Comica Entry 2012

'Anticipations'

Created for the 2012 Comica Graphic Short Story Competition.

I hope you enjoy...

 



I finshed them! (Maybe....)

Yeah, I am in a celebratory mood- I finished my paintings! I had this concept of having a panel with six different coloured paintings so they had an effect of bright squares of colour on the wall, revealing further detail when looked at closely- and I ACTUALLY managed to finish them! (And it only took nearly two years....)

I thought I would take a self-congratulatory moment (as everyone in the house is long past caring, two years of waiting will sap your enthusiasm like that) to upload them and wax lyric about the deeper meaning (basically none....) of each piece.

I'll do them in order....

This is 'Tube Strike Blues' started way back in December 2010 when Saul got sick of me moaning 'I can't paint' and went out and bought me some paints, canvas's and paintbrushes with a no nonsense 'well bloody learn then' attitude... good for him! The blue colour scheme was actually a complete accident, I was going to do the scene in normal tones but my printer ran out of coloured ink and printed the orginal picture (fleeced from Google images and probably copyrighted to the hilt- so ssshhh!) in blue tones. I quite liked it as everyone looked cold and fed up  and it really reminded me of living in London when there is a tube strike- it's never on a lovely sunny day.
 My favourite bits of the picture? The big guy in the hood on the phone- who is out of proportion with everyone else- but I quite like them being a bit all over the place (this is a reacurring theme in each picture- yeah I meant to do that!) The girl smoking and blowing smoke in everyones face- there's always one and it used to be me... and the pretty girl whose hair manages to look like a hood. This is my favourite picture mostly because of the colour scheme (I love blue) but also because I was really pleased with how it turned out, I hadn't painted anything really since school and never with acrylics before and was amazed at how easy they are to use. This one got me into painting again so I will always love it!

This is 'Stationary Envy' finished in  roughly April 2011. By now I had my colour scheme idea and liked the idea of a green picture- however I must say it's my least favourite and what I dislike is the different shades of green in the peoples faces, (blue is much easier because you can just use white for skin tone) However I was really pleased with the background and particularly keen on the light shining through the bus stop glass. It is of course another tube strike picture but this one was much more still then the first- I really liked the nervous tension in the original picture and I think there is an element of this in the painting.

Nicely political 'We're not Blue' (ie. We aren't Tory's) is a picture of the student protest's regarding tution fee's in January 2011- although I have tried to make it slightly non-specific as a protest piece by not writing any slogans on the placards as I think it  could stand up as any protest anywhere. I found the red really difficult to work with, which is why it veers into yellow and purple. As a piece of art in it's own right I really like it, I think it shows that dark, smoky intense atmosphere-  but as part of the group of six I think it slightly detracts as it is not quite true to the 'all one colour theme', annoyingly it seems to be most people's favourite....

'Another Dark Day' a painting of the Dale Farm evictions in October 2011. Politically, I know it's a bit contentious and I don't really know the ins and outs of it all- I won't pretend to be well versed in all the details but my emotional response to the situation was that it was a big bag of shite.... sending the police in to evict people from their homes really really sucks. I know it was green belt land and etc etc but still; it sucks.
Artistically this was one of my favourites, really lovely colour pallet to use, black and white and grey are very old school as a technique and I didn't really have to think about the colour scheme much. I like the overall effect and was pretty pleased with it.
The piece itself is dark and moody, looks really tense and had a good sense of depth- so that's all good then.

'The Hazey Phases Sunshine Crew' Lovely yellowness... I wanted to do a picture of a small crowd as opposed to a massive one- this is a picture from 'Glade Festival 2010' but the painting itself was finished in around June 2011.  I just wanted to show that lovely hazey hot day, scorched skin and grass festival thing. I'm not keen on Saul's greenish shirt but otherwise I think it's pretty good and everyone looks like everyone... always a bonus.

Lastly 'Carnival Crush', I hated using the orange but felt it was really appropriate to the scene (I was also running out of colours!) It started off as a picture of the tomato festival in Spain but Saul pointed out that as the other pictrues were UK based it would probably be more appropriate to use the Nottinghill Carnival as the setting (he's always right!) So I promptly nicked a load of pictures from the net and set about creating an entirely original image (the only one, the others are all copies of a photographic image) I was really pleased with the end result, I wanted it to represent flames and movement and I think it almost achieves it! It's a happy picture, with lots of people watching other people, like in a real crowd- it serves it's purpose but I'm glad I don't have to use orange anymore.

And here they all are together as orginally intended! I was really pleased- nay smug about it all until Saul said 'Hmmmmm, you could probably do with another three, then it will really work....'

I might have a break first.....