Paul & Jeremy

A Drunk Beatles piece from the sketchbook worked up in Manga Studio.

Blog Neglect

Hoping to get some regular posts up over the next few months as the Drunk Beatles project starts to move towards finished artwork. In the meantime here's something I drew last December for the office Secret Santa (the rule being no names on pressies just drawings, then you guess which is yours).

Eleven Doctors

Here's my little tribute for The Doctor's 50th anniversary.

Happy Birthday, Jack Kirby!

Today marks the 96th anniversary of the birth of Jack Kirby. Here's my portrait of the great man for Kirby-Vision's annual birthday gallery.

Size matters

I have a tendency to draw quite small when character sketching. So in an effort to open things up a little I've been drawing to the full height of the page (14cm). The end result is a lot more satisfying as extra time was needed for the structure of the bodies. I did find though that once scanned, the carbon 'inks' did not render as strong as my smaller drawings and had to be touched up in Photoshop.

Testing 7 - Faces

Another pencil verses ink test. Top - Pencils (via PSD levels), below - Micron fineliner and brushpen.

Testing 6 - Portraits

Family portraits in pencils (via PSD levels - top) and Micron fineliner and brushpen (bottom).

Testing 5

Background lighting experiments in pencil via PSD levels.

Testing 4...

More pencils to inks via PSD. This time I tried to build up the strokes by drawing them several times in carbon. It feels a lot more natural than just trying to render a single line with a fineliner or brushpen.

Testing 3...

Yet more pencils to inks from the sketchbook.

Testing 2...

Following on from the last post here's some more pencil-inks testing.

Testing...

Inking is torture. I'm heavy handed with a brushpen and stiff and twitchy with a fine liner. So in an effort to combat my dissatisfaction I've been experimenting with scanning my pencils and then filtering them through Photoshop. These new character sketches were drawn in coloured lead then re-drawn in carbon with a mechanical pencil. The results are pleasing enough so I intend to tackle some dormant sketchbook pages in the near future.