L O V E (2015 - present)
This is an ongoing series of full-colour psychedelic images linked by the exploration of a variety of themes and influences (books, films, religion, music, pop-culture icons...) all centred on the appropritation of cultural signifiers.0
The idea is that each image will centre on one specific message and will be chocked full of symbolism to stress that idea.
1. CHAOS AND CREATION (2015)
This is the first piece in the series and is a reworking of a drawing I did in 2012 - I'd long wanted to recreate it but never got round to it (uni... work... a broken graphics tablet...). Finally I've forced myself to finish, so I re-worked the parts that weren't doing it for me from the original and fully-coloured it.
The style's influences range from Adventure Time to Jamie Hewlett to Hergé to Yellow Submarine.
[2015, digital painting.]
Chaos and Creation (2012) - the original drawing that formed the basis for this piece. I still like most of it, but because I drew it straight from my head with no planning, there's A LOT of messiness and things that don't work which needed to be re-drawn.
From there I knocked up this very rough version to test some colouring - I wanted to see how well gradients worked and blending different tones. I decided overall that they didn't work, so I went for a more flattened approach.
First Draft - I experimented here with the framing, going for a thin "behind-the-image" border. I thought it was a little too blue/green so I messed around with the colour some more. The bottom right-hand corner is purposely left sparse of detail because the idea is that I will use this piece for a band poster, and the logo will be superimposed into that space.
The finished product. Hand-drawn and digitally painted, 2012-2015.
2. A X THE UNIVERSE (2015)
The second in the series started life when somebody asked me to draw an ostritch on fire - that begun a theme of death and rebirth and lead to ideas of infinity and universal balance.
