Illustrations for Exam Board Film Studies Resources - Film Practitioners

Pencil
January 2016

Some days, it just falls in your lap. I was contracted to write some film study resources for a new exam syllabus, and while in one of the meetings with the lovely Department Head, she happened to mention that because of copyright and licensing, they had trouble getting access to images - film stills and so on - to help illustrate their resources. Without thinking, I said "I can draw you some if you like", doodled her a reasonably detailed pencil sketch of Alfred Hitchcock and suddenly I had a separate contract to provide pencil illustrations of forty film practitioners - directors, animators, editors, sound designers and cinematographers - to adorn the new film study resources.

The process of producing that many illustrations fairly quickly was everything one might expect - a long slog, good fun, a learning experience, immensely frustrating (seriously though, Michael Bay's face is just plain lopsided and there are hardly any decent profile-type photos in existence of David Lynch's ace sound designer Alan Splett)... some didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped, some looked pretty good overall. Here are just a few of the ones that are possibly most easily recognised.

(Give up? They're all directors. From the top: Stephen Spielberg, Hayao Miyazaki, Ken Loach, Ridley Scott, Edgar Wright and Sam Raimi. Yes, I know - I promise there were some women as well, but I didn't trust you to know what Lynn Ramsey or Kelly Reichardt or Thelma Schoonmaker looked like. Sorry I didn't believe in you; I'll try harder next time.)

A Present for Sarah - Return to Oz

Colouring Pencil
December 2015

I'm pleased with this for several reasons:

1. It's a surprise present for a very dear friend of mine and I'm very hopeful that she'll really like it.
2. Out of necessity, it was completed in limited time and with limited resources (I had no time to paint like I'd planned and had to use colouring pencils; I only had access to a basic box of twelve which really restricted what I could do).
3. Again, as is often the case when working with secondary image sources (usually online, which often adds an extra layer of difficulty) rather than painting from life, finding pictures of a decent size and quality from which to work was nearly impossible. I had to create this as a composite of several different images to get the various details right, and the changes in tone between each image caused issues in keeping colour and shade continuity (as did the fact I basically had a choice of eight colours for the whole thing) - it doesn't come across so well in the scan, but the colours in the final piece were quite subtle on her face and looked pleasing.
4. IT'S ONE OF THE BEST FILMS EVER. I mean it. Go rewatch it if you don't believe me, or just read this.

Illustrations for Exquisite Terror - "Uncle Bob"

Pencil
September 2015

One last one for Exquisite Terror; this time, the inimitable horror writer "Uncle Bob" Martin. He may be much loved in the horror community, but he sure isn't one for selfies, and finding a reasonable quality picture of him from which I could work proved nearly impossible. We originally went with a different image in which over half his face was black shadow, but it was almost impossible to capture that well in pencil in a way which translated well in scans, so this pose (including its NSFW tshirt slogan) was used instead. It taxed me viciously throughout the process and led to some astounding procrastination, but now it's completed I'm happy enough with it, by and large.

Illustrations for Exquisite Terror - Hannibal in Transit

Pencil
January 2015

Aaaand we're back to The Silence of the Lambs, which seems to be my go-to illustration topic for Exquisite Terror. Believe me - I'm not complaining. As I may have explained in previous posts, that film means a lot to me, on several levels.

In truth, this drawing isn't great. COMPLAINTS: Lecter's face and most of his body/clothing details are fine, but the police officers aren't too well executed and I really want to bulk out the one on the right - he looks flat and insubstantial. The overall composition feels a little off and I wish I had come up with something a bit moodier for the background.

The restrictions inherent in trying to produce an "original" artwork of a well-known film, translating landscape orientation to portrait and finding enough screenshots of sufficient quality to cobble together the necessary details from which to work... well, first world problems, right? But still a challenge in some cases. Lecter on his own seemed sad, and kind of lacked... power, I suppose. But done sparingly, centrally and staring with wild eyes, flanked by two faceless police officers whose dark outfits made him stand out more - it kind of worked better. It's still not terrific though, and I'm toying with ways it could be improved before the final version goes to print. I hope I can manage it in time, but even if I don't, it's another drawing that taught me a lot about aspects I always either did instinctively without proper attention to detail or just wasn't aware of. Next time, then: even better.

Illustrations for Exquisite Terror - 19 Cadogan Place and 23 Yeoman's Row

Pencil
January 2015

Another pair of pieces for the excellent Exquisite Terror. This time, Naila requested pencil illustrations of two London properties that were hitherto unknown to me - 19 Cadogan Place and 23 Yeoman's Row.

