What Are You Doing Here?

2011-12-20T13:09:00.004Z

Like Christmas I appear once a year, or so it seems. I've been busy working on something for The Phoenix Comic which is a fantastic new weekly children's comic debuting in January. It features fantastic new strips from The DFC creators and many other lovely UK comics folks. If you know or have any children why not treat them and get them a subscription for Christmas? Or be utterly selfish and get one just for yourself.

If you're interested in something for an older age range then you can't go wrong with the graphic novel, Nelson, published by Blank Slate Books and lovingly edited by Rob Davis and Woodrow Phoenix, it features 54 artists all taking turns to tell the story of Nell Baker. I'm hugely proud to be a part of it, and I may be biased because I'm in it, but I think it's a brilliant book, an experiment that worked out incredibly well and also serves as an excellent snapshot of the UK comics scene and the incredible amount of talent therein. The proceeds from Nelson are going to Shelter so not only do you get lovely book you'll also be helping raise money for an excellent charity that helps a lot of people, you can buy it here or in all good comic shops.

That's the brazen, shameless plugging over with, now to celebrate the spirit of Christmas and giving. Here's my 'Elephant Of Surprise' comic strip I did a little bit over a year ago for Solipsistic Pop 3. Seeing as Sol Pop 4 is now out I thought it'd be a good time to share it on here and make it available to all. If the notion of a beautifully produced comics anthology bursting with creativity and wonderful comics then go take a look at the Solipsistic Pop website and see the superb job that Tom Humberstone does putting Sol Pop together.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and I'll see you on the other side.

Draw Harvey!

2010-07-20T12:17:00.000+01:00

On hearing the sad news of Harvey Pekar's passing, Adam Cadwell had the great idea of starting a Flickr group called 'Draw Harvey!' and this is my contribution. Go take a look at all the other Harveys on there, it's fascinating to see how one man can inspire so many different interpretations.

Bob Fish and Le Jeune Albert

2010-07-14T21:31:00.000+01:00

I did this for the Forbidden Planet International blog who are celebrating Bastille Day today. I wasn't the only contributor, I was in mighty fine company alongside Garen Ewing, Geraint Ford, Rob Jackson and Rob Davis. I love the work of Yves Chaland and thought it'd be fun to draw his private detective character, Bob Fish and his assistant Le Jeune Albert.

I'd done a couple of very rough thumbnail sketches and combined two that I thought looked okay. Then I worked that thumbnail up to this scribbly rough.

For the next stage I took this into Manga Studio and tidied it up a little and filled in the buildings and background a little more.

The next step was to print it out on to some bristol board in light blue and do some tighter pencil work.

Then I inked the characters and foreground with a brush, here's a pic of the page partially inked.

At this stage I was getting pushed for time and I thought it would be quicker to do the background buildings and bits and pieces in Manga Studio so I scanned what I'd done so far and finished off the inking took it into Photoshop and coloured it up. Here's the final line art.

I'd like to have spent some more time on the backgrounds and tweaked a few things but there's always something you'd like to do different and I think it turned out pretty well in the end.

Absinthe Frappé

2010-07-10T15:32:00.000+01:00

The character of Absinthe Frappé came about through a Twitter conversation between Simon Gane, Jamie Smart, Jonathan Edwards, Rob Davis and myself. For a slightly more detailed explanation of the conversation and Jonathan's fab illustration of Absinthe click here. We all decided the name was perfect for a Jonathan Edwards' character but I just had to have a go too.

Good Dog, Bad Dog

2010-03-04T14:19:00.000Z

Just a quick post to plug Dave Shelton's wonderful Good Dog, Bad Dog book. It's the first of the DFC Library books to go on sale. Detective dogs in a film noir world with plenty of humour and milkshakes, what more could anybody ask for? I had a blast colouring one of the stories, The Golden Bone, and I'm overjoyed to see all the strips collected in one beautiful book. Go see Dave's blog for more info, updates and links to (very positive) reviews. Not to mention many of his delightful sketches and doodles.

Dead Pets Pencils - Episode 2, Page 2

2009-10-19T11:03:00.003+01:00

It's been about a year since Dead Pets was printed in the Guardian's now sadly defunct Comic section, it doesn't feel anything like that amount of time. It's always interesting, and slightly alarming, to take a look back over work that was drawn a while ago, more often than not all you can see are the dodgy bits of drawing and where you would do things differently. The thing that strikes me most about this page right now is that there's fourteen panels on it. Fourteen panels?! What was I thinking? Artist me punches writer me in the gut. Good thing my gut is generously cushioned.

I'm not fat, my chest has slipped.

One thing I wanted to make sure of with Dead Pets was that there was always something happening in every episode, that the story was always progressing and that it took a little bit of time to read even though there was only 3 pages every week, one of which wasn't a full page. I also wanted to take advantage of the weekly format and the opportunity to have some sort of cliffhanger or unresolved moment at the close of every episode, hoping the readers would want to come back the following week. I don't know if I was successful in achieving any of those things but that's how I hoped it would be.

Here's the inks for this page. I cheated a little and used a very slightly modified copy of panel seven for panel 3 once it was all scanned in.

Dead Pets Pencils - Episode 2, Page 1

2009-10-13T18:52:00.001+01:00

I absent-mindedly sketched this rough idea for the opening panel and there was something about the point of view that appealed to me so I decided to go ahead with it.

I thought I'd try knocking up a model of the layout in SketchUp hoping that it might save me some time and that I could print off a picture from the correct angle and work over it. I was wrong about the time saving element but it was a very helpful thing to do. Once I'd knocked the model up I realised that the view I'd chosen was such an extreme, exaggerated one that to have it match the rough I'd need to tweak the depth of field on the camera in SketchUp. This distorted everything but I thought it looked okay and helped add to the feeling of being high up and that it was a large house. Anyway, here's a screencap of the model.

I printed off a blue line and worked over that, here's the final pencils. Sam's mum and dad appear to be missing from the pencils, I guess I must have drawn them on another bit of paper and added them in later on.

These are the uncorrected inks, you can see that I started to spot the black squares in the chequered pattern on the floor and then stopped. I thought I'd leave it and give myself the option to drop it in at the colour stage or even use a different colour. If I'd filled in all the dark squares it would have been a fiddlesome nightmare to separate them out in the colouring stage should I change my mind about what colour I wanted them to be. In the end I made them blue rather than black so I was very happy I didn't fill them all in.

