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Welcome
to the art portfolio site of Martin Davey featuring animation
and illustration artwork mainly for the childrens book / advertising
market,using photoshop and lightwave 3D.
He has worked commercially for over 15 years
in animation and illustration, based in the UK.
Martin is available for commissioned artwork
for childrens illustration, book covers,concept projects,oil paintings
and animation projects.
The images are drawn directly in to the
computer using a 'wacom drawing tablet'. Photoshop is used in the
creation of this work. The animation has been mainly realised in
Lightwave 3D, plus flash and aftereffects. Other artwork here
is traditionally painted in oils on canvas, and oil painting
commissions are undertaken of many subjects.
The
artwork can be professionally printed out on to paper or canvas for
display. Please contact the artist for details.
He hopes you enjoy viewing his art.
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CONTENT GALLERY
| Martin Davey paints a variety
of subjects from landscapes to animals and transport. In addition much
artwork is created digitally, using many different subjects like
animals, dinosaurs and horror, though usually with a humorous slant.
Some of the images on the site have been put in to categories to
reflect this. |
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ARTWORK
CREATION
Martin works in
two different enviroments to produce his artwork. One is the digital
realm and the other is using traditional paint media.
DIGITAL
ARTWORK
The digital
artwork is created in photoshop, a industry standard pixel based image
editing programme. The software allows one to use layers to create and
build up an image, so the sky could be on a back level and the
foreground on a higher level and perhaps a figure on a futher layer on
top. It is used generally in union with a drawing tablet and stylus,
which could be described as a sheet of electronic paper with pencil.
Basically the pencil does not have any lead or any output, but has a
special plastic nib that reacts to the tablet, a flat plastic A4 sized
surface, when it is stroked with the pen. If more pressure is applied
the drawn line becomes heavier/ darker as in real life.
Within the
software the size of the overall pencil/brush can be adjusted as can be
the properties of the colour used.The method in creating the images is,
after having the idea, is to loosly sketch the idea out in on of the
levels in photoshop. Then on another level produce a tighter drawing
using the original as a guide, and onwards until a satisfactory master
drawing is created. Each level is transparent, and it is only the drawn
line is opaque. The next stage is to paint the image.
Martin starts
with creating another level in photoshop, underneath the drawing levels
and begin with a plain medium tone brown colour filling the
(electronic) canvas. This will be at the very botton of the stack of
levels and untouched. A new layer is created on top of this and here
Martin actually begins to paint the image properly. He picks a
part of the subject and roughtly paints in the base colours, quite
lightly and not fully opaquely, so that the brown 'ground' level still
partly shows through the base colours. The base colours tend to be
tonaly dark versions of the final ones, so on top on the same layer he
paints slightly lighter tonal colours. Basically he is painting in a
'dark to light' method, typically used for acrylic and oil
painting.
As the painting
progresses the line drawing become less useful . Often the black line
drawing can be a distraction because of its heavy tone compered to the
colour levels. Also the drawings he does are not fully pined down in
fine detail. It is often easier to paint, or rather draw and paint at
the same time, the finer details. It is also a quicker route to
completion. The finished photoshop document may have 30+ levels, and
the file will be kept and archived in this form. A fresh copy of the
file is made which is then flattened to one level and this is used as
the master image, from which other digital copies are made.
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Martin at work in photoshop using an old CRT
screen for better colour accuracy.
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three
stages of an oil painting.
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Martin at work with a portable easel.
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OIL
PAINTING
Martin dabbled
with traditional painting when he was a student, experimenting with
watercolour, gouache,acrylics and oils. But the world changed when
computers were introduced in to the commercial art world and he rarely
did any traditional painting. Instead artwork was all digitally
created. But later in his life he took up traditional oil/ acrylic
painting, quite recently, as he always had that bug in him.
The first step
it to work out what subject to paint. He will spend a little time
thinking about the subject and then roughtly sketch it out on the
computer, much like the method described above for digital artwork.
Some times the photograph itself will be digitally manipulated in
photoshop to create a more balanced composition, by rearranging
elements within. Martin likes to paint in a time honored fashion of
painting a coloured, brown ground wash layer firstly in acrylic paint
on the canvas.
Then the image
is transferred to the canvas. This is done by scaling up the drawing
using a grid on the reference drawing and lightly drawing the same grid
on to the canvas at a scale proportionate to the canvas size. Martin
then draws (copies) the image using the grid as a reference point,
using a fine brush and brown acrylic paint. The drawing should be just
slightly darker than the ground.
After an hour
this drawing is likely to be dry, and it is then safe to apply an oil
based colour wash (oil paint diluted with white spirit) usually in a
darker tone than the final general tone of everything in the image.
When this is dry Martin starts to concentrate on certain areas and
applies a heavier coat of paint, using more paint the white spirit in
the mix. When this is dry then final lighter tones of paint straight
out of the tube are applied. So the heaviest ares of paint work are
areas of greatest brightness and colour, whereas the dark areas will
have thinner paint, often with the colour brown ground showing through.
On a painting it
is difficult to paint the whole area in one go as some elements in the
composition may need more work than others, and you don't want to paint
on areas that are partly dry ,or smudge a recently completed area.
Martin spends about a week, spread over a month or so on each painting,
allowing for drying times. He uses very cheap brushes for the fine
details as the oil paint ends up destroying them, no matter how well
they are cleaned.
One the image is
complete, it is never altered/ repainted. Instead Martin may do another
canvas on the same subject but as a fresh painting. He does not like
the idea of tinkering around with images....once its done its done!
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