Tuesday 30 August 2011

Knud Baade- Norwegian Landscapes

I went to see the Forests, Rocks, Torrents exhibition of Swiss and Norwegian landscape paintings at the NG. My favourite discovery was Knud Baade, represented in the exhibition by a single seascape (the first one below). He was  known for his depicitions of a mythical Norway of warrior sagas. His dramatic moonlit seas and mountains seem to have an echo in modern fantasy painting. I like them a lot.


The exhibition's on until the 18th September, and it's free. Go see.






Birdtree/ Lonely Cockatoo

This is based on the idea of a lonely, bland, cockatoo-type bird, surrounded by more attractive, colourful and popular avian specimens. It originally came about from sketching from the TV while watching Frasier. Just for fun really.




Monday 29 August 2011

Kazuo Oga/Ghibli Art



I've been looking at Kazuo Oga's work a lot lately- he was the art director on Ghibli films such as Totoro and Princess Mononoke, and is the chap to thank for many of the jawdrop backgrounds that fill Ghibli's catalogue. He had a solo exhibition in Japan in 2007, and several books of his work are out there. His use of light and evocation of luscious slices of nature are incredible.


I'd thoroughly recommend sticking this YouTube vid on fullscreen 1080p and kicking back to enjoy for the next forty minutes:
http://youtu.be/9CV3OqhF6gY?hd=1


And by all accounts he paints largely with poster paints.
Picture taken from the Oga Art Collection on the French website 'Buta Connection'.

Web Update/ Lucky Charm

I've updated my website with a bunch of new bits of work. Please have a look! And let me know what you think.


Here's one new piece:


Monday 1 August 2011

York Minster Grafitti

Walking up the long, narrow staircase of York Minster cathedral's tower, browsing hundreds of years of  grafitti. Imagining the folk from all over the world who have climbed the steps and scrawled a message. I found this rather fascinating, and we dawdled long enough for a tannoy announcement to request that we swiftly made our way down so that the next group could come up.


A few more on Flickr.