Birdman Doodle

2009-10-09T12:26:00.000+01:00

While rooting through my pages of art on Dead Pets I found this doodle on the back of one of the pages. I have a terrible tendency to faff about doodling or making marks in the margins and on the back of the work I'm actually meant to be doing. A two-headed birdman, don't know what I was up to there, I have an inkling that I may have had a Huzzah in the back of my mind at the time. Pardon me for not cleaning up the scan but I've got some work to get on with and posting this is just another way of doodling in the margins.

Dead Pets Pencils - Page 3

2009-10-08T08:43:00.001+01:00

Here's the next page of pencils along with the inks, pencils are a lot rougher than the first two, I think I was winging it a bit with this one, there might have been a more tightly penciled version but if there is I can't find it. I don't why I drew Godfrey the dog in front of the cross on panel 3, it's messy.

You can see in the inked version I got rid of him for clarity's sake. The last panel changed a bit, I was never truly happy with the drawing of Sam, the boy, in that panel. I was right not to be happy, the final version of him scarpering is better, at least I think it is, but it still bothers me. I turned Frazzle, the cat, so that he has his back to us, and decided to have all the characters in silhouette, it probably made more sense to have them looking at Sam and made his running away a focal point.

Dead Pets Pencils - Page 2

2009-10-07T10:01:00.000+01:00

I've been neglecting my blog again, partly through laziness but I've also been busy working on some comic strips for educational books with Rob Davis and Geraint Ford. I'll post some bits and pieces from that soon but seeing as I've got a bunch of pencils from Dead Pets Society sitting around I'd scan them in and post them here, my plan is that it'll give me something a bit more regular to update the blog with while I work on these strips with Rob and Ger.

Here's the pencils for page 2 of DPS (I posted page 1 quite a while back). I was probably trying to be tight with the pencils at this stage, I was still finding my way with everything at this point. If memory serves, I left more to the inking stage as time went by and I became more comfortable drawing the characters. Dead Pets was inked with the Kuretake brushpen that I like so much. I did fix a lot of mistakes, clean up the artwork and fill in areas of black on the computer once the art was scanned in though, that tends to be a quicker, easier process. I would usually blow up my thumbnails and print them off in light blue and pencil over those, I think I did that here but there's a lot of blue lines so I can't really make out what's what.

If you'd like to read a couple of full episodes in colour then a previous post has a couple of links to them on the Guardian site.

Draw Serge!

2009-05-26T11:00:00.005+01:00

Lovely man and top illustrator, Jonathan Edwards has set up a blog called 'Draw Serge!', so I did.

I think he came out looking more like Johnny Cash than Serge, oh well. I grabbed a few pics from the internet for reference, one of them had him standing atop a church or cathedral with a gargoyle or two behind him which seemed so appropriate that I nicked the idea. That's a 500 franc note he's lighting his cigarette with, he famously burned one on a TV show as some sort of protest against high taxation. Whilst looking for pics I found he had a much-loved dog called 'Nana' who looked so lovely I had to include her as well.

Do visit the Draw Serge! site and check out all the other fine contributions from the likes of fellow Huzzah contributor, Rob Davis, the wonderful Simon Gane and many others. And, if you're an artist, why not jump in and contribute a Serge!

Huzzah!! Noir

2009-04-07T00:13:00.003+01:00

Exciting news! Huzzah!! Noir has gone live, Ian Culbard has started it off with a lovely page...and so, another adventure begins. Click the logo to go see.

Don't worry, Huzzah Noir!! does not mean the end of regular Huzzah!!, they're running in tandem. Have a gander at the latest contributions from Rob Davis, Colin Fawcett and Paul Harrison-Davies, they're a treat!

Huzzah and the Big Baby of Death.

2009-03-25T10:56:00.012Z

I made my third contribution to Huzzah!! recently. After what Rob had the Baron say in this panel, I wondered what could possibly 'kill death itself'. I thought it may be that the sibling infant was the opposite of death and if it came into contact with the big baby 'o' death (BBOD) something interesting might happen. Having the BBOD ingest its sibling meant I could get a joke out of it and refer back to when the Baron rescued the infant from Xog. It also was an excuse for me to have a go at drawing beams of light shooting out of an evil child.

Hmmm, reading that last paragraph back to myself only confirms my suspicions that talking about Huzzah!! and what's happening in it makes you sound like a gibbering loony.

I've been slowly building up to doing the maximum allowed of 3 tiers per page, per Huzzah!! so this is the first whole page I've drawn although it's actually spread out over two pages as the first panel is the last panel of page 26. Here's the roughs I knocked up in Manga Studio. Everything was done in Manga Studio this time around. Occasionally, I might use a bit of Photoshop as well but there wasn't a whole lot of colouring to do seeing as there's so much solid black. I fancied the idea that the BBOD had been given some toys to play with and the fact that he'd just learned to speak meant alphabet building blocks, of course!

I went with the fairly rough pencils and decided I'd wing it a bit. Not sure if that was a good idea as I wasn't very confident throughout the making of this page, it took ages to finish, much longer than I expected and I was late in posting it. Lots of black with almost no backgrounds would lead you to think there'd be less drawing involved, that it'd be easier to get done, but it didn't work out that way for me with this page.

Next, the final art, put together as a whole page, that's how I drew it and worked on it but to see it in context, visit Huzzah!!

The DFC - Comes To An End

2009-03-04T10:13:00.004Z

As you may have noticed, the subscription button to the DFC website has been removed from the blog, the sad news is that the comic will end at issue 43. The current financial situation hits everybody, even big publishers like Random House. I'm sad but not completely surprised, it's always a big risk trying something new and different, and starting up a new children's comic in the UK is not an easy path especially if you avoid the shiny plastic toy with free comic TV tie-in mentality that is all pervasive in children's comics these days.

I'm sad that the Dead Pets won't get to appear in the comic itself, I was looking forward to being in there along with all my fellow DFC buddies. On the positive side, I was lucky enough to get to write and draw my own twenty-four page comic strip, have it published in the Guardian and get paid for it! I'm very lucky to have had that opportunity.

I think that everybody involved should be proud to have put out a weekly comic, with no ads and all original material for the best part of a year. Anybody that's ever been involved with something like that will know how much work it involves and how difficult it is to do. There's a lot of juggling and planning and dealing with artistic temperaments involved for the editorial team. I'd like to thank David Fickling for making it happen, Ben Sharpe, my editor, who was been an absolute joy to work with, he was incredibly patient and helpful even when I'm sure I pushed him to hair-pulling frustration at times. I don't know if he's aware of this but he is known as 'Lovely Ben' to me and many others. Thanks to Will Fickling and all the other people in the office that worked so hard on making the DFC what it was.

I had to...

