Staedel Museum and some photos

Museums are great and Frankfurt is full of them. You can get a yearly pass for 70 euro and you can use that to go to any of the museums (there are 30 of them) for free any time you want. You can also skip queues and get invited to special openings.

Today we visited the Stadel Museum to see a photography exhibition (go to this museum if you can, the photo exhibition was OK but the contemporary painting/sculpture/collage exhibition is mind blowing). It was trying to show the influence of painting on photography (instead of the usual other way round) but only succeeded in this with about 10 of the 60 works there. Also the English description of each photo was entirely inaccurate and confusing. If you go I would recommend not reading any of the descriptions and make your own mind up.

There were a couple of images which were interestingly exploring the relationship of post processing on photography to make it genuine art which led me to think again about the often critiqued validity of using digital manipulation to make art. To take complex photos, explorations in paint and combine them in a kind of montage is entirely valid in my opinion, especially if each of the raw materials has been created by the artist. I hope to explore this in the future with my works.

Seeing as I have visited a photographic exhibition I thought I'd post up some of my camera phone pics. This collection is from my travels around Frankfurt and Emilia Romagna.

I started drawing again. Here's a sketch. I have to finish the lemon. I hope to do more studies until I can paint again. Also look out for some pencil sketches in the future. I want to get back into traditional again soon.

Life - A Never Ending Holiday

This holiday just keeps going! I´ve finished with Cambridge at last and moved on to the freedom of Europe proper. No more of this island mentality. I want the continent! So here I am. It´s all very strange though as I can´t really come to grips with the fact that I am starting work again tomorrow after 6 weeks break.

Even the new apartment is like a hotel room and the local super market is filled with mysteries that only linguistic ignorance can provide. I´m sitting in an internet cafe that smells of tobacco and the incessant sound of overlapping slot machines numbs out the distant sound of thunder and rain.

Tomorrow morning I will join an old friend as we navigate the U Bahn and I take my place in what many in my career would consider the dream company. It´s all like some crazy story, not like real life. I think that part of me has become used to living life as a holiday and for the first time I think that it might actually stick around. For if life isn´t treated as a holiday but as a chore then why live?

Things have gone spiritual in this post and in my heart and in my head. I´ve learnt to accept the fact that I believe in crazy non plausible nonsense and I love it. Embracing your own absurdness is rewarding and gives unshakable confidence. I highly recommend asking yourselves what you believe in. Stop playing the oh so clever atheist game and listen to yourself for just a sec. See if something that you are convinced can´t be true is actually something you still believe. If not then go back to being clever and all knowing. :)

Long live the life! Long live thinking! Long live talking nonsense! Long live believing (or not)! Long live the holiday!

GTA Tribute - 1st pass

More to do but here's the start.

New Portfolio Site - WIP

Hey,

After finishing KDA (more news on that later) I had decided to catch up on updating my CV and getting a portfolio site up and running. I found a good free portfolio provider thanks to Andy Matthews (Lead Character Artist at Frontier). You can have a look at my very work in progress site here:

http://jason-hickey.daportfolio.com/

About the only thing on there that is ready to be looked at is my CV. CVs are hard!

Speedpaint - Fog

New lunch time sketch

Chronicles of Skin

A Hickey twin production form Cobwebgames. Please go here to lend your support. Any bit of cash will help.

Thanks a million, I know you'll do the right thing. :)

Lunch Self portrait on tablet

Piggy Bank rough

Spare time project. Used a photo of my line drawing from a phone so made extra work for myself. Will redo once properly scanned.

Warrior_J - Prep for Chronicles of SKin

Warm up drawing to get started on Chronicles of Skin Logo which I need a warrior sized head for. This is a self portrait but a bit warriorified. Spent about 1 hr and a half on it. I'm very slow at drawing now, I really need mroe practice.
Note I didn't use undo or eraser or layers for this drawing, trying to discipline myself for reral sketching again. At the end it looked a bit wonky so I used liquify to straighten it out so did have to cheat but felt ok about original anyway even if it's a bit messy.

Here are both: (First is warrior)

Tablet messing

I`ve done some messing on my new tablet. Still getting used to art rage. Here`s some pis i doodled. one with fede. :)

Study of a super smooth woman

Pose from a photo. Changed the lighting, skin tone, make-up and hair (style, length and colour) and tweaked features to make a bit more elegant and strong.

