Friday, May 26, 2006
do not feed the cartoonist
Word reaches me from Mr Mark Stafford (the most criminally underemployed cartoonist in all Christendom) that he is to be Cartoonist in Residence at the Cartoon Museum for the next 13 weeks. So if you happen to be in smelly London anytime soon drop in and see him and find out what it is exactly that a cartoonist in residence does. Presumably he'll be drawing in a cage while crowds of tourists point, take photographs and throw him fish. Or something.
toodle-um-a-lumma, toodle-um-a-lumma, too-rum-a-ray
Thursday, May 25, 2006
smoking bird
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
a boy
Pretty much an excuse to experiment with a different Photoshop brush to what I usually use. Hmm... interesting(ish).
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
sweepings
This current spell of relative quietude is likely to continue for a little while. I'm working on the cover for another Stephen Davies book for Andersen Press and also trying to come up with ideas for something else for someone else which might turn out to be something very interesting but about which I can't say anything (no, not even to you, [your name here]).
Anyway, so I'll probably not be writing as often to you all my dears but don't think that this in any way means I've forgotten about you. And hopefully there'll still be the occasional drawing randomly posted up now and again. Like, for instance, this chap with a badly placed ear...
Friday, May 19, 2006
cake
Image I drew for a friend's child's birthday party invite recently. Turned out okay I think.
Monday, May 15, 2006
girl
go see
If you possibly can then go see Brick. It's bloody marvellous. Quite the most fun I've had watching a movie since... actually since watching Double Indemnity a month or so ago come to think of it. Which is appropriate. As you'll discover when you see it for yourself.
Friday, May 12, 2006
the Colonel
I think I may have finally, more or less, settled on a design for a character I've been working on for a while for a possible series of strips. This is the Colonel as he stands at the moment...
Now it's time to take another look at what Hibbs, his personal gentleman's gentleman, should look like.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
life of a pen page twenty-seven: the death of a pen
It's over
No flowers, please.
(Click image for large version)
Sunday, May 07, 2006
life of a pen page twenty-six
I'm having to hold the pen almost perpendicular to the page now because there's so little fibre tip left...
(Click image for large version)
Thursday, May 04, 2006
life of a pen page twenty-five
(Click image for large version)
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
big fella
Pentel brushpen, from photo ref.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
life of a pen page twenty-four
It is increasingly my belief that an employee of Pilot (UK) Ltd has been breaking into my home at night and surreptitiously refilling the pen with ink so that this project unwittingly becomes an advertisement for the DR drawing pen's longevity. Twenty-four pages! This is surely not natural.
(Click image for large version)
Monday, May 01, 2006
spitting alien
Pretty much just practising my inking on this...
belated plug 2
I've been meaning to give a plug to The Barnstables' (nice touch that apostrophe, took me a while to notice it but I was glad when I did) for quite some time but somehow never got round to it until now. I know nothing of its creator, wiLbur, but having myself made failed attempts at working in the classic newspaper strip format in the past (and having noted the dearth of worthwhile work in said format in your actual bloody newspapers these days) it's both refreshing and incredibly dispiriting to see someone using the form so effectively and with such apparent ease. The bugger. Anyway, it's funny, charming, original and its author knows both how to write and to draw funny. Go read some.
belated plug
It occurs to me that I entirely failed to note the publication, some weeks ago now, of Mr Stephen Davies's children's novel Sophie and the Albino Camel for which I produced cover art and about a dozen black and white illustrations.
Oops.
Anyway, I'm telling you now - it's out and it's good: a properly breathless page turner for (I think) children of around 8 years old. There's stuff I'd do differently with the interior illustrations if I were to start all over again (basically some of them would have benefitted from a bolder, less fussy approach) but broadly I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out and the cover came out well I think. Go buy several copies each immediately.
