Wired 2011 Together 2011 painting

A week or so ago I was invited by Wacom to paint a picture live at the Wired 2011 Together event. With only few short days I was advised to deliver something simple so I knocked a quick portrait together - saving the image halfway through so I could paint the image to a finished stage at the event.

So Wacom tablet (Intuos) and Photoshop CS5:-

Medical Illustration

I spoke recently at the Institute of Medical Illustrators conference about drawing and painting with a Wacom tablet, knowing I have no work of any kind that would relate to a scientific audience (!?) I set about to create a quick illustration of the human heart to present at the workshop - I rarely get to just sit and draw something for the sole purpose of well.. drawing.

Pre-production paintings for unreleased Oakenfold project

These are some 16 x 9 concept paintings for an unreleased Paul Oakenfold video project, painted in Photoshop CS5 with a Wacom graphics tablet. I use images like this to guide colour-keys and focus scenes I feel are important to capture in a production. The images in the desert are more colour keys than concept art but the first image I wanted to shoot and splice into the beginning of a show to increase the drama of the opening.

The iPad 2 and Sketchbook Pro for sketching..

I am loving drawing on my iPad 2 - I had the first iPad for a while on loan but I never got round to actually picking up many apps for it - this time round I'm using it for almost all my client facing project planning and presentation - the next set of images i'm creating on it are storyboards, as with the first edition its great to pop out of your bag and start sketching..

I made myself a stylus or Sketchbook Pro out of a roll of anti-staic film jammed into a biro but its not as responsive as I would have hoped.. I plan to pick up a proper stylus in the next week or so. The multiple use aspect of the iPad is what is most appealing to me I think - the combination of video editing, drawing and photo editing along with books, comic books (guilty pleasure) and navigation with an external GPS unit has pushed me to use my iPad for all my travel computing (unless a larger job requires a laptop Final Cut editing suite) I will try and post some of my conceptual storyboards and sketches in the next few weeks..

Meantime here is a quick one I knocked out on a saturday afternoon - finger and home-made stylus. I created this to prove a point to a friend of mine - a fellow illustrator - who was torn between picking up an iPad 2 and Sketchbook Pro or going full whack with a Macbook Pro, Photoshop and a Wacom. His criteria was to have a light portable solution for polishing up his pencil and ink sketches in the computer. For professional, highly polished output - the Macbook Pro / Wacom route is the way to go, I'm still keen to use the iPad for on the road work or rapid prototyping with a client in the room - I would be less keen to use it for final print work.. I love my Wacom tablet and I use it literally every day even in my corporate job.

As it happens my friend won a Macbook Air in a company competition so he's going to try and cram Photoshop on it to use with a Wacom tablet - I will be intrigued to see how he gets on..