Neglected Guardian

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Last year (not long after the picture in the last post was made), I planned to enter the Guardian/Observer's annual comic competition. I was moving house at the time, and didn't end up finishing it, so I'll post it here. Needless to say, it would have been existential (any angst was an added bonus) and I was looking forward to playing with sound and and panel layouts a little. Oh, and puns, too.

This is the rough for the second page. After this, the protagonist would have delved into his introverted/escapist worldview.

Oh, and have a look at this guy's 24 hour (or so) comic: http://english.bouletcorp.com/2012/02/01/darkness/

It's been linked around a little bit, but the guy drew it at Angouleme BD festival in France, and it blows my mind to think he made something that incredible in such a short time. I was actually at the festival, but I don't think I was there when the 24hr comics event was going on! If you ever get the chance to go there, do it. I'll post a little more about it soon!

Hyrax in Arcadia

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Wow, sorry for the radio silence! I've been absolutely swamped with a project over the past few months- hopefully I can show some of it in the future. In the meantime, here's an early concept piece for a comic I was writing a little while ago. I drew it last September (I think), and added some of the buildings recently. I'll try and post more often from now on!

ADVICE TO SINK IN SLOWLY

Advice to Sink in Slowly is a project to give illustrated posters of any kind of advice to first year students from former graduates. The lovely John Stanbury, organiser of AtSiS asked me to join in, and as someone who loved having one of these posters in my first year of uni, I was more than happy to join in.

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The advice is pretty self explanatory! As much as I loved my course, it didn't teach much about my specific interests, and alongside that, I found it easy to get stressed out by my view of what was 'expected of me' by the course. Illlustration can so easily become obsessive, so I think this advice is still useful. For me at least!

I wanted the poster to be graphic in design, so even if you didn't like the artwork you'd still be happy to have the poster on your wall. Here's close ups of the art itself:

I generally went with the "Draw What You Want" part more than anything thematically close, but I guess from the top, each picture loosely represents knowledge/potential, adventure, and hope/peace and reflection.

I was going to do alternate versions with only one illustration in, but got lazy and didn't. Originally it was going to be a different poster altogether- a digital painting with lots of dismantled tech and machinery:

If you're a student in the UK you can request a poster for free here!

Burrrrfffdayyy

I've been busy! So here are some warm up sketches and quick pieces I've done recently.

It's straight up dawg time

This was going to be in colour, but I got carried away with a black and white experiment. Fun fun fun! Also, my first page drawn at A2, which makes things a bazillion times easier.

Noir

Here are some warm up pieces from a project that may now be on the backburner:

pewpewpew

More life drawing, all 3-15 mins! With a lot of these I learnt quite a lot, and I'm really trying to learn how the body works. Muscle contraction, weight distribution and how the torso twists... I may not get there soon, but I'll get there.







^On the two above I did quick sketches after the poses to try and decipher my drawings and understand how backs work. The bottom left post-pose sketch shows I've got a way to go!

You know nothing, Jon Snow

Something I did for fun a few weeks ago. I drew it between reading Feast for Crows and a Dance with Dragons, so I hadn't actually read any Jon chapters in a long time, and I didn't really try very hard to get an accurate likeness. So the sword position is wrong, and if I'd actually followed the book he probably has long hair, but whatever! I'll do some more if I ever get around to it.



Don't know what I'm on about? Go read George R R Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series! They made the first book, A Game of Thrones, into a HBO series. But who the hell watches that shit? Go read the books! Fall in love with a million characters only to watch them go through hell and die!

I've started life drawing once or twice a week. It's fun to balance accuracy and expression, and have dedicated time to learn how to draw as well as study anatomy. Getting down likenesses of the models was always a strong point for me, but I think now that it's been a while I'm more 50/50 with it, but genuinely seem to learn something useful with every drawing. All these are 5-15 minute poses. I'll post some more up soon!