19 Cadogan Place is located between Knightsbridge and Belgravia, just a few houses down from the former residence of noted politician/philanthropist/slave emancipator William Wilberforce. Online property listings (in this case, Zoopla) gush that no.19 is "an exceptional Penthouse apartment with a most impressive 690 sq/ft roof garden, overlooking the extensive gardens of Cadogan Place" and mention that it was last on the market in October 2014 with a guide price of £4,750,000. 23 Yeoman's Row, meanwhile, is also in southwest London and is described as "a quaint three storey cottage on a quiet little cul-de-sac off the busy Brompton Road, just a short walk from Sloane Square". Property magnates would be pleased to note that it is certainly cheaper than the previous property, with an estimated value of just £4,680,000. So that's good news for everyone, at least...

But I digress. So what is it that connects these properties? What possibly makes them of interest to a periodical that concerns itself primarily with academic analyses and scholarly articles related to horror literature and cinema?

Each served as home for a period of time (and in the case of Cadogan Place, as site of death as well) to screenwriter and director Michael Reeves. In his short life, he worked with horror greats like Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee, and notably directed and co-wrote The Witchfinder General before his death in 1969, aged just 25. As accompaniment for a piece in Exquisite Terror issue 5, Naila sent me images of each property and asked that I set about translating them into pencilwork.

I have no doubt that there are some people who very much enjoy drawing buildings, but I feared I was not one of them. The accuracy involved in creating straight lines and realistic angles and detailing the flat expanse of substance that makes up walls or windows... it just seemed like the opposite of what I have been trying to do in making my drawing and painting better, which is to create impressions of what is seen, not what is exactly there. It seemed sort of mathematical to me at first, rather than "artistic"; to someone who favours portraits over landscapes and often just skims in backgrounds without much interest, buildings seemed a lot more trouble than they were worth, frankly.

But of course I was wrong about this, and I'm glad I was. As ever, when you look at something properly and with care, you realise it isn't a box made of dull straight lines, but a shape composed entirely of light and shade. The brickwork, something I'd been dreading, turned out to be one of the most fun sections to do, and while it may have taken a while to get the proportions set, the fact I was drawing more straight planes than are found in the average human face transcended a chore and actually became fun. So there! Taught me a thing or two (as ever)...

A present for James

Colouring pencil
September 2014

A birthday present for a very dear friend, which took a lot longer than it should have because, try as I might, I could NOT get to grips with Vincent Price's head shape, a fact that is both stupid and humbling. This picture actually began life in pastel pencil but very quickly became incredibly frustrating and had to be thrown out and started again. I can see the appeal of pastel pencil in some circumstances I suppose, but honestly, it's so much nicer to have the fine detail and control of a regular colouring pencil, especially on a small scale.

Once it was done, I cropped it to fit in a landscape frame (about 16x10 inches) which helped balance the slightly squiffy composition. Not much else to say about it - I didn't quite capture Christopher Lee correctly and that is a shame, but hopefully Vincent will make up for it in the eyes of the recipient.

Brand logo - SonaMap

Photoshop/Illustrator
August 2014

I was asked to design a logo for an App in development at quite short notice; this was what was ultimately chosen as the final design. It was a surprisingly quick and painless process, because the brief was clear and gave me good sense of what kind of thing they wanted without being too prescriptive.

I wanted to include the symbol as part of the word to give it the potential to be used as a favicon, especially for smartphones where the screen would be smaller. From there it was just a matter of configuring the representation of the radar screen - circles or crosshairs, how many lines, positioning of the 'hits' and so forth. I don't have tons of experience with logo design to date (this is maybe the third or fourth one I've done properly) but I do really enjoy the challenge of condensing the information somebody wants to get across into just symbol, font and colour. That's an art form in itself.

Illustrations for Exquisite Terror - Buffalo Bill

Pencil
June 2014

Naila from Exquisite Terror asked for one more picture for the Silence of the Lambs piece, this time one of Buffalo Bill (who I think had ended up featuring in the essay I was to illustrate a little more than originally anticipated). I chose this one over the "tuck" or similar, just because I think it's a great image. It was hard to find a decent resolution of the photo from which to work, but actually this wasn't a bad thing overall. You don't draw every single tiny detail in minute detail, after all, but an impression of what's there - much like a photograph with not-so-great resolution.

