Kirby 99th Portrait

A little late in posting but here's my contribution to this years' Birthday portrait gallery over at Kirby-Vision.

Instagram Round-up

Here's a round-up of sketchbook work recently posted over at Instagram.

Minnesota Mugshots - Character design

Extra curricular activities kept me away from the drawing board last month. Finally caught up with some character designs based on the mugshots featured in the last post. First up is a rather scrappy line-up created in the iPad app Sketchpad.

Next we have a cleaner version created in Inkpad, with an expanded line-up.

I prefer the character design in this version but the vector drawing process was torturously slow. I shall probably revert to pencil, paper and ink if I'm to use these guys in the future.

Of interest below is the reference layer used for the vector piece.

Minnesota Mugshots

Last week, intrigued by this photo gallery, I took a break from 'Random Panels' and set about digitally tracing a selection of miscreants. Most of these were completed on my daily commute and it was more an exercise in mindfulness then creativity. This won't be the last you see of theses guys as I've already made plans to feature some of these characters in my next project.

Random Panel Round-up

Random Panels from the week after last. Original panels are all cribbed from Paul Gravett's
Great British Comics.

Random Panels Week Two

Not the most productive week for the Random Panel project, as I failed to keep to the daily drawing regime. Just three panels to show this week, the first instigated by the sad death of David Bowie.

The bottom two panels both originally come from Paul Gravett's Great British Comics.
The second panel, featuring Doug Maxted's Yellowknife of the Yard, was created on the iPad using, Autodesk Sketchbook. It's the most successful of this week's drawings, which is due to the fact it drawn in snatches over a few days.

Random Panels

Towards the end of last year I stopped drawing. I was gripped with the belief that my efforts were pointless. My imagination had deserted me along with any inclination to put pen to paper. I knew I had to get myself out of that way of thinking but there were so many excuses to cling to in the run up to Christmas.

Now the New Year is here it seems like the perfect time to cast off those shackles and get back to drawing again. To get things started I've initiated a sketchbook project where I re-draw random comic book panels and workout some of those confidence issues that have plagued me.

I'll be posting the results via my Instagram and Twitter accounts and collecting them here, along with the original inspirations, on a weekly basis. In an effort to vary the source material I will be taking the panels from books about a comics. This week's panels were all sourced from Trina Robbins' From Girls to Grrrlz.

Halfway through the week I took delivery Eddie Campbell's Bacchus omnibus and decided to do a panel from the book.

Even thought the panel I choose was just 'a man in a box' it took 3 attempts and one quick sketch to produce something halfway decent.

Quite a productive beginning to the project with a few lessons were learnt along the way. Spare a thought though to the fountain pen gave up the ghost midway through a 'Bacchus' and was consigned to the big pencil case in the sky.