7th December '11

One of the reasons I always give up on digital painting is the fact that I usually end up drawing rather generic digital art... I think my artistic muse lives in my pencil.

30th November '11

I've not been particularly productive on the art front lately. Both nights and days are dark and I still feel tired after the cold I had two weeks ago. So now I'm kind of just waiting for the Christmas holidays so that I can sleep, because it's going to be a very busy month coming up... fun, but busy.

This picture is something that I started a year ago. It's on A2 paper (42x59cm), which will be the second largest illustrative piece I've done. It's also not something I'd usually draw. I have very limited knowledge of guns, helicopters or apocalyptic scenarios, and there's a distinct lack of flowers anywhere. But I guess we'll see where it goes.

17th November '11

The worst part about being ill, after the bit where everything hurts, is the fact that even when you're stuck in bed off from work... you can't actually do anything with the time. You just sort of sleep... then wake up feeling rubbish, and try and think of something to do that doesn't involve moving, effort, or focusing your eyes too much. So here's a bit of painting I did last week before I got ill... or had Skyrim. Back to bed now and hope that I feel better in the morning.

9th November '11

There's this painful bit just after inking when all the energy from the rough pencil lines is lost. Hopefully I can add it back during the colouring stage.

7th November '11

Finally completed this one. The original sketch file saved on my PC is dated the 1st of December 2010... so... that's nearly a year ago ^^;
But it is almost accurately seasonal now I guess.
Original is alcohol based marker and coloured pencil on A3 Bristol Board.

31st October '11

Fay Hancocks and myself selling our wares at London MCM Expo - Comic Con this past weekend. We had great fun!
The whole event was even bigger than before, so I don't think I really got to see as much as I could have. But we got to see a lot of great costumes and meet some cool people.
Thanks to everyone who stopped by.

19th October '11

Between the lack of home internet and preparing for the London Expo/ Comic Con, I've not had much to upload.

So here's a work in progress of some colours. The process for it seems to have been - pick a bit, start to colour it, get distracted and start colouring a different bit - so the overall look at the moment is a bit blotchy.

6th October '11

Another sketch. I like flowers

4th October '11

My home internet is down, most likely, until the end of next week. I'm not getting any weird side-effects from not being connected to the internet all the time, but it is rather annoying as it happens to be the busiest month for me needing to send files to people and update things using the internet.
Oh well, I'll have to live without and try and organise things so I can carry on without.

Here's a sketch just about ready to go to the inking stage. I love keeping regular scans of work as it's nice to flick through and see how its evolved and where it's suddenly gotten better, or worse, and you have a record of the process.

28th September '11

I'm without internet at home for at least the next week, if not longer. So I'm taking the time in the evenings to appreciate the finer things in life, such as being productive and not hitting refresh to see if something new has happened on the internet...
At least that's what I tell myself.

I still occassionally think I see a flashing window out of the corner of my eye.

This image was started at the end of last year as an idea, then the sketch was 90% done in January and I've only just gotten around to inking it. Hopefully between ink and colour wont be quite so long a gap.

22nd September '11

Generally I spend the weekends at my partner's house, so my 'weekday room' has sort of turned into my sleep-in studio. By that I mean it's a mess.
I have an assortment of markers, inks, paints, pens, paintbrushes, artbooks, sketchbooks and paper across my desk floor and stacked untidily in boxes... and that's before you get me started on the unfolded pile of clothes (they're all clean though).

It's a special kind of organisation that I don't think everyone quite understands, but if I know where something is I'm generally happier than having everything tidied away where I'll forget where I put it.
Luckily I'm out at work for a big part of the day so I don't have to look at it anyway.

Image today is a work in progress watercolour ink and alcohol-based ink on watercolour paper

20th September '11

Today I re-found my love of paint (the actual medium not the Microsoft software).
I have a stack of canvases and limited experience with painting, thus a lack of confidence in painting straight onto the canvas.
After sketching the design onto the first canvas with graphite pencil, which then proceeded to get muddied up in first layer of paint I was... somewhat unimpressed with my skills.
This evening I tried drawing the design for the second canvas on with a pale coloured marker. Worked a charm! Managed to block out all the colour and work in some detail in about an hour.

I love the way you can mix colours as you go, so you very easily get lots of subtle shades in with out spending ages colour matching. I have to remember to mix enough paint when filling in blocks though, so I don't end up getting half way through a section and running out and not quite being able to reproduce the same shade.

