Mr Freeman?’
Alec nodded, ‘Yes Miss Ealand, Dr Harper. She’s going below with me.’
One second of hesitation, in fact even less than that, before Miss Ealand smiled a welcome and opened the door to the inner office. Alec waved Sara inside.
‘Okay.’ He looked at her. ‘Ready for this?’ Continue reading
My first Moonbase pictures.
1. I was really pleased with this, as I expected it to be much harder to get the shading to look reasonable. When I had finished the actual drawing I was then faced with the problem of how to put in a black background. I tried using black graphitint pencil and then a wash over it, but it didn’t work out as well as I had hoped. I have put up the different stages of the work as it progressed; I am most pleased with the finished drawing that hasn’t had the background done! Oh well, back to the drawing board!
I then decided to try doing Moonbase in pastels on black:
Although I really enjoyed doing Moonbase in pencil and pastels, i think the acrylic version is preferable!
Well, I had the paints at work, so I thought I would continue with the Moonbase theme. This was much harder to do, because I didnt have a good picture of an Interceptor from which to work. I took a scan of the picture when I had been working on it for a few hours, and then the finished picture. It’s not one that I think I will keep though, as the moonscape is not very good, and the ‘engine’ section of the Interceptor is too vague and unformed.
This is the finished piece.
‘Alec?’
The voice was hesitant, and held a dark note of fear but it was enough to make Alec Freeman turn with joy to the man sitting beside him.
Just that one word, that one name was sufficient to crack the shield that had safeguarded Straker from the events that had precipitated his nightmare. He leaned forward, head in his hands as he remembered the underground garage space, and then.. Continue reading
Where had it gone wrong? How had Straker escaped from his captors? As Mason hunched there on the greasy oil-stained concrete floor, yet another question burned into his mind. Where was Straker now? If he was out there, alive, he should have emerged.
Unless……
Hope flared in Mason’s breast. There might still be a chance. Continue reading
The dim light in the alleyway pooled down onto the huddled figure. Late at night, in this less salubrious area of London, there were few late-night revellers. Not even an insomniac dog-walker. But the man had been spotted nonetheless. It was dealt with in the usual efficient manner. Photographs, forensic evidence, SOCO’s. Processed, collated, labelled. Then the body removed to the central morgue for the next step. Formal identification and cause of death. Continue reading
Sky One. Drawn in pencil on card.
1.Initial drawing
2. Next stage
3. Still a work in progress.
4. Completed
This took me about 14 hours to complete
I do a considerable amount of art work with the different pupils that I teach and I like to work on something at the same time as they are drawing or whatever (it makes the atmosphere in my classroom much more relaxed). For the last few weeks I have been working on a picture of Moonbase. I like the geometry of Moonbase and the contrasts between light and shade. Initially I started this picture in pastels and chalks, but I decided to go over what I had done in acrylics.
In retrospect I should probably have started again, but I was only ‘playing around’ with the idea. However, after several hours work, and at least a dozen layers of paint I thought it was worth carrying on. It’s not perfect, not by a long way, but I was working in a small space, with cheap brushes and paints and frequent distractions.
Here is the finished result.
I started this to show a pupil how I used chalks and pastels in my drawings.
I think that I should have done it on a smoother piece of black paper instead of A4 black card, which has a rough texture and therefore doesn’t ‘hold’ the chalk as well as I would have liked. But, as with all my ‘drawings’ I do them for fun and my own pleasure. If you like them as well, that is fine, but they are very rough!
I had to build up several layers of chalks etc to get the depth of colour but having got to this point I thought it was worth continuing with it.
I trimmed the picture and double mounted it because I wanted the ‘whiteness’ of the heat of ‘re-entry’ to stand out, and the white frame helps to do that. I might try the same picture using coloured pastels which would be a very different challenge.
LtCdr
And below…… the final result.
Media used:
Conte chalks (white and shades of grey)
Faber-Castell Pitt Pastels
Compressed Chalks
assorted ‘stumps’ for blending
(And lots of putty rubbers!)
Smart-Price hair spray!! ( cheapest fixative for chalks and pastels!)
I have a reputation for violence. Well, not real violence. Mine tends to be the written sort. A stabbing in Shepherd Part 2, the odd torture scene in FarSight and Breathless, even an attempted suicide in Surrendered. The whole gamut of blood and gore and pain.
Continue reading