#the watercolor effect is just me messing with my phone picture editor

[vishnya-azraq]

during this beautiful pride month may i bring you this picture a kid asked me to draw last month after she saw two small hair pins of them i wear like 24/7

she had no idea who they are, just basically went “i love them and want a drawing of them”and uh

absolutely not gonna complain lmao

[doomedandstoned]

Colin MacGregor: A Portrait

The cover artist for Doomed & Stoned in Scotland shares his craft and journey.

Last month, Doomed & Stoned revealed its latest survey of the heavy underground by zeroing in on the Scotland rock and metal underground, with our usual anchor to doom metal and stoner rock, but showcasing several genre blenders to boot.

We assembled an enthusiastic team of musicians, artists, and local media types to help us vet each of the submissions so we had the most authentic picture of the Scottish scene's character, as well as a listening experience of the utmost excellence.

Doomed & Stoned in Scotland by Doomed & Stoned

We're thankful to each of the bands who participated, and especially grateful for the enthusiastic participation of Colin MacGregor, whose striking dark, rich colors on canvas of an ancient druid captured the spirit of the project so succinctly, and inspired many a casual peruser to give the 40-band compilation a good and thorough hearing.

Following is a virtual gallery of his work, with commentary by Mr. MacGregor himself, from Colin MacGregor Maker Art.   (Editor)

SELF PORTRAIT IN RED (2009)

9x6” acrylic on board

This is pretty much how it all began.

I was living in a flat in the centre of Edinburgh with next to no furniture, no television, no internet connection (no landline!) or working radio, I had to think of a way to keep myself occupied in the evening when I wasn’t working. This is when I found a box of 20 small acrylic paint tubes I’d bought years before and never really used, along with about 5 paintbrushes of dubious quality.

Using a photo from my rather poor mobile phone at the time, I set about creating this painting on a piece of board that I had.

The colour comes basically through how I see people I meet, depending on circumstances. This is how most of my early paintings were executed.

THOMAS BLACKLOCK “THE BLIND POET” (2013)

20x16” acrylic on canvas

This one was painted for the then bar manager of a long-gone Edinburgh pub called The Blind Poet, and the portrait is of Thomas Blacklock, of the aforementioned moniker, who lived in Pear Tree House for most of his life and was an influence on both Sir Walter Scott and Robert Burns, despite losing his sight as a child through smallpox.

The painting itself I don’t have much recollection of as I’d had extensive knee surgery at the time and was on quite a number of strong painkillers, but safe to say this painting led me to my first paid commission, where I produced two more paintings for Pear Tree House, one of which is still on display in their basement bar.

This one and the largest of the three, of Andrew Usher II, are currently in storage, I believe, in the south side of Edinburgh.

MAGGIE (2014)

12x9” acrylic on canvas

This was painted for my friend who was moving from Edinburgh to Bremen. She wanted something to put in her new home and also something to mark our friendship so I painted this in about 3 days.

It’s also quite rare in my canon as it actually has a bit of background in it, usually my backgrounds are just solid black.

This colour was actually quite difficult to get right, and it was applied in very thin layers and built up gradually, which is why I think it has quite a diffused, soft image overall.

ARANCHA (2017)

12x9” acrylic on canvas

This one is of my girlfriend and is based on a photo I took of her whilst walking through a park in Amsterdam. The photo itself was quite blurry as I took it on the fly whilst walking, but her face ended up on the whole in focus so I thought I could get something out of it.

There is a second version of this painting which is done in very pale pink and white paint, which was a bit of an experiment, but I kind of liked the challenge of doing something different

DAVID BOWIE (2016)

12x9” acrylic on canvas

This was painted within two weeks of the announcement of his death. I’d painted a few musicians before this one but they were all plain black and white, whereas this one actually had colour in the eyes, something a bit different to my usual stuff.

It was also the first painting I’d done by painting the canvas black first and drawing the basic shape on in chalk, something I’ve only done again once, and that was the recent Druid painting.

