Sketch dump

Hi All. Just in case you think I've been letting the daily sketch thing slide, here are what you've been missing...
They include some souvenirs of Les Miserables, which I went to see and which was very good.

Ramesseum

Mortuary temple of Ramesses II, known as the Ramesseum. 

Ramesseum, Ram-you-don't.

A couple more sketches...

Klimt's 'The Kiss', and Ingres' 'Orpheus and the Sphinx'.

Another Friedrich...

'The Stages of Life'.

Wandered off.

I missed a day, but I have two relatively valid excuses. 1. I lost my sketchbook, and 2. I was busy drawing stuff that someone's paying for. Anyway, here is today's:

Sketched copy of Friedrich's The Wanderer.

Airbrushing

Axel Williams of Axel Will Airbrushing produced this  bike tank decoration

based on my artwork. Nice rendering I think! I could never get to grips with an air brush, so I have much respect for anyone who can do it.

My original digital piece:

KBO

Winston Churchill, during our 'finest hour', from a photo by Cecil Beaton...

Bonus Nude

Ta da!

Female Knight

This is based on this photo, by kuskostock or at least the figure/pose is. I thought it was suitable to form the basis of a piece requested by mdkBlackWolf of their female knight character Terra d'Arcy.

St Paul's Cathedral

Saint Paul's Cathedral, from one of my photos, and from an old image of the Blitz...

Audrey Hepburn and Picasso, copies from photographic portraits by Cecil Beaton.

Couple sketch

This was drawn from this stock.

Sort of lends itself to a maiden riding a centaur, I'm thinking (a theme I've visited before)...

Watts what?

This was done from a photo of Naomi Watts. I'm going to try to improve at drawing recognizable likenesses of individuals. I suspect there's no particular trick to it- it's a matter of observation, and paying attention to the  angles of the various lines that define a form, and the relative lengths of these lines, and distances and  angles between key points. Also a matter of overcoming preconceptions about how things look, or should look.

Cat and dog.

Here is a drawing of a cat...

Drawn from an image by Darknight-stock .

This, meanwhile, is a drawing of a dog...

 and no ordinary dog but Buster, otherwise known as Babby Dogs, who lives here...

Galatea

Quick little sketch of Raphael's Galatea...

This went relatively smoothly although it's a copy of a large, complex mural as a tiny sketch. I remembered what they say about putting in the large shapes first, and then refining these down. In so doing I noticed that the composition is basically two triangles, pointing upwards, one on top of the other, with less distinct downward-pointing triangles or 'V' shapes overlaid over them (one formed by the arrows pointing down to Galatea's head, the other by the heads of the two figures on the one side and the back of the Triton on the other, pointing down to the cherub at the bottom). So there's geometry amid that chaos.

A girl called 145

Based on this  

Naked Wednesday

It's Wednesday, it must be time for another nude. This taken from Zedul...

More tattoos from my artwork.

The other day I stumbled across this Templar tattoo, which someone has got based on an image of mine...

And just now someone sent me a photo of a tattoo they had got based on my two angels/skull illusion design, which now features on cards by Eastgate Resource. Keep them coming!

I met the artist Anne Stokes at the Eastgate Resource stand, at the Spring Fair in Birmingham last year, at the NEC. Funnily enough the people at the company had requested fewer of her trademark skulls in the imagery they had commissioned from her for cards, etc. That makes it strange that the first image they took of mine features a great big skull! Stokes is quite famous, and so many people have tattoos of her artwork that a book has been made of it. She has also had lots of products made by Nemeis Now (with whom I've started to have dealings.) I saw some of Anne Stokes' gothic design in a shop in Rothenburg in Bavaria during my German trip last year, a picturesque medieval town with a slightly creepy air, where it seems quite at home. That leads me neatly my sketch of the day, as it happens...

Where have all the flowers gone?

Another quickish study of 'Windflowers', a Waterhouse painting... Done in 1903, the original was, when the winds of change were blowing.

Dark Waters.

I fell in love with this photo and had to do a sketch based on it...

Male stock

Sketch based on: http://vishstudio.deviantart.com/art/Male-Stock-326261649

Girl and Horse...

This might serve as the basis for a painting one day, on the theme of the strange damsel who, in Arthurian legend, presents Sir Perceval with a great horse that is really a demon in disguise. A particularly gothic feeling section that obviously struck a chord with me. This reference image was quite close to the image already in my head. It would need to be a nocturnal scene, though.

Collier's Lady Godiva.

Quick sketch from John Collier's Lady Godiva, a Saxon noblewoman, who was said to have rode naked through the streets of Coventry in order to spare the people from oppressive taxation.

Vintage nude sketch.

I'll just leave that there...

Mithras

Sketch of a statue of the Persian/Roman cult god Mithras, from my own photo taken in the British Museum. Unfortunate bull...