Yesterday (15 Aug) was a day off from work, and I spent it relaxing at home.  I was looking at art-related stuff mostly, and therefore have some links for you to check out.  I also got a couple of my own drawings scanned (but haven't processed them fully), and have put up some preview images of those, in this post.

There are several "speed drawing" videos up on YouTube, which show timelapsed footage of someone drawing a picture — this is captured with a video camera and sped up if it is traditional art, and it is screencaptured if it is digital art.  Two videos in particular caught my attention yesterday, and these are by a person called Moha.  Both these are done in Photoshop and they are very photorealistic —

• Jigsaw — A speed painting of actor Tobin Bell as the main villain in the Saw movies!  This is an awesome rendering of an image from the Saw III publicity.
• Kate from "Lost" — I haven't watched any episodes of the TV series, but all the same, this is a great painting of actress Evangeline Lilly.  Be warned though, that the video features some mild nudity towards the end.

I also spent quite a bit of time on a few websites, including those featuring the art of two great artists, Drew Struzan and Travis Charest.  More details below —

• Drew Struzan is an artist I have written about before (this post and this post from my older blog, the images are not working there though).  He has painted more than a hundred movie posters since the 1970s and his art is stunning (not just the likenesses that he captures, even his composition is great).  The Official Drew Struzan Page has a portfolio of his work.  Under the Movie Posters section, check out the Blade Runner poster, this artwork is going to be used for the upcoming Special Edition DVDs.  The poster he did for Pan's Labyrinth is amazing too, a very different concept is used.  Don't miss the sketches at the site, where there is work done with colour pencils on grey paper.  It's simply beautiful.  The Drew Struzan Movie Poster Page has images of most of the posters he has painted.
• Travis Charest is a Canadian-born artist who has worked in comics for several years.  I haven't read any comics with art by him, only seen his work on the net.  I love his detailed art style ahd rendering, and the effects he uses on costumes and clothes in his painted work (which I read are largely achieved through airbrushing).  To get an idea of what I'm talking about, have a look at his work on The Official Unofficial Travis Charest Art Gallery and Charest's MSN Group.  At the latter link, you can also check out episodes of his comic Spacegirl.
• Crazy 4 Cult was an art show recently organised by writer-director Kevin Smith, which featured art based on Cult Movies.  A large selection of the art is available at the Crazy 4 Cult Gallery, and all are great!

Now for some of my work...  Over the last couple of weeks I've done two drawings, which I scanned yesterday.  I am yet to process these (that is, adjust them in Photoshop and possibly colour them), which I will do if I have time today.  Still, you can have a look at small versions below —

A Doom-inspired picture, called "Dark Marine" or "Blazing Gunz".  I was thinking of using this as a title screen or poster for one of my levels.  I guess it wouldn't fit a more serious level though.  Done on notebook paper, I need to remove the blue lines and possibly colour the piece.

Ah, the poster from the cult classic Evil Dead II!  This one was done in pencil on the cover of a notebook.  I need to darken the whole thing and maybe colour it.

28 Weeks Later was a great movie, and this drawing is a very quick one I did (couldn't have taken more than a few minutes — hence, I won't be adding this to my Art Gallery).  Again, notebook with colour pencil.  This is taken from the US poster for the movie and features actress Rose Byrne.  By the way, all three of the above drawings were done while in office.

I recently watched some (and re-watched other) movies — Rush Hour 3 (nothing very original, but a lot of fun), Sunshine (again, not entirely original, but awesome), Hot Fuzz (great), Vettaiyaadu Villaiyaadu (watched the DVD version of this, awesome, liked it more than when I saw it the first time).  I was thinking of doing a drawing based on Gautam Menon's movies Kaakha Kaakha and Vettaiyaadu Villaiyaadu actually, let us see if it happens sometime.