Balloon Ride

I did this for this weeks Illustration Friday theme, 'Balloon'. Its not totally what I had in mind. It kinda found a different direction once I got it in to photoshop. I was forcing myself to get this done quickly so I just went with it. The composition is a bit awkward with the girl so close to the left. Perhaps it would have been more balanced with the town below as in one of the roughs. It came up OK though.

Flickr Sketching

Some of the Flickr based doodling I did yesterday of people on the street in Buenos Aires. These were fun to do. Drawing just for the sake of it. I'm quite happy with these quick studies. I can see a lot of improvement and confidence in them.

Jungle King

I added this old monkey king picture to my fourteen nights image. He was always in need of a background. It could be nice with a bit of extra detail but I quite like the contrast of graphic and painterly so I think I'll leave it at this.

In Colour

As posted on fourteen nights. A quick and dirty colour pass

Jungle Doodle

I did this doodle at my desk between renders today. It started as a doodle and became more of a drawing towards the bottom of the page. 'Jungle' is the Fourteen Nights theme this fortnight. This will probably what I'll post. I might try a bit of colour first.

Sneak Peek

This is a sneak peek of my Christmas card. I have been working on it this weekend. Just finished. If you regularly visit my blog and would like to be on my Christmas card list email me your address.

Sartorial Sketches

Procrastinating . . . a splash of colour for some of todays scribbles

Doodles

A few pages of the doodles I did to day. Hardly any from reference which I'm happy about all though they are a bit uniform. Will try and mix it up a bit tomorrow with more shapes and expressions.

No Gobelins here

Despite a few hiccups I am still pushing along with this Dorian Gray exercise. I am doing tons of drawing for this. So much so that I'm working on used printer paper to minimize my impact on the environment ;) I would think about posting them but the thumbs are barely legible and I'm still all over the place with design. Still not sure what I'm doing with characters as I don't like anything I've done so far. Backgrounds will most likely be Al Parker/101 Dalmatians influenced. I have limited the scope of this project now so that I can get something finished, evaluate it and move on.

This blog and the work I'm am doing is like my own private attempt to educate myself and improve as an artist. So I need to start trying to treat everything like assignments and not let it drag on too long. Especially as fitting this sort of regime around a '9 to 5' is no mean feat. (NB Art education in the UK is so poor that it's not worth doing a course. No Ringling or Gobliens here.)

A major spanner in the works of my thinking has been a recent comic by Sylvain Marc. It is very different to what I am trying to do here but I totally love it. It has really shaken up my thinking about I want from my drawing . . .

Loosen up a bit

Just a couple of quick sketches to loosen up and lighten up a little.

First Attempt

This is the first attempt at a page layout based on Chapter 10/11 of 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'. For now I am satisfied with these panels. Hopefully this has been a bit of a break through for me and I can begin to make some head way. I don't envisage it having this obvious noir look though and the characters are very much place holders.

I'm looking at a lot of Golden Age Illustration at the moment, especially Al Parker, JC Leyendecker and Bob Peake. I hope I can get that to feed in to the look somehow. I am a bit saturated with influences at the moment though I read too many blogs, books and comics. I could probably do with looking at other peoples work a bit less for a while and give all the stuff in my head a chance to settle.

Brush Sketches

Trying to sketch directly with a brush. Mixed results, it's tricky. Will try and practice more this week. Didn't get much done this weekend. I'm really struggling with the comic. Quite frustrated by it. Maybe I'm just approaching it all wrong . . . I think I'll give it a rest for a week. I'll try and do some more mole-men, illustration friday and some other fun stuff to loosen up a bit.

Friday

Just for fun. I love drawing from fashion photos. Always great exaggerated poses and interesting shapes and silhouettes. A lot of the pictures came from HERE. Mostly 1 min sketches.

I plan to get down to it with the Dorian Gray comic this weekend. Some more layouts, characters and colour to work out.

Slumber

I was out dancing until very late the last two days and I'm so sleepy today. Not as sleepy as this guy though. He was a fun model who slept most of the way back into London tonight. I was planning to do some storyboarding but some faces are just irresistable and it's much easier to sketch when your half asleep than it is to work do a story layout.

p.s. If anyone can recommend a good scanner that won't break the bank I'd be very grateful. I'm sick of mine.

Vivienne

A drawing before bed. A bit of research for an ongoing project. Funnily enough the same colours as the previous post, which was not entirely intentional but suited the picture. My fancy moleskine is becoming something of a fashion study book. Odd

Belated Halloween

For Fourteen Nights. I need to re-scan my final picture as my scanner is awful. I had to photograph this in the end and adjust the levels and it is still not great but you get the idea. The She-Wolf character is based on a model for an odd life drawing class I went to on Monday. The picture is ink and acrylic. I don't care too much for acrylic but the inks were fun.

edit - - having looked at this for a while I can't believe some of the errors I've let my self make. Like, WTF is going on with the propotions of the arms . . . Oh well learn and move on. One day I hope to be happy with something I've done for more than a day. Happy with the colours though.