FRANK ZAPPA (2019)

12x9” acrylic on canvas

As mentioned above, this was actually started in 2016 and sat in various states of… started-ness, for around 3 years.

The painting actually spent most of its life as a scribbly mess of marker pen and gun-metal grey paint, and was almost scrapped entirely until I reassessed it in October 2019 and decided to attempt to salvage it, which I’m glad I did really as it’s been used on my business cards and as the “face” of the exhibition it was included in!

LEMMY (2019)

12x9” acrylic on canvas

I actually started this one, along with Frank Zappa, back in 2016 but the pair of them languished in various states of unfinishedness for a long, long time due to a variety of circumstances.

I eventually got them both back out of storage and managed to find the focus to finish them both in time for a week-long exhibition in Bannerman’s Bar, Edinburgh, which also featured Wraith, Cronos, Ozzy Osbourne, Chris Cornell, Nick Cave, David Bowie, Mark E. Smith, the aforementioned Frank Zappa and a rendition of the Xenomorph from the Alien movie franchise. This exhibition coincided with a Bismuth gig which had been organised by Bailey Junior, who was instrumental in dragging me out my block and getting these completed.

CRONOS (2019)

15x11” acrylic on canvas

Bailey Junior approached me with the idea of producing a poster for an upcoming gig he’d organised with a heavy doom band from England called Bismuth, expecting a fairly quick Photoshop effort.

I hadn’t painted in a while maybe a year or two, having suffered a drop in confidence and not being able to find the time or motivation, but I’d long wanted to create a poster which was almost entirely in paint, rather than digital text over the top, so this proved to be the spark needed to push myself into painting again.

Loosely based on the Ancient Greek myth of Cronos and partially based on “Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan'' by Ilya Repin (1885) it took two or three evenings to complete. The text for the poster was hand painted on separate canvases and then put together using Photoshop to give the impression it was a completely painted poster. The only thing not painted was the Scapegoat.tv logo which was added later, just before the gig took place.

OZZY OSBOURNE (2019)

12x9” acrylic on canvas

This one was really, really quick. Probably about 2 ½ hours from start to finish, maybe 3 at a push. Painted roughly about 7 days before I was due to open my first exhibition at Bannerman’s Bar, it was a last-minute decision, but turned out really great.

The acrylics were almost used like watercolors here, being as there were large light areas and deep, deep blacks.

I’m especially proud of the mouth area, it really has an almost 3D effect, something I rarely managed to get right.

WRAITH (2019)

16x12” acrylic on canvas

This was the second collaboration with Bailly and Scapegoat.tv after the Bismuth gig. This was designed for Japanese band Friendship but sadly due to the rapid spread of COVID-19 the gig was eventually cancelled.

The painting itself was based on a number of different sources for reference for cloth, lighting and the hand gesture. I’m not actually that much of a fan of painting hands to be perfectly honest.

The painting itself is currently still in Bannerman’s Bar. We were planning to hold another exhibition for all the paintings in the Bismuth gig exhibition again, but the day after putting them all up Lockdown began and the pub had to close, so I’ve not seen any of the exhibition paintings in person in about a year now.

Hopefully things will change soon.

MIKEY LAWLESS (2020)

12x9” acrylic on canvas

This one was painted in the first week of January 2020 for Mikey’s mother after Mikey himself sadly passed away from cancer just days after the new year began.

I think it took me roughly about 11-12 hours from start to finish and ended up being the only painting I completed that year, despite the coronavirus lockdown and other things happening.

DRUID (2021)

16x16” acrylic on canvas

And so it brings us to this one, again it took a nudge from Bailey to get me kick-started enough to unbox the paints again, and it took a bit of time to get started.

I’m not going to lie, after over a year of being nowhere near a paintbrush and canvas I was nervous and unsure if I could even do it, but once the canvas was primed and the blue paint started drawing out the shapes it started to come together.

It took about 4-5 days, give or take, spaced over a number of evenings, to complete and use references from a number of different sources.

The blue colour was chosen as a representation of Scotland in general, trying to capture the colour of the Saltire, but also evoke moonlight.

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