A Psychochronography in Blue (Part 4)

As is suitable for a TARDIS Eruditorum cover post the story begins in the past.  If you want to go right back to the beginning you can check out the previous posts for volumes 1 2 3 (click the numbers) and the tangentially related A Golden Thread before we continue.

But those are not the beginning of the tale of this book cover, except in the way that my parents being born is the beginning of mine.  No, this books gestation began way back in Phil's Blog, but the cover began back in June, when I had the idea for the cover.  Except it wasn't to be this book's cover, because both I and Phil both agreed it would make a better cover for Volume 5, and thus it shall be.  This left me lacking an idea for this book though, so I went to do some roughs, which after a surprisingly small number of adventures would eventually lead to the following.

As you can see, the style of the cover is quite different to the previous ones, and is suitable not only for the single doctor the book focuses on, but should also carry a very suitable vibe from that period of time.  It wasn't always that way though - I knew I wanted Jelly Babies to be the focus in some way, but I really wasn't sure how to get it.  Here are the roughs as I did them, you'll note the last one looks completely different to the others, and I'll get to why in a moment.

So, this is the first time anyone has seen these, including Phil.  I didn't send them to him because A) the rest are awful and B) I sort of knew he'd love the last one anyway.  Sure enough when I sent it to him he basically said "Hell yes that one" and he was amused (as was I) that it was a completely unsuitable cover for the Gothic Horror vibe that settles on Doctor Who during these years (goodness knows what I would have done if he'd hated it).

You'll note the other covers are also not terribly Gothic Horror - but they're not all that mid 70's either - that's why I do roughs; to work toward the feeling and vibe that I want.  Except in this case it was pointless because after the grinning silhouette cover I went and made a cup of tea and  saw the box for the tea bags. This made me think of how crap packaging is these days (Tetley tea, in America, has packaging that looks like women's sanitary products.  I kid you not), which made me think how awesome packaging used to be (design wise, not freshness wise), and then I knew what I had to do.  Something that evoked, but wasn't identical to, Jelly Baby packaging of the 70's.

To get the Jelly Babies for the last one I just traced the 3D one I'd sculpted for the one on it's far left.  Yes, I sculpted a Jelly Baby that looked a bit like Tom Baker.  I named him Jelly Baker.

I don't think I sent Phil the tiny thumbnail though, I think I sent him this one:

Which is basically identical, but I made it a bit larger.  Knowing that if Phil was going to like it I'd have to do the Jelly Babies again, I did them on a separate sheet as vectors - the only downside being that after scaling I had to rasterize them to get the lines (Don't fret if this means nothing - if just means there was an extra step each time I needed a different size baby, but I didn't need to redraw them all over again).  Here's the result of that - not that you need it, you can see the results in almost every image on the page.  Of course if I used Illustrator this would be a moot point, but I don't have Illustrator, so there.

So Phil signed off on it and I got to work on the larger cover.  I wasn't happy with the layout or choice of the fonts though, so I went to find something more suitable, and Phil wanted some changes in the choice of text.  Phil was also concerned that the wear and tear to the paper wouldn't be evident against the white, so I fiddled with the staining of the paper a bit, eventually settling on having it more stained than the 'white' of the design rather than less, as it worked better visually.

The font I settled on for TARDIS needed a little tinkering with to make it work for the text above it, but otherwise it all went quite smoothly.  The back cover was based on a book I have from the time period, although the border to the text and colours are different.  I also decided to keep the back cover mainly blue as I wanted the spine to be blue (as is the intention for the whole series, and always has been) and it looked odd having the spine blue, and then going back to white for the back cover.  This was finished back in early September, with the re-sizing of the spine and the replacement of the temporary rear blurb text being the only work still needing to be done.  Phil got me the final page count and rear text a couple of weeks ago, and that required some re-sizing of the spine elements. I took the opportunity to bulk up the title text there a little too.
All in all it was a very smooth cover, and despite it's simplicity I'm very pleased with it.  And that would usually be it, but this time there are a couple of caveats.

Firstly, this is the first Eruditorum cover available with a matte finish.  It's long been a minor irritation that the covers have to be glossy, as this breaks the aged illusion somewhat.  Not completely (I've fooled at least one person I've shown them to who didn't realised I'd designed them and wanted to know about "the old Doctor Who books on your shelf"), but enough that it's bothered me.  Createspace now allows Matte finishes, and Phil proofed this one with that in mind.  The results are apparently far better (I've yet to see more than  photograph), so any additional prints of the last two books will also be with matte covers - not A Golden Thread though - that one it all about the gloss.

The second caveat is that when Phil did his kickstarter for Volume One: 2nd Edition there was a stretch goal for merchandise.  Vol 1.2 isn't available yet (He was, quite reasonably, waiting to see what the 50th anniversary held before going ahead with it), but we've set up a storefront for when it is.  Up until yesterday it contained a T-shirt and some Mugs for volume 2 (my mug hasn't arrived yet, but my T-shirt looks great), but it made sense to do a mug and shirt for volume 4 to tie in with it's release.

