Commercial Sniping - In a few steps

This is my newest contribution for The Circuit Magazine to accompany part 3 of 3 articles on the history of sniping. After staying relatively loyal to the concept for the first 2 articles I got slightly more adventurous for this one, as you can see. Although the weapon is the British Army's L96A1 sniper rifle!

Anyhow, I just thought I'd post a few shots in progress of my process for creating this piece to accompany the ScreenCast I recorded of the illustration (which you can see on youtube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojPjantpr5Q )

Step 1 - Initial concept thumbnail.

After playing around with a few poses I decided to keep as much relevance to the subject and article as possible (considering the lack of it in the character) I went with the traditional prone position but still wanted to emphasise the characters seductive curves, which brings the focus directly onto the buttocks!

Step 2 - Defining the Character

Next I decided I wanted an exotic looking female and used photo reference of beautiful curvy women of Caribbean origin. and penciled out my idea and scanned it into photoshop at 600dpi before reducing it to 300 at the painting stage. Notice, I don't really go over board on the sketch and prefer to build it up as I progress through the painting stage.

Step 3 - Colour Flats

Using the pen tool to create selections of anatomy and accessories I fill them all with the paint bucket tool and keep th

em on independent layers to give me greatest flexibility later on.

In addition I paint in a rough background to link it together and in preparation for choice of light direction.

Step 4 - Airbrushing

Using the selections I'd made earlier by keeping all opposing areas on separate layers I use a large, soft edged brush at a low opacity to first apply shadows and then highlights to pinpoint light direction and start to brin

g depth to the illustration.

Step 5 - Background

I now decide its time to build up the background and I virtually spin it around and paint it in reverse to the original concept. Again using the pen tool to build the basic structures and then an airbrush to lay colour and light direction down fast before using a more hard edged brush to add some texture. I also work in some accessories such as the goggles on the helmet, the drink, dossier, bino's and ammo tin.

Step 6 - Fine details/finishing touches

I finish off the painting by adding a few layers of a deep bronzing, orangey colour to the flesh areas. I paint in shadows, foreground foliage, slightly alter the expression and finally add some highly effective camouflage paint to her skin. Now she's hot and ready for action.

Acquire, Aim, Squeeze, Kill, Mojito to go!

Mathew Screen Cast (Callums World)

The first of four screen (art) casts recorded during the painting of Callum's World.

This features Callum's son Mathew. Initial sketch was done with paper and pencil, scanned into Photoshop CS4 at 600dpi with the rendering done at 300dpi in CMYK.

Callum's World

A recent commission I completed for a 50th birthday gift. Callum and his family being the subjects of this caricature. A new first for me with this piece was to record my progress using Screen Cast. It was more a test run to get to know the software and definitely not intended to be a 'How to'. However by recording my painting and then re watching the compiled video I have learnt an awful lot about my technique and have identified lots of areas where I should improve particularly in productivity. Feel free to watch the vids and comment. will be upload soon.

Roza Shanina

One hot but deadly chick. Roza Shanina is one of the most famous female snipers in Russian Folklore. Notching, amongst her battlefield kills, 12 enemy snipers. She was one of five siblings who went to fight in the second World War. four of whom, including Roza never returned, dying in combat in the final months of the war. But what she achieved during her short yet impressive sniping legacy will remain engraved in Russian history. My tribute, commissioned for the latest edition of The Circuit magazine.

Democracy Interrupted

This painting was commissioned by someone working in Afghanistan and he wanted to immortalise his time over there. His request coincided perfectly with the shambles that was the elections and the announcement of Karzai's eventual and somewhat unconstitutional (perhaps?) victory and re-election to President. Hurrah for democracy! Though thats all in the past now, quickly forgotten about and life goes on.

Apparently I do animals now too!mm

A recent commission I was asked to do of someones Father. I've always tried to steer away from animals and pets when doing caricatures as you often find that they are subject to more meticulous scrutiny than their human counterparts and you rarely ever win. However, I apparently did quite well with this one. I particularly enjoyed the cow,... 'Bluey'!

The Greatest of English Institutions

Living on a cricket ground and being such a big fan I was delighted to get this request to paint a member of the Hetton Lyons Cricket Team. The vintage gentleman sport in warm sepia glory.

least we forget 11-11-11

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

We will remember them.

Being ex services myself, remembrance day never passes by without me stopping and taking the time to think of those I've known and worked alongside who sadly aren't here today. You are all in my thoughts.

I've remodelled Bobby Chiu's awesome illustration "the Last Stand" as a dedication to my unit, The Parachute Regiment.

jonmoss Illustration 2.0

To rapturous fanfare and applause the new flash version of my illustration website finally went live on Monday and fingers crossed it seems to be working well and with the absence of any major glitches. Feel free to comment on your user experience particularly if you had visited the old site. I would appreciate all constructive criticism and opinion. The new format should help make it easier to update content and keep the site fresh, particularly with the Blogger and Twitter embedded widgets. Right back to the real work of illustrating, content is king, after all.

The Motley Project

I've been quite diverse recently taking on many different projects, this being a good example of that. I was asked by proud parents to do a caricature of their 3 beautiful kids. The brief asked for bold, colourful and fun, I soon realized that a traditional caricature wasn't gonna do it. So after toiling away with several different techniques I eventually settled with this 'graffiti style' which seemed to tick all the boxes. I drew all the outlines in Illustrator first then imported to photoshop to add the vector like colouring. I was pleased with the final image, as were the parents, more importantly!

British BodyGuard Association Illustration

I have an affiliation with an organization called the British BodyGuard association and they commissioned me to do an illustration for an article in their quarterly, industry leading, publication - 'The Circuit' magazine.

