The wildebeest series. Multimedia, digital and traditional, onto sketchbook, 9×12″. I was driven to use the wildebeest as my muse by the strength of this animal, but also the bewildering and almost relentless regularity of its seasonal migrations. If there was something that said ‘herd mentality’, it was the wildebeest – but just as much, its characteristic shapes give it a gaunt look, as though it, unlike other creatures, would be most willing to fight against it.
In the summer of my grade 8, I made sure that if anyone was going to be stuffed in a locker, they would at least get stuffed inside a pretty box. Ergo, fantasy locker murals! Both took altogether 80 to 90 hours to complete painting. Inexpensive acrylic wall paints don’t give the brightest shades and layered blending at times, but it is fairly durable. The fantastical tunnel in ruins was especially fun to paint, though the chromatic dragon was much quicker to complete.
Dragon was sourced from Julie Bell’s fantastic fantasy paintings, which I’m ever an adroit fan of. I’m afraid I don’t remember the artist for the tunnel painting. Didn’t get paid for this because I was in grade 8, and the school puts so little in creative arts besides.
Dreams of small, sublime (sometimes frightful) things. First illustration in ink; Second in graphite pencils.
Here is a series of figurative drawings in varying styles and mediums.
First two were done with conte and pastels respectively, from live model, in 2006.
This one below was completed less than two weeks ago. It was drawn on capriciously beautiful textile recycled paper, which made the whole process very unforgiving, because any erasing would cause damage to the fibres. It also prevented me from layering as much as I tend to like to do, enabling me to only “mix” two colours much of the time. Thus, I chose bright tones that are close to the primary colours to generate flow and pop in the illustration.
The last two are hand drawings, using graphite and ink respectively.
