Author: Graeme Skinner

Maker of Middle-Earth

Graeme Skinner

We had the opportunity to visit the Tolkien: Maker of Middle-Earth exhibition at the Bodleian, Oxford earlier this month as we were visiting the  area (okay, we visited Oxfordshire because the exhibition was on ;-)). I had read various reviews online both from friends and in the media and was rather keen to see it for myself. The exhibition didn’t disappoint, seeing the original maps that J.R.R.T. and his son worked on was something I never thought I’d see, and his original illustrations were simply amazing. I must admit to…

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To the Pyre

Graeme Skinner

I wrote a short story about a Viking King’s funeral pyre a good while ago (well, I think I need to finish it off yet ;-)) while I was writing I started a digital doodle to get in the mood, but didn’t finish that either :-), anyway when the theme of the month popped up for Vikings over on John Howe’s website I thought it was a worthwhile finishing off the doodle.

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Types of type

Graeme Skinner

I was playing with ideas for a poster to feature some of our favourite typefaces, it was quite interesting looking up details of each of the particular typefaces, now all I need to do is mount and frame it. It’ll be available as a limited edition print on a nice quality paper and as a bulk print on a lighter weight paper. (For some reason it has come out a bit ‘red’ when it was saved for the web’).

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Playing the Fringe

Graeme Skinner

We visited Edinburgh last weekend to see a show or two at the Fringe, while we were there and wandering around we spotted this guy playing a whistle and entertaining the crowd ‘old style’ 😉 I decided to take a quick photograph for reference purposes thinking it would work in an illustration one day. When I’d uploaded it to the computer I decided to play with it in Photoshop and ended up liking the result 🙂

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Niggle would approve.

Graeme Skinner

I started sketching a tree for the theme of the month over on John Howe’s website, it was supposed to be a quick simple sketch, then I got too the branches. The good intentions of a quick doodle to get in the right frame of mind went out the window and I started to become a little obsessive over the branches, I ended up doodling away at each little branch ignoring pretty much everything else. However, I get the feeling I need to obsess over the branches of the next…

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