Wow

Okay, I just this made me smile with designer joy.

Look carefully.... You see it?

No? Look again...















Isn't that brilliant :)

Fan Picnic

I really need to keep track of where I find these things. If someone wants recognisition for any of these let me know and I'll stick your name on it.

The fact that 3/4 of are fanart for some thing or another is totally coincidental. I just happened to like them for various reasons

First, some Hellboy fanart by Patricio Betteo (see last post but one for my thoughts on him) I love the use of colour on this, and the silhouette. Just check out the bulk of his body and stone hand against his tiiiiny little legs, and tell me that's not brilliant.
















A Harry Potter illustration by this anonymous person
I'm assuming it's the scene from book 3 where Harry summons the Patronus. It's a very simple drawing, limited colour, and I like how it's not actually showing the action scene, but the quiet moment of builup immediately before it, leaving the actual drama to follow to the viewer's imagination.

















As for this... I have no excuse, I just like how retro it is. I would never draw this way but it's interesting to see nevertheless.

















And finally, something not fanart! I don't know who did this, but the 360-degree idea of it is very clever, and makes perfect sense. I printed it out to stick on my wall and spent a some minutes just turning it round and round a few times to make sure I took it all in.

Smiling...

...at the work of Patricio Betteo. Question: Can he do no wrong? Answer: No, he cannot... or, wait I think that's a double negative, so... yes he can!

Anyway...


I bought his artbook 'Mirador' and it encapsulates one of the things I really enjoy about his work, his crazy lines. The book is purely black and white (and in my case came with a free lollypop!) but he's great at thinking in terms of shapes and not being afraid to stretch and bend things. Girls have huge semicircular legs and everything is built on some occasionally seriously odd shapes and proportions but it all holds together. Really interesting to look at.

The other thing is his use of colour, which is probably easier to show you than to tell you about.





He has a blog and some stuff scattered over the internet, but probably the best place to go is Patricio's deviantArt account

Handy genius

Been over at this site lately Art and Story They host podcasts, videos and article relating to techniques, tools and and bits and bobs. A lot of it is focussed around comics but knowledge is universal and there's some useful stuff in there.

This weeks 'Oh how I wish I could draw like that award' goes to Drew Struzan. I saw a review/tribute to his movie posters over on ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com and he's done some pretty epic stuff. Not just in terms of the movies he's been hired to produce posters for (Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Back to the Future, Harry Potter, Hellboy, Blade Runner etc etc), but just the quality of it all.















He's got a great sense of cinematic layout and drama, and everytime he paints a key character not only does it physically look like them, it stands like them and conveys something of their personality, which is really what every good character drawing should do (says I, who am nowhere near understanding half of it!)
His painted posters are often far more interesting than many current posters made using photographs and computer manipulation, because he knows how to put them together.
Go oggle at him
here