Astute 2 – Drawing

I have started drawing Astute 2. I am using a 1cm square grid, and you can see that it is a very complex image.

After some more work, it’s starting to fill the 81x60cm MDF board.

This detail view (at 30 hours) shows one of the most complex passages of the artwork.

And now at the 40 hour mark you can see the sheer amount of detail required for this particular painting. What I have done at the top centre-right of the image below is draw in these large areas of flat color (they are skylights) because it helps in not making any lines in the wrong square. I also use a fifth square – blue dot in the middle system to help with ‘navigation’ as well.

Detail view shown below at the 40 hour mark. It has been slow for the production of my artwork at the start of this year due to a variety of reasons, and I am keen to get stuck into my work.

The top section is quite difficult in some of the passages. I have had to use an eraser and if you take a good look at the image below (photograph taken at 50 hours) you can see afew dark smudged areas.

I am on the final stretch. Images below are at the 60 hour mark.

I have finally finished (the drawing) after spending 74 hours.

Photorealist painting – Astute 1

Chromacolour acrylic on MDF board. 60x45cm. Completed 23 January 2012. Time taken – 82 hours.

The HMS Astute is a nuclear-powered submarine in the Royal Navy. It is an outstanding achievement of modern engineering. Her builders BAE systems boast that it is “the largest and most able attack submarine that the Royal Navy has operated, with a performance to rival any in the world”. HMS Astute was launched on 8th June 2007 and this photo was taken by Christopher Morgan-Jones. The submarine is 323 feet long has a beam of 37 feet and a draught of 33 feet. It also weighs 7400 tonnes. She is capable of hitting 29 knots (54 kph) and has a crew of 98. The HMS Astute is nuclear powered and its powerplant never needs refueling and the limitation for time away from port comes down to the supply of food on board. Her service life is 25 years.

The HMS Astute is capable of destroying other ships and submarines with torpedo’s as well as launching her Raytheon Tomahawk Block III land-attack cruise missile’s. These missiles utilise high explosive warheads and not nuclear warheads. The Tomahawks can fly 2,500 km at 880 kph. This makes the HMS Astute a formidable weapon.

Please note – due to me using a $99 camera there is a slight color shift in the image. It appears slightly cooler than in real life. I will try and update the image.

The drawing can be seen here.

The techniques used can be seen here.

Astute 1 – Painting techniques

The painting of hyperrealism is often a long process and requires a lot of skill and some patience. After completing the drawing, I decided to fill in the biggest single color, or in this case range of colors, which is the sky background. Then I started to lay in with a thin wash of color the submarine itself along with the tarpaulin and English flag that are draped across the nose of the submarine.

The next stage is to lay in some of the myriad of colors that make up the rest of the image.

And some more work..the HMS Astute starts to appear more real.

And some more – to bring the work up to the stage where just about the entire MDF board has some sort of color. This is only a laying in of initial colors for most parts, however some areas are quite complex and you are forced to paint them with a little more accuracy than the broader areas.

At the 50 hour mark you can see that I have started some of the detail work of the hull of the submarine.

The work doesn’t seem to progress much at this stage (60 hours) but that’s because there are a multitude of what I call color & spatial corrections. This refers to the abstract nature of hyperrealist painting. There are some things that I have decided to modify slightly from the source image - often they are just to make the composition ‘read’ easier or due to the low resolution of the original I don’t understand exactly what ‘it’ is. There is one part where I have used other images to decipher what exactly ‘it’ is – the front beam, painted in blue has the words “Astute” but the source reveals nothing of the small text below. So I have added in the following URL – www.royalnavy.mod.uk. This is extremely difficult requiring not a OOO brush but a 10/0.

And now I am on the home run at 70 hours.

The painting was completed after 82 hours and can be seen here.

Main navigation
Tag Cloud
Alien Astute Black BMX Cars Charlie and Hanna CNC Crowd Depression DMG East Timor Flowers Houston Islam Jesus Landscape Mugen Neda Noam Chomsky Osama Racehorse Rave party Suicide bomber Techniques Therion Tony Rolt Vanquish Violence Yarra Glen
Easy Search

Search for:
Google+

If you like what you see and have a Google account - then please hit the +1 button. It helps my website in terms of being more easily found.
RSS
- Astute 2 – Painting techniques February 27, 2012
  I have started on the painting stage of Astute 2. I started laying in the white paint that makes the skylight windows. I then have to mix a huge number of colors and lay them in. The weather is very hot at the moment and it is incredibly difficult keeping the paint from drying out […]
- Astute 2 – Drawing January 25, 2012
  I have started drawing Astute 2. I am using a 1cm square grid, and you can see that it is a very complex image. After some more work, it’s starting to fill the 81x60cm MDF board. This detail view (at 30 hours) shows one of the most complex passages of the artwork. And now at […]
- Photorealist painting – Astute 1 January 23, 2012
  Chromacolour acrylic on MDF board. 60x45cm. Completed 23 January 2012. Time taken – 82 hours. The HMS Astute is a nuclear-powered submarine in the Royal Navy. It is an outstanding achievement of modern engineering. Her builders BAE systems boast that it is “the largest and most able attack submarine that the Royal Navy has operated, […]