Sketch

Another quick sketch based on Ken Hultgren's "The Art of Animal Drawing" (he being a lead artist/animator for Disney's Bambi back in the day). Done in a quick drawing session with my kids over the weekend.

Guardian Masterclass with Karrie Fransman

I nipped down to London yesterday for the Guardian Masterclass with Karrie Fransman, someone who I think has a lot of interesting things to say about the current state of comics in the UK, and worldwide. I was not disappointed. (Note to non UK readers - that means I really enjoyed it. Typical British understatement and use of double negatives, you know.)

There was a strong turnout - 30 or 40 people at a guess - ranging from semi-pros to some who were just taking their first steps towards creating comics. Everyone was made welcome, and had the opportunity to get a lot from the evening, I think.

Karrie talked through her own creative process for her first graphic novel, passing round a lot of the original thumbnails, reference sketches and synopses - and discussed how she changed the way she did things for her second. There was also (and this was a key draw for me) a lot of good advice on how to deal with the publishing industry, who to submit to, what to submit, how to stand on, and so on.

The sketch below (rough mix of 2B pencil, Pitt Pen and Pocket Brush) was from a quick exercise that we did, in which a storyline was revealed panel by panel for us to draw - quickly, without thinking too much about it. a riff on the usual "angry person - angry person dresses up - goes to party - wrong sort of party" journey, you know. It was great seeing everyone's different interpretations of this, ranging from the cartoony to expressionist to downright strange. If you work out what my one's meant to be about, let me know, eh?

Anyway, the course is highly recommended. Big thanks to Karrie & to the Guardian masterclass team for hosting.

The crow on the angry guy's hand in the top panel came from a sculpture of some choughs by Terence Coventry in the Pangolin Editions gallery downstairs (thanks to Pangolin for letting me take the photos!) Love the way the blackened metal becomes more polished at their beaks.

Everything is grist for the mill...

Masks

Pen sketches of a couple of items from a recent trip round Oxford's museums (LHS from Pitt Rivers, RHS from Ashmolean, if I remember right)

I'm doing so much digital stuff these days, nice to pick up a pen for a change!

English Magicians

I have been remiss in recent months in entertaining my readers with works of fan fiction - this will not do, sir, this will not do! By way of amends, it is my great pleasure this week to present some illustrations of the fabulous "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell". 

(switching back to 21st Century English...)

The TV series was so visually perfect, and the acting of a universally high standard, it's been hard to pick any scenes - these two have been taken essentially at random. I wanted to experiment with my digital cross-hatching techniques - normally reserved for my own improvised comics work - with something darker and visually richer - and also to play around with adding a few found objects, to add to the atmosphere. The second scene, featuring Stephen Black and Mr Segundus, was an experiment in adding in the sort of lengthy footnotes to a comic-book narrative that make the original novel such a deeply immersive pleasure.

The characters in the story are copyright of Susanna Clarke, and the images that my drawings are based on are copyright the BBC. This is just a piece of "fan fiction", unlike the majority of my work.

Cast (only those that appear in the illos above)

Mr. Norrell - Eddie Marsan

Jonathan Strange - Bertie Carvel

Lascelles - John Heffernan

Stephen Black - Ariyon Bakare

Mr Segundus - Edward Hogg

Paradox

Trying Something New

A few sketches here trying ut a new christmas present of some derwent XL graphite blocks - solid little bricks of crumbly, dusty graphite with a int of pigment thrown in, about 1.5 x 1.5 x 4cm. Impossible to use without getting your hands filthy - yes that paper started out white! - but very easy to wash off!

The sketches are taken from an old present - the Dover reprint of Ken Hultgren's "How to draw animals", originally published in 1951. Fabulous easy-to-read account of animal anatomy and posture (and how to use it to convey emotion) from one of Disney's storyboarders/artists of the 1940's (worked on Bambi).

I did these purely for fun, less than a few minutes each, a great warm up exercise, and good to be trying something well outside my usual style and materials.

Tidal Locking

I want to talk about the way in which we communicate ideas. Subjective opinions are often disguised as fact, here I've tried to do the reverse, and describe some objective celestial mechanics in a subtley emotive language, to anthropomorphise the earth's relationship to the moon.

The pictures are kind of related, kind of not. How does that influence your reading?

All of the planets, and their moons, are spinning around themselves, at the same time as they orbit around each other.

