Thor and Loki Linoprints

My first two pieces were re-designs of Thor and Loki taking their comic book interpretation back to their Norse mythology/ viking routes with some of their comicbook elements still there.
For these I looked at viking wear and armour, busts and artwork based on the description of the norse gods along with their original designs

round up meetings and connections

Hey, I haven't really been updating the blog as regularly as usual due to my work mainly being done in my book and expanding onto Facebook pages, Meetings and Connections is finished so I'll provide a visual summary of my unit of work.

 

Wolverine 1
This piece was done on textured wallpaper using black acrylic paint and a dry brush technique influenced by Japanese paintings. I then coloured the piece with inks trying to stick to flat colours

Wolverine 2

Thing (relief).
This piece was done on a thick wooden board, I started this piece by just smashing a red brick to bits (took a while) I then glued the rubble on in a mosaic sort of assembly using hot glue for the big stone and pva for dust and small rubble. once dry I painted some tone into the form to give the piece a figure (it's quite difficult to make out in the photo) I painted using acrylic and for the rest of the piece it's just a simple painting of blues with white and dark tones. the texture on the background was a result of thickly applied acrylic which just gave the black section something interesting.

 

Mr Freeze
This painting was done using acrylics on A3 Canvas. My main focus on this piece was to get the snow texture right and I looked at crackle effects. I created the initial background by dragging a wire brush along a white and blue canvas and then flicking paint onto the background, I then painting as usual on top of the background and the surface works really well. For the gun spray I used some textured pads dipped in paint and just dabbed 

 

Clayface.
Clayface is the product of heavily added acrylic paints, Dry acrylic waste glued on and all spread with a big brush and pallet knife. My aim for this piece was to create something with a heavy texture and my research was mainly into how mud and water flows and the patterns left in dry mud. This was an expressive piece

 

Superman 1
Superman I knew would be a challenging re-design, I had to keep the key factors of the character, meaning the colour scheme, the bright colours and the sense of invincibility. You can't dress someone in the Superman costume if they are going to look uncomfortable and weak in it so I needed to enforce a sense of pride into how I posed my figure. For the costume design I looked into Spartan wear, because they had pretty much the same design, muscular, barely dressed and large flowing capes. I wanted the large cape of a Spartan warrior to give my Superman the power, I replaced the tall boots with Spartan greaves to give the character a sense of uniform and again enforcing the warrior aspect. I needed my character to work in a real world. I gave his cape a pin of the Superman shield and as for the main shield itself, I wanted to create a beacon for Superman, an idea of seeing that symbol enforcing hope so I looked into glowing paints and neon paints and I settled with using the Alex Ross Kingdom Come shield design and spray painting red neon paint over a stencil to give it the glow and vibrancy I wanted to draw attention.
The building in the background is a quick painting of the Hilton hotel in Manchester.
I originally painted this in Gouache but was informed of the draw backs so I painted over in acrylic, for some texture I added some salt crystals to my work.

superman 2

Final Piece

 

Captain America Poster
(YOU too can be a HERO just like Cap)
This painting is a mixed media piece through predominantly paints. I based the designs on American World War 2 propaganda posters and the theme behind the piece is how their use of patriotism and symbolism hid the true brutality of war. The poster uses heroism and inspiration which would appear positive to any passer by however in the detail of the piece you notice the 'in-your-face' patriotism is drawing the attention away from the wounded and dead in the background, dangers of land mines, decapitation and overall death looms behind what looks to be an inspirational motif. All done on A1 cartridge paper with acrylic paints and oil pastels and black felt tip for detail.

 Red Skull Poster
'Du Sind Erfrderlich. Marsch! (You are needed. March!)'
This piece contrasts well with the Captain America poster visually. The colours are flatter and more simple and follow the general colour scheme of German war posters. This poster is a more aggressive poster than the Captain America one, focusing on Power, Ego, Strength and using this intimidation on the viewer in a threatening demand of "You are needed. March!" in a most unpleasant way of asking for help. In relation to comic books this piece draws from the Cosmic Cube/ Tesseract acting as the Red Skull's weapon, a Hydra agent as he would be interpreted in Nazi uniform and two prototype Nazi aircraft's which I found that looked very space agey and advanced for technology of the time. Again this piece is mixed media although more of a painting, A1 cartridge paper with Acrylic paints and a black marker pen for the text.

Research into Japanese art, dry brush and culture

For my Wolverine piece that I'm working on at the moment, I am looking into Japanese art and tradition, Dry Brush technique and culture of Japan.

Dry Brush

I really like the style of dry brush and I often use it in my paintings to give some texture to the piece but because of what I've seen of japanese dry brush I've seen that the art is fairly minimalist in that there is no background and the subject matter lets some of the subject matter through. The color pallets are very limited in that they are predominately only a few colors, black and white. They are also painted on a textured type of paper so I will see what I can find and if unsuccessful cartridge paper will suffice.

Each genuine piece of art that's come from an oriental country has a red stamp of approval to show which region it comes from. I won't use this in my work because I consider it would be disrespectful 

seeing as that I am not a traditional Japanese artist and it hasn't actually come from the place.