The article was discussing whether the conventional and stereo typical doorman could fill the shoes of a hostile environment bodyguard.

The exposure from the illustration has led to many more offers of work and it appears I am now the resident illustrator for the publication! Funny how things happen.

Anyway, check them out at http://www.the-bba.org.uk/ and if you have any bodyguard needs, you know where to go...

Dave the Mong

I done this cartoon/caricature of one of my friends. The idea was to ridicule him and open his eyes up to the fact his arms are stupidly out of proportion to the rest of his body. Typically though, he loved it and his ego absorbed it relatively easily. But it still makes me laugh so though I'd share it.

Anderson Cooper -Caricature

Anderson Cooper has always refused to comment on his personal life, leading to speculation that he is gay. This uncertainty didn't prevent OUT magazine ranking him second in their Top 50 most powerful gay men. But what is greater? Anderson's desire to put the record straight or a man's ego.... after all who want to be a runner up in whatever category?

Madking Caricature - Please Draw Me!

A very cool site called 'Please draw me!' is about the close down after I only just discovered it. As the name suggests it is a place for people to go and submit photos of themselves and wait to be drawn whilst they attempt caricatures of the other contributers.

Prior to the announcement that the site is to terminate I had already done a bunch of sketches and will be publishing them through my blog, as, when and if I get round to finishing them. Here's one I done of a guy known as Madking.

Check out the site before it closes at: http://www.udgang99.dk/pdm/index.php

Anderson Cooper Caricature

Here is the rough value painting of the journalist Anderson Cooper that I'm doing for a personal request. I'll hopefully be posting the final finished piece in the next couple of days.

Hopkins - Detail

Such a fun face to paint!

Hopkins - Bedtime Stories - Final

Well, here is the finished illustration for my final submission on the caricature course. Little has changed in terms of structure between this and the value painting but I got to have fun working on the details such as the texture of the leather chair and the wrinkles and crease's of Lecter's face.

Hannibal- Phase 2

Phase 2 of my Hannibal picture. Without getting too detailed I done a full black and white value painting. I would have liked to have rendered it to a higher degree but time is against me and today will see him getting some colour applied.

I made some structural changes through the painting process most notably to his head. My photo reference was relatively low quality so I put my hand my pocket and paid to download the movie Silence of the Lambs from iTunes and was able to get some good screen grabs, which has really helped. Still toying with the idea of throwing some 'props' into the picture, so dont be surprised if you see a bottle of Chianti in the final.

Everything has to start somewhere

Well, its the final week of the Seiler course on Schoolism. After doing a few studies of various celebs I've decided to go with Anthony Hopkins for my finished piece. Here are my modest beginnings and the initial sketch I penned out for the painting I'm currently working on. I should have a black and white 'value' painting up in a few days and god willing the final colour painting by the end of the week.

I'm using photo reference of Hopkins from the film Silence of the Lambs and putting him in more comfortable surroundings and narrating from a child's nursery rhyme book, quite a disturbing thought I'm sure you'll agree

Initial draft Ideas - Final Assignment

Here are two ideas I was working on towards my final assignment for the Schoolism course that didn't quite make it past the draft stage. Barack Obama and Anthony Hopkins, I wonder how many times we'll hear their two names together in the future, not too many I suspect.

I'm still keen on doing a Hopkins/Hannibal painting but looking at it from other angles. As for Obama its all a bit too cliche at the moment, though I have a feeling we'll all be drawing him a lot more over the coming years. Are caricaturists the only people who will be sad when Bush steps down?

Bruce Willis Caricature - Week 5, painting techniques

For my Bruce Willis caricature I wanted to work from photo reference which portrayed him as the action man we've come to know him as. So what better than a screen shot straight from Die Hard 4. I loved the lighting in this scene and enjoyed painting it. My process for this, the first full colour caricature in the course, was to do a detailed black and white value painting. I spent the majority of the overall time working on this stage. Next I painted a layer in colorize mode blocking in with my split compilation palette before returning to normal mode and detailing the piece in a direct painting style. After a bit of horizontal flipping and a few structural changes I was now happy he no longer looked like a distorted potato and pleased with the finished result.

Dave B - Week 4, Continuing with values

This painting of 'citizen' Dave B was done with a monochromatic palette taking the lessons learnt with value painting further.

Gary Value Painting - week 3

In week 3 of the caricature course Jason articulates the importance he places on getting good and correct values in his work. For the assignment we used a quick pencil sketch he'd done of a friend called gary and built up a value painting in greyscale using photoshop.

Pope Benedict XVI - Week 2, Understanding Shapes

This is my finished rendering of Pope Benedict XVI, done as part of the assignment for week 2, understanding shapes.

Tom Hanks Caricature - Week 1, Introduction to Caricature

Week 1 of Jason's course on schoolism.com titled 'introduction to Caricature'.  Each week there is a new video to download where Jason talks you through his techniques and thought process.  You then put what you've learned into practice by completing an assignment based around what you saw in the instructional video.  Week 1, Jason discusses the weight of a persons face and exaggeration and asks you to sketch the faces of 3 citizen's and a final rendering of celebrity Tom Hanks.  So this was my submission. 

A Beginning

Well, I've finally taken my first baby steps in this blogging world.  I hope to use this as an outlet for my sketching and painting and to put it out there in the public domain. Feel free to give me feedback and interact. It'd be cool to hear from other artists.

I'm currently a student of the fantastic Jason Seiler. I'll be posting the outcome of the assignments he sets us here in my blog, so look out for updates on that. For more information on Jason's caricature course check out www.schoolism.com