Some more of old Radge D. and the storyboard roughs for Silvy's Storm.

A bit more of Radge, these are ink on acetate laid over watercolours. I like that you can move the drawing around like a layer in photoshop, and make the colour miss the lines which looks so good in screenprinting.

The cheek of yoof!

Sheet clamp niggles.

Radge in the Raj ,rough

Radge in the Raj

Radge's mate.

On to the roughs for Silvy's Storm, a previous post. One thing I enjoy looking at is storyboards and roughs, they show thinking and revisions but more they are the genesis of the ideas and tell you as in shorthand, about the chaotic creative process!

Keiser Report- Royal Bank of Scotland Gobbledygook

Something that tickled me a few weeks ago on the Keiser report. He always cheers me up when he gets excited.

Radge Dalbot, a legendary sheet metal worker.

 Radge Dalbot was spawned as a bit of folklore by some of the older guys at the old workshop at Rapide Sheet Metal. I can only remember that they used him as a hero figure for us young'ns. Those were the days, back in the nineties! I drew him out of a mix of those old guys, they stick in the memory because they had character.

In a small shop everyone has a role and personality, and a space to let this ferment, into what you might call eccentric behavior. It was a lot of fun!

Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials - Metatron

It was time to return to Pullman's story with the long promised Metatron, like all arch bad guys, he is shrouded in mystery, only sketched out as a character. It amused me greatly how his hunt for the subtle knife brought out such electric fury! First I needed to draw him and then I planned a bigger image of him at his seat of power, with many zealots going through their rituals.

Who remembers hours drawing with felt tips as a child with those fun 30 pack of colours? Now I'm an older kid I realise why the results were usually rubbish. Too many colours! Really sophisticated results come from finding the right primary colours, along with a simple technique of layering always with the lighter colour first. Some heavyweight cartridge paper and a bit of experimenting and you can create all those 30 pack colours, with a lot of added texture and awesomeness!

I always use black G-tecs, and thought I'd try their colours. It has to be the light blue because the darker one is way too dark for layering.

You can do all of your drawing with the yellow, any mistakes will be covered with the layering of the red and blue.

Here's an example in stages of using the layering in a range of different hatching for the Metatron drawing. These images are bigger so you can see the lines.

I started with a lot of marks, just getting a feel for the way the colours blend. 

Slowly you can sense shapes emerging by always altering the direction of marks. I imagined Metatrons wings as made of crystal, so there is a lot of light bouncing around, and a lot of colour separation. It made him seem ancient.

Here you can see how dark the three colours blend.

This is how I left it. I loved working like this and will try again soon. Last details had him looking native american, there is a spectral war mask always hovering above his head. The trident is almost like a blunderbuss.

For the larger (A2) image below, like Where's Wally, Metatron can be seen at the foot of an enormous statue of... himself. The cultists/zealots are enjoying themselves in their way, heaping their fanatical praises as they steadily build the hysteria. They get to ride the helter skelter while hearing the mad organist! (on the high pedestal).  They get to enjoy the old school delights of choking incense and blood sacrifice! As long as they stay on their knees, Metatron tolerates them. 

MOLOCH! (and George Cruikshank)

The images in the windows of the tower in MOLOCH! follow a simple hierarchy of tiers with the rich at the top, peasants at the bottom, and some of the companies and organisations tenuously holding everything together which I borrowed from George Cruikshank's The Worship of Bacchus.

1860-62

I like the way he organised the picture with very specific examples of the effects of alcoholism at the bottom, then rising to a panorama of the whole society, and the massive profits, and costs to the public purse involved. The way he labelled everything gives a clear meaning, just like Irving Norman would later do. Of course this is the same period that Hogarth had his famous etchings including 'Gin Alley', in wide circulation. Such an ambitious work, with the industrial revolution in full swing.

I did the same thing, at the bottom are those incarcerated or without the hope of opportunity. Children videoing the burning of their schools. Occupy protesters held at Guantanamo Bay.

As we move up a tier we see the children of the elite, and their horror and fear at a glimpse of what they might become. The labeling of top public schools and the cynical Latin mottos are admittedly a pretty cheap shot. 

So we rise to the exclusive clubs of higher education, and the conditioning is complete for a role in society! Here the Bullingdon Don! I had such fun dreaming up these creatures!

Then all the way to the top of the tower, the world is their oyster! So many career choices for hungry monsters! I enjoyed the development of the American elite as klansmen and bald eagles. And at the summit, the entire penthouse floor, Goldman Sachs! Yikes!