Mark Nicoll

Been a while.

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 17:11:35 GMT

This illustration documents the usage of materials in the life cycle of a kettle, from the quarry, through steel works and other factory processes, packaging and distribution to warehouses and showrooms. Finally, mass domestic use of power and water, and the product’s eventual fate as landfill.

It was drawn in response to the DOTT07 "Stuff-o-meter" brief for the D&AD Global Student Awards 2007, and it was nominated in its category.

The original drawing is 2 feet high by 24 feet wide, in pencil on 200gsm paper

http://www.marknicoll.com is up, and I also use http://nicoll.deviantart.com for regular art dumps.

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 11:03:42 GMT

More work here.

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 14:24:27 GMT

Shaftsbury Avenue, Soho, London. Oil on canvas

I spent a month in Australia earlier this summer, and drew all the animals in Toronga zoo, sydney.

I have tonsilitis at the moment :(

Oh, hey, I signed up for a DeviantArt sight at last! ~Nicoll on Deviantart

Life, the general public and a frog.

Mon, 27 Mar 2006 10:51:58 GMT

Still sketching people without their permision. Have yet to be brutally assaulted. In fact, I'm finding the more open and inclusive one's attitude towards the sketchees, the more enjoyable and worthwhile the experience becomes. The ol' coy peep n' sketch game is a bit lame. Mind you, I might need to watch this since I have occasionally taken it to the point of being rude. I wonder, what is the morality of looking at strangers or even friends for the purpose of artistic development? Heheh.

Some creatures who failed to avoid being sketched

Some rubishy gesture drawings of people walking towards or away from me, drawn while walking.

Even I failed to escape being sketched.

I have been sketching so much recently that it feels as though I'm begginging to forget how to actually hold a pencil. I mean, I pic the thing up and wonder what it's for, and feel really clumsy, wondering what on earth I'm trying to achieve. Hopefull I'll take a step forward at some point and this phase will pass.

Merekat set me an assignment of studying statues, so I spent some time in the British Museum. Pencil on paper (A2 size).

Ten minute sketches

Thirty minute sketch

Three hour sketch

Apparently I need to work on demonstrating an understanding of 'form', rather than just going straight for the values and accidental light effects. Maybe I'll learn a thing or two at the Michelangelo drawings exhibition.

[Mini update]
Sketch with attention to form

Studies of Michelangelo's drawings made in the exhibition.

A poster design for a university project, for a prospective imaginary documentary on an 'Unsung Hero'. I chose Kasturba Gandhi, wife of Mohandas Mohatma Gandhi.

Paintings in progress.

Sorry about the pose. *wince*

This is a scan of an etching plate

It actually came out a bit like this when printed. Oh well.

Wed, 25 Jan 2006 16:26:29 GMT

String Storyboard

I recently drew a storyboard for a short film.

String is an exciting new short film by an inspired and up-and-coming group of filmmakers. It’s about a man on his way to work who finds a label on the ground attached to a piece of string...

Click here to go to the String website

Click here for access to the full storyboard, but watch out for spoilers! If you'd like a ticket to the premier, you can donate to the project via the website.

Here are a few images from the storyboard.

Life drawings

I really enjoy life drawing and firmly believe in it's importance with respect to artistic development, however I'm quite uncomfortable showing these. Looking back at them, I can see a considerable amount wrong that I missed at the time. It may be a feature of my recent practice of drawing really, really insanely fast - perhaps it's time to slow down and chill out. Will I be more awake next time? Man, I really hope so!

Miscellaneouseouseouseous images

Four pints down, in the Charles Dickens pub on Union street, and out came the paints. No water to hand, so the medium is Guinness colour.

Photography

Views of Soho, The City and the river.

On public transport.

Sat, 04 Jun 2005 23:23:36 GMT

For the past few months I've been drawing people on public transport. There has been some development, if only in the way I view strangers; there is not a single uninteresting face on a crowded bus or in a tube carriage. For any drawing where the eyes are visable there's probably a story attached. It can be a tricky exercise, socially because staring at people is considered rude and weird (at least in Britain!) and artistically because busses and trains tend to be rather bumpy. It's an exercise in letting go of control; the pen is going to do it's own thing some of the time and I just have to deal with it.

Here's where I'm at.

Speed Comic

Thu, 10 Mar 2005 11:08:23 GMT

A particuarly random thread on the Always Black forum put me in mind of a Mos Eisley cantina brawl (Star Wars). The thread was is called "Thief 3 Editor Released", but then this happens...

Each page is an hour and a half's worth of early morning exercise.

Oekakis:

Articulated Goddess

Mon, 14 Feb 2005 02:56:15 GMT

Animation

Animation

Narcissism in catharsis

Wed, 09 Feb 2005 22:08:11 GMT

I just found a thirteen year old photograph of me. I'd have been ten at the time. Earlier on this evening I was dabbling on the State Oekaki boards and did a self portrait... I wanted to make a few comparisons between versions of my mug although my early self-portraits are conspicuously nowhere to be found. Tonight's painting was only 20 odd minutes and I neglected to give myself cheekbones and went for a stigmatism instead. I intend to do a proper self-portrait in the not too distant future.

