Merry Christmas

Shepherds came to see the newborn King.....

An homage to Rembrandt.

Christmas Scooter

Another Christmas one - first done in photoshop then given the treatment in painter.

Christmas Choir Procession

This is the latest design in the church choir Christmas card series. Done in photoshop with textures ramped up nice and big.

Madonna and Child

Another Madonna design done just in time for Christmas.

Mother's Day

Here is a design I did for an Australian Mother's Day card (not sure when Australian Mother's Day actually is!)

Done first in photoshop then given the treatment in painter.

Shepherds at Nativity

Another choir one

These are getting a bit forumulaic but that's commercial work sometimes. Hopefully these will get licensed then I can do some more to order.

I found myself wondering - if it wasnt for the digital approach's forgiving nature and undo feature would I have been better off doing them with traditional oil pastel.

Church 3

Choir numero 2

This is the second painting in the Christmas choir range. I think it marks some progress for me - its a different composition that what I'm used to doing so it pushed me outside my comfort zone. Also having the church in the background not compete with the choir was quite a challenge. All in all an enjoyable piece to paint.

Church and choir

This is the first of a series of 'village church and choir' Christmas card designs that I've been asked to do.
The technique is intended to simulate a 'semi-impressionistic, painty, pastelly technique'

Mountain biker

Mountain bike card design. One of a series of male-oriented card designs.

I actually found it harder working out the background than the biker because I found I kept over complicating it and distracting from the man on the bike.

Photoshop and Painter.

Wine on the French Riviera

Yachting

Illustration for a male greeting card design. I'm trying to push the boat out as it were and stretch myself - this one is a little different compositionally to what I normally do.

Photoshop and Painter.

How I love to drive my imaginary classic MG on those winding country roads :)

Photoshop and Painter

Journey to Egypt

Here is a nativity design for a card. The strong lighting is supposed to indicate a divine light leading them on. I quite enjoyed doing this one.

Art is certainly proving to be a continuous journey of discovery and hopefully improvement.

Final Madonna

This is the finished version of the Madonna I posted previously. This one has a more 'commercial' face (borrowed from a different maddona design I did - such is the wonder of photoshop!)

Journey to Bethlehem

Christmas town scene

Here are some Christmas card designs. The idea was to create the effect of being painted on a rough surface and to be quite loose and impressionistic. Took me a few attempts to get there. Its interesting how it can actually be more time consuming to work digitally in some cases.

Mainly done in Photoshop with a touch of Painter.

3 magi approach Bethlehem

I thought I would try and push the boat out with this one and go for a lighting effect that is outside of my comfort zone. The camels were fun to paint.

Done in photoshop

Journey to Bethlehem

Nativity card design depicting Joseph and Mary's journey to Bethlehem. This one was quite a challenge - especially working out the lighting.

Done in Painter IX and Photoshop.

Madonna number 3

I just got Painter IX - it's really cool. I used it to loosely block in everything and then refined things in Photoshop. I'm considering doing this one as traditional oil painting too. I tried to go quite classical with the facial features.

Nativity

Another Mary and baby Jesus design. I am really enjoying improving my figure drawing and painting.

Done in photoshop.

Jesus and Mary

Christian nativity card design with an old school brown palette.

Quick sketch

Just a quick sketch done while waiting around in Heathrow.

Yet more Santa shenanigans

I enjoyed drawing all the animals for this one.

Santa the photographer

I think I'm starting to push this style in a fresher direction.

It was quite a challenge to draw all those reindeer legs!

Angelic host

I think seeing a real host of angels would be both terrifying and awesome. Perhaps not as gentle as a commerical christmas card design.

I might work on some personal ideas of how the Christmas scene really looked. I saw the 2006 movie, The Nativity, recently. I think it does a good job of conveying the reality of what happened and how it must have really affected Mary and Joseph as people.

Christmas card designs

Santa in some technological situations that he didn't expect.