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 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.

Exquisite Corpse Panels on a theme of Blackwing - updated

The surreal exercise of the Exquisite Corpse seen here at around 0:25 - 0:30 seconds of the Luna Trailer by the artist and film director Dave McKean - some other images are interspersed throughout the trailer (DVD and Blu Ray coming out at the end of February 2015, available here).

(C) Dave McKean and Barron Storey

Peter Elliott

Simon Newbury

Bartosz Jekiel

Giuseppe Lama

Detail - Tim Seelig

Tim Seelig

Daniel Newbury

Kerry Bennett

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."

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 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?

Our Chosen Instrument - #5 - Tim Seelig

Tim Seelig is the fifth creative to join our merry band. He studied Media Arts (specialising in Photography and Digital Design) and English Literature at Plymouth University. He took up drawing as a hobby around the age of 19 having rediscovered graphic novels (although there were many design and graphics experimentations in his early years on a BBC Micro using AMX Art and Basic). By the end of his second year he was running a small press magazine that featured comic strips, prose stories, and interviews with a group of like minded people. A lot of time was also being spent creating illustrations in Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro. During his third year he was encouraged to pursue his art further by a then post grad student at Plymouth who was finishing his MA in Illustration.

Over the past 12 years, Tim has provided illustrations for an assortment of projects, as well as guest lecturing  on his techniques and influences at the University of Canterbury Christ Church and Exeter. Previous illustrations Clients include Computer Arts Magazine, .Net, Digital Camera Magazine, South West Arts Council, The New Venture Theatre in Brighton, Desperado Publishing (US), Matador, Moonstone Books (US), Exeter University, and album sleeve art for a dozen or so bands.

Inspired by Dave McKean, Bill Sienkiewicz, Ashley Wood, Nick Bantock, Man Ray and Cindy Sherman to name but a few. 

Tim has recently formed Second On The Left (2OL) which will publish his first solo collection of work entitled Null Exhibit.

Tim and his work can be found on his website, Facebook and Twitter accounts and can be contacted through his email, tim@tim-seelig.co.uk