Merry Christmas! + a new Sketchbook update

Hey all!

Thanks to everyone who supported this blog this year, you are all awesome and I appreciate all the feedback that I've been getting. It's been a good year, but 2011 will be better. I definitely need to take it to a higher level, and I have 2 solo shows and a group show coming up in March/April.
Hope you all have an awesome Christmas and New Year!

Anyway, just got an update of new work to share with you via Hi Fructose, big thanks once again to Ken Harman for helping me share the inner sanctum of my black book with everyone. Please click the link below to check it all out.

WIP

Bird Lady

The main reason I started this was to improve and build upon it further. I feel like an idea which feels good to share with other people is always worth pursuing. In this case it was the significance of the symbiotic relationship between the lady (who appears to be homeless) and the birds. I tried to put in little subliminal details to suggest that, like the trees + verticals above forming cathedral churchy shapes, and triangular shapes, having the colour scheme the same as you'd find on a pigeon, and more things like that. I learnt a lot of things like the importance of ideas, purpose and intent driving content, and only using enough detail to get the message across, stuff i always struggle with, it was hard to limit the amount of detail on the pigeons to just the basic shapes and colours. The final painting took about 2-3 days

Here's also an interview I did for a website called My Modern Met. Big thanks to Alice for taking the time to do this.

http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/gorgeous-traditional-art-12

 gestural sketch, the pencil dark/light thumbnail, and the same one coloured and altered in photoshop.

 resultant colour study:

  alternate study with a different colour scheme

Back to the other scheme and messing around more with the colours

This is the initial drawing, I used pencil and just wanted to think about placement, design and composition.

Wash

Final Layer Wet

Final

Prints For Sale + Oils painting

hey,
I've teamed up with the Drawing Book to sell prints! They're really nice A1 high quality Giclee limited to 15.

I need to sort out the ridiculously expensive framing and shipping for some exhibitions overseas next year. Any little bit helps, and I'm offering these prints as a way to help me get there.

I'm also available for Commissions, so please email me if you're interested!


Just Click the image Below for whichever print you're interested in. You can also see zoom shots on that website!

This drawing actually comes printed at it's full size, not cropped as in the webshot

Ok Great now I can share some art!

This is a little oils study I did for another painting i want to start soon, its a bit smaller than A4.

Sketch paintings

Hey guys!

I'm working more in my sketchbook, and am also planning to do more studies too. Once the moleskine project is done, which I'm feeling really confident about, I'll probably start a new book as well as a new daily project.

I'm planning to get at least 1 work done a week which will easily arrive me on target for my shows next year, if it is done over the next four months.

If I could ask one last thing, I'm trying to raise funds to pay the large costs for framing and shipping, so if anybody is thinking of a commission, now is absolutely the best time for it! I haven't sold anything in a few months so it would be amazing to break the draught, and have enough time to get the most out of it.

Today's recommended link is this blog by Artist and Designer John Coulthart
http://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/


paintings are in oils

Hi Fructose pt 2

Hey!

Been lucky enough to get featured again on the Hi Fructose blog, continuing the Moleskine journey.
Huge thanks to Ken for the support!

There's some new stuff I did for the post so please check it out! I'll be dabbling in the moleskine daily and soon it shall be complete :)

"A few months back we took a look into an ambitious project by a young emerging artist named Rod Luff. The twenty-three year old artist lives down in Australia and has taken on the daunting task of buckling down and completing a moleskine notebook from cover to cover with sketches, miniature paintings and various studies. The response from our initial article was so overwhelmingly positive that we just had to catch up with Luff and take a look at how his progress has been going."

Click here or the image below to go to the post