Hunter S. Thompson Illustration

An Illustration I started that took a twist towards Hunter S. Thompson along the way.

Watercolour and ink on paper.

Places to follow me online:

My Website

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Red Fred (New Painting)

His name is Red Fred and he is a stand up comedian, a very funny guy. Just a regular dude from a different dimension.

Print will be available soon if you are interested.

I also shot a video on how I created this that I may put online at some point. This was originally a quick exercise for me to get back into painting after injury but I ended up getting into it and really liking it. Was good fun to create.

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My Webite

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DIY DSLR Shoulder Rig

Now have a new video blog post explaining more about this rig here

This is some of the process me and my dad went through while building me a shoulder rig. All in all the materials cost around £40 (thats including the tripod head). We intentionally decided not to use the standard 15mm rods to base the system on as I wanted to have everything home made and don't intend to buy any pro pieces to attach. I will also attempt a follow focus system soon.

It is based on a single aluminium sheet about 2 inches wide as it is nice and light. The handles are simply bike handles (I will buy a few different styles to suit different projects).

We then sprayed everything black.

I like that everything is adjustable to my needs. All I need to do is make some more screw holes if I need to attach any other pieces of equipment (follow focus, sound recorder).

I am very happy with it. It gets a very steady shot which is the sole purpose for making it, it is light, can be easily taken apart for storage and re-assembled, it cost at least £400 less than a store bought rig, easily adjusted to my needs and projects. Overall pretty damn good for around £40.


















Final Rig.
It was sprayed with a grey primer then finished with a satin black.

I added a small bag at the back with 5 pounds of weight to balance out the whole rig and take the strain of my arms. The whole rig with the Canon 5d mk 2 on it feels great and is a pleasure to use.

Only thing left to do is buy some black tiers to attach the weight bag in place of the red one's (purely aesthetic reasons) and buy some different bike handle bars for different needs and projects.

Now I plan to make a few different styles of rig to compliment this one (some more run and gun styled one's). I will also attempt a follow focus for this one.

A big thanks to my dad for helping me with this!

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andrew@drewportfolio.com

Catriona

My girlfriend Cat. Taken about 2 years ago. I just found this on my hard drive and really liked it.

Memory tree by Mike Kobal.

Another great movie clip shot with the 5d mk 2. I really like the use of depth of field in this and also the colour correction. It has an eerie feel to it.

Great work by Mike Kobal.

Watch full screen.

memory tree: Canon 5D, 50mm 1.2 from Mike Kobal on Vimeo.

g. (An amazing short film by J. Xavier Velasco)

Found this on vimeo the other day and I was blown away. It engrossed me from the first second to the last. It was shot so well and just sucked you into the story. The creator J. Xavier Velasco states that it was shot all hand held with a canon 5D mk2 and a few lenses and virtually no budget. Shows what can be achieved when you have vision and creativity. This puts a lot of big budget movies to shame in my opinion. I loved the hand held aesthetic, I am not a fan of complete precision and the slight hand shake in this only adds to the feeling, atmosphere and narrative. I think that if this was shot using steady cams, glide cams and other expensive gear it would not have had the same impact (well on me anyway).

Watch this and see what great vision and creativity can achieve.

Watch it full screen for full impact.

g. from J. Xavier Velasco on Vimeo.

Pretty Cool Canon DSLR Video with Zeiss 35mm

I just found this video online as I was searching around for reviews on the Zeiss 35mm f2 lens that i'm thinking of investing in. I like how the lens captures the video here, very clear and sharp with no vignetting and such like. I'm sure it would be great for still too. The person has done a very good job on this short video.

Anyway have a look at this

My first 7d test from Leandro Ferrão on Vimeo.

Film Colour Correction

A really cool tutorial for colour correcting your videos to get looks similar to Hollywood films. Its a great tutorial to get you started, i personally don't care for the extreme blueish correcting in this tutorial but i'm sure other people will love it. He shows you everything from quick colour correcting to adding vignetting to put more emphasis on your characters.

This is a good tutorial on simple image colouring and theory which is very relevant to stills photography too.

Have a look at this if you are interested in movie making, infact the whole article on movie making with your dslr is pretty informative.

Enjoy.

Episode 22: Creating a Summer Blockbuster Film Look from Red Giant Software on Vimeo.

Find the start of the whole article here:

Whole DSLR Cinema Article

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andrew@drewportfolio.com

Locum Pharmacist Business Card

I just finished a business card design for a Locum Pharmacist.

This was quite a tricky project as there is not much research that can be found on pharmacy related business cards and any that I did find were extremely bad and very uninspiring. So I had to approach this with a fresh mind.

The client wanted something that was visually attractive but got her details across effectively.

We came to the conclusion that incorporating a few pills or medical symbols would not be the way to go as it is very dull and very cliche. We instead decided to go for an abstract background design that wouldn't over power the text and a elegant soft colour that would make it stand out from the other generic pharmacy locum cards, so that when that company needed a locum they would reach for her card first.

This card is the outcome. It has the bold white text that can easily be read which is primary, It is attractive and eye catching yet elegant without being over powering. Subtlety was the most important aspect when designing this card as it would have been really easy to go for a bright saturated purple and high contrast background design that would loose the texts readability.

Both the client and I are very happy with the final outcome which is all you can ask for.

www.drewportfolio.com
andrew@drewportfolio.com

DIY DSLR Shoulder Rig

I am going to try and make one of these for my 5D to shoot steady videos. To buy new these things are expensive, £500 - 1200, no way am I spending that just now.

