Macro Photography

I've decided to start adding some of my photography to this Blog. I've always loved Macro Photography and so not too long ago bought a macro lens for my DSLR camera. Here I noticed a reasonably large fly grooming itself before feeding on a yellow plant so was keen to try and capture the moment. These pictures were taken with a Canon EOS 550D SLR fitted with a Canon EF 100mm lens.

Rough Sketches for a Painting

Since I can often go literally months without lifting so much as a pencil to sketch with, I've decided to spend a little time here and there to develop ideas for a possible painting I'll create. I want to create a creepy atmosphere with this painting and intend the finished work to show a good half dozen or so of these "human spiders". I'll post more roughs/sketches as and when I create them.

Portrait of a Horse

Outside of my day job and studying Japanese, I've been finding less and less time for completing personal projects and commissions of late. Over the last few days, however, I have managed to find between an hour or two to complete this commissioned portrait. I completed it using a variety of pastel pencils (Derwent and Cretacolor brand) and soft pastels (Rembrandt and Schmincke). The soft pastels were used to render the blackest blacks and the whitest whites within this work. The paper this is rendered on is Canson's Pastel Ingres (Grey) paper and measures A3 in size. I hope to have more work to post here soon and may also start including some of my photography.

Portrait of my Niece

I finished painting this portrait of my niece in oils earlier today. I built the picture up in successive glazes and so it took a while to complete but I wasn't in any particular rush. It measures roughly 28 x 20 inches.

Siera as Maya from Magna Carta

I've not uploaded any new pieces for some time and actually painted this work in Photoshop a couple of months ago. It's based on a cosplay by Siera of the character Maya from the game Magna Carta (more of her cosplays can be seen at http://clamwings.deviantart.com/). I wanted to make this work more of an illustration than a straight portrait - because of this I spent additional time rendering background elements and ensuring I did justice to the costume Siera had created for her cosplay. I worked larger within Photoshop than I normally do when creating this - the full resolution image measures 5400 x 7200 pixels. Credit for the photograph I worked from goes to Simone Rule (http://kawaiimon.deviantart.com/).

Miyukiko as Oichi from Sengoku Basara

Here's another artwork created from the cosplay of Miyukiko (http://fatalholic.net/). This time it's of Oichi from Sengoku Basara. Once again, I worked from a photograph taken by Andy Chan (http://www.flickr.com/photos/chan_andy). This artwork was created using Cretacolor Monolith pencils on Winsor & Newton Bristol Board and measures 21.7 x 42cm (A3).

PeCchi as Alice!

Here's my latest portrait, this time it's from a cosplay of Alice from Alice in Wonderland by PeCchi Sekai (http://pecchi.blogspot.com/). To complete this, I worked in a variety of soft pastels (Unison and Rembrandt brand) as well as pastel pencils (Derwent and Cretacolor brand) onto pastel paper. The original work measures 18 x 24 inches. What struck me about the photograph I worked from (taken by Nataly Ruiz) was how wonderfully saturated the blues of PeCchi's costume and eyes were. Because of this I chose to contrast these blues against an otherwise black and white image and think this has worked really well.