Being a small area, within the middle of the Gunwharf Quays of Portsmouth, between the harbour and university district,it can be quite easy to accidentally miss or pass by the Aspex Gallery.

Okay, so I admittedly got lost on the way there and walked past it twice by accident on a university trip, but I still blame the dark sunglasses I was wearing on that day.

To miss the gallery however would be a large loss on those who may do so however, as despite its fairly small structure and scale next to the seaside, it does have a great degree of substance though the variety of art styles presented in many of the shops that me and my classmates went to.

One shop we saw had an elderly couple who had retired to their passions, following a life of raising their children in the past, an admirable goal displaying the refusal to give up on hopes and dreams after passing a certain age. 

Their first few paintings were simplistic, using shapes and bright colours to depict bearmy landscapes like boats on the seaside. Nice to look at.

But then above those, there were far more detailed, photo-realistic paintings of scenes and celebrities that almost resembles something out of the National Portrait Gallery of London also.

This essentially summarised the fact that despite the initial impression you may get from seeing the outside of the Apex Gallery, there was far more to be encountered once I started venturing further.

In all honest, being new to Portsmouth when we started this project to create a Haiku, I wasn’t sure where to start with this project. In the project I am referring to, me and group of six other individuals at the University, had to create a haiku based off of a setting or location in the Portsmouth University.

Our group eventually settled on choosing the Highland Road Cemetery near the seaside. The Haikus I wrote were:

“A field of dead, something mysterious among cold fields”.

“Forest of the past, the winds of time flowing through passing those lives gone”.

“Flowers lay sullen among the chasms of death, reminders of love”

Looking at all three of the Haikus, you can probably figure out that the overall themes of them are the mysteries of death and the emotions expressed towards those who have passed away.

I chose these themes as the group I was in split up to observe the cemetery separately, so I travelled into an area of forestation that oversaw several of their graves.

The large number of graves I saw, even among the relatively small plot of land, made me think about the high number of people who died on a daily basis, thus I made death a major focus.

Whilst their, I saw a man and his pet dog, plus two parents and an infant child also walking around the cemetery. Thus, I also made the emotions of those related to the deceased a focus. 

Light research on Jack Kirby

Jack Kirby was born in August 1917 and died in February 1944.

He was born and raised in New York under the name Jacob Kurtzberg.

He initially taught himself to draw from a young age by tracing and copying figures he saw in comic strips and newspaper cartoons, citing examples such as Milton Caniff, Hal Foster, and Alex Raymond, among his influences later in life.

He began his career during the early years of the comic industry in the 1930s, where he drew various comic books features. It was at this time he used a number of different pen names, before finally sticking to using “Jack Kirby.”

After starting at the Lincoln Newspaper Syndicate, he moved to Fleishers Animation Studio in the late 1930s, before then moving to Fox Feature Syndicate by  January 1940.

There, he met another cartoonist and editor called Joe Simon and the two became close friends. The next year, the two left to work at Timely Comics (later to become Marvel Comics) where they created Captain America which would prove to be Kirby‘s breakthrough series. The two also created the Romance Comics genre.

Following this, the United States entered WWII, so Kirby and Simon drafted up a years worth of comics to fill in for the gap, whilst they were drafted into the army as soldiers.

Through the 1950s to1980s, he worked for both DC and Marvel comics. Post 1980, he then entered the fields of animation concept art and independent comics in the 1980s.

Hello everybody, just another quick blog post that I’m writing today, partially to get some thoughts off of my head that have been lingering in whatever remains of my brain at the time since last night, and partially to get rid of the numbness in my fingers that the colder weather outside has kindly gifted me.

I know this one’s a bit different from the other blog posts I’ve made. Well, really that’s something of an exaggeration, considering the only other blog posts I’ve done have consisted of around less than three hundred words. Plus, I’m fairly sure that I’ve only made about for our five of them, due to my chronic laziness.

Sorry, where was I?

I just wanted to take the time to talk about how great Jack Kirby’s artwork was and still is to this day, only helped by his prolific portfolio meaning that there will ALWAYS be something new for me to look at.

Thinking back on it now, I think my earliest experience with Jack Kirby was at a party I went to when I was much, much younger (being born in 1998, this was probably sometime around the start of the new millennium, the early 2000s).

Although I wouldn’t really rediscover or properly study his original work for another nine to ten years afterwards, I think this initial viewing generally summed up why I would fall in love with his work whilst later taking my artwork more seriously as a teenager.

Me and a number of the other children were given a series of colouring pens, along with this odd black paper that had white designs and images on them, the intent being for us to fill in the white areas with the colours provided.

Some of the designs were fairly standard but fun cartoon designs, depicting popular kids show characters.

I believe Robbie Rotten, a cartoon parrot and Optimus Prime were among the mix.

Looking back on it now, that was PROBABLY a work of Kirby’s art that had been included among the designs of this collection of fairly cheap party entertainments.

However, there was also this weird picture of Hulk that was far stouter and stockier than the muscular, taller version modern audiences are now more familiar with (Amplified by the recent release of the 2003 Aang Lee, Hulk film). It actually made the character look far more monstrous by himself, even when he wasn’t angry or screaming.

The 'blockish' design at the time puzzle but ultimately amused me, so I chose that image to colour in for the next hour with green and purple pens. I’m fairly sure the Hulk was running out towards the viewer, arms and legs outstretched in opposite directions. The odd perspective, along with the weird (but definitely not crude) art style created a dramatic shot that should perhaps had the risk of looking grotesque if done by virtually any other (more restrained) artist. And yet Kirby’s dynamic art style nonetheless made the image itself still seem appealing.

 I’m glad I rediscovered him and his importance to Marvel(‘s existence) properly later, after having moved to Los Almendros Spain with my parents in late 2015. I found his artwork once again whilst browsing the school computers at lunchtime at the San Pedro International College during my first year there, whilst looking at some of the masters of the illustration medium.

That’s about it really, just wanted to get this bit off of my mind.

Thank you for reading. 😊

Hello there, and good evening.

I've just uploaded another truckload of art work I've completed over the past two weeks.

So far, I've managed to change my line art thickness from 0.05 to 0.1 as I feel that this better translates my art style onto an A4 page (to then be uploaded onto the internet).

I've also adjusted my use of pencils to a darker blend for shading my images, so more details should hopefully better stand out now, than the lighter, wispier pencils I was using before.

My practice on eye shapes and movements has really started to improve, as I can better depict eyes squinting. They now look more like the designs used by Ayami Kojima, rather than ugly bricks. Further practice on bettering my anatomy will resume immediately.

Have a great night, or morning....depending on where you are. I'm going to stare out my window for the next two hours, then jump out of the window and into the pub below for a quick pint.

Bye.:(

I think I-m going to start to try and place less focus on using digital software to enhance the bulk and backbones of my artwork, otherwise I might become too reliant on them. I-ll start to try and use my pencils to develop better shading and lighting more often.

I'm also listening to Symphony of the Night - Wandering Ghosts in my University room, so I've got that going for me too...

Feel free to check out my account, and the art that I post on it.

I will try my best to upload more frequently in the future.

I am still trying to develop and hopefully improve on my art style, so that it may appear more "professional".

Thank you for reading this.