Some work 26-03-05 (maybe NSFW)
 

These are some pictures I'm doing for a magazine at the moment - none of the images are "finished", but they're all in the final stages of editing. Criticism is welcome.


http://www.ifsra.co.uk/images/d4.jpg
Lindsay Lohan kneels before 2 red dogs (a key scene in early 2005)



http://www.ifsra.co.uk/images/d2.jpg
Two people find love in a park



http://www.ifsra.co.uk/images/d3.jpg
Paris Hilton is left behind as a war zone is evacuated (this scene is tragic)



http://www.ifsra.co.uk/images/d5.jpg
A girl contemplates romance/suicide (in the end, she will become one of the "Suicide Girls")



http://www.ifsra.co.uk/images/d6.jpg
Donald Rumsfeld falls in love at a press conference (maybe everything will be ok)



http://www.ifsra.co.uk/images/d1.jpg
Girl with cat, Grozny, 2005

I don't know how to criticise this sort of work. I do know that it is powerful, unsettling, thought-provoking, strongly directed and kinda hot in a non-vanilla sort of way. I like the unusual palette btw.

Very neat and visually stimulating. I wish I could create that kind of work.. Great job :thumbsup:

Wonderful.....inspired

wonderful art work...like I've said before...sell me one? :D

that's hot
 

I must say-- tasty. I love it. At first for some reason I looked at your first peice with some sort of preestablished disdain...I dont know why, maybe becasue I was conditioned to criticize as means to foster improvement...rather than to nod ones head approvingly in response to something uniquely attractive.

But then I began to notice the texture of color and materials, and then I began to find my own meaning in the ensembles. I think I may have to forward a link or something to a few people just to share.

Anywho, I just joined tfp, so you managed to be privy to one of my more inconsistently incoherent post becasue I'm so excited I could almost pee on myself right now! But seeing as how this is somewhat a gallery, I'll reserve that for my next trip to Citibank.

Oh and the one with Paris Hilton...even though I think Paris Hilton is some kind of inspirational social savant, i still loved it. I'd continue...but heres me rambling again, and I hate it when I start sounding like a {insert appropriate descriptor for what i sound like}. I just hate that. ;-)

These are great. Are they digital?

#2 is my favorite.

way cool art man.......very cool effects.

i really like the one where the chicks head seems to be exploding......:thumbsup:


can't wait to see some more of your work.

These are really amazing. I love artsy things that look to deep for me to understand. Keep at it, these are really, really cool.

How did you make them, what medium did you use?

bad ass. i LOVE your mix of real and abstract. your images are powerful without too much wasted imagery. i truly admire your style.

let us know if/when it gets published so we can check it out for real.

i don't have too much for criticism, but for #2, i didn't see right away that it was a park. (until i read the title)

great work!

I am a big fan of your work. How do you create your work? Is it all done with hand? Or do you put together photos and drawings, or anything else? Also, what kind of magazine is it for? Sorry for bombarding you with questions.

These pictures are amazing! Keep up the good work. Great effects!

Hi, thanks for the responses.

This work is for an online magainze called Volumen, which is steadily gaining a good following.

These pictures are a combination of painting, drawing, scanned textures and photographs, all heavily layered together in photoshop. I tend to describe them as paintings, because of all the individual disciplines I've worked at that's the one they feel closest to.

The main element that I spend longest on with all these images is the layering. Typically, they have around 100 layers, and the way they are put together is what I put the most effort into. The original paintings/drawings I do for pictures like this I tend to keep fairly loose, because I find it easier to work with something less exact than something overworked.

http://www.ifsra.co.uk/images/sketch/rum.jpg
Easy girls, he's married

http://www.ifsra.co.uk/images/sketch/lohan.jpg

Both of these images are a combination of acrylic, acrylic ink, pastel, ink, biro, charcoal and probably a few other things that escape my mind at the moment. As you can see, they both look different than they do in the final pictures... I find photoshop gives me much more control in terms of colour/composition, and at the end of the day I'm more interested in the way the final image looks than the technical skill of any given discipline.

I'm currently looking in to the technicalities of getting my work printed on canvas, so if you're seriously interested in buying my work (little_tippler) pm me, or email me via my website.

Wow. You are truly a great artist. And thank you for answering my questions. This may be a dumb questions, but did you have to practice to get good? You seem to use a lot of mediums, and I was wondering what is your favorite kind of medium? Again, wow. Your work has and will probably continue to blow my mind away.

(The following are entirely personal opinions, they're not intended as a rant against any other styles of art)

I'm 25 now and I've been drawing and painting for as long as I can remember. I definitely had to practice. I think that technical skills are very important, as you have to have a certain level of control and abillity, otherwise it severely limits the work you can do - I'm still not happy with the work I do from a technical point of view, and I'm looking to get better all the time. For me, technical skills are very much a means to an end of creating the image I want to create.

The trouble is, I find it hard not to get proud and over attached to technical skills. Especially when you're young, there tend to be a lot of people around who will be impressed if you can draw/paint things the way they look - friends, family, etc. People tend to be less impressed when you try things that are more "artistic". Ultimately though, there will always be people out there who can draw/paint more realistically than you (such as John Salt, and that's a painting not a photo). The more photographic you try to make your work look, the more it will look like other people's who are trying to do the same thing. What will really mark your work out as "good" is the artistic expression, your abillity to convey mood through colour/texture/composition/ideas - you just need to make sure you have the technical skill to create what's in your head.

The other problem with spending too much time on "realistic" drawings is that it makes it hard to break out of that style of drawing. I originally got into working in a mixed-media style because I found it easier to be more expressive - if I sit down with just pencil or charcoal, I tend to find myself overworking a picture and getting stuck into trying to draw too realistically. I don't really have a "favourite" medium - right now I just want to get better at making more expressive drawings and paintings, that I can still tie together well with the other elements of my work.

Thanks for answering so many of my questions. So you use multiple mediums on your work, correct? Do you have any tips for an aspiring artist like myself? Oh, and that painting by John Salt was simply amazing. I wouldn't have been able to tell that was a painting if you hadn't mentioned it.

Yes, I use a range of different media on most of my work.

The main thing I would suggest when you're starting out is to relax and have fun with it. Don't spend ages on 1 piece trying to make a perfect picture, because it's probably not going to happen. You tend to pick things up a lot faster the more work you do, especially when it comes to things like drawing/painting people.

Yeah, I tend to start new sketches before I finish the ones I am working on, and I never get around to finishing them. I guess I'll stick to sketches for now. Thanks for the advice.