Drawing this did make me reappreciate all over again what a great villain he is and what a particularly excellent combination of qualities Ted Levine brought to his portrayal of Jame Gumb. His face is at once flabby, loose-skinned and almost skeletal; he has this overall look that shifts between being dangerous, sexual and stupidly goofy.It's a powerful portrayal and I hope the image goes even a tiny way toward illustrating some of it.

Illustrations for Exquisite Terror - Hannibal and Precious

Pencil
May 2014

I have a very dear friend who writes about horror movies, and one of the outlets through which he distributes these writings is a rather neat publication called Exquisite Terror, an academic exploration of aspects of horror film. Having heard that editor Naila was looking for more illustrators, James put my name forward and Naila got in touch to ask if I'd be interested in doing illustrations for a piece on The Silence of the Lambs.

My emailed reply contained more capital letters and exclamation marks than is usually seemly in a first-contact communication, but it couldn't be helped. I have been fascinated by that film since I was perhaps eleven years old (though I wasn't allowed to see it until much later), have seen it dozens of times and know it inside out. I know all the quotes and all the parodies. The merged personalities of Clarice Starling and Jodie Foster loomed large in my pre-adolescent psyche as one major heroine; Lecter, with his manners and his Katharine Hepburn voice and his ostensible invulnerability, as a perfect villain. My reply, therefore was a great big YES, yes, most definitely yes, I would indeed be interested in doing illustrations for a piece on The Silence of the Lambs, thank you very much for asking.

Naila requested one of Hannibal Lecter's face, citing it as "delightfully creepy", and one other image. I had hoped to provide more, actually, but a third piece I began fell victim to a poor choice I made quite near the start and couldn't be salvaged in the execution - the rest, typically, fell victim to a lack of time. I toyed with the idea of doing the famous "Nice-chianti-FF-FF-FF-FF" face for the Hannibal picture, but when I browsed stills of it I realised that it sort of lacks tension. The brilliance of that moment is the startling suddenness of what he does; the image of him actually doing it has already bypassed that moment and wasn't as effective. I browsed some more and settled on the big close up of his face as he drinks in Starling's story about the lambs - much creepier, and featuring quite hypnotic eyes that allowed me to let the edges ofthe picture fade into the background a little to try and get the focus on his gaze.

For the other image, I toyed with a few ideas - including, a little shamefully, a kind of wry still life collage of Lecter's own drawing of Clarice next to a glass of chianti and a plate of fava-beans-and-you-know-what. Yes, I know - it would have been bad; I moved on. I always relished the moment when the head-in-a-jar of Benjamin Raspail is unveiled, but it was genuinely difficult to find a good image of it from which to work and I gave it up as not to be. Likewise the skin suit itself was hard to frame well, and like the snarling Lecter, it lacked tension because it's somewhat less than the sum of its parts (forgive the allusion) - not a Maguffin exactly, but certainly not as representive of the horror involved as it should be considering its creation is the motivation for all that killing. No skin suit.

There were good images of Starling herself and I very much wanted to include her, but the image I settled on was the one I made a mess of and there wasn't sufficient time to correct it. Had there been the possibility of a colour reproduction I would have loved to create a green-tinted monochrome of Starling groping terrified in the dark from the night-vision-goggle-framed point of view of Buffalo Bill... but grayscale only on this occasion, so that wouldn't have worked. Thinking of black and white and its restrictions led me to the perfect shot - Catherine Martin's low angle POV, looking up out of the pit at the odious little Precious gazing down at her. That was the one I wanted.

Little else to tell really. Pencils varying from 2B to 6B - a lot of time (but never enough) spent trying to get back into the mindset, remembering less is more; remembering you're not drawing everything that's there but an impression of what's there; remembering you're drawing light and shadow, not lines. Once I'm 'into' a drawing, I remember how much I love it and once it's done I see all the mistakes I made in it. It doesn't feel like other mistakes feel - there's no fear or regret with them because that picture can only ever be what it is; instead you feel calm and even-minded, because you know next time it will be better.

Or maybe that's all just the psychological effect of hours spent gazing deep into the eyes of Hannibal Lecter - who knows.

