Hello everyone! I’ve something a little different for you this Flashback Friday – a retrospective of Beastie sketches, or “Sketch-rospective”, if you will!
It occurred to me recently that the sketches I draw for custom Beasties very rarely see the light of day. I do them, I send them to the customer, we finesse the details. Then I put the originals in a folder, stash the electronic versions in with the photos of the finished Beastie… And that’s it! So, how about we take a peek in those archives?
I had to look waaay back through my old sketchbooks to find my very first Beastie commission drawing. Check it out!
Pretty rustic, eh? Back then I was using “graduate” sketchbooks – books with a thick paper cover that are stapled together in the middle like a magazine – and sending my customers photos of the pages. That’s why you can see shadows down some of the sides!
I was also outlining with my favourite fountain pen, and colouring in by hand with coloured pencils. It took FOREVER! Especially for large areas of black, like this Grim Reaper Beastie from the following year.
That said, I did keep on drawing by hand for a good while afterwards! Here are a couple from back in 2017 – do any of you recognise these Beasties?
Cyclist Beastie
Slartibartfast, who now hangs out with Simon of Simon’s Space
Dublin Football Beastie
However, much as I love the hands-on approach, I was having trouble keeping up! A hectic pre-Christmas season in 2017 had me scouting around for new drawing options… Preferably ones that wouldn’t involve quite as much controlled shading with coloured pencils.
Enter GIMP and Inkscape, two open-source computer graphics programs. I won’t pretend that the learning curve with these has been speedy – I still feel like I’m figuring out the angles a bit – but the one-click colouring is a definite plus. This is my first attempt:
Then when I figured out that I could scan in my fabric stash and show people the actual prints I’d be using for their Beastie’s outfits, I couldn’t have been happier!
And although I can now type most of the text, I still like to throw the odd bit of my own hand-drawn lettering into the sketches too.
How about you? Will you be cracking out your pencils this weekend, or creating artwork on your computer? Be sure to tell us all about it in the comments!
We’ll be back next week to see what Paddy and Plunkett have been up to – see you then!
… While others were a lot less subtle.
I liked how some of the shapes echoed each other a little, like these two pieces. As above, so below!
Mind you, much as I loved the unearthly, ethereal shapes, there was something a little unsettling about this one… It looks like those white bulbs are poised for a global takeover, starting right here! It didn’t seem to bother the Beasties though – maybe they’re planning a takeover of their own?
They fitted in especially well in the Japanese garden – I feel more Zen already.
And when the rain got a little too heavy, we went to check out the indoor exhibition in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art. In the dark rooms, each of the carefully-lit sculptures took on a life of their own. They looked like flowers, or shells, or living things… But definitely not glass!
What’s this then? Perhaps it will help if we zoom out a little.
This is “Memory Palace”, an 18-metre-wide sculpture by British designer and artist Es Devlin. It’s named after the mnemonic technique where memories are preserved by mentally linking them to familiar locations – I’m sure any fans of “Sherlock” out there will recognise the idea! In “Memory Palace”, each feature on this curved white landscape is a place where a significant societal shift took place.
Mirrors on one wall and the ceiling expand the boundaries of the sculpture, and slightly change the way you see the individual elements… The same way memory can, I suppose!
