The Emperor’s new clothes look just fine to me.

This is a sketch of a sketch by Walter Mullready. Utilising only a black pencil and a red pencil he manages to get shades of brown and blue, and to even get the paper itself to shine as if illuminated from within.

Here is a selection of drawings from life classes I’ve attended.

These are self portraits.

And these are sketches and sculptures where I have distort the human form.

You are beautiful. You are the most perfect version of you that will ever exist in the whole infinite expanse of space and time.

All images on this page are copyright protected. © Dean Harkness 2012. Please ask for permission to use.

Stop ACTA

Please go to this site to find the e-petition for your country, sign and share.

Tweet Embedding

Had such fun tonight with @AbiBurlingham @fumanchucat and @MichelleUrso thanks to one silly tweet I posted. It got sillier… well, I did anyway, but then we all realised we had lives to be getting on with. It’s just one more thing I love about Twitter – it can still take you by surprise. It is so much more than so many people think it is.

If I ever have a kid I’m going to call it ‘Oops’

— Dean Harkness (@Deanus) January 16, 2012

Anyhooo, posterous recently added this embedding service so I just wanted to give it a go and see what it looks like. Kind of curious to see if it shows replies to the tweet in question, which I won’t know until I click on that green publish button. So, here goes…. 

Three book covers, two illustrations, and a partridge in a pear tree.

This is the second. It is a cover illustration for Indian Hill 2 by Mark Tufo, and again the second time we have worked together. It’s always a great feeling when an author comes back to me for another design, and is a great vote of confidence in my work. Means more to me than I can say.

The following is still a work in progress but I’m quite pleased with how it is going, and all being well will be the first of three book cover designs I will be doing for Stewart Arkass. It need some tweaking, and I am hoping to add some furniture to the room over the next couple of days.

This next one has a way to go yet, but I am loving striking quality the image has – it will make a great thumbnail, something that has become more and more important in my work due to how books are promoted and viewed these days. I’ve removed the author’s name as they don’t want their followers to know about it just yet. Luckily I don’t think any of them read my blog, but then again, who does?

I have another commission on the go but not at a stage yet worth sharing. It’s a challenging one that will require a lot of work using at least two paintings, one layered over the top of the other.

So it’s busy, busy, busy for the next few weeks at least. And somewhere in there I need to find the time to drum up more work so there isn’t a long period of nothing happening, which is always a worry.

I love working with writers and their efforts in promoting their work is slowly rubbing off on me. It is amazing just how supportive so many of the authors I’ve come to know can be, and I enjoy just as much supporting and promoting them. It is a wonderfully creative process to be a part of, so here’s wishing us all well for 2012 – I think it is a year full of potential for a great many people. Let’s make it a memorable time!

But what I want, what I really, really want is to zizazig, ahhhh!

and illustrations

I also like to paint

And sometimes draw

Or sculpt

Or write poetry

Media_Sex.wav Listen on Posterous

Taking pictures can be fun too

Ocassionally I make videos

ERM.mpg Watch on Posterous

blood_001.AVI Watch on Posterous

ERM.mpg Watch on Posterous

Moving on….

I play guitar a little

De_vici.wmv Watch on Posterous

And I love to cook

But what I really want is to act. The roar of the grease-paint, the smell of the crowd!

My post for D.C. McMillen’s guest spot.

Originally hosted here:
http://dcmcmillen.wordpress.com/2011/10/14/friday-spotlight-with-dean-harkness/#comment-207

Apparently duplicating content on more than one site can get them blacklisted by Google so please view this post where it was originally hosted by clicking the link above.

Many thanks,

Dean Harkness

Kill is kiss (a response to the film Pontypool)

Every now and then a film is made that has a central premise that is so important that, if it is well made, becomes what many would call essential viewing.

Last night I watched a movie that, because of its central theme and the way it was handled, instantly became a film of significance for me. It’s called Pontypool, and is one of those movies that you can’t believe you’ve never heard of and quite glad you know nothing about when seeing it for the first time as then it just unfolds in front of you. And in that sense you could consider this entire blog post as a spoiler. Not that I think this would genuinely diminish your enjoyment of it, should you choose to seek it out.

It’s based on the book Pontypool Changes Everything. I don’t doubt for a second that the idea has been done before and probably even better, but I’ve yet to come across it, so this was a nice surprise indeed.

Looking at the trailers you’d think it was a zombie movie, and it definitely uses the tropes of that genre to structure its message. I would say it is a movie that writers would really enjoy as its main subject is words, language and most importantly, meaning. It very cleverly gets across the idea that language itself, how it is used and misused, can carry with it an infection, and in the movie it has the rather nicely added little touch that it is only English that has become contagious, and only certain words, but only when those words are understood.

The cure for the decease is to un-understand words, change their meaning, but at the same time to not understand their new meaning either.

In a way I could say that this is one of the most important films I have ever seen. And I’ve seen tens of thousands of films. But this is a film about, what to me, is the most important thing we have: Language.

And if you believe as I do that all language is code, then I think you will ‘get’ this movie.

We all silently agree to accept that certain words have commonly agreed upon, or even inherent meanings. But we so rarely define what those meanings are. And without defining what a word can mean in any given context we are, to a certain extent, merely making noise. The meaning and significance we give the noise is more reliant on what the hearer decides rather than what the speaker intended.