For this I made a few small changes to the design.  Firstly I increased the number of babies on the image.  While I wanted the book cover to be bold and obvious, the associated products can be a little more obscure, and I like the idea of the 'Jelly Baker' being less overt in the image.  If you want an overt version there's both a mug and shirt available with just the Jelly Baker.

I've also put in the "Jelly baby?" question.  This isn't using an existing font, as I wanted it to be more reminiscent of the 70's Bassets Jelly Babies logo.  I found a font that was sort of similar and then modified it heavily to match the classic logo, without it being identical (The Capital B is lower case here for example).  The question mark had to be done from scratch, and I made it subscript to keep the lowercase feeling of the question (Having it higher made it feel more forceful rather than inquisitive for some reason).

Finally I decided to remove the wear, and that might be the case for many of these going forward (just the merch, not the book covers).  Convincingly wearing a book cover is relatively easy, as you have the entire area to work with, but for a Shirt or mug you just have the printed part, which is a small portion of the whole.  Hopefully my graphic skills are good enough that I don't have to rely on the aging for them to look good.

And that really is your lot, except for the links where you can buy all the goodies.

Phil's post on the launch is here (when it goes live in the morning at least)
The book is available here (there are more options in Phil's post too)
Mugs and T-Shirts available here

Slow Cooked Speed

I'll be honest up front.  Three of the speedpaints that follow pretty much stink.  Whether the other three do I leave to you to decide.  One thing is certain though; the relative quality of these things is usually based on the following:

1) Whether it's based on a photograph
2) How long it takes to do
3) Whether I'm using a technique or software I know well

If it's based on a photo, I took a little time over it, and I'm using tools I'm comfortable with, the results will usually at least be acceptable.  Anything else and quality becomes a complete crap shoot.  Worth noting for future reference I think.

Oh, and before we proceed to looking at pictures, you might wish to come back on Monday as well - I can pretty much guarantee another new post then.

Time Taken: 15 Minutes
Software: ArtRage 4

So, given the time spent, the lack of reference and the unusual tool setup* I guess I'm actually OK with this one looking as it does.  There's potential here if nothing else.  Not much else to say - I just opened AR4 and started painting, this was the result.  I hesitate to say 'She was the result' because other than the lipstick and high eyebrows there's something very masculine about 'her'.  Oh, I guess I did have something else to say after all.

*It's the oil tool, which I'm used to in Studio Pro, but it works slightly differently in AR4, and it was set up in an unusual way.

Time Taken: 40 Minutes
Software: ArtRage 4

This one is slightly better, but it also took almost 3 times as long.  Other than the time this had the same constraints as the previous picture - no reference, odd tool setup (I'm still finding my preferences in AR4).  The changes to the Oil tool between ArtRage versions are not huge, but seem to have a profound effect on how they feel to work with.  I'll keep plugging away at it for a while, but I'm still not comfortable enough with them to try anything really finished in AR4.

Time Taken: 75 Minutes
Software: ArtRage Studio Pro

This one on the other hand is disappointing given the three required items were in place.  It took over an hour, using familiar tools, and is based on a photograph.  Here's the step by step:

So yes, it's a nice enough picture, but I think I should be able to do a lot better.  I suspect I'll paint Robin Hood's bay again, or at least somewhere similar.  Nothing else to say here - I just like the picture and painted it.  Move along now.

Time Taken: 15 Minutes
Software: Black Ink

And keep moving along...

Oh, alright I'll say something.  I'd downloaded the trial of Black Ink as it seemed like it might be an interesting new tool to use, and while it certainly had some powerful features I didn't like the interface, and on my machine I found it slow and cumbersome.  This may not be the case on all machines (I need to update my graphics card after all), but it made drawing anything unpleasant.  I decided to try a speedpaint anyway and this is the result.  I might give it another chance before the end of the trial, but we'll see.

The image itself is based on a photograph I'd seen on Pinterest earlier, but is not referenced from it directly; just from my memory of it.  After 15 minutes I could see it wasn't going as I would like and gave up on it.  Simple as that.

Time Taken: 60 Minutes
Software: ArtRage Studio Pro

(Mild spoilers for the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special "Day of the Doctor" follow, if you've not seen it)

Back to the software I'm familiar with,and spending a bit of time over it and referencing  from a photograph (in this case a still captured from a TV broadcast).  I was watching the show and this shot appeared.  The first thing I thought was "Holy crap, that's awesome!" and the second was "I have to paint that!"  I have no means of capturing stills from TV though (I might get around to setting something up for that one day), so I had to nab one someone else had taken a couple of days later.  Here's the step by step:

Firstly I laid down the basics with the Palette Knife tool.  I'm not usually much good with it, and sure enough once I reached the 4th image here I decided to move onto something more familiar (I'll keep using the palette knife in future though - it was very useful for rapidly blocking out the main forms - I think it was only 10 minutes to arrive at that 4th image).  With the oil paint tool I finished off the rest of it.  I'm reasonably pleased with it, especially his left eye (the right one in the picture).  I loved the lighting and Capaldi's expression in the original shot, and I think I mostly managed to capture that here.

