A centaur's wrath

After three months of not producing absolutely anything due to my MA program, here is another piece of my work.  

Not only due to my origin, Greek Mythical Creatures, namely centaurs, fauns, minotaurs,sirens always appealed to me, monstrous yet delicate in a way, they consist great themes for illustration. I'll never stop producing different versions of them since it's absolutely exciting for me.

In this case, I used a drawing I had done back in March 2012. It was done almost on one go and last December, I worked more on his left had, his face. So a couple of weeks ago I added his tail, and started researching on the ways I could give the feeling of the furious centaur running in the water. Fortunately by my second attempt I found a satisfying way of depicting it. I used the pump of my old and rusty fountain pen, to spill those ink drops on a piece of paper. The spills were numerous, random varying in size, exactly what I needed. Through photoshop I multiplied them and arranged them according to the needs of the theme and the structure of the image. 

Centaur's body was another issue. The strong black frame of the image somehow imposed me a body basically of no colours or neutral tones. That made the contrast between the figure and the frame stronger and added dramatic intensity to the whole image as black colour, in this form, symbolizes wrath. Wrath that stems from the figure itself. The depth of the its mouth and the spits coming out of it, are black as well. Moreover this colour opposition dictated the hue of the background, that had to be something relatively neutral but which also had to give a level of contrast with the figure. To return to the body, I've tried also to differentiate mildly the hues of  the human part from the ones of animal part. That had to be done carefully, without compromising the unity of this hybrid creature. For this, I added one extra layer of white hue on the human breast and stomach as well as in the belly of the horse body. 

Finally, for the logo, I had to experiment more that the other parts of this composition. An old piece of cloth, somewhere on my desk, fortunately not forgotten, gave me the answer. Unweaving it, I gave the sense of disintegration the wrath brings to the soul. 

the happy hooker

This is my first project in England. The objective was to make sth out of some rough sketches I had done in the past, without spending to much time on it. It took me four days, I think it's fair enough. Although I had in mind an idea of what I wanted it to look like, I lost time going back, designing things from the the scratch, since I realized that I needed them during the procedure and not beforehand.

Once more, in terms of style, this piece is strongly based on its original form in pencil. I mean it is rendered in a way that respects the quality of the pencil line (not precise and sharp). As a result it evokes a retro kind of feeling, that it is so important to me.

Masquerade

Dad

It was only after publishing the previous work, that I felt not that satisfied with the result. I needed sth else to overcome this "accident" lets say. So within two days I came up with the above image. In fact the other day, i saw in the metro a young dad with his baby son, such a lovely image. So I said to myself lets try something like that. And here it is, hope you like it.

The lumberjack

It seems to me, ages since my last publication. In the meantime I've worked on many different things, which will appear here, some time in the future, hopefully.

Now, in this case, I started drawing some lines, without intending to go on with an illustration. And then I said why not? lets give it a shot. I added the forest, the ribbon and the deer (always fond of the deers, hope to craft more of them). Also I wanted to try/test myself in designing a checked shirt (which was very trendy last winter, i believe) so typical of a lumberjack. It was tough, i had to adapt the checked pattern to the drapes of the fabric. Finally I believe it paid off. 

The only thing i used reference for was the deer. Not yet that trained in drawing them accurately enough. On the other had, the lumberjack figure betrays its cartoon origin, means no reference used. 

With this peace it's obvious to me, that my own illustration technique and style is well established in my head. It's a style that respects the pencil origin of the whole thing. On the other hand, I need to try different roads, creatively speaking. Hope so ...

Under attack

The excessive use of color was one of the main objectives of this piece.  But the hardest part was to find a personal sense of rhythm, that would give a kind of meaning to all these different shapes, textures and colors.

absence of blue

It seems there were more things to be said on collage - and through collage, so I came up with one more piece. In this case, the heavy use of decollage, gives a more raw feeling. Older collages, washed paper in chlorine bleach, acrylics, post-it, were used on multiple layers to give the above result.

the blue collage

This collage came almost out of nowhere. Pieces from previous works that didn't come to an end, were put together to produce the above sample of my ideas on collage. But most importantly, it was my need to work again on something like this, since i hadn't for almost four months.

the Pearl

It's always the same for me, I never know where I am heading for (though it's easier to say where I don't want to go), what is going to happen to every little project. As in this case, i had no idea of what it was going to look like in the end. Anyway, i had the chance to play, putting together different kind of elements, references, ideas, styles and technics in an ensemble that feels coherent to me.

Barbara

 

It's a piece that came out of nowhere, or at least that's how I feel. 

Back in 2006 in its original form, it was part of an illustration in watercolors (for which i used reference, you can't get this dramatic kind of lighting other way)  . 

