With Child…

Around the time of the birth of my first son Niall, I painted this image of my wife in oils. It’s been sitting on our lounge wall ever since and I’ve felt it’s been in need of a little update:

Update….

I’ve been tinkering with this painting in my spare time. there’s something very relaxing and satisfying about adding a bit here and a bit there. No pressure stuff. It’s also quite lovely to see it turning into a painting after having stared at lots of incoherent scribble for so long whilst working on it. (watercolour, (and for the w/c purists- not a splot of gouache in sight.))

Window…. (Old Watercolour).

Haven’t had much time to sketch and I’m not allowed to post anything I’m working on right now, sooo….here’s a very old watercolour painting of my wife.

My beautiful Old Gibson….

This is a painting I did of my beautiful Ol’ Gibson acoustic…. been around the world and back a fair few times in her life and is a fair bit older than I am. sadly, she’s a little worse for wear and isn’t the most playable guitar I own, but she did make a great subject for this little watercolour I painted a few years ago.

traditional-watercolour

Black Swan…

Here’s a painting of a black swan I did back in 2003-04…

stuff from earlier this year….

It’s Monday morning and I’m still removing the sand from my eyes. I have a whole heap of stuff to do today so I’ll be busily working away all day, so no warm-ups or anything this morning. Instead, here are a few sketches I worked on earlier this year…

 

   and here’s another new one from the book I’m currently illustrating- line art (pending coloured work)…

simplifying…..

One of the (many) projects I currently have on the go is a (quote) Spiritual (unquote) children’s book. The subject matter is quite heavy and rather a strtch for most people, so my take on this book involves stripping the art back  to it’s bare bones and injecting as much humour as I can to make the ‘message’ sink in more easily. It’s great fun every now and again to draw in a style that doesn’t involve over-rendering, or little tiny details- the brain can only cope with so much at times eh?

here’re the pencils for one of the illustrations…

Here’s the inked drawing…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…Speaking of detailed artwork… when I first moved to Australia, I focused most of my creative attention on the drawing and painting of wildlife. It was a great time for me and I think I evolved artistically rather quickly. I immersed myself in the diversity Australia offers as far as it’s animal life is concerned. My wife and I travelled a lot to National parks and zoos and wildlife sanctuaries. Here’s a painting from that period, painted in watercolour, gouache and a scratch of coloured pencil here and there. Sorry for the crappy image, the photo was taken behind glass..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and here are a couple of graphite drawings from around that time….

Shameless Art Promo….

I just found this old image on my hard drive. It’s about 7 years old, painted in watercolour, I don’t get to paint in traditional media very often, but I rather like this image which was originally painted as a still life.

Old work, recently inked…

Before I start my day at the drawing board, I generally do something to warm up. It may be drawing something completely new, reworking something I’ve done previously that I may not be entirely happy with or inking up old sketches. Here are a couple of older images from my sketchbooks that have been inked over the past few days….

‘Granny’s Magic Slippers’- originally drawn a couple of years ago….

‘Broom Cupboard’- a reworking of an old drawing from a couple of years ago…

 

 

 

 

 ‘Paint Like Arthur Rackham’- Commission for The Official Corel Painter Magazine. This image was discarded in favour of a simpler image. It was drawn on paper, scanned in, then inked and painted using Corel PainterX. I’ve already posted the line art for this in an earlier post…

More whispy forest maidens….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve just finished this TV drawing. I have to say that the inking is my favourite part, call me weird, but I absolutely adore scribbling over the faint graphite drawing with the pen- very satisfying indeed.

So… the photo shoot went really well. the photographer was a very interesting lady, plenty of fresh insights about life and things and I found the 2 1/2 hours just flew by. I didn’t even really mind having my picture taken, which is kind of a first for me. It did help that whatever flash she was using didn’t blind me in the process.

Workwise, things are looking good. Coming to the end of the book I’m working on, just one illustration to go and a cover then I’ll go through and tighten up a few patchy areas throughout the other illustrations then it’s done. I received another book commission through yesterday, so along with the other couple of things I have on the go, I’ve got me quite a nice little pile of illustrations to be working through over the next few months. My horscope yesterday said something along the lines of: “Be prepared for a very busy period ahead…” Seems they were right. Ten deep breaths, now focus Mr. Pocock….

Father’s Day….

What a fantastic day it’s been so far. I was quite suddenly woken up at 7 Am by my eldest son Niall…”Happy Father’s Day!!!” he exclaimed. Rubbing the sand from my eyes and bidding the wonderful dream I was in the middle of goodbye, I looked up to see my beautiful wife holding my youngest son Finn and Niall with an armful of gifts, and of course, the toys he can never put down they all jumped on the bed and I opened my gifts.

It’s Father’s Day here in Australia today. It’s been a pretty emotional journey through the day so far as I count my (many) blessings and gaze on at my boys with absolute love in my heart. I became a Dad at the age of 36, later in life for many, I just know I wouldn’t have been ready for such a role any earlier I also  feel as though I’ve reached a point in my life where I’m about as happy as I’ll ever be and the overwhelming sense of pride and the surreal honesty of looking on at my sons as they play is almost more than I can bear at times. the tears aren’t far from the surface today

UPDATE…… Just gotten back from lunch at the local cafe and went to the park with the boys. Finn took his first step today!!! Also, his first tooth has come through…. Very exciting. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Dad, my sons Finn (left) and Niall (right) and I on Dad’s trip over from the UK a couple of  months ago….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Niall (2 1/2 yrs old)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finn (10 months old)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The boys and I at the park today… Can you tell I’m not a big fan of having my photo taken?

I did some work for a client yesterday, I had to produce a dragon silhouette for a company’s logo. It was a great job and I came up with a fair few designs I rather liked. A few of them were far too elaborate for a company logo though, this is one of them….

The Biggest Question Of All Is….

…Who makes the clothes for Superheroes?

Here’s an old sketch of a cool mandolin-playing Piskie enjoying some of nature’s finest herbs. graphite

Painting update and other things…

This painting is taking up a lot of my head space. When I can think of anything other than the jobs I have on the go, I’m thinking about actually finishing this one. It’s kind of a landmark piece as it’ll (hopefully) set the tone for the rest of the art I’ll be producing for the exhibition. Working in oils is very time-consuming and I won’t be producing all the other pieces in this media (thankfully). There’ll be some acrylic paintings, some watercolour stuff, mixed media, some pen and ink and some graphite stuff. I’m pretty comfortable with most of the mediums mentioned so that’s ok, but I’ll feel a whole lot better when this one is finished.

I’m also really enjoying the black and white art at the moment. For one thing, I’m terribly quick, and  instant gratification is so important whilst I’m so busy. here’s a drawing or two I’ve worked on when I should be doing other things. (ahem.)Nothing earth-shattering here.  Just some playing around with cross-hatching. I like to vary my approach and learn as many different styles as I can to keep things fresh.

Here’s another crow. For no other reason than the fact that I love drawing crows.

Distilling all the pen work into a silhouette. Trying to say as much as I can without all the hatching, criss-crossing and other detail that can sometimes be unneccessary. This is a discipline in itself and one I thoroughly enjoy.

and here’s a typical ‘hand loosening’ page. I frequently go through the routine of warming up before I start working on paid gigs for the day otherwise my work can look very stiff and lifeless. I find even half an hour a day is a great way to:

1) do your own thing

2) play with other ideas you may wish to pursue but don’t have the time, and…

3) free your mind up before attempting a (sometimes) daunting, difficult or even boring  job.