A tidally locked body takes just as long to rotate around itself as it does around it’s partner.

The embrace of the lock is gradual. The gravity of the larger partner distorts the smaller in a slight bulge. This applies a torque, causing it to slow. Eventually, the original frequency is subsumed entirely.

Our own moon is tidally locked to Earth, always presenting the same face to us.

As the moon slowed, the dust of it’s surface would have been pulled into great tidal waves. It is estimated that these could have reached heights of hundreds of meters.

The moon is now quiescent, and locked in step. But it still exerts a strong tidal influence upon the waters of the earth, that holds it in it’s thrall.

Hitch Hiker

In the news: http://io9.com/camera-traps-capture-fantastically-bizarre-animal-hit-1636358011

A genet (a cat-like animal) has been caught on auto-triggering infra-red night camera riding on the backs of buffalo and rhino, behaviour never observed before. I wonder what they're both thinking?

The sketch was also an attempt to figure out some of the magic done by the late Sergio Toppi, italian comics maestro extraordinaire, whose black and white work is an incredibly intricate interplay between solid whites and blacks, and passages of amazingly fluid detail. I would hesitate to compare this to his stuff, but I felt I'd got a better understanding of how he does his compositions after I'd finished. Go look him up on google, or better yet, get a copy of his "Sharaz-De" from Archaia.

Finally, apologies to the genet for making it look like a sock puppet!

Dancers, Light

Freehand sketches from a youtube video, using a Pocket Brush.  Pleased with this lot, mostly.

Twelve Easy Pieces

When I'm not doing comics, I'm often found doing code. Here's an experiment that combines the two. I've cut out 42 roughly equal-sized panels from drawings that I've done, and randomly recombined them on top of a six panel script. Look at how the words and pictures dance together, and modify each other's meanings!

The drawings are rather rough. The script is hardly epic (yet!). But I'm already quite excited by the possibilities of this. So excited, in fact, that I'm breaking the usual schedule to post this right now!!

The internal repetition on the first one was a lucky accident. Both silent panels (I think these are important in comics storytelling in general) came out the same. Or the weeping muscular figure in variant #5, reprised in the ending of variant #11.

Figures

Experiments at inking on top of printed photos, having figured out a workflow in Gimp for extracting only the inked line after I scan them back in. Looking for a balance between realism and minimalism (and not quite finding it yet, but after a lot of digital-only stuff, the exercise is good.)

The model is F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone, who's got a wonderfully expressive way about him.

Sports, illustrated

I don't really follow any sport, but there are a lot of good sport photographers out there, and as a subject for some anatomy/composition exercises, they turn out some excellent source material. The efforts we go to to overcome gravity!

Homage to Beatrix Potter

The first image from a photo of a man involved in a public protest in Manchester, dressed up as a policeman wearing a pig mask. He was arrested on grounds of impersonating a police officer, and later released without charge. Sketched using Pocket Brush.

Sketch done of a hedgehog while watching the old BBC Beatrix Pottter animations with my children (from a still while paused during the "live action" opening sequences). Sketch done with coloured Lyra brush pens.

Potter was a radical, and an agitator at times. Somehow, these two belong together.

Abstractions 1

Some rough sketches I did a while back, that will turn into something. Not much to look at yet, but These Will Be Important - Mark My Words!

Good Sport

Guest Post

Drawing of me made by my 5-year old daughter on a scrap of paper, while I was explaining head proportions to her. Girl's got talent.

Prehistoric Battle of the Pens

The house is full of dinosaurs when my 5-year old comes to visit, and the BBC "Walking with Dinosaurs" book is always open. A couple of sketches here taken from photos of the real live dinosaurs inside.

Peteinosaur was a small, early Pterosaur, about the size of a blackbird, I think. The fellow underneath is the boringly-obvious Bad Boy of the dinosaur world, T Rex.

Peteinosaur was drawn mostly with Pitt Pens, and a lot of fussy detail, the T Rex with a Pentel Pocket Brush, in broad, amorphous shadows and fluid lines. Nice contrast between the effects achievable with the two types of pen.

Skaters

Proportions are all to pot, but his hair really was that big.

Thai General

Sketch from the BBC newssite again - something about the composition, the blank space to the left, makes him look childlike and vulnerable.

Crooner

A surprise entry by the Vatican City to next year's Eurovision Song Contest.