In October 2010, I put the watercolors in the photoshop laboratory, eliminating all the kinds of "noise" (pencil, paper surface) and giving it finally this impressionistic feel ( the light is as if it consumes the figure and its details). 

Last August, I was working on a collage, using different paper textures and some patterns I had already made in Photoshop. A piece of it, you can see on the wall, behind the figure.

Last night I worked on another project, and I started browsing old pieces to find things I could incorporate in it. That's how I run into them and thought ... hm! why not?

practise continues: sonic youth

 

A big part of this work, had been done back in December, but somehow i wasn't pleased with certain of its details, so i had to put it aside . Thanks to the past few projects, solutions or certain ideas became more clear and concrete, so i finally managed to put it together, in a way that evokes the feeling i had in mind.

Practising on illustration

Ok, let me explain you what is going on here. Usually an illustration takes me about two weeks, half of the time goes to rendering the face, since my work is mainly "portrait oriented". In this case I tried to cut down the time to three days (in fact, it could have been just a couple) and produce a coherent result. It took me just a few minutes to make the rough sketch,(since the point was also to make a figure out of my imagination, with no reference) and I thought that I shouldn't try anything more elaborate, just go on and develop it into an illustration. What i always bore in mind was to respect the pencil lines, that's why I tried to keep them as they were, without making them more smooth in the photoshop. The certain feeling that comes out, i believe that is the result of the scanned pieces of paper i used, pieces that i had already washed in chlorine bleach, to make them lose their color. 


"Io sono Juno", means in Italian "I am Juno", the Roman name for the Ancient Greek Goddess Hera, Zeus' wife. The white part of her costume, was mend to resemble the column of a Greek temple. Finally, chromatically this piece of work is based on white, red and blue colors, which are often used in flags, such as those of UK, USA or France, and in this case i chose them to give a sense of power to the figure.

You've got mail

Here is a heavily stylized piece, made entirely in photoshop. It was mainly inspired by the work of Alphonse Mucha. Much attention was paid to the quality of the line, which was meant to be as firm and smooth as possible. It was the same feeling that drew me to use mostly clear colors (with the exception of the sky) without the one messing with the other.

This is Hermes, or Mercury for the Romans, the herald of Gods, delivering a message to you. Ι always found fascinating the way ancient Greek heroes, gods, symbols, survive till today in various aspects of everyday life in the western world, Apollo theaters, Hercules gyms etc.

A Time to Love and a Time to Die

It's been ages since I've worked on this theme, but since I never stopped loving it, I thought that I could share it with you. 

The idea behind it was to create a crest. In this case I've tried to incorporate elements relevant to the work of Douglas Sirk, such as the title of one of his last films, as well as the deer, a symbol that appears before the end of "All that heaven allows". Also it was an early Bond film, where the hero searches for his family tree, and he locates a crest of his ancestors with, among the others, the phrase " The world is not enough", which was to become the title of another Bond film. So I had also in mind the idea, of a crest with a film title in it. Finally I remember, that I always loved the label work on the bottle of Jagermeister, which depicts a deer head. 

So this is my chance to present a label-crest with a deer in the center of it.

Promenade

Aυτή η δουλειά, εξ'ολοκλήρου στο photoshop, έρχεται από το 2008. Comic και Graphic design στοιχεια σ'ένα σύνολο με σημείο αναφοράς μοτίβα ή μία αίσθηση γιαπωνέζικης τέχνης.

Comic art and graphic design elements in an ensemble (entirely in photoshop) reminiscent of japanese art or patterns.

Άσκηση decollage

Let them eat cake

H πρώτη ανάρτηση για το νέο έτος είναι συνέχεια της θεματικής που ξεκίνησα στην πρόσφατη δουλειά με τίτλο Queen. Mπορείτε να φανταστείτε ότι θα υπάρξει και μία τρίτη για να ολοκληρωθεί ένα τρίπτυχο πάνω σ'αυτό το θέμα. Αν έχετε να προτείνετε κάποια μεγαλειότητα της οποίας ο ταραγμένος βίος σας συγκινεί, παρακαλώ μοιραστείτε το μαζί μου, ίσως να είναι αυτή η τρίτη αυτού εξωχότης τούτης της συλλογής.

the Queen

Και να η τελευταία ανάρτηση για το 2011. Η βασίλισσα Ελισάβετ με την επιβλητική μορφή της C. Blanchett και το βλέμμα προσηλωμένο στο σωτήριο 2012 που καταυθάνει. Ευτυχισμένο και "πλεονασματικό" το νέο έτος για όλους.

Collage σε τρεις κινήσεις