Taking A Line Round Up - March 2015

It has been a good week 

for our creatives.

Simon Newbury has 

completed a sketch of a dog's head

for a friend and client

Simon Newbury

Tim Seelig has
recently collaborated with
Antony Vergettte-Lynn,
also known as
The Ink Captain,
to make a tee shirt to celebrate
the opening of a new studio
as wel as the craft itself.

Tim Seelig

T-shirts can be bought directly from
the studio, 
Ink Captain, for £12.
(Postage and packing is extra, so please enquire beforehand)

Kerry Bennett
has flown to New Zealand
but has had time to
capture a bird
in watercolour

Kerry Bennett

The New Zealand Fan Tail

Add caption

Patryk Hardziej
is holding an
Exhibition/Exhibition
"Illustrations" Patricia Podkościelny & Patryk Hardziej
15.04.2015 h. 19.00
Gallery in Hall of CKiS, Kalisz

Patricia and Patrick/Patryoja and Patryk

Renee Willoughby 
is curious about recreating her inward space
into an immersive performance and seeing how
that presence transfers through screens.

Renee Willoughby

It is an investigation into disembodiment
and public versus private spaces.Her performance can be seen here.

Exquisite Corpse Panel 7

Kerry Bennett, in preparation for her exhibition that opens on Wednesday at The Ridge Club at Hastings Court in Hastings (East Sussex), has completed her panel for the Exquisite Corpse theme of the Blackwing. 

My inspiration came from looking at all of the drawings before on the panel. The hole in the other images, I chose to change it to a crystal ball to see into the future. The black wings, something other than a bird, the interior of my brain with synapses pulsing came up with the above image and then needing something more human. I came up with the idea of human with the cocoon, and then I felt the need for the odd black feather or two. As if the winged creature had just flown away. So I guess, it bring the past, present and the future all together. 

She followed on from Daniel Newbury's panel. 

Kerry's Art Exhibition starts on the 4th of March 2015

Hastings Court "The Ridge Club" within the Care Home

Viewing from 11 am - 4 pm.

On for a couple of months

Solo Exhibition.

Opposite the Church, 

Just before the Crematorium.

The Shrove Tuesday pictures

Last week, I suggested pictures base on the theme of

 Shrove Tuesday, 

Kerry Bennett

Mardi Gras, 

Laurie Brook Summers

Pancake Day 

Peter Elliott

or Fat Tuesday.

Exquisite Corpse Panel 6 (edited and updated)

Daniel Newbury, brother of Simon, has taken the Exquisite Corpse a step further following on from Tim Seelig's panel (see below).

Tim Seelig's Exquisite Corpse panel

Daniel Newbury's Exquisite Corpse panel

Daniel says of his panel, "I went with various inspirations from the previous panels (i.e. the 'hole' from 2,3 & 4. The ornate bust of panel #4 sowed the seed for the stone work/intricacy of the grand conservatory/sanctuary and of course ‪#‎Blackwing‬. Unfortunately 'Blackwing' seems to have turned rather demonic in this particular manifestation). I then just went where my imagination took me and opted for a bit more of a narrative."

Daniel does intricate drawings of other architectural scenes, have a look at his "strokes" of London at his website and where he can also be contacted.

Kerry Bennett - Examples of her work

Kerry Bennett, an artist from East Sussex, whose meandering roots help to create pencil drawn illustrations:

The image of a sadly departed hen and the horns of a satyr

Have a look at her biography 

Waiting for food or singing a note

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder (and the seen)

Just taking a snack

Beware of the gentleman who plays a guitar where the notes turn into birds

Another rodent snacks 

Panel from an Exquisite Corpse

Kerry can be contacted for work, have a look at her contacts page.

Giuseppe Lama - examples of his work

Giuseppe Lama, hails from Italy but uses global inspirations to create marvellous miracles of illustration:

We are lucky that Giuseppe records his process of creation,
have a look at his biography.

Images from the theme of evil musicians

The more sepia-toned version of an evil musician

Once again, the working process that goes into an image, this time of the clock tower

that houses the infamous bell, Big Ben. 

The finished piece

Giuseppe's panel for the Exquisite Corpse based on the theme 

of Blackwing

The creative process for a Satyrnalian 

or even Satyrday embellished "S".

The finished article of the embellished "S".

Giuseppe can be contacted through his webpage. 

Exquisite Corpse Panel 5

In our first regular art project, the collected creatives who use the Blackwing pencil, we bring you the fourth panel by the digital artist, Tim Seelig. Tim exhibits his work on his website. Tim very kindly showed us the detail from his Exquisite Corpse panel in a few days before he revealed the full piece. 

Detail of Tim Seelig's Exquisite Corpse Panel

In both Greek and Roman Mythology, the Harpy was a winged monster, more avian like than Pegasus,  with a human face and it was thought that name meant "snatchers".

The Full Image of Tim Seelig's Exquisite Corpse

When asked for his inspirations and his working on the piece, Tim very kindly wrote the following:

"In term of ideas for my take on the exquisite corpse, I was thrilled to hear from Giuseppe the direction he was going in was taking elements of the previous entries, but he hadn't come up with a Harpy. 