2009-02-19T13:12:00.008Z

I'm a little bit late in mentioning this but my latest contribution to Huzzah!! is up. It's been a huge amount of fun doing these but that doesn't mean to say I'm not daunted by the setting, it's not the kind of thing I'm used to drawing. And that's all the more reason to take part, being pushed out of whatever comfort zone I may have!

I'm also taking Huzzah!! as an opportunity to experiment with and learn how to use Manga Studio, the first piece was all done in Manga Studio, or at least as far as I can recall. The second was all Manga Studio apart from colour which was done in Photoshop as I was pushed for time and there were a couple of things that I wasn't sure I could do or didn't know how to do with Manga Studio but I knew I could definitely do them in Photoshop. I think there's never going to be a one-stop shop for comics, in terms of software, there's always something one program can do that another can't.

Here's a rough for the first plate I did, this one came together in an ad hoc manner, I had a rough thumnbnail layout that I scanned in, then I added elements and then I changed my mind ooh, about a few hundred times and eventually, found the final picture, probably not the best way of going about things. Click all images to enlargificate:

The finished plate:

This is the second plate, I worked this one out more solidly than the first so I didn't spend so much time 'finding' the drawing. I had to work in a 'what are you doing here' at some point, and this seemed like the perfect time! And a double one too, bonus!

I can't wait to see what paulhd does next! To see it all in context, visit Huzzah!!

Laura 'Bloody Mental' Howell - Strip-A-Day

2009-02-05T17:23:00.007Z

Oh, just remembered I wanted to point you in the direction of fellow DFCer, Laura Howell, who has embarked on her second Strip-A-Day Spectacular! Go see!

(Of course, she's chosen the shortest month of the year to to do it in! Sheesh...how lazy can you get?)

Me, next week...

2009-02-05T17:07:00.005Z

Well here I am blogging about not blogging, humble apologies and that.

I've been a bit busy but not for much longer, this'll be me next week...

Moleskine De Juan Berrio

2009-01-28T11:13:00.006Z

Andrew Wildman highlighted this video on Facebook and I had to post it here, it's too damn good! I didn't know of Juan Berrio's work before this but I'll definitely be investigating further...

Dead Pets - Page One - Pencils

2009-01-26T16:37:00.006Z

I'm still busy finishing the last episode of the current Dead Pets story. I'm probably going to milk what bits and pieces I can for this blog. Sorry, but I've been working on the strip exclusively for a while now so there's not much else I have to show or talk about!

Here's the pencils for the first page of the first episode. I began this page by knocking up a rough perspective drawing in Manga Studio EX, printing it off in light blue and then I drew over that. I've used a couple of applications to help me out whilst drawing Dead Pets - SketchUp for help on a couple of perspective heavy panels and Manga Studio for the same and the occasional rough breakdown too - virtually all of Dead Pets was drawn and inked in the traditional way (paper and brush and pen) and the lettering and colour are all digital. I'm toying with going all digital but I'm having trouble committing fully to working that way. Some old habits are hard to break.

I sought out a bunch of photo reference for the van on the web, I find cars and vehicles difficult so the more reference the better! It also looks like there's a few places where I've redrawn the odd bit or moved elements around in Photoshop.

I wanted to set up the situation as quickly as possible in this first panel of this page, my aim was to avoid having too much preamble. Here's a family, they're moving into a big, old house, one of them is a young boy and his only friend in the new place, is his dog. I tried my best to make sure that something happens, in each episode and that the story progresses in some way and that each episode ended on a cliffhanger or moment of suspense, however slight. Three pages per episode (one of those truncated by about a third) isn't a huge amount of space to work with but limitations are good, you have to think and learn to work within them and hopefully, be creative with how you do that.

That squirrel ends up causing a fair bit of trouble for poor Godfrey, the dog. If only he knew.

Dead Pets - Sample Piece

2009-01-19T12:56:00.011Z

Before being given the go ahead to start, I did a sample piece to give a general idea of how the strip might look. The characters changed a little from this initial piece, Frazzle the cat, in particular. Part of this piece was used for the Doodler section on the inside of the Comic in the same issue as the first episode of Dead Pets. Here's the pencil roughs, I can't remember but it looks like I might have drawn them over an even rougher scribble that I printed out very faintly as a guide.

These are the more finished pencils, I was definitely drawing over a blue printout of the previous picture here.

The line art, inked with a Kuretake brush pen, which I may write a little something about in a future post.

And the finished art - I coloured it and added the window shadow on the computer. It was while doing this sample that I realised I didn't want to have the dead pets slightly or semi-transparent but to suggest their lack of solidity by having their linework in colour - apart from a few details here and there - and no shadows cast on them or by them. There is a shadow on Gus the snake in this picture but I was still working out what the rules were at this point. I'm still unsure as to whether my ideas to make them seem ghostly are entirely successful but I didn't want to go down the see-through route, it would have been a pain to deal with technically and far too time-consuming. Not that doing colour holds on the linework of the pets is a speedy process either, as I've discovered.

Dead Pets Society - Online

2009-01-18T11:37:00.006Z

I've just spotted that a couple of episodes of Dead Pets Society are now available to read on the Guardian website, episodes two and three, to be precise. They've been put up in a click through format of a panel or so at a time, it works quite well, especially on the build up and ending of the third episode.

It can be difficult to keep surprises and significant moments from view in a comic strip, it's natural and pretty much unavoidable to look ahead or take a page in as a whole entity before reading it, often without even noticing that you've done so. There's ways and means around that but you can't always use them due to space constraints or how the pages fall.

With the format in the newspaper there's only one turn of the page and that happens after the first page, which I think I managed to take advantage of once, or maybe twice, but most of those 'moments' take place towards the latter part of the episode, the weekly format suggests you build to some sort of cliffhanger on the last page and set people up for next week's episode.

Knowing that the reader takes in the page as a whole is also one of the wonderful aspects of comics, allowing for dazzling page layouts, interesting compositions and design, so it's not all bad. It's just one of the many aspects to consider when creating comics. You can choose to ignore it completely - nevertheless a decision has to be made.

Right, I'd better get back to working on the last episode (number eight), I'm beginning to bibble on here anyway...

HUZZAH!!

2009-01-08T14:27:00.010Z

It's deadline crunch time so I've been quiet for a little while and probably will remain so until the end of the month.

I've just popped my head out to urge you to visit HUZZAH!!, the successor to Who Killed Round Robin? I've been invited to take part and I'm excited (and not to mention a little daunted) by the whole thing. I won't go into what it's all about here as it's explained on the site. I haven't been able to contribute yet but will do once Dead Pets is done and dusted, around the beginning of Feb. Go see the lovely, unfolding comic strip being created by my fellow participants.

