drawings and paintings of old men

Recently my computer life was on a ship, furiously dodging pirates to get to New Zealand where I was waiting, beer in hand. One of the benefits of having no computers around is generally getting out more. That and drawing old men. 
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England expects.

I drew this bloke after strolling past a pub during the England Vs Algeria football match last friday. to be honest this fella was a mixture of about three hundred horrified English gents watching their team bottle it for old blighty. I was smart and stopped watching after the first half.

grinning poolside bloke

a quick doodle to offset those sad waiting blokes that are contemplating old fashioned volcanism in the post before.

sad waiting blokes

Recently I got stuck in Canada because of the volcano, and I had to fly to NYC then Barcelona, then travel up to London via train. After waiting in endless lines for days to try and get tickets. During that time I saw a lot of pretty unhappy travelers , this is one of them. The middle one looked a bit like my friend Cocky.

SKETCHBOOK

This sketch is just to practice more face on characters as i usually draw on the 3/4.

CHARITY SKETCH / PAINTING

This was a gift to Wayne for his schools charity auction. The mother who brought the portrait option asked for something for her sons birthday. I had it mounted in two frames, one above the other.

Sets : bedroom - sketches, film frames and the Edmonds cookbook.

I used Cinema 4D extensively for all concept work. Virginia's bedroom needed to have a special touch, and her central window feature provided the lighting and mood device I was after. The optimistic sun design I wanted for the this stained glass window in her room features alot in my work - why ? because something similar was on the cover of my mums cookbook when I was a kid.

Sets : Kitchen - sketches, reference, and lighting paintover

The kitchen is one of my favorite sets, probably because I quite like kitchens in real life but also because I had such a terrific time down at the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green, London.  The good people there took me in after hours and opened up the dolls houses so I could cleanly photograph some reference. The miniature look was a style was a style I wanted to push for early on. The really tough schedule made that difficult but I am proud of the quality of sets in the time we had.

Sets : the study - sketches and styleframe.

I used Cinema 4D extensively for all concept work. I prefer to work in 3D space as quickly as possible, so my sketches were then modeled in Bitstate’s london studio by Jay Harwood. I would then take the 3D set to texture, and set dress it, to my liking. I am a pretty hands on guy and really love doing this stuff myself as it establishes the look and feel for the film for everybody in production to see before we put these models into final surfacing. Its also a great way to figure out cameras and lens work early on as you can drop a camera in the scene to visualize your shots accurately to how it should play out via the script. Jay's very quick and clean modeling was vital to my process.
I called this stage script geography as it plotted out the space the characters would move with-in against the script. For example I wanted Virginia to open a door at the back of the room, and almost timidly approach her occupied father, to ask the big question - ‘ papa, is there a santa claus ? ‘

Sets : Churches office - sketches and styleframe.

I am really fond of some of these sketches. Some of these were quite early on - you will see a secretaries desk on the right which we scratched early on - and we changed the windows slightly to make them more elegant. Incidentally you will notice in the film that, like Virginia's room, these windows were strategically placed to give us really dramatic lighting options.

wall artwork

I drew and painted the medically themed poster wall art, in the screen printed style of the day, and painted the framed family portrait also for the fathers study. The grumpy looking suited man I painted for churches office. I felt strongly that this subtle detail would help build upon the period piece we were making, and that detail would at times saturate the frame to be achingly beautiful.
I would have loved the time to paint more of these. As an animator myself sometimes I start to really appreciate the thought of making an image to be looked at singularly, something you can actually hold in your hand rather than look at on a screen.

blood spattered vested man in t-pose

just as the title says - tiny bit of blood on that vest. more to come . . .

new sketch book, so drew one of my favourite things. a zombie. This one has been stabbed in the lungs with a spade. I usually try to treat sketchbooks really sweetly when i first start them, but invariably they get ruined by ugly messy lists and scribbly notes. Actually i am trying to draw more, as for years now, i have not been spending the time sitting down with pad and pencil just for the hell of it.

This sketch I made on another flight back to london from canada of a Victorian lady looking out of a plane window. The intention is to combine the two pictures later and make a scene.

unit del pedro at 30 grand feet

a drawing of myself looking out the window on a flight back from New York city. I was flying back after a meeting in which the job I am currently working on, was not green lit as I had hoped. The job booked several weeks later and its a project I dearly love.