Time Taken: 125 Minutes
Software: ArtRage Studio Pro
Based on stock from NicklausseStock

This one ticks all the boxes, with two small things different to mix it up.  It's using software I know, based on a photograph and took a little over two hours to paint.  It might have taken less time, but I didn't choose the best time to paint it and got interrupted a few times (the time here is the time actually spent painting, rather than from the time I started to the time I finished which was more like 6 hours).

I'd wanted to paint this image of her for a while as I liked her expression and hair, but I kept putting it off.  I finally started it as this was the first photo that popped up when I was looking for something to paint.  I was using the oil brush tool in ARSP, which I'm very familiar with, but I was using the oval brush rather than the rectangular one.  These act very differently, and usually I use the rectangle as I find it more precise (the oval is very useful for hair though), so this was an interesting experiment for me.  I also did it on one layer, which is not terribly unusual, although I usually keep the background as it's own layer to make later touchups to it easier.  I'm quite pleased with the result, although it shares some common flaws with my other work (Her head is not turned enough, her body not angled enough, that sort of thing).

OK, that's all I have for now.  Come back Monday.  No, really, that's all, come back then...

Painting Class: Painting Still

Well, I'm sort of amazed how fast the last few months have gone by, and how little artwork I seem to have done in that time.  I was worried at one point that I was slipping back into the mode I entered that eventually led to the creation of this Blog - that of not being fussed to do any art, a state that lasted close to 10 years.

Thankfully though I am doing art - less than I probably should, but vastly more than I was during those 10 years.  The stresses of the last couple of months are wearing off too, so more is likely to be forthcoming.  After this post I have one more planned before the end of the month (possibly 2, but the other will be quite personal and have no art in it, so you likely don't care).  Which brings me back to this post, and why I'm commenting on how time has flown:  It's an art class post.

The last post I wrote on the subject was after my last class waaay back in August.  It doesn't seem that long ago, yet it was almost 3 months.  I started another class about 10 weeks ago and just finished it.  I didn't attend all 10 sessions (I think I missed 3), but I painted a reasonable amount in those sessions I did attend, and at home when I missed one of those 3.  As a result I have 5 new paintings of vastly differing quality. They are all on canvas board, painted in Acrylic, but the sizes vary.  Incidentally, all the photographs but one are from angles other than that at which I was painting as I took them as an after thought rather than during the process.

So this is the one I'm least happy with.  I'm not the worlds fastest painter, so I decided to leave out some of the objects you'll see in the photo for time reasons.  Even so, it took me two sessions (not counting setup and break down, that's about two hours a time), and looks really sloppy to me.  Here's the photo of the scene it's based on, from close to the same angle from which it was painted (I think I was looking down on it more).

So you can see I got the proportions way off the mark, and everything's a bit too bright in the painting. For all that though it's not a complete failure - One thing I didn't mention before is that all of these look better in real life than the photographs really convey, I'm just not very good at photographing them as yet.  So I'm quite pleased with the orange ball (actually an egg end on).  I'd painted the A being far to orange, which made it difficult to get the egg as bright as I would have liked, so I dulled it down at the last minute, to a poor result, but it does mean the egg stands out quite nicely, whereas it would have been lost before.  The cloth isn't bad either, especially compared to some of the later ones.

This second piece took three weeks, and is probably the best of those I did, even though I don't like it all that much.  All the pieces this time around were still life, which is fine, but it would have been nice to mix it up a bit (mind you, nothing was stopping me from doing just that if I'd wanted to work on something else instead, so it's entirely my own fault).  The image of the painting itself is a little washed out, the real colours are a little better.  Here's the photo of the scene.

So I'm not happy with most of the shapes.  The paint brushes are wobbly, the gear is squiff, the flower too blocky on the lower left and so on.  I quite like the can though, which is why I chose this particular scene (we had a choice of two).  At one point the flower pot was a much ruddier brown.  Paula (who runs the class) talked me into trying to make it closer to the actual, brighter, colour and I'm glad she did.  Here's a shot taken after the first session, where you can see the layout pencils and the less saturated brown of the flowerpot.

My mother wants to have this one, I really don't know why.

This one was painted the evening before halloween, hence the blood that was not in the original.  Actually, the photo below is probably the closest to the angle I saw the actual mask from, so you can see I made a bit of a mess of the perspective.  You can see that I've left out the things from the table itself - choosing to focus on the mask.

A better thing to do would be to have made the entire background blue, but I thought it would be a challenge to capture the silvered material.  Did an okay job I guess, and the whole thing took only 2 hours.  It's the one I like the most of the 5, even though it's not very accurate (working from life is a lot harder than working from photos, and I have a hard enough time doing that).

This and the next are quick value studies, and for this one I didn't lay out using pencils to begin with but went straight for the paint (similar to the way I do most of my speedpaints, but with, y'know, paint?).  The downside of this is that the composition is pretty weak, with far too much black space.  I also left out a small tower from on top of the cylindrical box.  Sadly this is the only one for which I don't have a photo of the original scene.  Despite the flaws, I quite like it - I think the pig turned out pretty well. as did the shadows.  The whole thing took only 40 minutes, aided by my not needing to worry about colour I suspect.