I've just realised that this is my first post of 2009, so let me wish you a belated Happy New Year!

Quick Reminder

2008-12-26T21:30:00.006Z

A short post to remind everyone that my comic strip for the DFC, Dead Pets Society, begins in the Guardian's Family section tomorrow, it'll be in there every Saturday for 8 weeks.

Here's a little teaser from episode two.

DFC Preview Site

2008-12-22T15:00:00.003Z

I've always firmly believed the DFC needed to have some of the comics strips available to read online, and now they have! Go, see! If you like what you see, subscribe! The DFC is a good thing for children's comics and the UK comic book industry in general. They're trying something brave and new and I think it deserves to do well. Of course, I'm biased, but now you can make up your own mind.

Blurby info bit:

"We've put a new previews site up! There are flashbook versions of some of the strips now up, at our fantastic new previews website! There's one episode of some of the strips, in most cases (but not all!) the first episode, to give people a taster of The DFC. We didn't want to put up all the strips at once so as not to blast people with too much content, but the plan is to cycle the strips round, so that it isn't always the same content. If a strip isn't up now, rest assured it will be appearing in the near future! First episodes of new strips will also be going up, a certain amount of time after first appearing in the comic."

I think this is an excellent move and the previews, though in a Flashbook form, look good and work very well indeed.

Dead Pets Society

2008-12-19T12:08:00.007Z

I've hinted at it before now but here's the skinny...my strip, Dead Pets Society, produced for the DFC, will be appearing in the Guardian newspaper's Family section beginning on Saturday 27th December. Should you be outside the UK and unable to obtain a copy of the newspaper then you can usually read it online here, after publication. It's weekly, there's eight episodes and I hope you enjoy it!

Step right up! For one week only, folks...

2008-11-18T12:38:00.006Z

...the DFC will be in Tescos throughout the land from Wed 26th Nov to Tues 2nd Dec. They're making it available for the one week only as a marketing exercise. Here's a pic of the cover, featuring a Mo-Bot from Neill Cameron's Mo-Bot High...

This is an opportunity to take a look at this subscription only, weekly children's comic without having to commit to a subscription. There's a great variety of comic strips in the DFC and I think it's worth investigating and supporting. It's all original material, nothing licensed, nothing based on already existing cartoons, toys or brands and its mixture of silliness, adventure and fun is a refreshing change from most of what's out there already. I should mention that I've had some involvement with the DFC, I coloured the first Good Dog, Bad Dog, strip by my good and hugely talented friend, Dave Shelton and I continue to be involved but I don't think I can say much about that just yet.

As much as I might like to.

Nick Hornby interviews David Simon

2008-11-05T20:43:00.008Z

Came across this interview with David Simon from The Believer magazine in 2007 - Simon is the main man behind the brilliant HBO TV series The Wire. The interview is conducted by the author Nick Hornby and is well worth a read. If you haven't seen The Wire, apparently the favourite show of America's new president, then I only have one question to ask: What are you doing here?

Scary Vegetable Competition 2008

2008-10-31T17:49:00.002Z

In the spirit of the day, visit the scary vegetables...Moo-Hoo-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha!

Scary Face Doodle

2008-10-23T18:22:00.005+01:00

I don't know about you but this guy gives me the heebie-jeebies. I remember that I doodled this with a Pentel brush pen in the ICA bar whilst waiting to see a band play and thought at the time it was a bit strange compared to what might usually come out the end of my pen. It's been tweaked slightly in Photoshop to make it less grey.

Edit: A couple of comments on this picture suggested who it looked like, I thought about it and I reckon he looked like a zombie Max Wall, I did an image search so I could compare and found a photo of Max Wall that is way scarier than I could ever hope to have come up with.

What Are You Doing Here?

2008-09-17T12:15:00.002+01:00

I know, I know...what can I say? I've been busy...

2008-09-17T12:09:00.006+01:00

Okay, not that busy, but I am now. I'm working on something of my own for the DFC.

Nemi-sis

2008-01-31T20:45:00.001Z

Sarah went into town yesterday and brought a copy of the Metro back with her, it's a free London paper that usually has nothing worth reading in it but you can't help picking one up and thumbing through it anyway. The Metro's only useful function is to provide something to peruse when you're on the London Underground and you've forgotten to bring a book. You can try putting off the inevitable by reading all the adverts on the train fourty-seven times but eventually you'll grab one of the many discarded copies littering the train carriage and start flicking through the paper (unless you're one of those lucky people that can doze on a train and never have to resort to such desperate measures).

The Metro's most heinous crime is the inclusion of the comic strip 'Nemi' by Norwegian cartoonist, Lise. Nemi is the second most popular strip in Norway, according to Wikipedia. The Nemi gallery on the Metro site, part of the heading says:

...love her or hate her, she always gets a reaction!

I can't argue with that. My reaction in this case was goggle-eyed, head-smacking disbelief; that a cartoonist could be so lazy and unfunny at the same time. Cutting corners I can understand, producing a comic strip day in, day out isn't the doddle that it may appear and if you can come up with an idea that allows for an easy ride once in a while, I'm all for it. There are times when the economical approach can be more effective and successful than any other. But if you're going to be this lazy and not even try to improve or enhance the joke with some artwork then it had better be brilliant...

This makes me want to weep. A black panel in which all you're imagining is Nemi sitting on the loo. It's not funny, it's not clever but it is weak and boring. If she was shouting in annoyance at the perpetrator then it might have, at least, raised a small smile of recognition. Instead we get an explanation of why there's a black panel.

Edit: I forgot to mention that the "older sibling" line doesn't make much sense either, surely a younger sibling is more likely to muck about and turn the lights off? And how often is the light switch on the outside of the toilet? Can't say I've found it to be all that often.

Super F*cking Awesome

2008-01-01T13:55:00.001Z

I've been to see the Super Furry Animals about 3 times this year alone. I like them a lot but my girlfriend, Sarah, likes them even more. All the gigs have been good or great but they were absolutely fantastic at the Royal Festival Hall last night. The actual RFH auditorium wasn't being used but all the rest of the building was used in some form or another, there were special themed bars - one was a joke VIP bar with fake bouncers outside and mock paparazzi taking photos of anybody that was entering which would then appear on screens inside the bar, there were lookalikes of famous people milling about helping add to the illusion. There were weird little attractions like the smallest discotheque in the world (10 people max) and all sorts of other strange bits of fun and silliness.