This guy has done the best diy job I have seen yet. I hope to create something like this but more suited to my needs. I will keep you updated on my pregress. In the meantime check out this guys video.



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andrew@drewportfolio.com

Chase Jarvis Inspirational Talk

This is a great speech by Chase Jarvis on photography, video and creativity in general. I love how he says that he didn't do anything the way you are supposed to in his creative career. I feel the same way, I always like to question why something has to be a certain way simply because thats how its supposed to be.

Click on the link below and give it a watch, it certainly brightened up my day.



www.drewportfolio.com
andrew@drewportfolio.com

Tae Kwon-do Flyer

This is a flyer I recently created for a Tae Kwon-do instructor in London to promote his classes. I had some fun with the design as he was more open to whatever ideas I thought appropriate. He wanted something modern that would stand out from the crowd so this is what we ended up with at the end. I am really happy with the outcome and so is the customer which is what I aim for when doing a project.

This is the Front



And the Back



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andrew@drewportfolio.com

Clay Model Attempt 2

A small monster face I made out of clay recently. This was really good fun and I think I will buy some more and see what I can do with it.

This will be painted soon, my elbow is in agony and can hardly use a paintbrush but when its healed and I have painted this model I will upload it here.

www.drewportfolio.com
andrew@drewportfolio.com

Clay Model Attempt 1

I decided to buy some clay the other day and make some weird stuff. This is the result.

A monster/Ghosty thing. I thought he looked like the kinda ghost that would smoke a cigar.

This will be painted soon, my elbow is in agony and can hardly use a paintbrush but when its healed and i have painted this model I will upload it here.

www.drewportfolio.com
andrew@drewportfolio.com

Watercolour

A quick watercolour drawing on A3 Bristol board. I found that the Bristol board is the best paper yet that I have used with watercolours, nice and thick (not much warping).

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andrew@drewportfolio.com

Digital noise can be good

This is a shot I took last weekend. Cat was sitting swaying to some music while having a few beers and I wanted to capture the moment. It was almost complete darkness, only a single candlelight across the room as the light source. So I decided to push my Canon 5D as far as it would go, I shot on the highest ISO setting and also intended to push it a fair bit in post processing as it was that dark. So here it is, I think it came out pretty cool. It captured the moment I wanted perfectly and yes the digital noise is horrible but i feel it works for this particular image. This image for all its imperfections actually makes it more appealing to me.

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andrew@drewportfolio.com

The Road

Went to see 'The Road' this weekend. I had read the book and found it to be one of the best that i have read. It flows so well and you never want to put it down. I have been waiting or the movie to come out ever since I heard it was getting made (about a year ago or something). I saw that it would star Viggo Mortensen who is one of my favourite actors if not the favourite.

I went into the movie not expecting it to deliver on the level of the book as very rarely a film can actually capture the essence of a book and normally leaves the viewer disappointed. Soon as the first few scenes played I was hooked. Not one part of the film allows your mind to wander. It keeps you gripped and focussed throughout the whole movie. I would say that it definitely captures the essence of the book and I would say captures it so well that I would find it hard to say one is better than the other.

Anyway all I'm saying is that if you were thinking of going to see the film then i would highly recommend it and also to read the book. I think actually having read the book first makes the viewing experience even better as you can experience the great words on the pages become great visual scenes on the screen.

Go See It!

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andrew@drewportfolio.com

The Tenebrous Liar

I Saw Tenebrous Liar at the Windmill in Brixton on Monday. They are an awesome band, this is the third time i have seen them now. The first two times were when they supported Soulsavers and they really caught my attention. The music is dark, energetic, heavy, soft take a look at their myspace here www.myspace.com/tenebrousliar

The singer 'Steve Gullick' is also a well known music photographer. His photography is so good. He has photographed many great people such as Kurt Cobain, Mark Lanegan, Lou Reed, Neil Young and many more. He is a true inspiration when it comes to music photography for me. If your interested in Photography or music then you really need to check out his stuff. His website can be found here www.gullickphoto.com/


So if you get the chance to go see The Tenebrous Liar or an exhibition of Steve's photographs I don't think you will be disappointed. I am now a big fan of both.

All photographs taken on an old Olympus OM-2N film camera, using TRI-X film thats either pushed to 800 or 1600.

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andrew@drewportfolio.com

Soulsavers Gig

Soulsavers at The Electric Ballroom in Camden on Friday night (11th Dec o9).

Was an amazing gig, the band were spot on and full of energy, Lanegans vocals were perfect. One of the best gigs i have ever seen.

We got to meet Mark lanegan. Mark is my favourite singer of all time and this is pretty much a dream come true meeting him. He was a really cool guy, he was happy to chat for a few minutes and take a few photo's. We didn't want to bother him that much as there were a couple of crazed fans that were clawing at him but we got a few photos and that was really cool. We asked him to take a photo of me and Cat for some reason (did I mention we were a little drunk) which he said yeah, but that he ain't that good with cameras (especially 30 year old film cameras) and the photo was eh......pretty messed up but is a cool memory of the night.

We also met The Guitarist Rich Warren. He is an awesome guitarist and is full of energy, its so good to watch him perform.

We also met the Bassist Martyn lenoble who was also very cool. All great musicians in their own right. Great night and here are some of the shots from the night.


Check out there myspace here www.myspace.com/soulsavers

Pentax ME Super
Kodak Tri-x pushed one stop to 800

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andrew@drewportfolio.com