Magic Studio...

Hope everyone had a good Christmas. As a belated present my sister got me 'Machines and magic Vol 1' an art book mentioned before, put together by Craig Musselman, and featuring a couple of my images, among much other splendid stuff.

I have a lot of stuff planned for the coming year, and have a few interesting projects in the pipelines. Having completed a number of commissions, I have been taking some time to finish off a mermaid painting that I started a while back.
On a related note, I saw online a former church for sale, which is very me, and would make a great studio. It is in Brixham in Devon which would be a very inspiring place to live and work, and where I spent some great childhood holidays. I need to sell a few more paintings before I can afford it, unfortunately...









One can dream...

Stuff and fluff snuff.

Sadly the rabbit Charlotte Scudamore died yesterday (the white one), which meant digging another hole. That's three lagomorph fatalities this year (the other male Poppy died while I was in Italy). RIP Scuda-no-more. What with the cat going last year, our little menagerie is rather depleted. Six beasties down to two.

Work wise I've just completed a painting for a book cover, featuring an under-dressed female sticking it to a Grey alien, in the Amber Room, with a broadsword. Lined up I have some more medievalism, some sci-fi and some Arabian mythology, which should be interesting. Also Christmas is coming and we are all getting fat-skinny. I'd really ought to get some shopping done...

Some less well known great artists

Went to London today, hoping to visit the 'Leonardo Da Vinci in Milan' exhibition at the National Gallery. Unfortunately tickets were sold out, so we just looked at the regular collection, which is worth the train fare in itself. I scribbled down some names of slightly less well known (to me at least) historical artists whose works are well worth a google. Here are some of them (in no particular order):

Francesco Hayez (above)

Salvator Rosa

Christopher Wilhelm Eckersberg

Pierre Subleyras

Elizabeth Louise Brun

Guercino

Guido Reni

Domenchino

Zurbaran

Johann Liss

Cornelis van Haarlem

Simon Vouet


So the day was far from a dead loss. Also had a new experience at a steak house restaurant, when the beef steak was brought out still sizzling on its own red hot slab where it could continue to cook until it had stopped going 'moo'. The world still has things to show me, clearly. Also had a poke around the stalls at Covent Garden market where there is some interesting stuff to be found, including things for securing curtains that look like witch-hunters bodkins, gas masks, telescopes, and marbles (which people from Birmingham call 'marleys', apparently).

My list at the moment...

I have been quite nicely bust of late. Commissions that I have completed over the last couple of months include apocalyptic and Gothic artwork for a couple of Heavy Metal album covers ('As Empires Decay', which is digital, and 'Brutal Temptress', which is oil on board). I have also completed 'Lioness of the Stars' , a fantasy painting of a lioness-centaur (oils), 'Retours', a book cover for a French author's novel featuring a group of warriors (digital), and some borders and illustrations for wedding invitations with the look of medieval manuscripts (mixed media).

I picked up my 'Blackguard' visual story a while back, and have been reworking that, but it has come to another stand still due to commissioned work.

Jobs I am presently working on include two interior pieces for Cubicle7. I had been planning to do some master studies of historical works of art, but one of these illustrations involves something more interesting, a ghoulish reworking of a certain Dutch Masterpiece. The other involves a monstrous version of a certain sound-making device (considered by some to be a musical instrument), which shows the influence of a more recent, but in his way equally influential master (arguably). These I am doing digitally. I am also doing an oil painting for another fantasy author, featuring a woman slaying an alien, so as I say I am nicely busy. I also have a few things in the pipelines, including interior work for Battlefield Press, (hopefully) the good people who commissioned the cover I did for 'Midway Between'.