Client 101 - painting for Worthing Churches Homeless Project

Acrylic on paper
Apr 2014

It's that time of year again - time to contribute something to the extremely worthwhile and deserving Worthing Churches Homeless Projects Art Event, in which artists are recruited to make and donate a piece of art along a theme; it's displayed along with the others and auctioned in aid of the charity. I did it last year, when we were assigned the 'profile' of a homeless person and asked to produce a portrait of them based on the few lines they had written about their situation. This year was slightly different, but no less poignant - the 'Hopes and Dreams' project:

"What did you want to be when you were growing up? Is it the same now or have things in your life changed the things that you want, the things you dream about? A ten year old boy might not dream of owning his own home and raising a happy family but twenty years down the line that might be his greatest ambition. Worthing Churches Homeless Projects are running a project on Hopes and Dreams which will culminate in an exhibition as part of the Worthing ArtsTrail June 2014. The project calls for 100 members of the public and 100 people who have used the services of Worthing Churches Homeless Projects to write down their hopes and dreams. These will then be depicted by local artists."

It is of course one of my defining characteristics that I am grossly short of time, espcially lately, and so I couldn't do an oil painting like last time - there wasn't long enough to let one dry in time for posting (since I now live in a different landmass to this time last year), and so I sat down on a Sunday morning with an A3 sheet of good paper stiffened with gesso and a set of acrylic paints a friend bought me, and determined I would get the piece finished that day.

It's sad to relate but based on this and one other recent project (a handmade book I illustrated for my friend's daughter), I'm ready to admit that acrylic is seriously NOT my medium. I look at these pictures and feel quite frustrated actually - the way I paint, building over layers of things, just doesn't work in acrylic like it does in oil and I'm annoyed I wasn't able to do a better job. But at least I know now that it's best to keep the acrylics for flat colours and next time, just start earlier with my oils. I suppose that's progress in self-taught land.

Anyway, the 'Hopes and Dreams' profile sent to me was preceded by this statement from the very lovely project co-ordinator, Rachel: "This is one people keep sending back to me as it is so tricky so I totally understand if you don’t want it either and I will send you another one but thought it worth a try!" It's this one:

Client 101 - Marc, 55
I did not have any aspirations as a child as I did not go to school until I was 16.
I still don’t have any now.

I had a few initial, pathetic ideas involving some photos I took of my friend posing dejectedly in a stairwell, but they were far too trite for what this man was telling us about his life. I wanted to be able to see his face. Initially his eyes were light blue, and they looked up, but that felt trite too. They're still not right - I see so many things in this painting that I want to fix even now that it has been framed, posted and received in Worthing - but at least the proper mood of the piece is there. It's always tricky with this - you want to create a piece that will attract people and make them want to own it so they'll bid on the piece and get more money for the charity, but you also want to represent the experience that created the profile in the first place. Those experiences are sad ones, and deserve to be contemplated by those of us who often forget how lucky we are.

In short - not a painting I am particularly pleased with technically, but an experience I am glad to have had again and a piece that I hope will help raise some money for the project, even if it isn't much.

Programme Cover image - Peter and the Wolf

Hand drawn/traced from sketch in ink; coloured in Photoshop
March 2014

As part of my current dayjob I help put together event programmes. Usually I'm only responsible for the copy, but in this case the opportunity arose to do some artwork for the cover and I jumped at it. I had wanted to do an actual painting but there wasn't time, so it's another sketch-ink-scan-Photoshop job which I had to complete in one night. It's not my favourite thing I've ever done, but it'll definitely do the job. In truth, the main things I wanted to put across were to make sure the silhouettes of Peter and the main characters were easily recognisable and that the wolf... well, that the wolf looked threatening but not overtly sinister. I really like wolves and they get a bad press in general, especially among little kids who will be forming the majority of the audience at this concert, so I tried to go for something less cartoony. Again, it isn't perfect, but I like the pose and the eyes - it goes some way to conveying that it's a powerful animal but not the salivating hell-hound of fairy tales.

Gig poster - Hollywood Assassins, Red Raucous and Les Stoogers

Hand drawn/traced from sketch in ink; coloured in Photoshop
February/March 2014

Yes: a previous sketch reappropriated for the poster, just because I'm working on two other projects and didn't have time to design it from scratch. It's a bit of a last minute engagement and the promoter said he'd get some posters printed if I cobbled something together. The poster is not in any way remarkable, but it's included here for the sake of completeness and because of course I quite enjoyed the fonts.

Swan Boat - artwork for Adam Boucher and the Dead Set

Hand drawn/traced from sketch in ink; coloured in Photoshop
February 2014

Remember the 'Beginners' EP artwork I did for Adam Boucher? And the swan done as a potential sketch for it? Adam got back in touch wanting another CD cover at relatively short notice and asked if I'd simply do him a coloured version of the swan sketch because he'd liked it. So I redrew the main part in ink, scanned it in, and intergated it into a photo I had taken about six years ago when my friend and I spent a day dicking around on pirate boats and eating ice lollies when we should have been doing something useful. Easy enough - well, in the timeframe given, anyway. With a bit more time I'd put some highlights under the boat so it doesn't just look like it's hovering in a pool of black shadow. Actually now that I'm looking at that it's very annoying... but I'll know for the second version.