SFA played three times over the course of the evening, each set lasting about forty-five minutes or so, their performances were interspersed with sets from Deerhoof and Adam Hussein, early on it all seemed a bit subdued but by the last set the place had really filled up, SFA were going for broke and the audience were having a wonderful time. Being right on the South Bank meant we could go out on the terrace and have a great view of the fireworks and do lots of ooh-ing and ahhh-ing. After the display we went back in and the band were still playing and building up to their usual finale of 'The Man Don't Give A F*ck' which was joyful and mind-blowing, especially with the surround sound effects zipping around the foyer of the RFH. A blissful, wonderful evening that left Sarah and me with big, stupid grins on out faces. And that's coming from an old curmudgeon who doesn't normally do anything very special on New Year's Eve and usually just prefers to have a relaxed drink with a few friends.

I also got to catch up with my oldest friend, Hardeep and some of his mates, it's been a long time since we've seen each other and it was lovely to see him, have a laugh, take the piss and enjoy the pleasantly inebriated evening together.

All this was topped off by a leisurely stroll over the Hungerford footbridge to Embankment tube station, taking the time out to gaze at the beautiful view of the river and the surrounding buildings and admire how stunning London looks at night.

A truly positive and very heartening start to the New Year, here's hoping it continues in that vein.

Happy New Year to you all!

What Are You Doing Here?

2007-12-29T12:36:00.000Z

Good Dog, Bad Dog begins.

The Guardian.

Today.

Run.

That is all.

GDBD

2007-12-10T18:27:00.001Z

Take that, secrecy and intrigue! The cat's...no wait that should be the dogs have been let out the bag a little over on Dave's blog. Sorry to anybody coming to this site via Dave's posts on the subject only to find my posts linking back to his. It's just our plan to have people sucked into a never-ending loop of surfing between my site and his. Mwah-hah-hah!

Well, better get back to keeping those naughty little monkeys in line, comic strips don't colour themselves you know. Have you ever had to remove a crayon from a monkey's nose? Tricky.

Up to

2007-12-07T10:52:00.000Z

Hello? Anybody there? Ah, thank God, the lights are still working. The questioning name of this blog has never been more appropriate seeing as how there's been nothing to read or look at for such a long time. Like so many people I've gotten lazy about posting to my blog, I've just been getting on with life and work and all that other stuff that gets in the way of being on the internet forever and ever.

Much as I'd like to, I can't really talk about what I've been working on recently for fear of having my ice-cream privileges taken away and my toes being gnawed on by starved for a week slugs. Dave Shelton has been working like, well...a dog on this project and I've been colouring it, hopefully not like a dog - what with them being partially colour blind and all - it's true, I removed a dog's eyes and held them up in front of my own and everything was red. If we were to divulge any more information on the top secret project just yet, national security would be compromised, society would plunge into apocalyptical chaos and, worst of all, house prices might drop.

Visit Dave's blog for a very brief taster. You'll find that Dave can't talk about it much either, for fear of eternal damnation (or a severe ticking off) but at least there's a picture to look at.

I'm not going to make any insane and rash promises of posting more regularly, like once a year or an equally similar unyielding and punishing schedule, but I shall endeavour, nay...think about (in an absent-minded, dreamy and wistful sort of way) posting more often, once things have gotten a bit less intense on the deadline front.

Freshwater Fish

2007-03-29T11:08:00.000+01:00

I'm just trying a smaller font size on this post to see if I or indeed anybody else prefers it, any comments welcome.

Here's some spots produced for (yes, you've probably guessed it) Horrible Science Magazine, various freshwater fish and some of their strange/interesting behaviour. I've had to draw a fair few creatures for Horrible Science, drawing animals well can be difficult especially when you may only have a small amount of reference or knowledge and have to draw a variety of them in a short amount of time but as I've probably mentioned before you can learn an awful lot from having to draw things that you probably wouldn't choose to draw. It doesn't hurt to have a broad knowledge of all sorts of stuff if you're an illustrator - or artist of any kind I suppose. Sorry that I don't really remember what all of these spots were about in particular and can't give you more information about them but I do remember that I enjoyed doing them and that out of all of them I think I like the Pike one most.

Goldfish

Suckermouth Minnow

Piranha

Tench

Siamese Fighting Fish

African Cichlid

Pike

Sketch

2007-03-17T23:00:00.000Z

Just some messing about a bit earlier on today.

Illustration Friday - Wired

2007-03-16T11:30:00.000Z

I didn't have time to finish what I was working on for the latest IF as I had some Horrible Science stuff to finish off so here's something old that fits the topic, it was originally produced for Hi-Fi Choice magazine. I can't help feeling that posting something old is cheating a bit and kind of misses the point of IF so I guess that makes me a dirty cheating hound. Hopefully I'll finish off the piece I originally wanted to do and post it here.

Horrible Science - Astronauts

2007-03-16T09:44:00.000Z

More spots produced for the Horrible Science Magazine, pretty self-explanatory really a bunch of astronauts from various countries.

Horrible Science - Barmy Birds

2007-03-15T10:49:00.000Z

I've been working on the Horrible Science magazine for a little while now, doing spot illustrations that are meant to be close to the style of the art in the original books. Here's some spots of some birds and examples of their weird behaviour. One of the best things about working on the Horrible Science (and previously Horrible Histories) magazine is that you have to draw all sorts of stuff that you would probably never normally draw. Being pushed out of your comfort zone is a good thing, even if the end result isn't as great as you'd like it to be at least you've learned something. I might never have drawn anything as brilliantly named as the Blue-footed Booby.

Blackcocks & Hawfinches

Dancing Cranes

Blue Bird Of Paradise

Catbird

Riflebird

Blue-Footed Booby

Sugarbird

Mortified and ashamed...

2007-03-09T11:28:00.000Z

...is how I felt when I saw how long it's been since I posted anything on here. I've been busy but not that busy, if I'm honest. Bad Faz (with much finger-waggling at self). During this quiet period on the blog I was asked to do another piece for Scholastic, one of their classroom publications - the same one I did the Sybil Ludington illustrations for that I posted oh so long ago. This time it was a civil war scene, part of the battle of Bull Run where Union soldiers mistakenly thought a battalion of foot soldiers approaching them from their right were Union when in fact they were Confederate. At the time they were engaged in cannon battle with Confederate soldiers over the hill in front of them. Various conditions including no wind, low cannon smoke and dirty uniforms all led to the confusion. This is the initial pencil rough I drew.

The deadline was kind of tight on this one - it's really a bit of a shame when deadlines don't allow enough time for research and to familiarise yourself with the period as much as one would like but that's the world of commercial art and illustration for you. I did the best I could under the circumstances but I'm not entirely sure if I was all that successful in depicting the scene. Battle scenes can be tricky to draw for many, many reasons - mainly because there's usually just an awful lot going on and laying something like that out can be difficult and this one was also made hard because of the three groups that needed depicting. Here's the revised and more finished pencils.

