Sketchings...

I found some sketches  on my hard drive I did a while back on grey toned paper. Toned paper is so fun. It does half the work for you! All you need to do is add darks and highlights and bam. Instant tonal! There's Gary King, Sherlock, and  a gorilla... Hopefully you can tell which is the gorilla.... 

Selfie...

Here's a little self portrait I did recently. It's acrylic and coloured pencil on illustration board. It was a learning experience to say the least. I messed up on my prep drawing and didn't notice it's impact until it was too late. By then I was way too lazy to fix it properly. So now all I see are those mistakes. :)

Painting is a love hate thing with me. I have a hard time getting past the initial stages of a painting when it doesn't look like anything other than blobs of colour. If I do get past that initial hump I usually then fall into the trap of not knowing when it's finished. I think this is finished... Or at least I'm finished with it. ;)

Smeagol

This is a sketch of one of my cats Smeagol. We got him and his sister Precious a little over 10 years ago. Yes... His sister's name is Precious. Yep. Big geek over here! I'm hoping to take this to finished painting. I never really did pre-painting studies before, but I can see how much they can help. I made a lot of mistakes with this sketch that hopefully I can learn from and avoid when I go to final painting. I'm picturing it very dark possibly black with the lighter colours of the cat being the only light colours. We'll see how that goes. :)

Painting?

First time I've painted since college. Don't ask me how long that's been. :) This was supposed to be the eyes of an owl. I view it as a great learning experience. I made a lot of bad decisions and a few good ones. Hopefully I can learn from the bad ones and not repeat them the next time. In hindsight I wish I had of worked on a larger board so I could have framed the image a bit wider and had the owl's "horns" break the top of the framing. I think that would have looked better and sold it more as an owl. This is definitely one of those cases where the process revealed more than the work itself. 

It's been a long time...

Wow. It's been almost a year since I posted here. Talk about neglect. Hopefully that will change soon. I'm trying to get back into painting. I got a bunch of acrylics and some illustration board. I haven't attempted anything non-digital in a loooong time and I think it's going to be a fun challenge.

Here's a little tonal study I did for a part of a painting I hope to do. It's supposed to be Marc Maron. Look him up if you don't know him. He's a real funny guy.The likeness is getting there and this study really helped me figure out some things that I should and shouldn't do when I start the final work. I'm hoping to do a sort of poster illustration and this will be one of the elements. So there will be more to come. :)

Can you spare a like?

Hey. It's been a busy few months. I've been working steadily and balancing animation, music, and family. It's great fun. I recently finished a contract animating some Mort Drucker comic strip for MAD. That was a blast. My band recently performed for an international media conference in Whitehorse too. That was a crazy experience. What a beautiful place. 

Anyway. Enough about me. This post is for my wife. :) She was recently told that the program she teaches at the college was being suspended and thus, she was being laid off. The college she worked at is making drastic cuts to it's arts programs which is very unfortunate. At the end of this month she will officially be a low paid freelancer like myself. :) But there's a slight silver lining. April recently submitted an image for a contest put on by the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival. This is a great festival that we were wanting to go to, but due to everything that happened recently we realized it wasn't going to happen. Well here submission is  among the finalists chosen for public voting. The prize is two full VIP passes to everything happening during the festival. This would be such a great spirit booster. If you can spare a few moments you can vote for her by following the link below and liking her image. You'll have my eternal thanks for doing so. ;) Fingers crossed. This is her image below.

Thanks!

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151007321866344&set=a.10151007320591344.417148.9406661343&type=1&theater

Busy few months...

Things have bee busy around the Condon household as of late. With a daughter in grade one french immersion, a wife with a job that demands lots of after hours work, Christmas right around the corner, and myself currently juggling two animation contracts and a band... Free time to sketch is at an all time premium. It seems everything I've drawn for the past few months has been for something specific. Not for myself. Which is great , but you don't usually get to do any free form drawing with commissioned work. :) This piece is from an un-used poster design for my band. I had the idea of doing it up like an Art Nouveau print. It never got finished. For various reasons... This was as far as it got.  I might re-visit the concept again for another poster.


Speaking of Band posters... My wife and I were just nominated for Visual Artists of the Year for the 2012 Music PEI awards. It's a great honour that belongs mostly to my wife. She does the heavy lifting. I'm just here to bounce ideas off of and to contribute the odd illustration. It's great to see her get some recognition for the time and effort she puts into making us look so good. My band , Bad Habits, also got nominated for two awards. Weekend Warrior, and Entertainer of the Year. Needless to say we were pretty excited. We were told that it's unheard of for a band to get nominated for Entertainer of the Year without an album. We didn't expect it for sure. But we're thrilled none the less. The Weekend Warrior award is for the hard working bands that try hard to get their music out to people at the bars and clubs week in and week out. We've definitely done that.:). And.. It's a public vote open to everyone. So feel free to drop by the link below and throw a vote our way. You can also stop by http://www.afewbadhabits.com/ to check out the band in more detail.


Happy Holidays everyone!


http://www.musicpei.com/music-pei-week/ballot-public.php