Moon!

Moon? You're going to pick moon for a topic? Red rag, bull, anyone? Ok, so this my illustration friday for this week. It's been a couple weeks seen I've posted one (I almost always thumbnail ideas for them, half the time I finish an image) and I've been chained to a mac for the last few weeks so I was just so desperate to get my hands on paper and some ink! Enjoy!

Website Updates

I've done some pretty major stuff to my website. If you've got a minute, please check it out and drop me a comment on this post to tell me what you think.

Final Bull

Itch officially scratched. Hopefully no bull sh*t.

Reworking The Bull

Now this one has been bugging me for some time. About 2 years ago... more maybe... I was messing around in Flash and created the top vector bull image that's displayed below (top, below... you know what I mean!). Now, It's been bugging me ever since. I messed around with the colours, the tones, the proportions, it wouldn't get ...right. My recent work has been much more collage-y and tonal and I thought it was high time to give the bull another whirl. I created a background (not posted, in case you think your missing an image) and dropped the vector bull over him. I liked the background, the way it was going but not the bull! So tonight I've redrawn him in pen. I think it's a real step forward, there's so much more life and movement in the drawing. I'll drop him in and depending on how it looks, post the result! (probably tomorrow now, man I'm cream-crackered...)

Goosebumps Final Image

The final image for the previously posted sketches. That sentence doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Sorry! I posted some sketches for an image illustrating the skin phenomenon "Goose bumps". This is the final image illustrating the skin phenomenon "Goose bumps". Clear enough? Are you happy now? Good!

Twist Sketches

This is how it seems to be working at the moment, sketching in the evenings, working on my thumbnails and ideas and then finishing up the final pieces on a Sunday. Happily the initial thumbnails for the posts I'm making today (featured above and below this post) were made on the same sketchbook page. If you look real close (or click to enlarge the image) you will see a little self portrait of me giving myself a good talking to...

Snake Alive!

It's a Sunday, so that means loads of posts! This is an image I've been trying to finish for ages. It's to do with lying and truth although pretty loosely if I'm honest. It took me ages to get the snakes to sit right on the hand and around 3 or 4 minutes to do the stork in the top right, which obviously is the part I'm most happy with. Oh well. Some things never change!

Spaceships and Flowers

I've been very busy of late and so have been neglecting the old Sketchblog. This image is for a thank you card, one heck of a tricky subject. I wonder why people always put flowers on thank you cards? I guess it's like sending flowers but with the advantage of costing a whole lot less and a card never wilts and dies, unless you put a flame too close...

For my flower card (and being me) I couldn't just leave it at that. I had to add in a bunch of spaceships! It comes from a 1960's Superman story I remember from my Dad's old comic annuals where Superman meets a tiny alien in a corn field. Superman helps the alien escape earth as he's so tiny he keeps crashing his spaceship into leaves and various other small things. Much like "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids", really!

Whilst researching this subject I also ran into a bunch of conspiracy theories based around the Nazis building flying saucers. Boy did those Nazis get around! What with all those supernatural experiments I keep reading about in Hellboy it's a wonder they ever had time to play with flying saucers, let alone invade most of Europe!

Ok, I'll stop now.

Goosebumps Sketches

I thought I do a quick post and put up the sketches I've been doing for a new image called "Goosebumps". The main drawing (top) is the basis for the digital painting which I will start when I stop being so anal about having all the correct album covers for each track on my ipod. The fact that the damn thing stays in my pocket 95% of the time is not the point...!

Puppet Master Hand of Doom

Definitely the best title for a post I've come up with yet! This is an image I've been playing around with and one day I might work it up into a final image, along with the other thousand scribbles just like this one...

Nosferatu ATTACKS!

I've been cropping some bits out of the corners of my sketch book. The next few posts all feature these strange and wonderful otherwise lost gems. I wrote a nice little intro, then realised it would only feature on the bottom post. Oh well, live and learn! Oh and I like vampires. Especially when they attack jaunty sea captains.

Man Giant Bird

Every time I see this sketch it makes me laugh! Oh well, simple things for simple minds.

Man Crop

Oh yes. I found this little guy in a corner of another doodle. He must be all of 10mm high...

Big Bag of Hate

So, one of the best parts about scanning your sketches is going through and cropping down a big page of doodles and finding some gems. This one one of those! I'm not sure what I was hating at the time, work, the world, whatever, so I decided to crush myself with it and end it once and for all! Good job this is all happening in "sketchworld"...

No 1 Skooter

You can't really go to Greece, taking a sketch book, and not draw a scooter! I got my wife (crazy bi-lingual person) to do me "Scooter" in Greek and as she has such awesome handwriting I got her to do the rest of the writing. Doodling is much more fun together!

Raining Strip

So this strip I drew on the bottom half of the page that I drew the Ladders Strip on. It was created in the same way, so one drawing led to the next. I prefer this one, I think it's more concise and punchy. So there.

Ladders Strip

Yeah, ok, so a bit of weird one I'll be honest (probably better off clicking on the image for a better view). What's it about then? Well, I could gas on about how it's an artistic statement concerning hope, dreams, crashing reality and pushing horizons to reveal another "glass ceiling". Hmmm. Fact is I did the first drawing, then the next, then I thought I'd set the little guy on fire, then I made him fly. Which explanation has the greater truth? What is the nature of truth? ZzzzzzZZZZZZzzzzzzZZZZZzzzzz... Oh! Sorry! fell asleep there for a second.