Night Sky - Better quality

Night Sky - Acrylic on Board - 1.4 x 0.7 m2 - 55" x 27.5" - For sale

Bowl - 25 minutes from life

College Night

Low res photo of my painting (acrylic on paster board).
For sale if you want it.
Unframed.

A bit more detail and working out drawing issues

Undercoat Vignette woman 2

Undercoat, still some drawing problems to work out but composition is getting there.

Lunch

Cup, scribbles and a pencil

Just warming up again. Trying to stay loose.
From life.

Vignette_01: Biblical Hands

All finished. Moving on to the head next.

Back to the drawing board. I think it's getting there..

Booo hoo. I can't get the composition right! :)

Sometimes you start painting and enjoy it so much that you're not sure when to stop. I think I may have made this one worse. I did learn a bit about placing colour and shapes even if it ended up worse...

Portrait vignette

Here's a work in progress. This is about 15 minutes.

Vignette Study: Sketchy

This one is focusing on mood and abstraction using the unfinished sketch vignette. I am still trying to pull the background into the figure and the figure into the background (tonally) and with my palette. I chose a composition that was a bit desperate but at the same time with some hope. I tried to make it a little biblical in the composition. I actually played around with it at the end to see if I could do better. I will post those next.

Thanks for leaving comments everyone (you know who you are)! I'd appreciate it if the rest of you leave some tips/encouragement now and then :)

Vignette Study: Cut Away

The idea here is to use as much of the background colour in the drawing. Normally it's a mid tone or white but in this case I used black.

TAD POSTER FINAL

Approved and celebrated on TAD. I'm almost famous!

I think I'm getting there with the layout

It reads a bit more professionally now I think. Maybe it's a a bit dull though?

Restarting TAD

Ok I'm about ready to restart TAD again and I'm months behind. Where did I leave off? More or less on that poster which is till causing me headaches. Anyone out there have some advice on typography composition for this?

I am struggling.

Thanks in advance.

Speedpaint - Upside down

Upside Down

I couldn't think of anything! Agh. This is supposed to be an upside down space ship thing fighting in the atmosphere of some planet with other space ships. I know it's hard to read but that's what happens when you can't think of anything. :) Still it was great fun and I was listening to Justice live while doing it. Total of 25 minutes since I came up with an idea.

Odosketch is awesome

A friend showed me this site earlier that lets you draw in a simple way and records your drawing. I like it! :)

Speedpaint - Dance

This was 45 minutes. Everybody dance now. Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom.

Speedpaint - Meditation

30 minutes of painitng. man it's been too long. Subject meditation. What I learnt? Maybe start painting some surfaces in order to learn about surface texture a bit better.

Best film music duel

From a film (Train de Vie) we can't get on DVD with english subtitles. Why???!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bQmT1EM0Eg

Toony portrait

Didn't take long and I'm too tired to finish (couldn't sleep so tried to draw instead)

Vignette Study

Here's a black and white figure study trying to focus on using vignette al Richard Schmid.

Balloon with text (large)

More update:

Balloon 1st pass

Another update. Having trouble composing the text and picking a palette for it. Probably I will just get a font tomorrow night and start laying it out more professionally.

Poster colour and brief vignette

Here's the latest colour work and a brief vignette study for TAD colour and composition:

Values of my poster as I add more detail

Here's a value study of my flying balloon boats. They will be rusty colourful metals with slightly transparent paddles or sails depending on what i think looks better at that point. :)

Hidden Truths

The news is travelling fast. For anyone who doesn't already know I've been promoted to a senior artist. This goes hand in hand with my recent increase in responsibilities as an art director's assistant for parts of the game we're working on. Anyway enough bragging, let's just say I'm really happy at work at the moment (except for some tech issues we're having this milestone ;)

Anyway here is the final painting I will be sending to Stephen Murphy this weekend as promised.
Tell me what you think. Streling Hudson over on VLP actually followed my composition completely without any coersion. That makes me proud. :)

So here you go. And Stephen, take care of this painting I've grown fond of it.

PS This photo sucks. Better one tomorrow. I'll probably swap it here in this post ;)