Incidentally, I know it's been a long time! Things have been a bit hectic, moving house twice (once to a different country) and finding a new job and realising that the worst thing about moving house is that it's 90% cleaning. Anyway, hopefully there will be more time for artworking very soon. I have a few bits in mind, mostly painting, and I'm twitching to get started...

Ink sketched by hand
Aug 2013

The other main contender for the EP cover was this sketch... but yeah - the other one's more fun, innit.

Hollywood Assassins EP artwork

Ink sketched by hand, coloured/edited in Photoshop and Illustrator
Aug 2013

Following on from the album cover below came this cover for another six recorded tracks. It had to be done quickly - like within six hours from initial idea to finished product - and I think that shows a bit, especially on the shading on her jeans. If I'd had time I would have liked to fix the texture there - I'm still not great with Photoshop but I can think of two ways I could have improved the texture and I suppose that's some kind of progress.

My initial idea definitely had the skull in it, but was something more like a classic Hamlet pose (only with a 50s-styled female protagonist for the sake of consistency with the album). I then saw - on my teenage cousin's Facebook, if you can believe it - this great publicity still for Hannibal, which I really liked. I sketched some stuff but it wasn't great. AND THEN I happened upon a great vintage photo of a little girl bowling and thought, hmmm...

It took a long time to frame it right, because it's pretty difficult to arrange a believable 'bowling hand' and a decent skull in conjunction with each other - you just can't get a great angle on either because all the fun stuff that makes the skull a recognisable symbol is hidden under the palm of the hand. Maybe that's why when I searched the phrase 'Skull being used as a bowling ball' there were no images at all like the image I ended up making. So I suppose that's kind of positive actually.

Anyway - overall it's not too bad. The whole retro 50s thing around bowling fits the band image really well, the ridiculousness of the situation means it's got a mix of mischief and the macabre, and the colours are quite attractive. If there'd been more time... but I'll stop being negative now. I think my favourite part of all is the stitched-looking logo - it was a new technique for me and while it could certainly be refined for future use, it doesn't look too bad.

Find the band here and the EP on Amazon, iTunes and 7digital.

Hollywood Assassins album artwork

Ink sketched by hand, coloured/edited in Photoshop and Illustrator
Apr 2013

I would have had a lot more to say about this but frankly the project dragged on for so long that by now I'm sick of looking at it; I had to do several versions of it because of a really stupid combination of circumstances and the fact that the colour contrasts were so bad in different browsers. Still, it's over now and I learned a lot in the process. Plus no one knows about the band so hardly anyone will ever see it anyway...

The guitarist's four-year-old daughter had a look and said: "That's silly. The boy should be holding the lady, not lying down."

Client 507 - painting for Worthing Churches Homeless Project

Oil on canvas
Mar 2013

My lovely friend works for a charity called the Worthing Churches Homeless Projects, which is always coming up with ways to raise money that seem a little more varied and interesting than a lot of other charities. This spring, they launched an art event explained by their literature as follows:

"The aim of the project is to raise awareness by highlighting the significant number of people Worthing Churches Homeless Projects help in a twelve month period. Moreover, an illustrative project will demonstrate that a homeless person cannot be identified by their appearance and remind us that homelessness is something that can happen to anyone. In doing so the project aims to dispel the stereotypes attributed to homelessness."

Their hope was to recruit one artist for each of the homeless people they had helped in the previous twelve months. When my friend put out a Facebook call for more people to get invovled, I jumped at the chance. This was not just because I, as a definite home-body and non-outdoor type, have always found the idea of homelessness one of the saddest things I can think of and a very worthy charitable cause, and not just because I wanted to help my friend out, but also for the highly selfish reason that I was dying to paint in oils again and this was a perfect opportunity.