I should probably mention that as it's a magazine for schoolchildren in the US there couldn't be any blood or anything too gruesome so it's all a bit tame really. Kind of silly when the same children are probably exposed to far more violent imagery on a daily basis on the telly and elsewhere. Can't help thinking that it's a good and responsible thing for children to be made aware of the true price and horror of warfare, maybe even more so in an educational magazine. Anyway, enough blather, here's the final piece.

Minor Changes

2006-11-07T12:27:00.000Z

I've moved the blog over to the new beta of Blogger and made a couple of very small changes to the look of the site. Fortunately the changeover seems to have gone quite well and nothing important appears to be broken or shonky. This bodes well for the future of Blogger, it's about time they updated the service, some nice new features have been included, especially the formatting options. Enough about Blogger, I've been working on some spot illustrations for Horrible Science Magazine but I should be posting some more Elephant stuff soon.

The Elephant & Dwat

2006-10-04T12:56:00.000+01:00

Here's a quick doodle that I did on the computer, I quite like the starkness of it and that there's not much feathering and faffing. I haven't decided on whether to have the Elephant in colour or B & W yet, it may depend on how much solid black is in the final artwork. I'm also undecided on whether to ink traditionally or digitally, on one hand I like the idea of using traditional materials and having original artwork at the end of it but inking digitally can be more freeing when you don't have to worry about art supplies and the mess and have access to that most wonderful feature - the multiple undo. I also find that I can feel more open to experimentation with the marks I make when inking digitally. I may end up with some sort of compromise, I could pencil the pages traditionally and scan them in and ink digitally.

Anyway, this is the Elephant with his companion Dwat, I've used the Dwat character in a comic strip before called The Malice Family. He was a somewhat unsympathetic character and I think I'm veering towards him being a bit more likeable this time around (I stress the "bit"). The Malice Family was semi-autobiographical and the Dwat character was based on somebody very real who happens to be one of those people that are so extreme and often very funny and entertaining when dropped into almost any situation. Or so I hope. In reality he was a never-ending source of entertainment but also a monumental pain in the arse. As I've explained before he's also to blame for the name of this blog.

The Elephant - In Colour

2006-10-03T18:30:00.000+01:00

I inked and coloured the sketches posted below and here's the result. He should probably be wearing a smoking jacket. Still, there's always a next time. All good men (and elephants) should wear a fez when relaxing at home. Cats & monkeys too.

The Elephant

2006-10-03T17:53:00.000+01:00

Here's a couple of recent pencil drawings for a character that I came up with some time ago, I've always wanted to draw a comic strip with this character ever since I came up with a name for him (which I'm not going to divulge just yet) but I wasn't entirely sure of what I wanted him to be. Initially the strip was going to be a super-hero parody type of thing (if I can find the very first drawing I'll post it) but I wasn't completely happy with that and at one point I was planning on doing some sort of kids book thing with him and then I ended up completely second-guessing myself into inaction. Since then he's been lurking somewhere at the back of my cobwebbed mind, slowly taking shape, so I've decided to try and flesh him out in a more concerted fashion and actually do something with him in the near future. If I make some public proclamations I may actually feel like I ought to live up to them and produce some more comics.

Militiamen Gathering - Part 4

2006-10-02T13:35:00.000+01:00

Here's the final all coloured up (I kept within the lines and everything). This was for a client in the US, the publication is produced for schoolchildren and I was asked not to include too many pitchforks for fear of satanic connotations which seemed a little extreme to a Brit like me - bit of a shame as pitchforks do appear to be a more useful and deadly weapon than a spade or hoe.

Not that I'm an expert on such matters.

Militiamen Gathering - Part 3

2006-10-02T13:26:00.000+01:00

This is the line art. Finished art coming up next.

Militiamen Gathering - Part 2

2006-10-02T13:19:00.000+01:00

The house I used for reference was a bit too grand so I had to change it to something more modest. Here's the pencils at a stage or two further on.

Militiamen Gathering - Part 1

2006-10-02T13:06:00.000+01:00

The second illustration I had to do for this recent job was of the militiamen, that Sybil had been rounding up, gathering outside her father's house, her father being Colonel Henry Ludington. This is the very first compositional sketch of the gathering that I did, it's very rough but it was just to see if I was on the right track.

Sybil - Part 4

2006-09-27T11:10:00.000+01:00

Here's the final version of the illustration, I'm reasonably pleased with how the horse came out as horses can be difficult to get right, they're quite tricksy things to draw. Sybil's face has been softened and made more feminine compared to the inked version posted previously, the client wanted her to look feminine and determined and the previous drawings didn't exactly show that, the scene was also meant to have a "sense of urgency" and I hope I pulled it off for the final artwork.

This is one of three illustrations that were commissioned along with some scrolls for text to be placed on - this was for a full page, one of them was just a very small spot illustration of Sybil on her horse and the other was about a third of a page and shows the gathering of the militiamen which I'll probably be posting something on next.

Sybil - Part 3

2006-09-25T12:35:00.000+01:00

Here's the inks, all done with Pilot DR fibre-tip pens mostly using a 0.1 size pen with a bit of 0.3. Some cleaning up to be done at this point still, but it's pretty much finished. There was some back and forth with the client on a few elements at this stage, mainly Sybil's face, which went through a few changes over the course of the illustration. You'll be able to see the difference in the finished illustration which I'll be uploading soon.

Sybil - Part 2

2006-09-13T23:20:00.000+01:00

The client asked for some changes so this is the second version of the rough, I think it looks better for their suggestions, not so claustrophobic and the open space suggests more of a ride for poor old Sybil. There were a couple more minor changes before the final pencils were finished. Go here if you want to read about who Sybil Ludington was and what she did. More soon.

Sybil Ludington

2006-09-09T18:35:00.000+01:00

This is a rough of something I've been working on, the illustration has gone through a few changes since this first rough. I'll post more about this soon.

Some Sketchbook Nonsense

2006-07-31T20:51:00.000+01:00

It's been a while so I thought I'd post a bit of sketchbook stuff.

Illustration Friday - Jungle

2006-06-09T14:43:00.000+01:00

Haven't posted in a while, I've been a little busy with work lately, here's something I did originally for Hi-Fi Choice, a bit odd what with the stereo in the picture and all but it does fit in with this week's Illustration Friday topic - Jungle.

Spring: Pencils

2006-04-07T09:32:00.000+01:00

Initially, the buildings weren't in the picture, then I decided to add them to give more of a sense of space. I'm not sure it was the best idea, I think that they might have over-complicated the picture. What you gain on one hand you lose with the other, it's all a matter of balance.

