwork is roughly the size of A4 (29 x 21cm), maybe not the biggest but very detailed. I decided early on to include the rhyme 'It's raining, it's pouring,' in the painting. Below you can see details of where I hid the lyrics.

You might also have noticed that the painting seems very speckled. This was not an effect I wanted so I had to lay over some gouache especially on the old man's face to smooth the colours. I have a few theories as to why the paper speckled so much. Normally this only happens when I'm working very wet layer upon layer but in this case it could have been dust on the paper or more likely the grain was damaged. The piece of watercolour paper was actually an off-cut that had been sliding around in the paper roll packaging for a few months. So note to self be wary of cars, motorbikes, rabid dogs and old bits of watercolour paper.

Failed Sleuth

Here's a quick post for you! A complete break from the norm and I didn't get the job in the end probably because I haven't even begun to hone this style yet but I thought people might like to see it. The image below was part of a prospective commission that offered the job of illustrating a story in a Pulp Detective magazine. Here you can see one of the main characters sat in his office with some of his old boxing memorabilia from his past fighting career.

The artwork is comprised of a watercolour wash, black ink and then pencil crayon to lift some of the colours. I was reasonably pleased with the end result and I'm sure to expand on this style, for one thing I can have some finished art in a day rather than a week, which is a plus!