And here's the last one.  Another value study, but I wanted to have the tangerine be orange.  I did lay this out in pencil first, but mostly just with simple block forms so I could get on with the painting.  This backfired a little as the weights came out a little weak looking.

The proportions on the A are better than they were in the first picture, but it's still a little stubby.  This was mostly straight lines and circles, which are tricky to do with paint it seems (unlike digital stuff I can't just hold control and click the endpoint for a straight line).  I may need to make myself one of those painters straight-edges out of a bit of dowel and a sponge to help with the problem, although I was moving quick on this one and probably wouldn't have wanted to slow down anyway if I'd had one.  It took about 70 minutes I think.


And that's it for this post.  Hopefully I'll get another post up this week (month), and I'll certainly get one done for next.  You know, looking at those photos again, I wouldn't mind basing some digital work on a couple of them, they might turn out quite well.  Or I could try them again with real paint later, a reasonable gauge of progress perhaps.

A Psychochronography in Red, White and Blue

And here, sooner than planned, a new book cover.  This time though there's a twist - despite the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who being in less than a month, this is not a Doctor Who cover.  In one way it was far simpler than those, and in a couple of others gave me some pause for thought.

While not a Who cover, it is a cover for Dr. Sandifer (or Phil as he's known to his friends (I assume - I've never actually spoken to the good doctor except via i-correspondence (that's email to you (and yes, I did just do, and am still doing, a run on sentence with four sets of nested parentheses - hardcore). It's for his latest exploration into psychochronography, titled A Golden Thread: An Unofficial Critical History of Wonder Woman.

Which subject led to the first pause for thought: Given the legendary litigiousness of the US comics industry, how do you do a cover for a book about Wonder Woman without actually featuring Wonder Woman on it?

Read on oh truthful reader, and discover the answer, and more...

So there's the cover (clickable for enbiggability, as are all the images that follow) - Hopefully it inspires thoughts of an attractive raven haired superwoman, despite lacking any imagery of her (If I have done my job poorly than you may instead be expecting a political thriller set within the walls of the White House - it was a fine line to tread) .  How myself and Phil arrived at this is chronicled as follows.

It all began with an email from Phil saying he didn't need me to do the cover for this one.  This may strike you as odd, given that the cover is directly above, but in fact it wasn't odd at the time - he had an actual honest to goodness publisher interested - and while they might have been interested in Phil's words they were not interested in some part time wannabe cover artist.  This held no surprise for me, so I just got on with some Doctor Who ones that were bound to come in handy eventually.

Phil's publishing deal unfortunately fell through, and he mentioned some aspects of cover design of his now to be self-published book in some unrelated emails; it never went much further than that.  Then, at the worse possible time (see previous post) I receive an email with something along the lines of "I don't think I ever officially offered you the Wonder Woman cover.  Do you want it?"  Well, of course I did, so I got to doing some thumbnails - time was tight this time, the book was basically done, and just needed setting and someone to do the cover.

The top row were the first thumbnails I sent him.  With time being tight I didn't have a lot of time to come up with amazing ideas, so the results were a little limited compared to what I usually send him.  Nevertheless they provoked discussion, which was the important thing.  One and Five were dismissed immediately (I was secretly happy about this - they would have been very difficult to pull off in time), as was cover two as it held the greatest chance of us getting sued (though I think we were both sad about that - there was some real potential there.  Cover three was deemed worthy of further exploration, and Phil liked cover four because the stars evoked "A series of failed utopias" which is apparently a central theme of the book.  The stars are actually representative of the decades in which WW has been around (that's Wonder Woman, not Weight Watchers), but I'll take it, and decided to pursue the idea.

Second and third rows were the next round, all variations on a theme.  Phil immediately picked #3 and #5, the "misfit" stars being to busy on the other variations.  My personal favourite (#8) was rejected for being too bottom heavy - and to be fair I think in retrospect Phil made the right choice, as while it's still my favourite, it needed some curves to help evoke WW's femininity.  I really liked the star 'A' logo though, so decided to try that with the two preferred covers.  I also felt that the Misfit stars should go on the back rather than the front (sorry e-book-buyers, no Misfits for you), and so #5 was going to be a feature of the back cover either way.

The final row is of the last two revisions, each with the same back cover and a very rough idea for the spine.  Phil chose #1 (obviously), and again I think this was the correct choice due to the curves.  I had added a dark gradient to the cover to help Phil's name stand out along with the 'A' logo and a second curve to add a little more depth.  Phil never expressed his thoughts on these alterations - his email simply read "Number One!"

Before I received that email though I needed to ensure I  could do a reasonable looking gold at a much larger scale.  I decided to do it with the large star, since it was going to be present whichever cover was chosen.  I also had a go at adding the gold effect to Phil's name, and neither myself or Phil were happy with this first attempt.  The star was more successful though, but involved far to many layers for me to use the technique on the whole cover (even my recently upgraded PC has some limitations on it's memory).  I needed to come up with a better method that looked just as good (I kept the big star as it was for the rear cover though - no point wasting it).