Illustration Friday: Spring

2006-04-06T23:21:00.000+01:00

It's a good thing that this week's topic for Illustration Friday is Spring, after last week's topic I was in the mood to do something lighter in tone. I've been working on this for too long today to be able to say anything insightful about it, I do know that my eyeballs have dried out so I'm going to have one last cigarette for the day and then I'm off to wonderful, lovely bed. Ahhhh, Laramies...the sweet smell of poison.

Thank You

2006-04-03T10:38:00.000+01:00

I decided to have a go at Illustration Friday because I'm not always great at giving myself a brief to work towards and I thought having something sort of imposed on me would be very useful. I didn't really expect anything in the way of feedback considering how many people take part so I was quite surprised to get any comments at all. Thank you to everyone that has stopped by and taken the time to leave comments. You've made it an even more positive experience than I thought it would be.

Now it's time to get cracking on something for the latest topic!

Monster - Pencils

2006-03-31T14:54:00.000+01:00

These are the pencils for the Monster illustration, I got some Col-Erase light blue pencils for my birthday and decided to try them out. From what I can gather they're pretty much the standard pencil for animators. They're really nice to draw with and I can see why animators love them so. For some reason the shade of blue came out incredibly lurid when I scanned them in so I tweaked them a little to resemble the original a bit more.

Illustration Friday: Monster

2006-03-31T14:22:00.000+01:00

Sorry, but I think the topic has changed to Spring as I was posting to the Illustration Friday site, this was done for the previous topic. I was trying to get this finished before the topic changed and was in a hurry and didn't notice. This is the first Illustration Friday I've taken part in. I was running a bit late because I was working on some typical monster stuff for the illo and then realised I wanted to push myself a little and not do a typical monster (as much fun as that may have been). I figured that the scariest monsters are usually the ones that you can't see and this is what I came up with instead.

Pootling

2006-03-27T12:47:00.000+01:00

Just some more pootling about on the 'puter. Seems to be some sort of pointing thing going on, dunno what that's about.

ICA Wallcomic

2006-03-16T17:14:00.000Z

I've just added a comic strip to my site, it was part of a large project for the ICA that many cartoonists were involved with. Click here to take a look.

Euros Childs

2006-03-14T16:59:00.000Z

I went with my girlfriend, Sarah, to see Euros Childs live at Bush Hall on Saturday. He's the lead singer and songwriter from Gorky's Zygotic Monkey and has just put out a solo album called "Chops". I was a bit worried about how good it was going to be, the album has a rather DIY sound and doesn't have the richness and warmth of genuine instruments being played, which is one of the things that make Gorky's so good. Thankfully, there was a proper band playing with him that sounded absolutely great and they really made the album shine. Bush Hall is a pretty little venue although the photos on the site don't really indicate quite how small it is. Euros still looks like he's only fourteen years old and he probably always will with his adolescent physique and his teeny, tiny head which is often obscured by his floppy hair. His small head makes his neck look rather large and wide and I figured he was interesting looking enough to try and draw. Not so sure about the chop, I liked the idea of it replacing the old cartoon cliché lightbulb but I ain't so sure it works. The colouring is a bit slapdash but I wanted to keep it fairly fresh and not overwork it. I might have over-exaggerated the amount of hair but it's what stands out most when he's playing live and shaking his head a lot.

Digital tomfoolery

2006-03-10T15:34:00.000Z

I've been footling about doing some digital doodling today, just for fun.

Middle Aged Food

2006-03-09T12:11:00.000Z

As promised (although a bit later than planned), here's some more of the Middle Ages food spots. I think these came out quite well, they're fairly solid Horrible Histories work and I can look at them without cringing (too much). I tend to prefer working on something more character based than an image that relies on scene-setting very heavily. That's not necessarily an admirable trait but it's definitely where my interests lie. Despite being supplied with some reference for each illustration and usually searching for additional material myself, I always felt it was hard to do justice to the period in the time allotted and that I was drawing with only a minor knowledge of time and place. It probably didn't matter too much as it's all very cartoonish but I like to feel I'm working with a bit more understanding of the material than I usually had whilst working on Horrible History. I confess that despite having drawn all this history based work my knowledge of the subject hasn't improved much if at all.

Website Update

2006-03-06T14:53:00.000Z

Just a quick post to mention that I've updated www.fazchoudhury.com, I've added the Horrible Histories double-page spreads that I did. More stuff for the blog soon, honest...

Look out! Jelly coming!

2006-03-01T10:59:00.000Z

I’ve been working on some illustrations for the Horrible Science magazine and haven’t been posting to the blog of late, I'll try to make up for it. Here’s another Horrible Histories spot illustration, it’s titled Bishop’s Feast but I don’t recall what the story is behind it, a common problem seeing as I've done a fair amount of them. I guess Bishop’s had jelly on some special occasion although I can’t understand why they’d have it without ice-cream! Where’s the fun in that? Is it just me or does this picture seem ever so slightly icky? Something to do with the look on the bishop's face I reckon. Maybe it's not just the jelly he's pleased to see...

This was one of a few spots on food in the Middle Ages, I’ll probably post some more of them soon.

fazchoudhury.com

2006-02-16T16:53:00.000Z

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, I've been busy trying to build my own website, I've finally managed to get it up and running but there's still a lot of content to add. I've put up some of the art I did for the Horrible Histories Collection, namely the cards that were free gifts with the magazine and I've also put up pretty much all of the Hi-Fi Choice work. Some of it you may have already seen here on the blog but I think there's plenty of other stuff to check out. There's going to be some crossover because the blog gives me an opportunity to comment on the work in more detail than the site does.

If you'd like to take a look at what's up so far then please go to www.fazchoudhury.com

If excitement didn't get the better of you and you're still here, the picture below is the rough sketch of the design that I decided to go with for the front page, I kind of liked the sketchy quality of the rough and was tempted to just go ahead and use it but I decided against it in the end. My plan from the beginning was to use a limited colour scheme and try and go with as much white space as possible. I wanted to keep it try and keep it clean, simple and free of anything too fancy looking.

Skills

2006-02-09T16:39:00.000Z

Utilising my newly learned and yet highly honed (Hah!) HTML skills, I've tweaked the blog's template to get rid of that slightly annoying border that was surrounding all the images. This pleases me.

Here's another Horrible History spot illustration, there's probably going to be a whole bunch of these seeing as they've been my primary output for the last few years. This one was done for the puzzle pages. I think it was a spot the odd one out kind of thing and the guy on the right of the picture was meant to be a little drunk and confused as to which item was wrong. I can't remember what the correct answer is but I'd hazard a guess that it's the rifle.

