Art of Paul Ferry

Macro Photography

2011-09-11T16:28:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-26T16:25:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-04T06:55:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-01T14:27:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-26T15:25:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-26T14:08:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-07-12T05:05:00.000-07:00

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.

Miyukiko as Ciel Phantomhive

2010-06-14T14:53:00.000-07:00

I'm currently working on a series of portraits based around cosplays and this is the first example so far. I've kept the work loose and painterly looking even though this is a digital painting, which was painted in Photoshop from the excellent photography of Andy Chan (http://www.flickr.com/photos/chan_andy). The character portrayed within this portrait is Ciel Phantomhive from Kuroshitsuji and is expertly cosplayed by the very talented Miyukiko (http://fatalholic.net/).

I hope to be in a position to post further examples of cosplay portaiture here very soon!

Portrait of the Artist

2010-05-18T03:30:00.000-07:00

I recently completed this digital self portrait. It was painted in Photoshop in much the same way an oil painting might be done - colours were selected (originally from pre-determined swatches) and painted next to each other before being "blended" by painting hues inbetweeen. Although pre-determined colours were used at the early stages of the work, very soon the decision was made to add saturation as well as alter the "temperatures" of the chosen colours. To achieve the thick application of paint effect in areas of the work, a canvas board had acrylic paint thickly applied with a palette knife before being photographed and applied digitally. This portrait has a very different mood and tone than my earlier pastel portrait (my "Portrait of Lynsey" was posted earlier in this blog), the colours are more saturated and the rendering less subtle and more energetic. Similarly, the difference in pose also accentuates this difference. These differences are down to the fact that I wished to make "Portrait of Lynsey" a subtle, contemplative piece, whereas here I wished to generate the look of a more spontaneous self portrait with broad brushstrokes and saturated colours.

Portrait of Lynsey

2010-04-27T12:37:00.001-07:00

I recently completed this pastel portrait of my sister. I applied much of what I've been studying throughout my Honour's year to date - such as light, colour, gesture etc. I deliberately kept this piece subtle and wanted very little to distract from the face which is the center of interest. Warm and cool tones were applied within the skin to achieve a varied balance of values (warm shadows contrast with the cooler highlights). I decided against a rim light to bring the subject out from the background as I've found they tend to have a flattening effect, I decided instead to brighten the background a little with green (which contrasts nicely with the red shadows at the edge of the head). The picture was completed using a combination of Unison soft pastels and Rembrandt soft pastels on Canson pastel paper - the portrait measures 20 x 24inches.

Below I've also attached a couple of additional images showing the progress of this work. At the bottom, a sketch in oils can also be seen with the early stages of the pastel portrait.

Finally, I've been coughing an awful lot lately most likely as a result of inhaling lots of pastel dust over the last 10 days or so and therefore would recommend to anyone wishing to use soft pastels at any point to never blow excess pastel dust from the picture and also to use a dust mask! You live and learn.:)

Self Portrait

2010-03-26T10:45:00.000-07:00

Here's a new self portrait I've just completed, might still play about with it a little yet though. Was largely an experiment with warm and cool tones as well as further experiments with texture using Photoshops adjustment layers.

Portrait of Filo

2010-03-17T12:11:00.001-07:00

I recently completed this portrait of Filo (our wonderful family pet who unfortunately passed away around 2 years ago) using Photoshop. There's been a good tutorial within this month's (issue 59) Photoshop Creative magazine concerning layer blending modes and styles. I'd had a read and looked through the tutorial before deciding to apply what I learned from this to my portrait of Filo shown here. I've always loved painterly portraits and feel they often contain more interest and vibrancy than more polished examples. I hope to produce some more examples in this style soon.

Good to Go!

2010-02-21T11:43:00.000-08:00

My younger brother modelled for this science fiction portrait. I wanted to depict a fresh recruit, ready to undertake his first drop into combat - there's a slight hint of apprehensive feelings but his strong resolve takes over and he signals he's "good to go" with a thumbs up gesture. I liked trying to suggest these contrasting attitudes by having his face lit at either side by complementary colours and I was hoping to maintain a painterly look to the piece throughout. I hope it's worked!

Recent Self Portrait

2009-12-01T04:01:00.000-08:00

I've been away from this Blog for quite a while, so I'll try and keep posting more regularly in the future. I recently completed this self portrait in soft pastel (a combination of Rembrandt and Unison pastels). I'm going to work on some portraiture over the next year so I'm hoping to make big improvements overall in this area. I've also been working on sculpting a head in ZBrush and will hopefully post my progress for this soon.

Builder

2009-06-10T16:38:00.000-07:00

Another illustration just completed. These have all been sketched straight into Photoshop using a Wacom. I've really grown fond of illustrating with a tablet (I started using one when a good friend of mine kindly lent me hers whilst she travelled to Japan with her boyfriend to teach English). She'll be returning soon so it looks like I'll be having to buy one of my own - time to start shopping on Amazon I reckon! :)

Magician

2009-06-09T09:17:00.000-07:00

Just thought I'd post my latest character sketch. Once I've drawn all of the characters, I'll probably add simple animations to them to give them a little more life.

New Character Artwork

2009-06-04T03:32:00.000-07:00

Just thought I'd post some of the latest character illustrations I've completed recently. Hope you like them!

