Wednesday, November 30, 2011

17 Hills.

Long time, no see! Sorry about that. Between working and having some general art block, it's been a little bit since I've posted. I'll try to keep that from happening in the future, but I can't guarantee anything.

Anyway, for my latest entry, I'd like to present to you a drawing based on the song "17 Hills", which is on Thomas Dolby's new album 'A Map of the Floating City'. It's not currently on youtube, but if you have Spotify, you can listen to it for free. Which I hightly recommend. AMotFC is a fantastic album. I've scarcely listened to anything else since I got it.


Forgive the less than stellar quality of this photograph, which I had to take with my digital camera. I tried scanning the drawing, but since it's so big, it took three scans, and I was having a lot of trouble getting the three different pieces to join together properly. I decided taking a quick photo of it would do for now. When I have more time to spend I might try scanning it again.

I heard from the official forum that Thomas is going to be touring the US in the spring of 2012, and I am going to try very, very hard to get to one of those shows. Depending on the size of the venue I get to (and you can bet your arse I'll be at one of the shows), I want to try to meet him and possibly get his autograph. Of all the drawings I've done so far that have been inspired by his work, I'm probably the most proud of this one, and I want to bring it with me in the hopes that I can get him to autograph it for me. 



Sunday, November 13, 2011

This is planet earth...

I have for you all a new piece of Duran Duran art. It began as a "failed" sketch in my sketchbook. At the time it wasn't what I was going for so I left it partially finished.

Due to the fact that I still don't have a working car (or a driver's license, for that matter), there were a few instances where I had to be dropped off at work over two hours early, so I had lots of time to kill.
One of those times, I had my sketchbook with me, and while flipping through it looking for sketches to finish I ran across this one and instantly had a Duran Duran brainwave.




Sunday, November 6, 2011

Thoughts on this blog's direction, plus some Duran Duran art.

I still want to illustrate/take a picture for every Thomas Dolby song, but I'm thinking I want to add other music related art to this blog. A staggering percentage of my art is inspired by the different artists that I listen to, and I feel like limiting this blog to Thomas Dolby art would feel a little stifling. Also, my musical obsessions have been running around like headless chickens lately, so I don't think I can really limit myself to one musician's work. Case in point? For the last two days I've listened to nothing but Howard Jones. Several years ago, when I was in college I had a miniature obsession concerning his music. I only own three of his albums now (I only had two back then), but he's one of my favorite artists.

Anyway.

In this post, I want to include some Duran Duran related art that I've made thus far. In subsequent posts, I'll include other music related art I've made. And I'll work on being a little more organized as far as recording which Thomas Dolby songs I've already made art for, and which songs I have yet to interpret. I might also take the liberty of listing every Duran Duran song, and every Howard Jones song, and any other artist I like enough to potentially give a shit about interpreting all their songs through my art.

OKAY, ENOUGH RAMBLING. I'm actually going to post shit now.

This is a drawing I did back in 2009, inspired by a song called "What Happens Tomorrow". I got the idea for this by randomly staring at some ivy that started to grow on one of our windows.
I very rarely use any medium aside from markers, so I'm sure it's refreshing to see something done in colored pencil, without the acid trippy rainbow of colors I normally use. I like this piece a lot, but as with a lot of my older art, I would like to try and make it better. For one I feel like the magenta could have faded better into the green.


Done in 2010, this is also different from my normal faire. It was done completely on the computer, using Paint Shop Pro 8. It was drawn using the pen tool, using the computer mouse, since I'm not fortunate enough to own a tablet. It was a lot more time consuming than it appears. As of right now I'm not seeing a whole lot I would be able to improve. I'd probably choose a little lighter shade of gold for the sun rays, but that's all I can think of.


This is a more recent piece, done earlier this year. In March, Duran Duran performed a a concert that was streamed live on youtube, and I watched it. I had a piece of paper in front of me and was doodling on it throughout the concert. This is one of the ideas I came up with. It was drawn on cardboard.
I would like to try doing this one over again, perhaps on regular sketchbook paper, or even on the computer.


This piece was described by my brother as "legit pop art", and I have to say... It's one of my favorite drawings that I've done, ever. I do wish the dot was a little more perfectly round, but I'm not going to nitpick. By the way, the design inside the dot? I have a tattoo of that symbol. The only difference is that mine doesn't have yellow on the inside. And of course, it's not inside a giant dot, but forget that. XD
I hope some day I get a chance to show this to the band, I like it so much. 

The last drawing I'll post for you today is this one:

This was done with a mixture of pastel crayons, crayola markers, and a couple metallic markers I got on sale at Wal-Mart a couple years ago. I was originally a little torked off because it smeared a little more than I had intended, but now I rather like the end result. I do wish I'd done the mouth a little better, and even though my people are never realistic, I can't seem to escape this pox where the peoples' heads are always too big, but oh well.