Not being able to see the wood for the trees
Any artist worth their salt will spend hours working up ideas, discarding drawing after drawing in order to refine an idea. This process can happen over weeks, months or even years, but you, the viewer rarely see this. No as the viewer you are presented with only the finished work, and I for one feel this is a little sad. Now as artists we have a predisposition to never being happy with our work, and I for one am guilty as charged in this area, but I wanted to try and wean myself off of what I think is a wasteful state of mind.
And so here I’ve tried to present to you all the working drawings and even mere doodles, over the coming months I feel sure there are many here that will lead to one dead end after another, but there will also be those that will lead to the final work. And so why do I attempt this, after all even I freely admit I don’t like anyone to see my work if I’m not 100% pleased with it? I do it because I know the whole process will aid me in improving my work, it will make me really look more closely at every thing I do.
So what is ‘a moment in time’ anyway?
A moment in time, the latest sketches by Brent Meheux
Lately I’ve been trying to nail down the whole ‘a moment in time’ thing, both by sketching out ideas, as you see here, and in words, which you can read about here. As you can see from these latest sketches at first it looks like a chunk of the earth has been torn from the ground, and items are suspended in mid air, as though it were a snapshot of a moment. The idea is to move on from here to then bring in man made objects as well, such as cars, or boats, all cut-away to, I hope, show the power of speed. Well that’s the plan, I’ll just keep drawing and refining the idea for now.
A new camera, a new outlook
Coffee couple taken with the Fujifilm X100 in Exeter by Brent Meheux
I’ve always been passionate about photography and for quite a while now I’ve been looking for a new digital camera that offered great quality and yet was small enough to take everywhere with me. Well after reading the great reviews of the Fufifilm X100 on Steve Huff’s website I decided to take the plunge and buy one. This picture comes from the very first stroll with the camera in Exeter, totally silent and unobtrusive, perfect for reportage work.
1967 Mini - Monte Carlo Rally
Mini Copper, 1967 Monte Carl Rally, I’ve always had a passion for Mini’s, well real ones that is, and to me one of their finest moments would be the 67 Monte Carlo Rally. At the moment I’m still looking at this ‘moment in time’ theme, but I’ve been trying to get speed involved more, hence the ‘jumping’ Mini. When I first started working on this I was really looing to practice on my fore shortening and more the technical side of things. For the first time in years I dug out my ‘ellipses’ for work on the tires and the lights.
Now this is an interesting point for me for lots of reasons, one of the main ones is the fact that although I loved the pencil work I’m just not happy with the pen an ink, I’m not sure if it’s the large sign in black, the whole composition or something else, all I can say is something is just not right. Time to move on to a fresh approach I think, not sure what, but a completely different style for a while.
Nippon Boy
In the early days I was always fascinated by both cartoons and comics, now I should stress not any ‘crap’ by Marvel, sorry, but I’m really not in any way into the whole ‘super hero’ thing. I like science fiction yes, but I like my characters to seem real, and I like good ‘original’ artwork, such as is found in the likes of 2000AD. Big muscles and tights really don’t do it for me. Well I’ve never really tried to draw strips, but I keep coming back to the idea, you see I love ‘character development’.
Nippon Boy as with many things started in front of the TV one winter night, loads of sketches then followed over the next few days. I was also influenced by the whole ‘Munny’ thing, and after seeing a couple of ‘munny’s’ tarted up as Samurai I started to look at the whole thing as a modern lad whose just got the ‘samurai’ bug, where will it lead, where will he go?
Here you can see just a few of the working drawings for the head and different facial expressions as well as a montage for a cover.
Tractor
I was undecided as to add this or not, it was a piece of work carried out a good few months ago now and was really just a practice piece. This is around the time I first started to work on the whole ‘a moment in time’ idea and at the same time look at working on the technical side of my illustration work. The tractor comes from a wide source of reference photos of old post war tractors, and although it has features from many the idea was always to come up with something original, really in the style of a ‘Disney’ cartoon. As you can see I’ve also included a few of the working drawings so that you can see how it evolved over time.
