Having finally finished the Event Horizon large scale realism painting in July I got cracking on thumbnail layouts for the next piece (working title of ‘Old Nightmares’). The starting point is a photo of the small pond and bank of trees in the field beside the house I live in (which was also my childhood home). The rough idea was to try and re-image/paint a creature from a repeated nightmare I used to have as a kid – a mixture between a wolf and a bull which I used to only catch glimpses of as it ran behind hedges/trees. The other visual secondary elements besides the kid and nightmare creature are a wolfhound, Shoebill, an axe, various rubbish and a Lady of Shalott style character by the shore (my parents had a print of the John William Waterhouse painting on a wall in our house).

Besides the above I’m thinking of starting to work on a series of medium sized realism pieces too – in a less detailed format (that doesn’t take up to three years to finish!) This would allow me to work through some of the other ideas and concepts I’ve jotted down. On the folk illustration side it took me longer than I though to finish the ‘Goblin dance’ painting. The final image was too busy and needed a good bit of adjusting with saturation and brightness to try and separate out the different figures/creatures. It was also the first time I used a retro print effect plugin which took some experimenting with to get to a finish that was subtle enough to add some texture but didn’t take from the design or look too messy. Besides the above I’ve tipped away at the daily practicals (figure/concept/character etc.) thou I haven’t gotten back to much watercolor or cartoon render work – but hopefully will do in the next couple of months.
“I’m thinking of starting to work on a series of medium sized realism pieces too – in a less detailed format”
The Katyusha music video pre-production has moved along. The track itself is pretty much at the mixing stage. Ive done a costume fit with the lead and a few camera tests (after having picked up a Samyang 12mm lens which is lighter and wider than the chunky 16mm I had initially tried on the Snorricam rig). I havent made a storyboard yet as I’m still not sure what the final chorus should be but most of the rest of the video has a rough shooting script. I may just go with a 120FPS with some night lighting for the climax as a fall back but Ill do a couple more hours of brainstorming first.

On the live set front Ive added another five or six covers songs into the mix (some hip-hop/loop pedal based) and probably put as many on the back burner after having experimented with them for a few weeks and found I couldnt consistently get the right range/tone. I found changing a lyric or two, to have a different vowel sound, made some lines/pitches easier for me to hit. I also decided to divide the tracks up into two different sets (upbeat and downbeat) – which should make it more flexible when it comes to venues/audiences. As I mentioned on the last post I eneded up making a softer snare pedal out of another small tin box with some sand in it which work well with the downbeat material. I’m mulling over using a bass drum pedal and a suitcase for the kick sound aswell as some odd cymbals but I might just stick with the Logjam pedal for the mo as its simpler.