Exhibition!

Dear readers,

I am very happy to announce an exhibition in the Gallery "Fango" in Cottbus (by Berlin), Germany. The solo-exhibition focuses on my graphic work that centers around psychic disorders and translations of strong feelings. I do not plan on showing comic works, but comic lovers, ink fetishists and tattoo fans are probably the right target. Ach, heck, I don't really understand, what my "target audience" is. So be it - if you enjoy intricate, detailed artwork, searching for clues and like to see my artwork in person and on paper, feel very, very invited.

It opens on the 25th of February and will run for about a month. The exact opening hour and the program for the vernissage will follow soon. I am happy for every friendly face to turn up and say hi! I will probably be too excited to function rationally - maybe seeing me blabber incoherently is also worth a visit.

There will be some limited high quality prints to purchase and some posters. Galerie Fango also host concerts and a coffee shop.

Announcement on the Fango Homepage

Win a signed, deluxe-Printed Poster!

Hey Friends of this homely Blog!

A while back I posted about drawing a Poster for the Special Edition "A Storm to Come" from the amazing Band VanCanto.
VanCanto entered a challenge to bring the "Peer Gynth"-themed Play to life. To win a beautifully printed poster (acrylic glass or canvas!), signed by the band and the author, or just to support this cause, you can write an Email to the Thalia-theatre until the 15.12! Find all infos and a Video by the Band here.

The 3 most wished pieces will be brought to the stage, even if it's acapella Metal! 

It would be amazing beyond words to see something like this come to life : )

Making of "Truce"

There are a lot of ideas bothering me about this picture. I think, it's the first comparable one, that made me sad drawing, because to declaring a truce with one's monsters means that one has to have some monsters in the first place. The older I get, the more irrational and shapeless are these monsters, but living in a world where the Wild Things Are is also a vow for solitude.

Vincent offers a truce to the monster's but he doesnt seem to be very happy about it and here is, how that picture came into being:

The sketch. Photoshop. I keep a file where I just pile up scenes and sketches from the Vincent/Gabriel universe. This was one of them. They are usually even more rough.

(photography) ink-drawing. On a ... light-table I traced the sketch on an A3 format with blue pencil and sharpened the lines with blue ink. At this point i had in mind to color the character quite dark and make the monster behind his back a starfield with a gradient to white to backlight the character. But... 

.. I let the colors go wild (photography again). Using a mixture of inks and watercolor as well as salt and some effect-spray (that did not work well - the effect is just a bit visible on the upper right). I could not control the colors and did not bother to after a while. I made sure, that there were enough interesting shapes to create the monster's from later.

The scan.

Heavy use of overlay and multiply to create focus.

At this point I asked a friend, seven, for help, because even though I like the focus on the poison green monsters, this was not, what i had in mind. Als the feel for this area as a room got lost. She advised me to tone down the green.

Which I did, in the End: 

Also, check out dashed. It's a crude but fun drawing tool, without an eraser! and an amazing function: one can drag a cutout over any place of the paint-chat-like-window and see a little video of how that area was created. I like that feature: (Click to go to "dashed"

Dark Paper!

During the past evenings i kept oiling my rusty traditional gears...
It's not that my days are totally packed, but i have so much on my mind, that it's hard for me to focus. But - nevermind!

4 years ago I handed in a proposal for a comic project. Unfortunately the answer was: Yeees, we really like it, wait half a year and we'll talk about it! And this kept going for 1 1/2 years. The constant excitement and hope and disappointment got to me and I decided to let it be. One day, when I am through with studies, I plan to take off some month and just concentrate on finishing one of the projects connected with this world : )

First one copied from a editorial, the other ones without reference, but totally out of proportion. partly it's becaus the left character is way smaller than the right character, but that doesn't explain the really small hand :X. And there needs to be a way to protrait these two characters together without them looking weird. meh. last one an oekaki.

Thanks for looking in!

practice and edna again

The first two pencil drawings are practices - copied from old daguerrotypes I found on the internet.

The essence of what I felt was in their portraits reminded me of two characters I always wanted to design. Since I started doing something for the M-project again, I used the inspiration to draw their younger alter Egos. In the stories, they are the parents of the main-character-cast.

I felt rusty with watercolors and had this postcard-pad lying around. I did not menage to scan this at all : / It's 3 layers of colors done during some breaks.

And Edna breaks out from the Adventure Edna Bricht Aus. I wanted to draw a good fanart, but somehow it never turned out the way i wanted it to. What the heck, i leave it in the Sketch-section before it gets burried forever.

VanCanto Poster!

Hey Folks!

I am very proud to present (a very small!) version of the Poster I did for the special Edition for the new VanCanto Album - Break the Silence. It's out today!

I illustrated the very complex Song "A Storm to Come", circling around the Peer Gynth topic in a modernized Version.

(click to see a detail)

The poster is on the back of the booklet, carefully crafted that no fold will obstruct any character's head. Boy, that was a challenge and I enjoyed it!
Check out their Music. They do acapella! Metal! Seriously. And they can do that life!

And stay tuned, to hear more about the Peer Returns Project!

2. Completion

(the label "the learned" collects things that are important insights for me and changed the way I go about creating artworks)

2. Unfinished forever...
Are carefully arranged, insanely detailed illustrations really that good? What about the viewer's space?

Artwork is not finished, until it has been discovered and "completed" by a viewer. To control every last line and to tell everybody, that the illustration can serve but one purpose, might work in many cases and should work if it is wished in the briefing, but... if you find the freedom to let chance take her turn and invite the viewer, everybody should win. Even better, if one can reach an audience, that is willing to open up for the art.