This was the first pass at the front cover, with the second iteration of the gold on Phil's name (much better), and The first pass at the gold on the two curves.  I say first pass, but it was also the last pass as I was pretty happy with the solution on the first go.  To get a better look at how it's done let's look at the 'A' logo as it progresses.  The one in the above image just has the simple gradient I used for the thumbnails on it.

 So first of all I masked out the various shapes I wanted.  Since I wanted it to look 3D I had to split the shape along the middle, and alternate light and dark for each segment in order to get the sharp changes in shade at the corners.  These foul colours are not used in the final image - they're just to make selecting the various parts easier.

Secondly I took a black and white image of some American flags (taken on July 4th, and heavily manipulated), and distorted it based on the divisions made in the first step.  I then removed the parts of the image that were not needed for the star (They're actually just masked out, so I could still move them around if needed).  Yes, I just used a Photoshop Layer Effect for the red interior, it did the job well enough for what I wanted.

The next step (Bottom Left) was to use yet another layer effect on the star shape and overlay it on the black and white metal.  This one was a Bevel and Emboss.  It definitely looked too "Layer FX" though, which is not a good thing (If you're not a Photoshop user you're probably not aware of the dirty looks this can get you in the right circles).  I needed a way to change that, which turned out to be very simple.

In the last step I've simply added a colour gradient to the gold, and revealed part of the US flags photo over the red star part (I was confident the actual text that was to go here would disguise the rest of the obvious Layer Effects).  A Color Gradient is simply a strip of colour - anything on the left replaces the black in an image, and on the right the white - with anything in between changing the range of greys (or colours, which can be considered the same thing in this case).  The actual gradient used took a while to arrive at - though in the end I just threw the gradient used in the thumbnail images into the Color Gradient, and it worked perfectly, so I could have saved myself some time if I'd started with that.  Anyway, the result looks a lot less like the Layer Effects look, but also doesn't look like real gold (boring), or Comic Book gold (too simplistic), or Airbrushed 80's Logo gold (too cliche), but is instead somewhere between all of these things, which is exactly what I wanted.

This one is just of the full cover as it stood when I dropped the finished 'A' Logo into place.  Note that the spine is very wide (no page count at this point), and I've added WW's nickname to the back.  I just felt it needed something extra there - though it would move for the final cover.  The text on the back is from TARDIS Eruditorum: Volume 2, as a place holder until Phil could write something to go there.  He eventually did so with a remarkable burst of speed.

These were the stars for the back cover.  In the end I didn't go for all 16 from the original cover, but settled on 10.  Primarily this was done to save time since time was tight, but also because I really didn't feel it needed all of them when half of them would be partly or mostly obscured anyway.  I did these and decided to just repeat them.

Under the stars you can see some of the construction of a couple of them.  The 'flower' star was just interlocking circles with the outer parts removed (not as easy as that makes it sound), while the 80's grid square was achieved by creating a checker board pattern, and then warping it slightly before cutting off the excess parts outside of the star shape.  This one being a lot easier than it sounds.

This image here is of the spine when it was half completed.  I realised I wanted the swoop to unify the front back and spine, but since I had't designed the swoop to do that it took more work than I had planned.  Here you can see the swoop, not having had the photo of the flags correctly set up for it has just gone an almost flat yellow, which isn't terribly interesting.  I compensated by using another copy of the flags image, but that still didn't quite work for me, so I ended up hand painting quite a bit of the spine portion, which also made it easier to have the front and side match correctly.

The final image, above, is of the cover as it appears on the book, held betwixt the fair fingers of the author himself.  This was a rare treat, as usually I don't see the final cover until it arrives at my door - but this time Phil had a proof copy done (actually with a very low res image of the cover - it held up rather well).  This allowed me to check if the reds, blues or the gold were wildly off the mark (as they were on TARDIS Eruditorum 2, with the blue being three shades darker then I was expecting).  They don't appear to be off by much in this photo, and so you can now buy a copy of the tome yourself.

All in all this seemed like a big challenge when I first started it, but it turned out to be relatively straight forward and a lot of fun.  It's also made interesting by the fact that I haven't aged it like I do the Who covers - so I didn't have to balance the actual design with the amount of wear and tear and fading and grunge, so I had the training wheels off, so to speak.  They'll be on again for the next cover though.

If you're interested in reading about my previous covers the Psychochronography in blue series started a while ago.  Here's Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.  If you want to learn more about the book (or even buy it) you can head over to Dr. Sandifer's Emporium of Pasley Wonders and Finery.  It's highly recommended.

Also, Ghastly Haloweeeeeeen!

Sketching for July/September '13

With over a month since my last post, you'd think I'd have lots to show.  You would be wrong.  It's not that I've not been active (though I've not produced anywhere near what I should have - almost no speed paints for example), just that much of that I either can't show, or can't show just yet.  Mostly though this month (and the end of the last) has just been a fairly tough slog.  Long time followers will know that October 5th marks an unhappy anniversary for me, and  as such the two weeks around that date are usually a pretty horrible time for me emotionally.   This year though I also had two friends pass away in the time since I last posted.  The latter was very close, and died on Thursday.   I won't post my thoughts on that here - it's best left to other places, but obviously it's affected me deeply.