So, do you wreck-a-nice-beach, or do you think it’s in-con-sea-quench-shall?

“Sample is a colour. The sky is a person. Laughter is walking. Yellow is crowded. Friends are verbs.”

Cemetery. A poem by D Harkness

In a forest that on the dead feeds

flakes of names fall and are forgotten.

The place they marked, now covered by weeds;

The dead supped through soil when rotten.

Swallowed by root, exhaled by leaves:

carbon, oxygen, hydrogen returned.

And so it is this solemn place breathes

with those we’ve buried and those we’ve burned.

Why Book Covers?

The reasons I chose to make book covers are both separate and inseparable.

I didn’t learn to read until I was quite old so never had a relationship with literature and yet, even as an illiterate child I would hear things that moved me deeply, and all I knew about them was that they came from a book or a play or a poem etc. Eventually I learnt to read and in my early 20′s began reading in earnest. Being a terminally slow reader always hindered me but I just got on with it and always read by recommendation and so read a lot of great books that I now consider to be directly connected to the person I am.

Until then I had of course developed the habit of flicking through books looking for the illustrations and the first books I bought were art books of all kinds, and for the most part I ignored the pages with writing on them.

I never thought I would read a great deal and much less write, and although I had no innate ability at art I stuck at it and over the years developed skill and talent at several techniques of art, starting with drawing, slowly moving on to colour, and eventually progressing to painting and lastly sculpture.

I had no real hope of making a living with these skills, not because they weren’t good enough, but more because I was not wired in the right way to think in those terms. I just did for the sake of doing.

After many, many years of keeping up with these practices and at the same time doing numerous day jobs I eventually decided to bite the bullet and try to make a living with my artistic abilities, and in a way that could keep my interest and so be sustainable – in an intellectual and emotional sense. I had spent years doing portraits etc and I found that that was not enough on its own to keep me focused and motivated.

After much thought it came to me that I could combine art with literature and in so doing kill many birds with one stone: I wouldn’t have to think of what to create in isolation – there would be a starting point, sometimes a very specific starting point. I would be working with writers who are by nature people who think, which is not something to be dismissed. My art would have an audience and that audience would also more likely be people with certain sensibilities. I would inevitably read more, as even now I often need an external motivation to read. And all this turned out to be true.

As much as I have to constantly struggle to get work I can honestly say that that decision to design covers for books, which to date has involved sculpture, painting, illustration, model making, photography and a bunch of other hands-on methods, as being one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

Of course some bum-head then invented the Kindle and as much as I’d like to push them in a ditch for doing so, I still want one.

Rom-com or kiss of death?

OMG! I just had this brilliant idea for a movie! Or maybe a TV series… sitcom perhaps! It could even be a documentary….

Basically it would be about this man and this woman who meet, or know each other or whatever and they would like each other, but maybe not at first, although at some point they would definitely be in love, like really, really in love. But some stuff would happen showing up the differences between men and women, cos men and women are different, and the things they do and say, which just go to show how different men and women are, would makes things worse, and other people would be in the film and say things to try to help, but they probably wouldn’t help cos they don’t understand just how much in love they are with each other because theirs is a really special kind of love. But eventually they would realise how special they are and how much they love each other cos they like the same things like being healthy and clever and sensitive. The guy would definitely find it harder to deal with his emotions and how to show them cos men aren’t very good at that, even though he would be really deep and sensitive and have a really amazing job that made the world a better place in some way. He could do something like design cars that have extra safety features that mean that even if you were in a really bad accident where other people were hurt or even killed you would be ok because of his design, or maybe an architect or something. Either way it would be important. And he would also do something manly and physical like mountain climbing or ride a motorbike at the weekends.  And she would work in fashion or with kids to show how creative and sensitive and caring she is, and in her spare time she would do ballet or something like that to show that being really fit and healthy is important too. And they would see that they are just meant to be together and how the world would be a better place if they were a couple and had some kids of their own.

It could be set somewhere really cool like London or New York and their friends would be really good looking too and successful but one of them would be a bit weird and quirky and not really understand, even more than the others don’t understand. There would be a really sexy love scene, but not too sleazy, just enough to show that they are actually open minded and not narrow minded or self obsessed at all, and it would have some awesome soundtrack to it by Damien Rice or someone like that, nothing too mainstream, cos they are clever and not just following the herd and can think for themselves and be original and everything.

Most of the film would be quite funny but at some point it would get really serious and maybe even make people cry a little because of how difficult love can sometimes be and how things can go wrong even when you don’t want or mean them to and there would be a bit where it looks like they really aren’t going to get back together just to keep people on the edge of their seats for a bit.

I really don’t think anything like this has ever been done and I’m sure people would love it and go and see it and get the poster and that, and it could make loads of money and have a sequel where they do it all again but even more. Can you imagine? It’d be amazing!

I thought it would be really good to have Jennifer Aniston and Matthew McConaughey in the lead roles but someone said they’ve already made a film together so it should probably be someone else, but definitely not Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie cos even though they are good actors they are a bit too perfect and I think it should be with actors that are good looking but in a believable way.

I really think I’m going to start working on a script because the world needs a film like this and it could be entertaining but also help people who are in relationships, and show them that it is always better to fight for what you really care about if you want to be happy and that there’s nothing wrong with wanting nice things so long as you’re a good person really.