Last weekend

Here's a quick impressionist background that no one will ever see. One of five I did last weekend. It's going to be an underlay jiggling around under very dark/near opaque tinted glass in a kidnap van, so you'll be able to see maybe 10% right at the center.

Fun.

I get to draw and paint with big brushes!

For the last few months, I've had the great privilege to work on the third season of the Ricky Gervais show. Frequently working straight from storyboard roughs, I've been drawing and painting on the fly. The style has been a lot of fun, varying from cartoon 50's high style to painterly impressionism, Tex Avery to Spanish Baroque, whatever sells the gag.

Background for Columbus selling the idea of exploring.

I've had a lot of fun. Thanks to Richard Lee and Dan Fraga for sympathetic eyes, encouragement, freedom and constructive criticism. Thanks also to Ricky Gervais and Karl and Stephen for having such wide-ranging and whack conversations.

Trafalgar square

Here are some recent backgrounds. Some of these images are crops from very large pans. Click on the pic for larger image so you can see how loose they are.

Hotel

Kuwait GW1, somewhat realistic parody sequence. 

Karl's Kitchen. 

Karl's sadly vacant fridge.

Desert Isle crop.

Desert isle shoreline

Karl's garden with space for lettuce munchin' slug

Birth control centuries ago. Citrus fruit for diaphragms.

Rough board of Karl in imaginary catacombs under the surface of Pluto.

Light flowing into imaginary underground catacombs under surface of Pluto.

London mashup.

Italy mashup, syncs to earlier London mashup. 

Mentalist's house

Nasty pub urinals. 

Nasty pub urinals, reverse angle. 

Park in London

Rain rolls into park. 

Rough board I worked from for my trench warfare BG. 

Trench Warfare

Huge multi-plane trench warfare pan, increasingly snowy. 

Ibiza safe and gloomy

Cropped in on an island I imagined off the coast of Ibiza. 

It's a lot of fun to see these with the animation on top of them. 

Trying to get back into painting.

I've been making a living painting dramatic buildings and landscapes and evil villainous lairs out of my head for the last fifteen years.

But I've never really painted outdoors. (I've done some pastels & watercolors, but never oils.) I've prepped a bunch of boards and I'm going to try to get fluid. Here's the first one. Figured I'd add yet another Arroyo Suicide Bridge painting to the thousands that have already been painted.

There's so much information in the real world! Overabundance. The problem goes from trying to make stuff up, create color scapes from scratch, textures, tones, to editing it all out... I'm busy removing texture, smashing together tones, composing by elimination of visual noise. The creative problem is almost diametrically opposed to what I've been doing for all this time though the subjects are the same.

I'll see if I can find a villain's lair to paint during a storm. Reference makes all the difference.