Artwork for 360 Game

2009-05-25T04:21:00.000-07:00

I created these drawings recently for a game i'm working on along with two programmers, when completed we hope to publish it on the XBox Live network. As ever, any comments would be appreciated and I'll post more illustrations as and when I have them.

ZBrush Tutorial

2009-05-20T05:51:00.000-07:00

Since i've got a bit more time these days to myself, I thought it would be a good idea to start really getting to know ZBrush. As I have a couple of good books on ZBrush, I decided to commit to going through the tutorials within the books. The pictures I've uploaded here are from my own efforts in completing the first chapter of Scott Spencer's book "ZBrush Character Creation: Advanced Digital Sculpting" (2008, Wiley Publishing). I'll upload any further work I produce in completing the tutorials as soon as I have some.

Robolympics Animation

2009-05-15T04:29:00.000-07:00

I've just uploaded the animation I created in my Advanced Animation module to youtube.

The link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtEsQEDJzQc

Concept Sketches and Modeling

2009-05-15T04:06:00.001-07:00

Thought i'd share a recent project i've been working on just for fun, though it's not complete yet. I completed some illustrations of an ogre some time ago for a childrens' story my brother had written. I'd set myself the task of modeling the ogre, he's a reasonalbly high poly model but to add extra detail I created a normal map using ZBrush. I'm still working on the textures, but I've included the UV Map layout as well as the texture map so far and the normal map. Also I've began to model an environment to put him in, I've only spent a couple of hours on the environment so far but it's coming along.

Thought I'd post some of the work I completed recently to try and get into this years "Dare to be Digital". Though the team (3 programmers and another artist) and myself weren't successful I thought everybody in the team did a great job. These were sketches of the main playable characters, I'd make image planes of these and pass them to the other artist in our team, Dale Taylor, to model up in Maya.

"Self Portrait" and "Toward the Light"

2009-05-15T03:56:00.000-07:00

In addition to the 3 renders of a scene I created in Maya, whilst exploring Light and Colour I created this acrylic self portrait and an illustration in Photoshop CS. The self portrait only took around four hours to complete (that doesn't include preparing the watercolour board or transferring the drawing). As for the underwater mermaid illustration, it's the first Photoshop illustration I've completed almost exclusively using a tablet (the mouse was used for some parts but prior to this I completed all digital illustrations entirely with the mouse).

As ever, any comments are greatly appreciated.

Maya Still Life (lit 3 ways)

2009-05-15T03:51:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I posted anything here so I thought I'd post the 3 finished renders of the Maya scene I promised in the last post:

Maya 3D Still Life

2009-01-23T10:27:00.000-08:00

I just finished rendering this scene earlier today. It's modelled in Maya 2008 and was created for a Lighting and Colour module i'm currently working through. In creating the image I rendered the scene in passes (shadows, reflections, highlights etc were all rendered independantly and composited in Photoshop CS), this gave me greater control in any colour or value adjustments that were necessary. I will render this scene another two times under different lighting conditions and post the results soon.

Recent Portrait Commission

2009-01-14T09:06:00.000-08:00

Since I haven't posted any new work in a while I thought I'd post this portrait I recently completed in chalk and charcoal. The original is A3 in size and was drawn onto Canson Pastel paper, which I've always found to be a beautiful paper for drawing on in charcoal.

Portrait of Lynsey and Thumper

2008-11-07T09:38:00.000-08:00

I completed this portrait a few weeks ago. It was drawn using Graphite on Bristol Board and measures 18 x 24 inches. Scanning it using my A4 flatbed proved to be a bit of a pain - it required sewing together 8 seperate scans in Photoshop CS.

Pastel Triptych and photo collage.

2008-10-17T15:19:00.000-07:00

I've always had a passion for space and astronomy and so with that in mind created this Earth Rise Triptych in soft pastel a couple of years ago.

The following image with paper swans was created to answer a brief where I was asked to create an image using four different ways of looking at a single object or subject. In this case, i chose paper - the swans are, of course, made from folded paper, the waters they seem to swim in are just a crumpled sheet of paper with the colour inverted in Photoshop and the moon is just paper scrunched up into a ball and spearized in Photoshop. Even the stars where made from scanned shredded paper.

Digital Paintings

2008-09-04T13:36:00.000-07:00

Just thought i'd post some examples of digital artwork I've painted using Adobe Photoshop CS software. The first image was completed last year as part of my University course. The following three were actually painted back in 2004/2005, and helped me get into the course in the first place!

Life drawings and other work

2008-08-30T23:59:00.000-07:00

Thought i'd post some old work since i've not been able to create any new pieces over the last few days. The life drawings were completed a couple of years ago as part of a life drawing module during the first year of my Computer Arts course. I've also posted a couple of Fairy drawings I completed around the same time as well as a portrait in acrylic of a friend. Finally, there's a portrait of family pet, Filo, I drew last year.

Hello!

2008-08-28T15:46:00.000-07:00

My first post on my brand new blog! I'm currently a student studying Computer Arts and, upon graduating, wish to become a freelance illustrator. I'll try to keep this blog up to date with any new artwork I may come up with as well as post past work i've completed.

I've recently entered a drawing into this year's Art Renewal Center Salon competition (drawing category) and have posted the drawing here, it's my latest work. You can view the previous winners and finalists at their website - http://www.artrenewal.org/

I'll look forward to posting further work soon. Until then...