Every so often I return to Brian Gallagher’s illustration blog, and I’m always captivated by his handling of buildings. I like how the rendering is actually fairly simple, but they really convey a lot of feeling to me. They are nicely designed and the values are great.
Category Archives: landscapes
Russ McMullin – Church on Agave Hill
My work schedule has been brutal, but I finally found time to finish this piece. My opportunities to do illustration are few these days and this project is one I did for fun. The church is loosely based on one I saw and sketched. The location is plucked from my imagination. The board is 5×7 Ampersand. I used an Olfa 9153US AK-1/5B Standard Art Knife for the scratching. Once the image was transferred to the board it took approximately 4 hours to complete.
Prepare a sketch for scratchboard
With this sketch I took some inspiration from the architecture of a catholic church I passed while on a family outing. The church is tall, yet simple. My drawing doesn’t look much like the church, but it was what got me thinking about it.
The sketch is rendered in blue Papermate ballpoint, my favorite sketching medium. I tend to sketch on lined paper – something I’ve been scolded for. It’s a habit from school and a psychological crutch. I have proper sketchbooks, but generally do better work in lined notebooks because I don’t worry about the outcome.
The snake is not symbolic. It was already on the page when i started the church. The church sketch kept growing until the two ran together. When I pulled the image into Photoshop I erased the snake and cropped the image to a ratio of 5×7.
The bottom of the composition seemed too plain, and I thought it would be nice to have something in the foreground. With a new Photoshop layer and my Wacom tablet I added an agave plant, and played around with the clouds.
Nicolas Delort – A Rumor of Angels
I like the motion in this one.
Tim Oliver – fox in the woods
This image has a simple charm that really appeals to me. The detail is kept to a minimum, yet it communicates so well. I like how the complexity at the top pushes my eye down to the fox. Part of what I like is how it reminds of my own back yard.
Brian Gallagher – Sunflower and Dolmen
I revisited Brian Gallagher’s blog today and found a few new pieces that I had to post. It seems that most scratchboard artists these days are striving for as much detail as possible. Brian goes against that trend and creates nice work with simple bold strokes. This leaves more to the imagination in my opinion. His style has an energy that really appeals to me.
Nico Delort – perspective and sense of scale
A horrific post-apocalyptic scene, beautifully designed with tilted perspective and a sense of massive scale. Gorgeous.
Russ McMullin – Another work in progress – Batatakin Ruin
I got inspired by Scott Seibel’s work and decided to do some sandstone. I think I was 9 or 10 years old when I hiked to this ruin with my dad. I thought it would make a great subject for a scratchboard piece. This is a 5×7 Ampersand board. Most of it is rendered with an Olfa art knife that looks very similar to an Xacto knife. Some of the scratches are done with a #16 Xacto blade, which lets me do fairly wide strokes.
UPDATE:
Scott Seibel – boulders and petraglyphs
I ran across these images today by Scott Seibel. Awesome. I grew up in country like this, so I love the rocks. Very impressive.
Hannes Binder – At Midnight – Amazing children’s book illustrations
What amazes me most about the work of Swiss painter and illustrator, Hannes Binder, is the sense of scale.