Been busy...

2006-02-09T15:36:00.000Z

I've been a bit busy trying to build my own website, not knowing anything about how these things are done has made it slow going. Ah well, it's all learning which can't be bad but it can be very frustrating. It's something I've been meaning to do for ages, having an online portfolio and presence is quite important for a commercial artist these days and it's about time I sorted it out. Starting up the blogging again has spurred me on to get cracking with it even if it has made posts to the blog less forthcoming.

Here's a picture of a pirate, it was a tryout piece for getting work on the Horrible Histories Collection and was the very first thing I did in the Martin Brown style. Martin Brown being the illustrator of nearly all of the Horrible Histories books and the artist who's style had to be emulated by all the artists working on the magazine. The pistol the pirate is holding looks too large and there's all sorts of things about it that seem a bit off but I guess it was okay enough to get me some work in the end. It was my good friend and partner in inky crime, Dave Shelton, that put me in touch with the esteemed Nick Abadzis who was a consultant for Eaglemoss on the Horrible Histories collection, I'd like to say thanks to both of them for without their help I might not have got the opportunity to work on the magazine.

Table Manners

2006-01-25T16:39:00.000Z

This is one of many spot illustrations I did for the Horrible History magazine published by Eaglemoss. I haven't seen it for ages and just came across it whilst browsing through some folders. The title says it all really.

I can hear tiny footsteps in my head

2006-01-25T16:08:00.000Z

Back again, after a small flurry of activity and a hugely painful, close to incapacitating back pain, which is now on the wane. Hoorah! And...Phew! Didn't fancy having to go and get it "looked" at. Here's another Hi-Fi Choice illustration, I'm guessing it was something to do with sound and emotion but I can't recall exactly what the column was about. All I remember is being asked to have Numskull type characters in it. I don't know if they're still in The Beano but they used to be in it when I were a wee lad.

Update

2006-01-17T15:14:00.000Z

I haven't been able to post anything for a day or two due to a work deadline which is now over, I've also got to finish some work on another project which means I'm going to busy over the next few days too. This means that it'll probably be a short while until I post again, unless I get a few minutes in which to goof around, of course.

Sons of the Dessert Wine

2006-01-12T10:46:00.000Z

This is another illustration done for Hi-Fi Choice magazine, I tried to make the two guys on the right look a little like Laurel and Hardy out of consideration for the Masonic theme. I think this one was about a wine tasting society that would enjoy fine music with their fine drink. The column I was illustrating in the mag tended to take some real audiophile story or fact and then expand upon it. Not all of the Hi-Fi work was fun to do, having to draw highly uninteresting home stereo kit in most (if not all) of them was usually the worst part. Every now and then I'd have some fun with the rest of the content, this was one of them. Not sure about the smiling bloke on the floor though, he doesn't look quite right, perspective's a bit collywompus. At least it looks like he's having some fun.

Why this blog is called What Are You Doing Here?

2006-01-10T15:31:00.002Z

Primarily it's a bit of an in-joke amongst friends, it's a phrase that we associate with this guy we used to know (a good few years ago) who would often use it when bumping into you somewhere out and about. It always sounded like he was surprised you were there or as if he was suggesting you oughtn't to be wherever you were, you know...like a pub, a gig, a shop or other such exclusive venues. He would also say it in his Donald Duck on helium voice (which wasn't an affectation, it's how he actually sounds) and it would often be accompanied with a squelchy tap on your shoulder. I shudder even now just thinking about it. Many of us came to dread the shoulder tap. He had an uncanny ability to turn up when you'd least expect it, like the baddest penny there ever was. Nowhere was truly safe. You could try and hide in a cupboard but he'd probably already be in there, waiting...tap, tap!

The same question is also used over and over again in many TV shows, listen out for it, if you've never noticed it you probably will now that it's been pointed out. It's just one of those things that people don't often say in reality (apart from the aforementioned accquaintance) but is ubiquitous on the telly - much like "Let me get this straight..."

Update: Looking back at it this may come across as being a bit mean about the person in question, but I'm not going to change it as it does sum up how things seemed at the time.

Christmas Card

2006-01-10T14:03:00.000Z

I haven't posted in a very long time but I've decided to see if I can give this blogging lark another go. This is a card I did recently for the company where my girlfriend works. Her boss wanted something to send out to their clients which was also specific to the company. They make facial hair for films and TV, the basic idea was suggested to me and this is what I came up with. This was the first bit of artwork I've produced in quite a while that I could say was in my own style (whatever that may mean). In other words it was an absolute pleasure not to draw in the style of the Horrible History/Science books. I ought to try and do it more often.

The bigger picture

2005-04-05T13:14:00.000+01:00

I also work on the Horrible History magazine for Eaglemoss Publications, these are the pencils for a double page spread on the Georgians. You may have noticed that the picture is partially inked, this was back when I inked directly on the pencilled illustration, lately I've been lightboxing the pencils and inking on a seperate sheet of paper although that's mainly because I'm working on smaller illustrations these days which makes the lightbox option more convenient, I'm not too sure I'd enjoy the process on a larger image. Click on the image to see a larger version, it might take a while to load, it's pretty big.

2005-04-05T12:19:00.000+01:00

This is the pencil rough for the turntable battle Hi-Fi Choice illustration from a couple of posts back.

Heavenly Illo

2005-04-05T12:12:00.000+01:00

I'm still new to blogging so I'm just trying things out here, I'm finding out how to post images and how they'll look when posted. This is just another experiment in doing so, here's another picture what I did draw for Hi-Fi Choice....

Learning

2005-04-05T11:30:00.000+01:00

This is the finished version of the previously posted pencil rough. I can't remember what most of these Hi-Fi Choice pictures were meant to be illustrating, I have a vague recollection that this one was about some kind of comparison between two different turntables (or something similar and equally fascinating).

I thought I'd try out using Flickr to post images, just to see how they turned out and how the text would display on the blog. Ooooh, the excitement.

.

My Final Hi-Fi Choice Illustration

2005-04-05T11:05:00.000+01:00

I illustrated a humourous article on the inside back page of Hi-Fi Choice Magazine for a couple of years, this is the final illustration I did for them. The writer was finding it increasingly difficult to come up with something funny to say about the world of hi-fi and they decided to knock it on the head. Despite some of the strange things I was being asked to depict, and the difficulty of illustrating sound, I enjoyed doing these. I was given a lot of freedom to interpret the brief and could pretty much draw in my own style which, unfortunately, is not always the case in this line of work.