Howth, Co.Dublin pen sketch

Ceramic studies

These are some very early thrown stoneware pieces that were made when learning how to close a cylinder on the potters wheel. I finished them with some simple brush marks and a clear glaze.

White Ceramic Pieces

The first two pieces from a series of white stoneware ceramic pots with 18 carat gold detailing that were based on minimalist human forms.

'mother and child'

'drummer'

mother and child maquette front

mother and child maquette back

Ceramics

More old work that I found from my college days. Ceramics, something which I'd always love to go back too.
These ones are made with craft crank clay mixed with various grades of wood shavings, made 11% larger to allow for the shrinkage rate of that kind of clay. They were then smoked fired and bolted together with metal parts of found origins or rusted with ammonia. The next and final stage was to dairy products and keep in a warm damp place to help grow fungus and blue mould (extremely unhygienic to touch).  All vessels are made to the volume of the human brain. The theme was the death cycle, when something dies to allow for something else to live, or something pretentious like that. It was along time ago :)

Sand Paintings

These paintings were the progression on from the earlier war paintings, I went for a more abstract approach then the horrific subject matter of napalm burn victims. I painted these on the flat with watered down acrylic (because drying times). They were done without the use of brushes except for the details, sand was spread in areas and then the acrylic was poured over it so the pigment would mass up against the grains of sand when dried. I put down cling film in areas and a heavy plastic sheet was layered over the paintings when they were drying, leaving folds similar to the folds in a map. En-caustic wax and brush work finished of the details.
Shame these are such bad photos, I'll need to take new ones when I get back to Ireland.

'keep the home fires burning'

'still sipping from the river lethe'

'misguided'

'war games'

Digging up the old crap

now I have to buy a hat, bloody tigers!

'Naplam VC' part of my research into the photography of the vietnam war

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The above painting was made with an old oil we found in an abandoned jail (that's another story:)) this forementioned oil never dried, so it was perfect for the effect I wanted for the skinn areas. I was mixed with convetional oil paint which I coated with Acrylic so it skinned dried but left it squissy to the touch. I unfortunately burst after I set fire to the painting.

Another painting based  on the vietnam war where I used the above technique for the skin and hung the painting on it side so the lips sagged away from the teeth. Its was later buried for a few weeks and then dug up again where worms ate parts of the canvas.

The later two paintings were based on my discertation about the photographers doing horrific acts themselves while trying to convey the horrors of the vietnam war. The act of myself making these painting was to retrace their steps in making compostional pleasing work with a juxtoposed subject matter. I never used these either.

T shirt designs for a mates metal/ska band

Hi all, I decided to set up a new blog for work in progress and just scribbles that I didn't want in my other blog as I use that for a portfolio rather than jibberish images and doodles.

Anyway here are some Tshirt designs that I did for a mates band way back that never got used. (until now)

'chalk boy' originally done as Photoshop brush to replicate chalk.

faces

Tshirt back

the good corner

'loon'