Meetings and Connections contetual studies and research

For my project my next step after research is 'casting' my characters in a fashion and looking at contextual studies for them


Me and Nicole:
Elektra and Daredevil

















With me and Nicole being a couple the characters in relationships work well for us but in particular these two seeing as like the characters we have martial arts in our backgrounds.

 

Because I'm working realism and surrealism into my work I have been looking at Ninjutsu martial artists for function of the characters. In the comic's Elektra is an assassin so looking at traditional Ninja design will help me redesign her appearance to make more sense. I plan on making use of the glove/gauntlet designs, pants design and the use of footwear called tabbies.

I then went on to look into Sai and Escrima Stick fighting to look at the poses and give me an idea as to what kind of composition I can come up with for my photographs. I found some really dynamic imagery and I plan to take some photographs with me and Nicole at her club's dojo of me and her sparring using the weapons.

Me and Nicole:
Rogue and Gambit

In making the most use of the weapons, the plan is to produce some photographs of other characters as well who also use weapons in order to take the photographs in a safe environment and under control.

For the X-Men's costumes I looked into various things including kevlar, flight suits and parachute materials but decided if they would be in battles and getting knocked about quite a bit they would need something that absorbs impact but is also easy to maneuver in and so I decided on motorbike suits. Now granted the films often portray their costumes as black leather suits, I wanted to look for something of a different approach but eventually settled on thinking that is probably the most accurate of themes. I also looked into some Cajun symbols and patterns for Gambit as I thought I could put a New Orleans Saints patch on his jacket to show off his heritage.

I also looked into some more weapons research and found this bow staff fighting stance which I may adapt in my photos

Me:
Robin

 

I will probably aquire some various other robin costumes to use as a basis but this design has always been my favorite. Robin is a character used for his agility so his costume needs to be lightweight but seeing as how the character is prone to knife and gun attacks his costume will need to be bullet proof

I came across these examples of Kevlar body armour and I like this design because it identifies the key areas that need shielding. I can redesign his costume to match these pannels of kevlar and the shoulder pieces work really well due to the design of the costume

  One direction I had to debate on was mask design for these characters. For my development I'll try various things but in the comics and movies, Robin and any other character with an eye mask tends to have them simply sticking to the face. The movies accomplish this through latex face masks but my theory is that it leaves them more exposed to them falling off. Although the elasticated masks seem cheap and tacky, I think it brings them into the real world in terms of function.

Finally some more bow staff fighting for research




Me:
Nightwing

Nightwing was the first Robin so I felt to use myself for this character also, his costume design will be similar to Robin but I want to give it more of an urban approach

 

To do this I thought of researching a combination of two things I previously searched, Kevlar and Motorcycle suits. I came across a few designs where Kevlar plates were used in the suits for extra protection. This works perfectly for the character giving him the urban edge using motorcycle leathers, and the added function of kevlar for protection

Nightwing's primary weapons are escrima sticks like Daredevil so I can use that research into stick fighting with him also but I want to show that some characters rely also on their bodies as weapons and I plan to try a photograph of me doing a roundhouse kick like the one above to the camera.

Nicole:
Mystique

Mystique is a mutant and enemy of the X-men. Her ability is to shapeshift so for research on how I would portray that I was thinking something like holographic images like 3D posters. It's still an idea I'm playing with but I had a better suggestion.

An example of a modern day mutation is the chameleon, having the ability to change their appearence based on their body functions (e.g temperature).
My thoughts for Mystique would be to give her Chameleon like scales (similar to her appearence in film) and because I like the colours on the first chameleon picture I might use some of that and throw in a few other colours rather than just leave her the comic book blue colour. Throw in hints of reds, yellows and purples.

Mark:
Magneto

This is one I really have to get right in order to engage Mark on my project.For Magneto, there is quite a few ideas I think I can look into, starting with the helmet.

 

My research on the helmet led me to a civilization known as the Olmec. They predate the Mayans and they believed that God would speak to them but tell them terrible things so the block out their thoughts they produced helmets which covered the locations of the brain where thought process occurred.  They created huge head sculptures showing this known as the Olmec Colossal Heads. Magneto's helmet is designed to stop people from reading his thoughts so these two come in the same kind of field.

This helmet which is the same shape as Magneto's is called a Barbute, it comes in a 'T' and a 'Y' shape, is an itallian design based on the Greek Corinthian Helmets. They are traditionally made of a single sheet of steel. In redesigning Magneto's helmet, there isn't much to differ from but I plan to make sure both these two elements are present in the design process

For the cape, I looked into Ferraiolo capes, traditionally used amongst clergy members. Seeing as how Magneto is a preacher of sorts in that he stands for mutant peace, it would be fitting for him to have a garment with religious undertones.

For the general attire I looked into royal clothing I found for Brittish Royal Uniform. Magneto sees himself as king of a mutant Utopia so it makes sense to see himself as royalty and fancy himself a king.