But on to happier things, at least for this post.  We've had a house guest for a few weeks, and he's likely to be around for a while longer.  While his presence is obviously a minor distraction from the art thing he's also the model guest, and we're very happy to have him. I do also have some things coming up soon - I'm taking a new painting class, and I'll be posting the results before long.  One of the pieces seems to be fairly popular, (though of course, being me I can't see why) and overall there should be three or four paintings by the end of it.  I've also been working on a new book cover for Dr. Sandifer, and that should be hitting the electronic store shelves in the next few weeks - I'll have a post about it ready when it does of course.  There are also another two covers that are essentially done, and just waiting on a final page count.  Those I'll probably blog about in December and January when the books go live.  So yes, things are happening, even if it's not quite in the places I would hope (anatomy practice, sketching, that sort of thing - I've had no mental time for it the past few months, but hopefully that will change soon).  For now though, let's get the sketching up to date...

Two sheets of heads from July through to September.  Varying quality, obviously, although there are a few I'm really pleased with (yes, that's a rarity - mark this date in your diaries).  The profile of the woman (used n the thumbnail of this post) turned out quite nicely, as did the closeup of the eye to her right.  Below the eye is perhaps the best face I've ever drawn while not referring to a photograph - He just looks very natural to me (albeit like Bill Clinton's younger sibling).  On the larger sheet I like the stylization of the chap in the top left, and the expression of the girl below him.  The arm of the girl to their right turned out okay too.  I've also put a little work into drawing some more diverse ethnicities.  Hopefully that's apparent here.

And here are some figure based sketches. I like bits of many of them, but almost none of them as a whole. I still have a long way to go with this stuff evidently.

And there you have it - Not a lot to be going on with, but it won't be over a month until I post again, so there's more to come fairly soon.

Speeding Back to Action

Back again.  I'm not sure I'm going to write detailed reasons for post delays any more, as mostly they just boil down to "Because Life."  Time just tends to get away from me sometimes.  Anyway, I said a few days, and it's been seven, or at least it will be seven if I manage to finish this post on the same day I start it, which was not the case with my latest speedpaint. This is a speedpaint post by the way, if the title didn't give it away.  It starts badly but gets better, so stick with it if you're going to look below.

Ready?  Then I'll begin.

Time Taken: 25 minutes
ArtRage Pro

I told you it would be a poor start.  Yes, this woman looks like she has some sort of terrible drug habit, and no, she's not supposed to look like that.  The sad thing with this is that it actually looked like it was going to be pretty good at one point, as you can see if you look at the stages:

Rushed the finish though, messed it all up.  She's not based on anyone, I was just slapping down paint to see what stuck.  Sadly what stuck was poo; it's really hard to get that out too.

Time Taken: 70 Minutes
Sculptris

No, I didn't paint this.  It's technically a speed sculpt rather than a speed paint, as will be the next two.  70 minutes isn't actually that speedy for a sculpt though; I know guys who can reach this stage in what seems like 10 minutes (It's longer, barely, it just seems like that).  I've not done a lot of head modelling, so this was interesting.  No reference, so it was also a good way to gauge how my head anatomy knowledge was coming.  He turned out looking sort of Egyptian, and for once this was partially intentional; I saw him swinging that way and went with it.

Time Taken: 90 Minutes
Sculptris

Oddly I started this one from scratch, but she looks sort of related to the last one, as though I just altered the mesh.  Not terribly successful, but it could have been a lot worse.

Time Taken: 70 Minutes
Sculptris

I'm a reasonably big Discworld fan, and obviously I have a mental picture of most of the characters.  I've tried drawing Sam Vimes a handful of times and it never turns out like the version in my head, so I tried modelling him this time.  Looks a lot closer to my mental picture.  Not great, but better.

Time Taken: 1 hour
ArtRage

And this one is also dreadful.  She's based on Countess V by Ann-Emerald-Stock, and while there's a similarity I'm not very pleased with the result.

Time Taken: 15 minutes

Less said the better really.  On the plus side, it only took 15 minutes.

Time Taken: 50 Minutes
SketchBook Pro 2011

Amadeus is one of my all time favourite movies (though I don't watch it often).  This is based on a picture of F. Murray Abraham as Salieri in the movie (specifically as he is in the framing story; an old man).  It's not particularly great, but it's the best thing I've done thus far in SketchBook Pro, so I guess that's something.

Time Taken: 45 Minutes
Photoshop CS3

Just a free form sketch of a woman, not much of particular note other than I really messed up the perspective.  Oh, and I did it all with a square brush, and the default color swatch selection, because why not?

Time Taken: ~ two hours
Photoshop CS3

One thing I don't like about painting in Photoshop is that Colour selection is sort of a pain.  In ArtRage and Sketchbook it's very easy to pick your colour, not so in Photoshop.  So after the last one (Where I only used the default colours), I thought Black and White might work well too, and since it was Freddie Mercury's birthday recently I thought he should be the subject.

