James Nathan Illustration

Cardiff City Football Club

James Nathan — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 21:13:22 +0000

I’ve been working for CCFC now for a fair few weeks creating illustrations for the cover of their program every week. These are some of my personal favourites so far. The blue and yellow lighting on the players is an idea I had on the first cover that featured the teams manager. From then on that has become a theme for the covers.

So here we go.

Bill

James Nathan — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 19:04:31 +0000

I gone done a Bill Nighy sketch init.

Girl at the docks

James Nathan — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 14:57:19 +0000

Another painting I started and took much too long to finish. I was watching the film ‘The Secret Garden’ a few weeks ago and got the idea for this painting when Mary is sent from India to England. This doesn’t have anything to do with the same story, it was just a image that popped into my head.

There are lots of mistakes and I don’t feel that its finished, but as usual I have to stop somewhere. But still…could’ve done more…

Igor Stravinsky (Mads Mikkelsen) quick paint

James Nathan — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 16:26:42 +0000

Needed to paint something quick and fun. I’ve had this screen shot on my desktop ready to be painted for a while so thought I would do it quickly now as an exercise. The screen shot is from ‘Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky’, probably one of my favorite films for several reasons.

Took about forty five minutes. No layers used, no opacity on the brush, no soft edge brush just hard edge, no undo’s and no eraser.

The Woman Who Knew Too Much

James Nathan — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 13:16:53 +0000

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything which I consider personal work. Recently I dug up a bunch of images which were hiding in a folder called ‘Finish These!’ in the depths of my hard drive. There’s over ten pieces which have been started and never finished, mainly because I set myself such a big task and due to being swamped with other work the image gets abandoned. This piece here is one of those from the folder.

I started this in spring last year (2010)…and gave up. Among the others, I’ve been meaning to finish it but never tackled it until these last couple of days.

So here it is. The idea was a noir style 1920′s detective story. The woman here, about to be assassinated by the man in the reflection behind her. This was really fun to paint and I went all out on the details. All the jewellery, dress, hats, shawl, shoes etc were painted using 1920′s references. The dress hanging on the back of the chair is Chanels ‘Little black dress’. The postcard taped to the mirror is of 1920′s New York.

I could have gone on painting more, but decided to finish it here. Enjoy! No idea how long it took me! Ha! Click on the image for a closer view.

Details below.

Above is a Gif of the images process from where I began up till where I originally gave up. Click on the image if it isn’t animating! Also the image below is how I found the image when I started work on it a couple of days ago.

Cardiff City Football Club

James Nathan — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 10:21:48 +0000

So far the last five or six weeks I’ve been doing the cover for CCFC’s magazine. It’s been good to do something so different from what I would usually paint. I came up with the idea in the first cover of having the teams colours shining onto Malky Mackay (the teams new manager), and the idea has stuck and become the theme. These are five images I’ve done so far, I can’t find the second cover.

Astrocious

James Nathan — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 01:17:27 +0000

A quick paint.

Space

James Nathan — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 19:11:45 +0000

I’ve been working on this on and off around other work, for a few weeks now. Really glad to have it finished, although there is a lot I would like to REALLY finish. Details etc. BUT this will have to do, otherwise I’ll never finish it.

No textures used, just brushes. Lots of photo reference for lighting and colours.

Click on the image for a better look.

Red Letter poster

James Nathan — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 17:43:58 +0000

I recently had the opportunity to create a poster for the film ‘Red Letter’, directed by Tom Marshall. The film is about a young boy coming to terms with the death of his mother and moving to a new home in a quite and strange town. The film is full of suspense and will be showing at major film festivals.

Check out the trailer here http://vimeo.com/24966034

The Killing of the Romanov’s – Final Major Project

James Nathan — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 16:02:55 +0000

At our final exhibition I exhibited my videogame/script/interactive narrative idea. The idea was to produce the basis or foundations for what could be hypothetically developed into some kind of videogame.

Set in Russia around the time of the Russian Revolution and World War I, the story follows the life of Nikolai Dyakov who grew up in The Winter Palace and was close to Olga, one of the Romanov daughters.

The narrative begins around the time of Nikolai’s death as on old man in his home. The story uses memories to navigate through Nikolai’s life.

At the age of sixteen Nikolai and his father are thrown out of the palace due to Nikolai’s involvement with Olga. They suffer through poverty. Nikolai goes to war, Nikolai becomes involved with the Bolsheviks, and eventually becomes involved in the killing of the Romanov’s including, of course, Olga.

The idea was not to create a game, but an interactive narrative. No points, no scores, no levels. The audience are immersed in the story of Nikolai’s life alone.

I hope to work more on the project in the future and really finish it, as at the moment this is the early stages of a project like this.

Here are the images that were shown at the exhibition.