This little blog seems to be getting a lot of attention right now, thanks for visiting, it's very encouraging to see that my work is of interest to so many people from so many locations around the world, so thanks for the encouragement. Questions and suggestions for future posts are always welcome.
It's been a while since I last posted, so here's a quick update. The last few weeks in summary look like this - Portraiture, Flu, Borgia, Cannes Film Festival, 3D sculpture, Good Guys. Strange eh? I know...
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| A wee, and badly taken, iPhone snap of the start of one face. |
Portraiture
Continuing with my portrait in oils during the week, I began work on the faces and was quite pleased with the slow but good progress I was making. An example of the start of the grisaille painting can be seen above.
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| I'm holding out here, feeling really awful, looking worse, still painting...but an hour or so later I took to my bed for 3 days. |
Flu
Amazingly, just as I got in to the nitty-gritty of the faces my sons and I came down with the worst, most disgusting flu. Someone suggested it was swine flu, I don't know. But the timing could not have been worse. The illness was horrible, bloody awful and it would not leave us. But if I thought flu looked as cool as the video below I might have thought it sucked a bit less to suffer it.
* Hmm...seems you may need to click the 'HD' button on this little film to make it work, not sure why.
Borgia
I managed to pull it together before my shooting date for the new TV series 'Borgia', but only just. That was a very interesting experience in which I had a chance to work with Vincent Carmichael, Art Malik and John Doman. We shot in an old building in the vicinity of Prague castle. Seemingly the production took over the whole building and decorated many of the rooms in a renaissance style that resulted in quite incredible mural work. I have so much respect for Czech set designers, they are simply brilliant. I was knocked out by the quality work they did on Narnia and so it's good to see the industry here is finally getting back on its feet.
Get this - The story goes that the owner of the building was going to sell it but now that it is so richly decorated he's changed his mind. Unfortunately I didn't get to shoot in the 'Sistine chapel' that they recently built up at Barandov studios, but I've seen some pictures and it's, again, astonishing. Go Czechy!
Cannes Film Festival
I was delighted to learn a few weeks back that two of the short films I did last year will show at Cannes Film Festival this year. I was completely blown away by this news. Here's the shorter of the two. 'Product Placement' is based on a short story by Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club.
3D Sculpture
I've had the opportunity to play around with digital sculpture this last week or so and I've found it simply fascinating. I was trying to think of a subject for my first test sculpt and decided on a character from the classic science fiction film Bladerunner. I was a big fan of this film as a teenager, indeed at the time I rated it my favourite film of all. I can no longer claim a favourite film, you get older and your exposure broadens, so now, lets just say it's one of many many favourites.
For my first effort I chose the character of J F Sebastian played by William Sanderson who many will now know from True Blood and Deadwood. My intent was to see how close to 'real' I could sculpt his face from the elevator scene in Bladerunner.
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| Sculpt in progress. |
The result is toy-like, fitting I suppose as this character was a toy-maker. I'm trying to just work on this stuff on weekends, but damn it's tempting to fire it up late at night. At some point I hope to post a breakdown of the work in progress. BTW - The hair is still unfinished, I hope to improve on that next week.
SPOILER - This link shows the scene I looked at, but don't open it if you have not seen Bladerunner, the events shown here will spoil it. I should add it's not for children, so if you're a young-un - lay off. Instead look at the trailer below...
* When I first saw Bladerunner I realised I had been in the building in which J F Sebastian lives. It is the Bradbury building in downtown Los Angeles. When I was a little boy I sometimes accompanied my father on his deliveries and it was a treat to literally get behind the scenes of MGM studios and such like. But one day he took me to the Bradbury just to ride the elevator. He knew the people there and they were very nice to us. It makes me a bit sad to think of this time now. Then again, maybe it's not my memory after all but someone else's, just an implant. ;)
Good Guys
During the week I am working on my portrait painting and rehearsing lines for yet another short film we are shooting in 10 days time. 'Good Guys' is a science-fiction themed short and will involve some interesting prosthetics, something I'll perhaps reserve for a future post. I have many 'sides' to learn and so I have recorded a reading of the lines that I play over my ipod as I paint...I just hope they stick in my noggin'. Wish me luck!...and I will get around to painting with wine again soon, I promise.
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| My last doodle painted with a glass of wine. |
