Sketching

Just added some sketchy studies to the sketchbook page of my website.

More soon!

Bye for now x

3rd dog

3rd dog.

New personal work.

Mixed media: pencil, ink, acrylic and digital painting.

More soon! bye for now x

Website update.

Updated my website with new illustrations and a sketchbook section: at home in space

x

Neither water nor air.

Ménage à trois

Personal work.

Mixed media: pencil, ink, acrylic and digital.

Shop!

My shop is now open, please feel free to browse, it's a little shop but one you can peruse without feeling awkward if you want to leave without buying.

darrenhopes.bigcartel

Bye for now x

The Serpent Path

A chance to let my dark half loose. Album artwork for the prog rock band Incurvatus. For their forthcoming release The Serpent Path. I also produced an illustration for the inside booklet ... I'll post that soon too.

Bye for now x

Nature Magazine

Two of five illustrations for this weeks Nature magazine in the Autumn book review section.

More soon! Bye for now x

The Silkworm

One of four illustrations I made for yesterdays T2 in The Times. Illustrating Extracts from The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith. It does not take a one legged detective to find out that Robert Galbraith is actually J K Rowling.

A very enjoyable job, did I ever mention I love illustrating literature? I think I probably did.

More soon, bye for now.

x

Burden

New personal work.

Mixed media: pencil, ink, acrylic and digital painting.

More soon! x

Green Waltz

Here is a piece of flash fiction I wrote recently. I am hoping to illustrate it when time allows and when I have decided whether to go down the strip route or illustrated story path?


Green Waltz.

Slender fingers carefully cutting. Outside in deep red, the sun rising, a slow charge against the retreating night. Slender fingers cutting shapes. Outside in red, deadwood limbs sway as light strengthens. Her little fingers, snipping scissors, busy cutting. Red orange sky with hints of encroaching blue now, dry limbs swaying, waving the passing time goodbye. Little fingers collect the cutout shapes, discard offcuts and pick up a crayon. Outside blueness prevails. Busy green crayons colour shapes. Through the window upright and bare against the clear blue sky, the trees. Little hands brush green coloured shapes from the table into the mouth of a sad old leather bag. She goes out, amongst the parched copses under the cloudless blue sky.

A short walk over the hill flanked by the tall, long dead stick men. To the one she chose some weeks before. He stands naked, alone, not the biggest, small, just a little taller than herself. From her pocket a ball of string, old and yellow. Little slender fingers go to work. A paper leaf from the tired old bag, snip the string, slender fingers deftly tying. Again and again, reaching, bending, engrossed, consumed in her repeated work. The sun high in the clear sky burning, watching, a fiery eye witness to the solitary little figure. Steps back from her task.

Finished.

She stares. And stares.

She stares at the little green dressed tree swaying, a rustling dance in the soft rolling air with the hot sun rising. Mesmerised. The high fiery eye staring like it to was mesmerised by the little green tree in it’s waltz with the breeze. hypnotic and strange. She had wondered you see, she had never seen and had to know.

What they had looked like.

Before.



By Darren Hopes

Popshot - Journeys

My cover artwork for the latest edition of the ever inspiring Popshot magazine. Theme this issue is journeys and it was a pleasure to illustrate.

Popshot is a truly fascinating magazine of contemporary Poetry, Short Stories, flash fiction and Illustration? it's like they made it just to suit me!

Mixed Media Experiment i

This started out as oil on board, it was just a monochromatic underpainting which I was going to paint in oil but instead I decided to scan the oil underpainting and work on it with digital painting and some scanned ink brushstrokes. not sure if it's finished, just an experiment really it's sometimes fun to have no plan as to where a picture is going.

More soon, bye for now x

Little Miss Geek

Two recent illustrations for the Telegraph Magazine illustrating a feature on the website Little Miss Geek which was created to inspire and encourage girls into the currently male dominated field of technology. Quite right too! (that girls should be going for it in technology … not that it should be male dominated)

Bye for now x

Happy 2014

Sorry for the belated new year wishes I got a bit bogged down early on, three commissions in already so nothing much to post but here is something that never saw the light of day. It was a version of the Owl Service cover that never got used (I made a few for the AD to close from) The one they went for partly incorporated this but I quite liked this one as well.

More soon, bye for now x

Images of Undiluted Love

Latest illustrations for my friends at New Scientist. This time illustrating an intriguing short story by Joanna Kavenna titled Images of Undiluted Love. Quite aptly Chritmassy don't you think? no? … well it's got snow!

Bye for now x

Never Blinks

I have started an inspiration blog over at tumblr called Never Blinks. Please check it out, the talent I am finding is humbling and will either make me give up or strive like a man possessed to get better. It certainly makes me want to get that canvas that is lurking in the corner of my studio up on an easel but don't expect me to show the results of that anytime soon!

Bye for now x

Slip

A return to my photography at last. I have been mainly concerned with my illustration and  more painterly work over the last couple of years and whilst I have tackled a few commissions photographically I have not produced any personal work for a good while.

This is essentially a piece I did to practice for a slightly more complex image I have planned.

Model is Sarah ♥

More soon x

Hollow

After illustrating The Owl Service I am very happy to say the Folio Society returned and asked me to illustrate a short story for their magazine. I think I may have mentioned before but I love illustrating short stories and this was no exception. It was a dark, grim and gritty tale called Hollow by the author Breece D J Pancake. Here are two illustrations from the series of double page spreads I created.

I like characters in stories that I essentially dislike, loathe even but whom I can perhaps feel for at the same time, perhaps even understand why they are as they are however abhorrent that is to me. The Bunny Munros, (as in The Death of), Eucrid (And the Ass Saw the Angel), Frank (The Wasp Factory) Hollows Buddy is similar. I will be reading more of the late Breece Pancake for sure.

New Scientist - Bloody Mary illusion

Two illustrations for this weeks New Scientist. A suitably creepy halloweenesque piece on research into the eerie visions that can occur when staring into a mirror.

'So professor, we just popped round to see how your research was going? what have you been up to over the last few months? you've been what? you had some people over to stare in a mirror until they saw scary faces? I see. Why has all of your litmus paper got smiley faces on?'

I am being silly! The experiments in fact have some fascinating results confirming the perception of faces (even our own) is not a stable thing shedding light on the volatile process of self identity and even having use in the treatment of post traumatic stress and schizophrenia.

The Owl Service 2

 

Here are five of the interior illustrations I produced for the Folio Society edition of The Owl Service, there were 8 in all including the frontis piece. They are best viewed in situ though, in the book, Folio books are just such beautiful objects!