I should clarify at this point - I have painted in oils before, but not for years. Like, maybe fifteen years (CAVEAT REMEMBERED SINCE TYPING THIS ORIGINALLY: fifteen years apart from two occasions since, neither of which resulted in a finished picture). My grandmother gave me a set of oil paints and some canvases when I was maybe ten or eleven, and I excitedly set about recreating some horses (my primary interest in life at the time) and, as I recall, one bowl of fruit (an attempt to acknowledge that I understood oil paints were for Serious, Grown-Up Art). I know the last time I actually painted in oils was one day at my friend Emily's house; I know too that the painting was left unfinished and that Emily has had two children since then. I had gathered some new paints and a new tabletop easel and been given an excellent book on painting by the wonderful David Leffel - I just hadn't ever had the time or inclination to actually pick up a brush, and the longer I left it the more I wanted to do it and the bigger a deal it became. This was the perfect opportunity to jump in - I'd be working to a deadline, doing it for someone other than myself, would have a brief to interpret and the aspiration that it needed to be good enough to possibly sell and raise money (which was the slightly scary part...).

Anyway, my friend sent me the 'brief' from which I was to work. Each brief was based on a real person and gave a taste of who they were and how they lived. I saw only one other brief; it was longer than mine, and ended with a note of hope as the man in question was working two jobs and saving to find somewhere else to live. The one I was assigned was shorter, and sadder, and quite a lot more disturbing:

Client 507
I am a 37 year old white, British woman and I have nowhere safe to sleep at night.

That's it really - the rest you see here. I couldn't ask anyone to model for me because of timing, so I used myself and modified some of my features a little. The woman in question was less than a decade older than me and it was important to me to feel a connection and avoid automatically making her look like we'd assume a person might look - like a junkie or a prostitute or even like they were old before their time. Christ knows if I managed any of what I intended - photographs show so little of what's really going on in an oil painting. There's also the fact that I'm still learning how to 'see' objects properly for painting - it's a really peculiar thing, so I had to get someone else to look at the painting a couple of times and tell me what was wrong with it because once I started seeing the paint itself, I could no longer really see what I was painting in the same way. Yes, I'm well aware how wank that sounds, but it's sadly true.

The painting is currently drying in my house and will hopefully be picked up in a week or so if it's dry enough. I'm glad I did it, I enjoyed painting it and I can't wait to start the next portrait because I already learned so much from just this one. My main hopes for this picture are twofold:

¤ That it raises at least some money for the homeless

¤ That if someone buys it, it frightens their children for generations.

Gig Poster - Ruckus and Hollywood Assassins

Photoshop and Illustrator
Mar 2013

Kind of self-explanatory, hopefully. I chose the yellow to compliment the colour scheme of Ruckus's logo, and played around with fonts in Illustrator looking for ones that were reminiscent of 50s B-movie posters and the like. Another minor influence was Stan Lee - my decision to turn the date, time and venue into shouts of excitement is a nod to anyone who's ever read his early Dr Strange comics and felt absolutely exhausted after all those exclamation marks. (To that end, I swear the choice of Comic Sans was on purpose and not because I think it rules as a general typeface or anything...)

I should have spent longer on the music notes and stave because they're a bit wonky but when I looked up it was nearly 4am and I had to get to bed so there wasn't time. Likewise I probably should have found a different image instead of just plagiarising the artwork I did for the album cover (which I still haven't bloody well finished) but oh well... I shouldn't bitch really. As it is, I rarely know when to stop messing with things I have drawn or made, so maybe time constraints are the only thing preventing me from ultimately setting myself and everything I ever made alight. Or something.

Jenny Ringo Poster 2 - "Older than before..."

Photoshop and Illustrator
Feb 2013

Ongoing updates for the poster - minor font changes, a more olde-worlde sepia tone feel and my first time using a texture overlay, which was pretty simple but effective. I'm also fascinated by the idea of hand drawing ornate borders and making them into smart objects in Illustrator - I might look into doing this if I ever have time, since this border was one I got by joining a graphics website on a month's subscription - they have beautiful stuff there and this border is great, but if I had time I would've liked to use my own.

Jenny Ringo and the Cabaret From Hell

Photoshop and Illustrator
Feb 2013

Yes, I fully understand it's a bit lame to include your Photoshopping in an 'art portfolio', but you can shut up. First, Chris and Andrea who made this film are some of the loveliest people ever, and I really appreciated getting the chance to have a go at the poster. Then there's the fact that my band performs in this film, which was a great experience. I am also in it a little bit, which was a shame because I'm not much of an actor - but luckily it's a horror comedy so I got my face eaten off by a monster and all was right with the world.

There's also the fact that no one has ever really taught me Photoshop - I had to learn it all myself. There are things on there that took ages because I didn't know how else to do them, and there's so much of it I don't know, but even as I was making this I felt like I was just a little better at it than last time. And THAT'S the best bit.