Aleister Crowley and Nightside works in progress

Easy to start many things, but sticking it through all the boring all the tedious parts and more importantly through all the moments when one fears that the whole lot could be ruined, is the virtue of 'to keep silent' so i have not placed much up of late, though i am trying every day to get to the place with digital art which can be closer to my minds eye.

The following are some works in a state of production still. I am perhaps not unique in feeling that when you have a great image of a work in your mind, to feel that one's abilities or technique is not up to the task and so one holds off and takes it slow and fills the time in between with many smaller projects. Being also that i am so much in love with the work of academic painters like Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema, William Bouguereau, Jean Leon Gerome, John Singer Sargent and John Waterhouse to name just a few, i am wanting to strive to develop something of their style.

On another note, a colleague has recently just introduced me to Prismacolor pencils - these are absolutely fantastic and i think will replace my Derwent pencils. What I notice is that you can layer on colours with the Prismacolor pencils far better than Derwents (although there are many types of Derwents perhaps they have some similar style softcore pencils) -- This layering of colours builds up a form and can help create more solid shapes and figures - perhaps because this layering a subtly varying colours emulates better how the world actually appears - everywhere in nature colourse colours vary in the most minute details - rocks are not just gray shapes, skin is not just a pale pink or peach colour - look at it up close see all the varying pigments - greens, purples, blues, even from a distance a  place face can simulatneously look red, orange, yellow, blue, purple, brown and most times regardless of any racial differences - no one is just one color. The great academic painters and also renaissance painters painted how eye sees and how the unconscious eye also sees. I say this as artists in the past had used the practice of flipping images to show up errors - something which digital artists do today also. I had at fist not thought this would make much difference, but then upon trying it was amazed at how many errors show up. It is a good test and if you are working with digital art - it is an excellent way to fix up errors that that on the surface on not detected but something deeper in the observer will pick it up. - You can flip the works of the great masters of painting and see how they can work in reverse just as well, and one's art must be able to do this also. I am not there yet but getting there.

Aleister Crowley and Rose Kelly in the Cairo Museum 1904

April 2012, Photoshop CS4/CS5

A'rab Zaraq - detail from larger image

April 2012, Photoshop CS5

The Book of the Law -Work in Progress

April 2012 Photoshop CS5