This image was made as part of a new series of two minute time lapse illustrations that I am embarking on for my YouTube Channel. I’ve called this one Red Ed.

As part of this journey, I want to explore a variety of different mediums again and become a bit more exploratory concerning image making. Way back in 1994, I did my Art Foundation where we were encouraged to look at all aspects of creative processes and practices. From Fine Art, Printmaking, Photography, Costume Design, Sculpture…

The list is exhaustive. But it was brilliant and ridiculously informative in terms of enrichment and discovery. One process informed another and thus the understanding of materials became constantly enlightening and ideas flowed in abundance.

It’s extremely easy to get bogged down in one set of processes and stagnate. Due to the fact that I have been working with digital images for so long now, I feel that I need to get in touch with real hands on materials once again and explore mark making in a very real sense. Im looking forward to this journey of discovery and challenging myself to use materials I haven’t used before or indeed materials that I’ve not used for a long time. My aim is to explore a combination and variations of paints, inks, pens, collage, print and whatever other new and interesting materials I can get my hands on. I will still be working digitally and where applicable, I will incorporate the two processes.

Much of my digital artwork starts off as pen and ink drawings and many of the textures I use are hand produced and scanned before using them as part of the digital process. So I am used to creating with real hands on materials, but for many reasons I feel I want to delve a bit deeper into the word of illustration and image making by looking at new techniques and trying out varied approaches to creativity. All of which will hopefully inform and enrich my established creative process. Let face it, it can’t be a bad thing!