This probably would have taken a lot less time had I not messed up the initial sketch.  It's the first one above (actually, that's the second attempt - the first was worse still).  It's clearly him, but there's something off about it.  eventually I realised I had drawn his chin and Jaw the wrong size (I guess he had an enormous jaw), and that was throwing off the rest of the picture.  I tried again, keeping much of the nose, cheek, eyes and forehead, and this time it worked out a bit better. Worked with a hard edged circular brush - if I had used a soft edge brush I likely would have spent much more time on it, getting the blending looking better and so on.

And there you have it.

A Collection of Pleasingly Structured Lies (№ 2)

I had meant to do a speedpaint tonight. This would allow me to write a blog post about it tomorrow, which would be good, since my artistic progression is probably the main reason people read my blog (Actually, that's not true - I get more views from people who want to know about my book covers, Red Faction or how to trace a picture of Mickey Mouse - but I'll take what I can get).

Anyway, I didn't do the speedpaint. I had read an article on io9 earlier today that inspired me to write some fiction instead. I'll link the article at the end of this post so as not to spoil the story that follows, assuming you actually want to read it.

Despite this having happened a few times recently my writing fiction is not generally a common occurrence, so it might be months or years before I'm inspired to write any more. Either way, you are free to ignore my random writings, and I assure you I will get a speedpaint done, and an art based post up in the next few days.

I wrote this pretty rapidly over a couple of hours, and it's now gone two in the morning, so I hope you'll forgive a few grammatical and spelling errors. If it transpires that anyone other than my wife actually bothers reading it I'll clean it up a bit (she's a good proofreader - well, she's good at most things, so that's no surprise).

OK, I'll cut to the chase and get on with it.

Die Zukunft (The Future)

The young man headed for the door to the heavy pounding, wondering what could be so important at this time of the night.  He hoped the thumping was not enough to rouse others in the dormitory; he was unpopular enough as it was. Tying his robe he opened the door, and was confronted by a familiar looking older man. He looked much, but not exactly, like his father.  A lost uncle perhaps? Possibly a cousin? He felt certain he knew the man from somewhere at least. The young man took in the elder's clothes, and found them to be unusual, certainly not suitable for this time of night at this time of year.  Perhaps this was why he appeared sick?

"Do I know you?" he asked, "Are you all right?"

The older man had sagged against the door frame, his skin a sickly grey pallor.  Sweat stood out on his forehead and he gasped as though he had exerted himself recently.

"Oh, you know me," the older man gasped, "Better than you think.  I am not all right, but I think sitting may help, if you would be so kind?"

The young man took his arm and led him to the seat in his small room.  That done, he seated himself on the narrow bed and awaited an explanation.  He thought he should be angry at this interruption of his sleep, but the man looked so frail he found that he was filled more with concern.  He noted the bag clutched to the strangers chest with some curiosity - it was of an odd material not dissimilar to leather, but with none of the texture that a good leather bag might have on it's surface.

The elder caught his breath and began to speak.

"You will find this difficult to believe," he started, "But I bring evidence to convince you of my words.

"I have travelled here from the future, and I am you."

These words were so alien to the young man that he did not immediately comprehend them.  He knew of the concept of time travel of course, having read Mr. Wells' Die Zeitmaschine. But that was a fiction, a magical tale to be sure, but still a casual nonsense not to be taken seriously.  And this man being himself?  Preposterous!  He had a familial resemblance , yes, but surely this was not the face he saw when he looked in the mirror each morning, even accepting years added to it.  He looked again, trying to see past the pallor, the age and the moustache, and gasped.  Could it be true? They looked far more similar than he had first thought, though in the dim candle light of the room, along with the other factors, it was hard to be sure.

He realised the older man was still speaking - he had tuned out the words in his shock.

"... brought with me a device that might persuade you of the truth in my words, for it is vital that you believe me before I can tell you my purpose for being here."

The older man pulled from his bag a small box, about the size of a thick book.  It was made partly of what appeared to be glass, and another material the youth did not recognise.  It had the appearance of luridly painted, heavily lacquered  wood, but again not with the texture he would expect of such.  Along the side of the box were four silver buttons, and protruding from it was a length of cord, ending in a curve of metal.  At each end of the curve were two disks of a black foam like material.

"This is a music player," the older man stated blandly.  Clearly this was a common device to him. "You place this over your head with these disks upon your ears; they are called headphones.  I will then press this button and you will hear music from the future.  Once you have heard it I will let you examine this device, so that you can see that there is no trickery.  I hope this will be enough to convince you that what I say is true."

The young man took the 'headphones' and hesitated.  This looked like some strange instrument of torture - what if the metal band carried electricity from the box to his ears, electrocuting him?  He was no expert on electricity - he still relied on candles and gas lamps, though the library downstairs had some electric bulbs. His hesitation was momentary though; why would this man come here to electrocute him?  There was no reason, and as insane as his claim sounded it seemed somewhat less insane than randomly electrocuting a destitute.

He placed the band over his head, the discs on his ears, and as he had promised, the older man pressed a button.

The sound that filled his ears was certainly melodic, but like nothing he had ever heard before.  He heard a man singing in English (which he did not understand), and mixture of known sounds and instruments unlike any he was familiar with.  All in all, while obviously music, the sound that filled his ears was quite dreadful. He quickly removed the headphones.

"Is all the music from your time this ghastly?" he asked.

