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It was a really tough choice to select just one Picture of the Week today. After all, look at all the submissions from the past seven days! Fantasy art! Zombies! Portraits! Portraits of zombies! And so much more besides. Eventually though I decided that this lovely pencil sketch by Aslam deserves the accolade. Often we’re so busy playing with all of Painter’s amazing brushes that we forget the beauty and power of the humble pencil sketch. Aslam’s image showcases some beautiful linework: strongly delineated but delicate, with a wonderful mix of spontaneity and technical skill. A richly deserved Pic of the Week, I think you’ll agree!

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This stunning robot study by Adam Shortt showcases some great Painter techniques like the use of photographic textures as well as a fantastic colour harmony and a composition which leads the eye through the painting on a perfect winding left-to-right path. The gentle facial expression on the large robot and the soft lantern light held by the smaller one makes what could be a scary image into a gentle and friendly one. I must admit, I’ve also got a bit of a thing for old and weatherworn robots, especially big ones - I watched Laputa: Castle in the Sky too much during my formative years probably! There’s nothing like an incredible piece of mecha rusting away forgotten to suggest futurity or an alien world in a sci-fi painting, because the subconscious automatically extrapolates the hundreds of years of technical evolution required to create an iron giant, and the long fallen ages that pass while it rots away.

The latest images for Creative Challenge 14 are now up! You can grab them from the website now and get painting!

 A quick note on the Creative Challenge while I’m here: for some reason, our spam filters will send emails with the subject line ‘Creative Challenge’ to my junk email box if you send them directly to me. While I love receiving all your emails (especially the ones with tales of the Big Tortoise from the last challenge, which I’ll share on this blog in the near future) I don’t want to lose your precious artwork down the spam filter! Please remember to send your creative challenge entries to opm@imagine-publishing.co.uk with the subject line ‘Creative Challenge 14′ (or whatever number it is) to guarantee that I’ll receive them in time. I check my junk mail folder regularly, but it does get pretty packed in there!

Just so you all know; Friday and Monday are national holidays here in the UK so the Painter office is closed, and I won’t be in it! In fact I’m not going to be back in Painter Towers until Wednesday 15 April. I will of course try to log in and do a bit of image approval and some Tweets as well over my holiday, but in all honesty I plan to spend most of it challenging my daughter to a chocolate-eating competition so I won’t be around very much! Another member of the Painter team will be approving images on Tuesday while I’m off, but do bear in mind that it’s not usually part of their job so they may not do it as regularly as I do!

Enjoy the weekend, and I’ll see you all when I’m back on Wednesday!

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I was drawn to this image by George for its colour and crispness. Nice use of Jeremy Sutton’s brushes and a great approach to mixing photographic elements with a more painterly style. A well-deserved Pic of the Week for you George!

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Ciaran’s image showcases a deliberately naive style but take a look at the composition itself and you’ll see that it’s very well set up - there’s great use of perspective and height to really reinforce the hilly nature of the scene and the shape of the town, people and foreground draws your eye straight to the empty chest. The depth that Ciaran has achieved on the rain is a nice touch, blending stylised and realistic elements.

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