The above sketch in fact has nothing to do with my painting endeavors and is just something I've recently added to the increasing pile of sketches :S

7th September '11

The days are shorter, colder and wetter. British Summertime is coming to an end.
I also found some pencil drawings today that I'd forgotten I had... I think I should try finishing something once in a while... but I get distracted by other work or a new idea.
I've also run out of paper... Luckily I love paper shopping.

11th Aug '11

I'm exhausted. I can't wait for my holiday in a week. Still a load of work to do before then.

Here's some colours. The red are going to be a pain to balance to the right shades post scanning. Just this small preview has made the lower flowers a lot more red than they are on paper. Oh well that's an exercise yet to come.

2nd August '11

I find men difficult to draw. They always come out too effeminate, which isn't what I want men to look like.
Also men and flowers aren't a particularly effective combination.

28th July '11

I was very much hoping I could finish this tonight, but I think it still needs a couple of hours to polish it off. Unfortunately I wont be able to work on it over the weekend and I need a good night's sleep now before I can complete the week.
Hopefully on Monday I'll be able to get it finished, and work on some new stuff in the mean time.

26th July '11

Another WIP sketch.
Think I need to fatten this deer up a bit :)

21st July '11

Midweek visits mean I've not had time to do much colour work, so here's another part sketch.
In other news it is very rainy. Good old British Summertime...

19th July '11

This is a sketch.

14th July '11

Not sure it was a good idea to start colouring the clouds with the single angry cloud right in the middle of the picture... but don't worry little cloud, soon you'll have more little cloud friends to keep you company.

12th July '11

Wow, been a month since I last posted. Guess I have been busy.

But here is my finished frog. Might come back to tidy a little, but lots of other stuff to do and I'm happy with it as is.
Original is Water-based ink, water-soluble pencils and bombay ink on A3(ish) watercolour paper.

12th June '11

Don't eat ice cream and draw without making sure you wash your hands in between... because no matter how careful you are you'll probably get some on the side of your finger and ruin your paper... :)

24th May '11

There's something lovely and intimidating about clean lines. They're just waiting for you to mess up and put bright pink on top before going 'well that was a mistake'.

15th May '11

This weekend I celebrated my birthday. The Earth has officially made another complete orbit around the Sun since I was born.

5th May '11

Today I voted for the way we elect our government in the UK.
Here are some more colours for a frog.

29th April '11

One of the great things about being able to scan art into a computer is the ability to manipulate it and try stuff out digitally before you go past the pencil stage on paper.

Being able to look at the composition of an image by zooming in and out and being able to effectively view the image as a thumbnail without having to try and hold the image up on the otherside of the room while battling with myopia is fantastic.

Mapping out colour and tone schemes is very helpful, especially since they're probably one of the weaker parts of my final work.
Both things probably stem from things from earlier in my life.
One because I used to be scared of using strong colours because they seemed to be more permanent and I was scared of making mistakes.
Secondly because someone said I used too much grey in my work.

I might be better at colouring now if I'd ignored the second comment, but I guess we'll never know.

18th April '11

Looking forward to an Easter break in 3 days time. Hopefully get a chance to finish off some work, but regardless it will hopefully be productive and relaxing.
And in the mean time I've been adding some colours to a frog I was drawing a long time ago.

13th April '11

Taking a break from the stuff I've been working on for a while to draw some stuff I like a lot - flowers, girls and birds

4th April '11

This artwork was done for the Kitacon III conbook cover. The lineart was also used for the convention bags.

The original artwork was auctioned at the convention, raising £130 for the Red Cross Japan Tsunami Appeal.

16th March '11

Doodling digital stuff

15th March '11

Finally completed something. Alcohol based inks and water colour pencil on A3 bristol board.

10th March '11

Nothing in particular to fill the gap. Hopefully pictures will be displayed shortly.
I'm rubbish at digital, but having been forced to do some recently I thought I'd doodle a bit. I'm also rubbish at drawing men :)

17th February '11

After a week of being ill I'm inundated with art work that actually needs to get done. So I'm a bit lacking on the art that can be shown front.
At least it means I should have more to show later on in the year.

This is a half coloured piece done before I got ill. It'll probably/hopefully/maybe get finished at the beginning of March.

23rd January '11

I think my pile of 'incomplete artwork' is starting to collapse under itself. I'll just have to resort it into a priority order.

20th January '11

Some more pencil lines on paper : link.

13th January '11

First week of work done. And only another 50 and bit more weeks left of the year, seems quite short when you think of it that way...

9th January '11

First post of 2011 is a revisit to an old sketch. Trying to get a pile of sketches into some state of completion so that they're not in a stack staring at me, reminding me of the things I have started and not finished.