‘A moment in time’ is a theme that will become more pronounced over time I’m sure, but for now I’ll do my best to explain the idea to you. As a technical illustrator I’ve always looked at a cut-away such as the SB6 as a split second of time, a snap shot of that second, but what has always annoyed me about that sort of thing is that there’s no real feel of movement. And so I’ve decided to try and move in a new and unique direction, using landmass and other tricks to illustrate the ‘speed’. Now all the work so far has been nothing more than working drawings to explore that landmass, next will be the cut away to explore the speed side.
Hunter, or Hunted
This is the first piece I’ve produced since I got back from Afghanistan that relates to that tour, I’m not sure where I’ll go from here to be honest. I’d like to think that it’ll be the start of a series of paintings from the tour, but still not sure. The subject is a British army sniper team in Afghanistan, taken from reference photos of the lads on the ground. I’ve deliberately chosen angles that hide their features, they know who they are, and so will all the lads from the tour, but I didn’t want others to. The title relates to the fact that as with any war fought between conventional forces and insurgents you really never know where the threat will come from, is the local national enjoying tea in the shade harmless, or is he ‘dicking’?
The work started as pencil drawings and then was inked in, scanned and coloured in Photoshop. Also a lot of people ask about the earth under the main scene, it’s all to do with a theme I’m working on at the moment called ‘ a moment in time’, all to do with the fact that all my artwork is a snap shot of a simple moment, you’ll see it again and again in the future.
Foreshortening
One of the real skills in technical illustration is ‘foreshortening’, a task these days taken care of by most computer programs, mores the pity. Artists are just not taught how to put together a 3-d grid anymore, in fact the vast majority would only have a lose idea as to what I was talking about and no doubt think I was on about a simple ‘cube’. If you look at the first 2 illustrations here you can see the simple grid I’m on about, in the first case we have a simplified version so that you can see ho on 2 planes foreshortening is achieved.
And now lets look at the second example, here the effect is also bent in the way a ‘fish eye’ lens would see the grid. Really sorry I can’t direct you to the website I got this from, it’s been in my ‘odd art’ folder for ages. If it’s your work please drop me a line and I’ll be sure to credit you.
Bella, practice, practice and practice some more!
The only way you get better at anything is to practice, and for artists it’s a never-ending game, but one you don’t see much of. The illustration here, ‘Bella’ is a 1960’s scooter with a simple figure form to add interest, a piece just done for practice and amusement in front of the TV an evening or two ago. The idea as always was to practice industrial shapes, with also a nod to a simply brilliant illustrator I like, Gianmarco Magnani (see his website here - www.silencetv.com). Rather than spend hours drawing the 3-d grid I simply added a few lines of the grid for reference and went straight into the drawing. After scanning the pen and ink I coloured in Photoshop and then looked at adding the text as a simple exercise in typography, quite pleased with it really, might come back to this another day.
Tut-Tut – East meets West
After working on the scooter, ‘Bella’ the other day I thought I’d try a more interesting subject, something with more going on. I was watching the latest offering from the boys in ‘Top Gear’ (www.topgear.com), a trip through India in some classic British cars and got intrigued by the Tut-Tuts flying around in the background. If you’ve not come across these before they’re basic 3-wheelers powered by a small scooter engine. They use to be really popular in Europe in the years after the war, Italy in particular has a real passion for these. Now a few weeks ago I was chatting over an idea with a friend who is keen to use one as a mobile coffee shop, well one thing led to another and I ended up with a sort of ‘East meets West’ idea. Again the whole idea is to start practicing rusty skills in 3-d and foreshortening, not really interested in colour at the moment, just the drawing. Oh, the little guy on top is montaged from my ‘Hunter, or Hunted?’ And another nod to Gianmarco Magnani, really like his work at the moment.
Supermarine SB6
I don’t suppose I could really do a page on my artwork without throwing a nod to the Supermarine SB6 that I did for my degree course. The finished piece is about a meter and a half wide and was produced in the old way, pencil on drafting film. When I undertook my course I was pretty much the last student taught in the old way, after me it all went to CGI, which I think is great, but it somehow all looks the same. The original drawing was scanned in to Photoshop for the colouring, the first time I’d ever used Photoshop for that, and I suppose the start of a lifelong love of this program. It was also a great lesson for me in how there are two ways to do anything, the right way and the wrong way.
