Ronnie Tucker

That was quite possibly my worst post title yet, but still applicable!

I have now opened an account with imagekind who do prints of artwork on to paper, canvas, greeting cards and so on. So if you fancy grabbing a print (cheaper than an original piece) then feel free to head over to my imagekind shop.

After my Bubble Bobble mosaics I thought I would try Link from the SNES game Zelda: A Link to the Past.

This one was a bit more tricky since the Zelda sprite has a black outline and a black outline on the shield. I paint the black outline using acrylic paint to save me from using up all my black tiles, so I had to remove the black outline from the sprite (in GIMP) and also remove the black outline between the shield and Link, so it took some preparation before I could even start the mosaic. But once that was done it was full speed ahead, and a few hours later it was done.

Voila! One Link!

For my next trick: a flying Mario from Super Mario World

Initially I was going to do a watercolour or acrylic painting (or a series of paintings) showing some characters from the good old 8-bit and 16-bit era. You know: stuff like Mario (SNES), Sonic (Megadrive) etc etc, but then I thought: why bother sitting painting squares when I could just do them in squares… mosaic tiles to be exact.

Above: Bub and Bob mosaic on my wall
(click photo above for a larger photo)

And lo, it was to pass. After a few minutes finding rips of Bubble Bobble sprites I began to glue the mosaic tiles to a sheet of thin plastic. The tiles are actually 1cm (10mm) square which would have made them each about 15cm square! So I cut each tile in to four and used 0.5cm (5mm) tiles.

First came Bub (above, click the photo for a larger photo). The plan was to cut away any visible while plastic that was showing. But the more I looked at it, I realised it would look better with a black outline but I wasn’t sure if I had enough black tiles to do that for Bub and, the soon to be created, Bob. So I left about 3mm of plastic around the outline of Bub then painted the visible white plastic with some black acrylic paint. Voila!

Now Bob (above, again click photo for larger one). Same idea. Each one took about 2hrs to cut the tiles and glue in place with a further 15mins or so for cutting them out of the plastic sheet and the black acrylic. They are both 16 tiles square and blue-tac’d to my wall, perched upon photo’s of my geckos. 

Next: Link from the SNES Zelda game ‘Link to the Past’.

Coming soon: Even more 8 and 16-bit legends. This is FUN! 

Shop now open folks, come on in!

I’ve discounted a few older paintings and added my most recent one (The Cottage) if you want a further 10% discount you can use the coupon code: grandopening0408

You can also enter by clicking the Gallery banner at the top of the site or by the Gallery link on the right of the site.

New painting done last night:

Desolate
Oil on Canvas Paper
13″ x 7″

Originally it had more water showing but since there wasn’t anything I could think of to put in the water to keep it interesting I just lobbed it off and it gives it less wasted space. On sale soon in the all new and exciting shop (when I the company emails me the template I bought).

At the beginning of this month, ZeroOneArt had your’s truly (that’s me) as their ‘Recommended’ artist (middle left, click the screen below for full screen evidence):

Now ArtFair365 have featured me in their Artwork of the Week slot! Click the screen below for the evidence (no, I didn’t Photoshop it!).

Happy? Oh yes! But will it get me more exposure and sales? We shall see…

Did a new painting a few days ago, just got round to photographing it today.

The Cottage
Oil on Canvas Textured Paper
13″ x 8″

I’m also in the process of setting up a proper online shop thing for the site. Everything is in place, I just need to install a nice theme for the shop then I can open it up for people to (hopefully!) buy stuff. In honour of it’s opening I’ll reduce the price on some of the older paintings. Watch this space!