Slaine

As part of what will hopefully become a regular segment on the podcast we asked for our listeners/followers to suggest via facebook an illustration for Jay and me to do.  We narrowed it down to a choice between Slaine, Wolverine or Marv from Sin City.  The unanimous decision was for us to do a picture of Slaine the character from 2000AD.

I had a particularly tough time with this, I intended to try painting my version and the combination of inexperience and trepidation about using paint had a negative impact on the initial drawing.  I fell back into a lot of old bad habits and was not terribly happy with the result, the pose was stiff and the anatomy overworked in some areas while unclear in others.  I did attempt to paint it but have decided not to post this as it was not great.  In an effort to salvage the whole project I did a new illustration, just a sketch this time.

The main thing I have taken from this is that I still have a heck of a lot to learn, particularly when it comes to painting.  I will continue to work towards learning to paint, while this project was overambitious for my current skill level I am trying to use it as motivation to work harder. hopefully I will get my painting to a level that I would be happy to share with everyone.

I have posted below the initial sketch before I painted over it and the redraw that I did afterwards.

1st attempt

2nd attempt

I know which one I prefer.  This was both frustrating and rewarding and I know I am looking forward to the next one of these. We will be posting the next shortlist for things for us to draw on the facebook page soon.

Gord & Jay Talk Art Episode 5: Anatomy

We're back with Episode 5 of the Gord & Jay Talk Art Podcast.
In this episode, we get our hands grubby in the details of learning human anatomy.

Here are some things we mention:

• Jay mentions the mighty Alphonse Mucha, in particular his Figures Decoratives (must be said in a french accent for full effect).
• Gord mentions the big two anatomy instructors: George B Bridgman and Burne Hogarth. Basically, if you're going to learn anatomy, these two instructors are the masters.
• Jay mentions Andrew Loomis. He's not known for his anatomical knowledge, but he will always be the 'go to' artist for learning to draw faces.
• Jay talks about the workshop that he and Patrick Gavin attended hosted by the fantastic artist, Eva Widermann.

You can right-click here to download the episode.

Or you can go to our iTunes channel (be kind and subscribe, rate and comment!).

The music we used for the background in the intro is provided by Setuniman. There's some little interludes by northern87 and indigosierra, and the outro is by Setuniman too. (because that person does some great stuff!)