I'll be back!

Hey y'all!

Welcome back or if you are a first time reader thanks for dropping by.

I have had a canvas lying around my flat for ages and when I say ages I mean ages!  I had started a sketch on it last year but it didn't look great.  I tried rubbing it out but even though it was in pencil it still left a mark so I stuck it round the side of the sofa and forgot about it.

One night I was round at a party and we were discussing topics I could use for my next artwork.  One of my friends brought up a number of movies and Terminator was mentioned.  It was only in passing but it stuck in my head.

The Terminator character would be the ideal subject for the canvas.  How so?  Well in my mind an image of Arnie is always set in a dark background with a spot of light to show the figure.  I also wanted to try a new technique where I would color the whole image with maybe two or three primary colors.

I started by again trying to rub out the figure I had on the canvas.  Once I had done that there were still some pencil marks but I powered on.  I drew in the figure of the Terminator basing it on the Arnie figure from Judgement Day.  I kept it very basic and outlined any shading.

I then added the first color.  Bright blue. This would mainly be on the leather jacket and his hair with a bit on the side of the face.  I then left it for the night.

The next day I really wanted to beef it up a bit,  I wanted to do the flesh of the face and I wanted to use a rich color to contrast the cold blue.  What better than red?  It was coming together and was looking like the Arnie Terminator from my childhood.  (Yes I know I shouldn't have been watching it as a kid but who didn't?)

Now that I had the likeness down it was time to add the black.  I had to have faith that by just leaving the odd line of white then the gun would look okay.  Luckily it did.  Also leaving white on the fave helped with the definition

So that was it.  After a few finishing touches I was done and received an offer for the work within a few hours of it going on Facebook.  Just goes to show that in art there is no such thing as a lost cause!

Thanks for reading!

AP  /www.facebook.com/apart1983

The First Step

So I recently decided to give the art a real go.  "What prompted this?" you may ask.  I had been drawing as a hobby all my life. I never really showed many people my work but recently a friend was talking about their love of pro wrestling (another love of mine) and so I decided to send them some pics of my illustrations of wrestlers.  She was very impressed and so challenged me to draw some other images.  After her positive feedback I gained real confidence in my abilities and so started to draw again and the more I drew, the more pleasure I got from it.

After getting a buzz from doing art casually for one person I knew it was something I would love to do on a more professional basis.  "So where to start?" I had quite a bit of material but nowhere to display.  First stop; Facebook.

I created my own page specifically for my art.  I uploaded a load of pictures I had already done.  I sorted them into categories so viewers could instantly see what kind of art I had on display.  I invited a number of friends and I was good to go.  The only problem was I was only really reaching my friends with this.  I needed something that would get my work out beyond my social circle.

Check out my page!
facebook.com/apart1983

I already had an Instagram account but had never even posted anything before so I decided to give it a whirl.  I was still producing my artwork so decided from now on every new piece went straight onto Instagram. It took a few goes but once I started to get the hang of the hash-tags I began to get more and more likes for each piece.

Instagram - Andylovesthe80s

My confidence was growing and then that stroke of luck.  Because of what was going on with my illustration I was eager to tell my friends so while showing a friend some of my stuff on my phone at a party he asked if I would do him a picture from one of his favorite movies.   He had liked my style and so thought a particular scene would look really cool.

I delivered the piece to him 2 weeks later and he paid me for it.  The amount isn't important what is is that was the first ever time I had been paid for my artwork and it felt amazing.  Now the goal was clear.  Creating art was and is going to become my life.

Come back soon to see what else I get up to, the lessons and techniques I have learned so far and where social media has helped me develop even further.

Thanks for reading!

A.P.