Some sketches from 2014

Remember 2014? Seems like a long time ago now.

Here are some sketches I did during the long long ago, before the poccylips (if you get that reference we can be friends)

Don't look at his feet, he's self conscious

Oh for pages the scanner can't see through

Scariest bad guy on the Discworld

Merry New Year!

Recent sketches

Hello all and sundry, how are your faces? Well I hope.

As the title totally gives it away, here are some sketches from ye olde sketchbook.

I have been mostly rocking the old blue animation pencil, I seem to like it more now than I did back in college

"You're not gonna put this on the internet right?"

For those that despise technology that doesn't work properly and... being the thing

I have been thinking about making a manual for turning lights on and off, just for me

The joys of big boobs and taking the weight off

Anytime I draw a watch or clock, I can never decide what time it should be

See, the body parts are tattooed and make the.... ya you get it

Jack is even more back... again

Well those cheery chaps that hired me to create illustrations of Jack asked me to do two more because the first ones worked out so well

The second one they asked for is a repaint of an old book cover

They liked the first ones so much they sent me a t shirt for free, what nice guys they are

Majestic

Jack is back

I was recently commissioned to do two designs for t-shirts for a company in London that do Jack the Ripper tours.

 

The first is a playing card design, the Jack of... Ripper I guess

I wanted to make him pop out of the card, like he was coming for you and added a little street scene behind him to explain the light source on him.

 

 

This second one was to look like Jack had split you open and lifted your guts out, gross but REALLY fun to paint, took me right back to my days as a kid reading 2000AD and staring at all the gross details in the stories :)

I tried to keep it a little comic booky so as not to be to disturbing but still look realistic enough to be recognised.

 

 

 

Tigger the Tiger

It's been a while since I posted anything so here is a quick watercolour and gouache Tigger

Self portrait

I painted a self portrait to enter the Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year competition.

As is my want I started off with a sort of practice sketch paint

"I really wish I was over there!"

I was not a fan of it, the proportions are wrong and the beard is way to yellow, but I did like the effect of light around me, like a shifting aura.
But I continued

"I also wish I was over there!"

Everyone that see's it tells me I look grumpy, but I always look grumpy and that isn't how it felt to me at all, ah well, can't please everyone I suppose.
Here is reference of my eternally grumpy face

This is why I can never fly to America

My Bluebell

Beena my love as a Celtic Queen, she loves Magpies (two for joy) and bluebells.

Viking mit Crows

German for no reason.

Sketch

"Oh look a Viking" - A Crow

Painting

"Oh look a Viking in color" - A Crow

A portrait of Mistress Beena

I draw Beena a lot, usually she is reading and fidgets a lot which makes it very difficult, but every now and then she does something that requires her to sit still, like sewing!

She still wouldn't keep that one arm still

But even easier is to just use a photo, which I did, this one

Or these three to be more accurate

So I sketched it onto a piece of canvas (a step I forgot to record) and painted over it with some burnt umber acrylic, the burnt umber went a lovely grey when it mixed with the graphite from the sketch, but what harm

Insert paint here

I then set about the joyful task of getting the oils out and in the space of about 2... maybe 3... possibly 4 hours, I dunno, I was totally in the zone, this was the result

Its similar to make-up, but more paint is involved

This was one of those paintings that just worked for me, there are a couple small things I will alter later on, but they don't even bother me that much to be honest which is a rarity in and of itself... maybe I should do this for a living.

Zombies

A couple of groovy zombies painted in oils for funsies.
I sketched them in with a pencil that put a quick wash of acrylic burnt umber before using the oils.

Pet Portraits

I have a new website *CHEER APPLAUSE* picture fixer pet portraits

It is dedicated to creating pet portraits, it isn't exactly a huge market, but I just love drawing animals, so if you or someone you know has a pet they love and would like a framed picture of them, head on over

The Practical Potioneer

A digital painting of Severus "Snivellus" Snape from the Harry Potter books.

The sketch from a corner of a page

I liked the half hearted sneer I was getting as I worked the face, but this was more about me hammering digital paint into submission and trying to make it do something new for me rather than showing the character, but it would be nice if I got both. Either way, I like the whole thing, although I don't like snape himself.

Black Night Pages

Hello all, I hope you're all loving the new year.

Here are the first two pages I have done for the next Islander Art Magazine comic type thing, since it's titled Black Night, I went for a scary story.

The story itself is an old campfire story, I just padded it out a bit.

I tried using the Loomis method of skewed perspective and jagged shapes to create an unsettled feeling throughout.

I also added a layer of noise over the inks to help it match the font I chose as well as make it a bit more rustic and remove the clean finish of digital inks.