"You are convinced then?  That I am from the future?"

The young man considered. "Yes," he said, "That much would seem to be clear, though I am less convinced that you are me."

"Proving that much is simple," the old man responded, and pulled a worn and battered book from his bag. The book was intimately familiar to the young man as it had belonged to his father, and there was an inscription within; "Herzlichen Glückwunsch zum Geburtstag, Alois!" The book had aged greatly, but the inscription was as clear as when he had last seen it.  He was convinced.

"Now," The older man began after a heavy fit of coughing into a handkerchief "The reason for my being here."

"In four years time there will be a war.  The greatest war the world has ever seen.  You will serve in that war, as I did, and will be decorated for your bravery. Many on all sides will die, and ultimately our country will lose the conflict.  I do not believe anything can occur that will alter these events, as there is no time for you to gain a position to prevent it.  Germany had a difficult time for many years after this war, and times were hard, but eventually there was a ray of hope.  A man came to power who galvanised the nation. He made Germany feel vital again, and began the fight once more.  Rapidly he conquered much of Europe, and was held back only by the might of Russia, and the channel of water between France and Britain.  He recently allied with Japan, in the hope that they could come at the continent from the other side, and Italy to aid him heading south.

"It was not all good though, and despite bringing glory back to the nation the man was seemingly driven insane with his power.  Millions have died, anyone who does not live up to his ideals has been persecuted, and his tactics mean that people are fearful to speak out against him.  He has caused as much harm as good, and when I left it seemed that another war, far worse than the last, was about to break out.

"With this in mind, a team of American and British scientists came together to create a machine capable of sending a man back to stop this lunatic before he came to power.  The project was called Chronos, and the machine that came from it was known as Zeus."

There was a pause while the older man coughed again.  This time when he removed the cloth from his mouth it was flecked with blood.  Stable again, he continued.

"With our heritage and skills it may surprise you that I was called upon to work on this top secret project, but I traveled to London to help fight our dictator when it became apparent his rule would do as much harm as it would good.  I was given the task of drawing illustrations and floor plans of various buildings of government, many of which I have worked at over the years.  I fear to say that I had held a position that was little more than a glorified cleaning manager, but it gave me an intimate knowledge of the buildings few others have.

"The details in these illustrations drew the attention of the Chronos team, and they brought me aboard to do more of the same, this time focused on how these buildings looked in the past.  I have not been on the project long, and there are many things I still do not understand about it, but due to a quirk of fate, that I have neither the time nor inclination to describe, I was sent back accidentally, with only a small bag of random possessions and some money.  I found myself in London still, five weeks ago; fifty years in my own past. It has taken me from then until now to travel here to Vienna, as I knew you would be here at the Männerwohnheim.

"Since I am here, I believe you can stop this monster before he starts.  You can bring him down using information I have brought with me."

Another cough racked his body, and taking this pause as his opportunity the young man asked the many questions that had come to him.

"Who is this man you wish me to stop?  And how can I do this? You have told me already the way of the future, if I change it how will I end up in London, on a project that only exists because of the man I must stop?  This Zeus will have no reason to exist. I, as you, will have no way or reason to come back and have this conversation. And why are you sick?  Have you been poisoned?"

"Not poisoned as such, no," the elder began again, "A side effect of the accident. I fear I do not have long to live.  A week, a day, perhaps as little as a few hours.  I have been deteriorating rapidly, but if you can change the future this will have been worth it.

"I believe you can change the future still.  I gathered from overhearing the scientists that time can be overwritten, much like the tape in the cassette player from which came the music you heard.  There is music on the tape, but other music can be written over it, replacing the original.  The original music was still there previously, and can be recalled by the listener even though it has gone.  It seems that time too works this way, you will erase my past, but my past will still have happened in a sense, and I will still have travelled back here to -"

Another fit of coughing.  This one interspersed with dry retching and a horrible shaking.  A small trickle of blood came from his nose.

"Perhaps not even hours then," he said quietly, before changing tack.

"In this bag is a folder.  On my journey here I have written in it everything I can remember from the end of the great war until shortly before the rise of the Führer.  Use this information to hunt this man down and destroy him before he can bring ruin to the world."

The older man paused now, a slight glaze came over his expression.

"Funny," he said, "In my haste to write this history It did not occur to me to actually put his name in my notes.  What a ridiculous oversight." He sighed, the light fading from his eyes, blood now running freely from his nose and into the Handkerchief.

"He is a Jew, a Jew by the name of...  Of -"

He stiffened briefly, and then his body sagged.  The bloody cloth fell from his now limp hand, landing in his lap.

"Of what?" cried the younger man, rising to shake his older self. "By the name of what?"  But it was too late, the elder was dead, the name of the dictator, the Führer, the monster, taken with him to his grave.

He would have to deal with the body before dawn, but first curiosity gripped the young man.  He reached into the bag, already plotting how to eliminate an unknown Jew among millions, and pulled out the folder of papers within.  Despite what he had learned over the past half an hour he was still surprised to find his own familiar handwriting on the cover.

"die Zukunft," it read, "von Adolf Hitler"

The article that inspired this was published on io9, and can be found here.