A 10-year-old Space cadet; Ensign Marky.	A vodka'd out dark Mark of two years ago.
A Mark of earlier this evening.	This would be me, as would this.

I don’t consider myself particuarly coy or repressed (rigorously examine inveterate beliefs), but I have massive trouble expressing some things in any way other way than art. It’s a matter of feeling it strongly enough, otherwise I default to whatever the hand dictates (fantasy) but it’s the only means of catharsis I have.

Note - Have been dumping Oekaki contributions in the previous post rather than giving any of them a post of their own. Check em out?.

Tablets

Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:59:44 GMT

Except not, believe it or not, pharmaceuticals. I’ve been playing with a graphics tablet that was kindly lent to me. I like. Looking forward to using it more. Must get one.

These paintings average between 13 and 30 minutes. Oekaki on the State boards.

Homo Depressus: First Degree

Fri, 14 Jan 2005 21:30:13 GMT

A five page comic. Written by Kieron Gillen, art by me.

Preamble by Kieron Gillen

Homo Depressus was – in fact, perhaps still will be – a collection
of short comics.

It’s satirical science fiction. But it hasn’t many laughs. It isn’t
even black humour, and far prefers the accusing, puritanical gaze to any
other expression. It rarely laughs, and when it does it’s a spat, aggressive
“HAH!” rather than anything else vaguely integrating.

This strip was to be in the middle of the sequence, so doesn’t attempt
to explain the conceits of the world. That said, you should be able to
follow it given these three facts.

1) Modern life is the End of History. Homo Depressus takes that literally,
and has society stay completely static from now until if not forever,
at least enough to allow evolution.

2) The biggest evolutionary pressures are those which stop you breeding.
Anything that kills young people is strongly selected against. One of
the biggest killers of young people today is suicide. Logically enough,
if the world continues as it is, evolution would select for traits that
reduced the suicide rate.

3) Rather than doing it psychologically, I’ve chosen to make the mutations
physical. The human being evolved to make it harder to commit suicide.
Blood clots quicker, Bones are constructed to shatter differently and
so on.

Homo Depressus is a world of people who are suicidally depressed yet
find their efforts thwarted at every turn.

This would have been around the third episode or so.

Enjoy.

In a very specific, rarely used meaning of the word “Enjoy”.

- Kieron Gillen

The Comic

It's dark. That was your warning, if it bothers you.

Homo Depressus: First Degree - The Comic

It is also up on www.alwaysblack.com.

Notes

It’s actually my first attempt at drawing and putting together the art for a comic. It was some time back in March 2003 when Kieron first showed me the script and I said I’d take a shot at it. The ideas of the Depressus world fascinated me (having done bits of soul destroying temp work over the previous year, they seemed particularly apt) and the style of the script was too grimly cool to turn down. I started off enthusiastically and drafted it out quite rapidly.

University was heating up and I lost confidence in my ability to maintain any kind of continuity or present the comic decently. It kept nagging at me that I should finnish it and designs, concepts and drawings for some of the cells were still happening over that time, but it had slowed right down. I didn’t touch it for pretty much a year after that and, to my shame, nor did I talk to Kieron about it at all.

A couple of weeks ago I took another look at the script and what I’d drawn so far and thought “this /does/ have potential and can be done. Time to have a go at redeeming myself”. I showed it to Kieron at quarter past midnight on Thursday, which was an absolute pleasure to do – I’d been kicking myself for having vanished into the void but he was great about it. He suggested some edits and, having fixed those, that was it.

All in all, I’m really pleased to have done this. Thanks very much to Kieron for providing the script, he’s great to work with.

Some of the drawings that went into the comic;

Here are some of the drafts from 2003. It would have been entirely different if I’d gone ahead and finished it at that time;

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Photodump

Sat, 01 Jan 2005 03:49:26 GMT

London, baby. The city.

I just prematurely spring-cleaned my web space and since lots of links were killed in the process I've been back over my previous LJ posts (all two of them) and updated them. I also added a load of content in the relevant places rather than spamming it in a subsequent post. 'Few toons, more paintings and... yes! Some utterly innocuous nekid people (life drawings) to entice you to look back at those posts. Oh yes.

Mmmm... I just downed half a dozen pints of water, having mixed various beverages in the terminal moments of 2004 {Here's too a} Happy new year {and the imminent prospect of passing plentee of pee}.

All that stuff is copyright me 2k2->2k5, o' course. Not the buildings, obviously. They're... copyright they're respective owners. Architects. Whoever. Ain't mine. Infact, I wonder… am I allowed to say these images are copyright me? Having taken these photographs, is there any litigious scenario whereby they wouldn’t be? If you know about this kind of thing, please let me know. Mmm, actually I quite like small print. I see why they do it, now. It's kinda cosy. How sad.

Terminal Sketch Dump

Wed, 29 Dec 2004 22:30:09 GMT

Here are a few pages from my most recent sketchpad which is coming to its end.

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Thu, 23 Dec 2004 05:32:52 GMT

For lack of actual /content/, I'll use this as an art dump.

Here's a 40 minute speed painting apropos of nothing in particular.

Past paintings;

Past toons... n' stuff.

Pratchett's Sgt. Detritus, Ankh-Morpork City Watch.

Hmm. Some of that's rather old.

I'd better be working on a website, me thinks.