I told him this is what i planned to do (and in fact it's something I'd had in my head from the moment Simon posted his picture). 

Unlike the previous pieces mine started as a small sketch on an A3 pad (drawn with the Blackwing), just to give me an idea of what I was doing in order to compose the Harpy. I then started going through various classical renditions of Harpies via Google and (the) few books I have on Mythology. Most were shown as half women and half bird. But for me, whenever I thought Harpy, I automatically thought of Ray Harryhausen's miniatures from Jason and the Argonauts (bat wings and rough, possibly scaly skin).  I wanted to go down the more traditional route of a bird with a woman's torso and head.  

There were a lot of layers in this before I started merging them in Photoshop. At one point, it was taking up a couple of Gig of RAM. The head, shoulder, and arms used belong to a friend of mine and the latter appendage were used as the feet of the Harpy. The wings took 3-4 hours alone and are a mishmash of ceramic wings from my Mum's garden, crow's wings, raven's wings and painted textures I'd done with acrylics. 

I used a mixture of mouse and Wacom tablet and pen in the composition. The beak and the feathers around the face are taken from a Harpy Eagle, I thought given the name, it was suitably fitting. At some point I may return to this and do a more detailed setting for the backdrop."

Blackwing images take flight

Our creative collective have been given full reign to let the Blackings do their stuff:

 Giuseppe shows us his thinking whilst he conquers the Houses of Parliament Clock Tower, 

you see you thought I was going to say Ben Ben, oh damn, now I typed it.

 Try and spot the differences

 Kerry Bennett plays with the Blackwings on different types of paper

 Including smooth 300 gsm watercolour paper for the mouse 

 Michelle Taylor plays with her Blackwing to create a white winged creature 

More from our other artists later this week

Exquisite Corpse Panel 4

In our first regular art project, the collected creatives who use the Blackwing pencil, we bring you the fourth panel by the digital artist, Giuseppe Lama. Giuseppe shows his work on different sites across the web, have a look at his past stuff at Pinterest, Facebook, Behance and his own website. Giuseppe very kindly shows us his process for his Exquisite Corpse panel in a series of shots, before he reveals the final piece. 

Giuseppe lets us into his thinking behind his Exquisite Corpse piece: "I wasn't too sure how to continue the visual narrative of the theme after the previous panels so I decided to take a few key elements from those panels and just give them my own twist. The image is a blend, if you like, of Simon's woman (female bust), Bart's holed wing (the hole in her stomach) and the reptiles very loosely themed to your crocodile, all in one big anthropomorphic monster. The statue-like reference is there to represent the idea of a fetish/symbol of our Exquisite Corpse. The vaguely Corinthian-like capital from which she emerges reminded me of the Greek caryatids in Athens, just to reinforce the idea of a cold piece of marble... Don't ask me why I didn't do any preliminary sketches, I just went for it and "took a line" for a wander on that very same piece of paper

As for the technique, as I mentioned there was a lot of smudging, then pencil shading on top of it, then erasing to obtain areas of light, then repeat the process over and over until I got the smoothness I was looking for.

I hadn't done anything like this for a very long time, last recorded time I did was back in 1999 and produced this: 

(Do have a look at these other images at the link above, they really quite spectacular and spooky - Ed). 

So you can tell my style hasn't really changed or progressed since... One thing I can tell you for sure is that I really had a lot of fun doing it again!

This piece promotes the Blackwing as an extension to, what we presume, Medusa's hairstyle - where snakes, hair follicles and feathers vie for attention. As Giuseppe states on his website, "Religion and pagan rituals coexist to this day, in a chaotic blend of surreal beliefs where messages from the dead are still coming to us in our dreams." It adds so many motifs, classical mythology, sculpture and maybe a hint of Henry Moore's internal spaces. But I leave it to you to make your own mind up, but don't look Medusa straight in the face otherwise you may turn into stone.

It will be interesting to see where Tim goes next with his Exquisite Panel. 

Satyrday - our contributions - part two

As Satyrday comes to an end, we look at our other creatives Satyr'ical characterisations:

Patryk Hardziej gave us the Satyr with drink in hand as he heads to town for the night. 

The Satyr, I mean, not Patryk or maybe both. Can we also welcome our new

creative, he is awaiting his pencils.

Kerry Bennett brings us a chicken possibly on the head of a satyr, 

quickly drawn before catching the train.

You'll get to recognise this satyr, he is slowly going off the rails 

on this Satyrday night.

Simon Newbury plays with manipulates to bring a mythical mosaic

With a Guinness and a lobster, his Satyrday night

gets worse...

Satyrday - our contributions - part one

Our creatives were given the subject of Satyrday - a portmanteau of the words Saturday and Satyr (the mythical half man creature that the Greeks had given horse features and the Romans changed to goat features). What would they bring to the table? See below:

Giuseppe Lama shot the process of his Satyrday embellished "S" letter with the final shot below. 

This started the ball to roll and Bartosz combined his love of the Quay Brothers film

Instititute Benjamenta and satyrs.

Peter Elliott then created a rough working drawing of a chubby satyr.

Then Daniel Newbury, one of recent enrolled creatives, produced a hint of Twin Peaks.

Following with Tim Seelig's satyr profile. 

What does Saturday mean to you?