The right way is to undertake hours of research, 100’s of photos and produce loads of sketches. With the Supermarine SB6 I was lucky in the fact that there are only 2 left in the world and I gained access to one, the first right on my door step in the Southampton Hall of Aviation. This is a fantastic and highly underrated museum that is just full of fantastic planes and artifacts from around the Solent. They could not of been more helpful, allowing me to take hundreds of photos and point me in the right direction for further research, Hendon. At Hendon I was lucky enough to see, and get copies of, the original technical drawings Mitchell and his team produced. And then there was the picture library of the Times, full of original glass plates of the period.
A little history…
The Supermarine S.6B was a British racing seaplane developed by R.J. Mitchell for the Supermarine company to take part in the Schneider Trophy competition of 1931. The S.6B marked the culmination of Mitchell's quest to "perfect the design of the racing seaplane" and was the last in the line of racing seaplanes developed by Supermarine – click here to read more from Wikipedia
I’ve also include a close up here of the pencil work, as well as a sheet from the sketch book water colours.
Soviet Mig
Soviet Mig
As time goes on I’m working more and more on montages of my work, I seem to scan in a line drawing, and then a few months later return to it and start to montage it with other work, Soviet Mig is no exception. I’ve always been fascinated in the post war jets, in fact it’s a period I’m fascinated in full stop I suppose. The world seemed a far more ‘classy’ place to me then, and yet as in in the war the ‘cold war’ was pushing the limits of technology on an almost daily basis.
The montage also makes use of another of my ‘moments in time’ earth drawings again, used here to lock the montage down. Added to the plane are a few Soviet era missiles and symbolism, a work in typography and we’re done!
The T-shirt and snowboard were a last minute idea, lately I’ve been seeing so many great artists working on snowboards and t-shirts I decided to have a small go myself, quite pleased with the result really.
MGA Trailer
Now I know this is a little odd, but I have a few passions in life and 2 of the strangest are my old 1957 MGA and ‘Glamping!’ The first most people just nod at, I mean OK I can understand that one they say, but ‘Glamping!!!’ Well what can I say it’s to me the perfect way to recharge the old batteries if like the rest of the 99.9% of this country you’ve got to watch every penny. Now the only problem with glamping is that it really is about taking everything, including the kitchen sink, with you, the MGA’s not a lot of use here then.
Which is why I’ve started to look at the whole idea of building a trailer for ‘Monty’, oh, that’s it’s name by the way. Now a quick search on the web soon reveled a load of other people out there with the same idea, such as the couple I’ve reproduced here, but I’m after something different. The wings and wheels are pure MGA, but I love working in wood, and I think it somehow goes really well with the whole ‘Glamping’ thing. And so my initial designs are based very much around a wooden tub.
Well not really sure how far this will go, my real problem is one of time and lack of a workshop. We’ll see, you never know…
The Dragon Chair
It’s been quite a few months since I produced the Soviet Mig and I decided to revisit the artwork this week after finishing off the ‘Nippon Boy’ piece, again it’s a case of one piece giving direction to another. When I first did the Soviet Mig there was no reason to it, no idea behind it, it was just a case of a pretty picture. This time I had a more ‘fleshed’ out idea.
The Dragon Chair to me relates to the massive problem we have in the west when it comes to dealing with and understanding China, and boy are we going to pay for it! If you go back 100 years or more and look at their history it’s full of us, the west, using gunboat diplomacy to force the Chinese to cede their lands and their wealth. Time after time there are occasions when they tried to fight for their rights, the ‘Boxer Rebellion’ for example, all failed, until the ‘Korean War’
All of a sudden a ‘soviet’ china had caught up with the west armaments wise, thanks to the Russians, all of a sudden the west were caught on the back foot and no where was that more apparent than in the air. The Americans in their normal arrogant way just thought it would be a turkey shoot, flush from winning the war they were given the biggest bloody nose they had since Pearl Harbor, the Mig 15.
The Mig is flying over the wreck of a Saber ejector chair, again as ‘a moment in time’, and behind is the ‘Chinese Dragon’ – the link with the past.
