Mermaid commission

Here's another commission I did. Kinda made me think of somebody witnessing an alien abduction. Enjoying playing with pure black and white not using colour/greyscale. Client liked it, Hope you do too!

Hunger Games Commission and an iPad WIP

Hi all,

In my new efforts to blog far more often here's the latest pieces I've done.

The first is Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games. I told a friend of mine that I listened to the audiobook not so long ago and in the first book a number of moments stuck with me and I hoped to illustrate some of them. (All of which I'll illustrate soon, I Really enjoyed the first book. And now that I've written it here I HAVE to do it ). My mate Paddy remembered this and since his wife Miriam is a BIG hunger games fan he asked me to do a pic for his wife's birthday. I was more than happy to and was given a direction of ' Maybe a pic of Katniss in the woods hunting deer or something?  She likes those parts of the books.' So I got to work,

This is what I came up with. I'm pretty happy with the result, but more importantly Miriam is! Happy birthday Miriam!

I thought about using Jennifer Lawrence's likeness in the pic, but when I was doing some prep one day I developed a few more designs that I thought were stronger, this one is my fav.  I'll prob do a few more iterations of her yet, she's a great character.

On the note of her hunting I put in two deer amid the trees in the BG, I played around with their negative shapes, tried to give the idea of movement and as they are not both in perfect silhouette, it's almost like Katniss can almost hear them both somewhere in the foliage.

I wasn't going to blog these but they got quite a good reception on Facebook and Twitter so I thought I'd better throw them up here. It's a Wolverine WIP that I have been doing in my spare time on my iPad. Here's pic one from my iPad that I have done with my new stylus

All are done in the Sketchbook pro App using the Griffin Stylus ( many people have been asking what I did them with) , which I really recommend. Still a long way to go with em yet but fun to do and there will always be an iPad drawing on the go now so expect a lot more to follow.


 January has actually been pretty good, I got a rake of commissions in so I have enough Pic's to post for a while. If anyone else would like a commission please contact me via Twitter/Facebook. 

Another progress Drawing: Batman and Catwoman

Hey Everybody

Here's this weeks post. It's a very (very, very very) belated wedding present for two close friends of mine. One night over a few beers my friend told me he'd love a pic of Batman beating the living daylights out of Spidey. Me being a colossal Spidey fan said "Grand", I'll draw one up for your Wedding, only Spidey will be annihilating Bats!

Now after sobering up, keeping the idea that it was a wedding present and my friends would have to look at this for quite a long time I thought Spidey smashing up Bat's face was the wrong way to go. So I tried to go with something a little 'classier'.  This was pretty easy to figure out what it should be considering Batman was the requested hero, so Batman and Catwoman seemed like the perfect route to go down. 

The trick with this was to make this look like Bats and Catwoman are actually in love. Much like my friends Brendan and Helen. And NOT like a typical over sexed up, fan boy mess of a drawing. It was a wedding present, it had to be right.

So after struggling with it for quite some time starting something, finishing it and starting something else again. I eventually landed on this one. Fell on my feet here having struggled with it for so long. Love is supposed to make people strong and weak, I think I managed to keep the character of both of these iconic comic book heroes while reflecting the love that doesn't make Batman stand so tall, and makes Catwoman give up a little bit of her balance.

Anyways here it. If you read all I had to say above, thanks you're a proper legend!

Some really roughs first just to get it started, I'm liking making more decisions while inking/clean up these days

Started working in the details, I use Sketchbook Pro for most of my digital inking and cleaning up my storyboards

I zoom in and out a lot when I work on pieces like this, its important to see all of what you're working on

Here's the final inks on the Happy couple

After I get the drawing/inked part sorted it's into PS for some painting for a variety of brushes.

Here's a C.U. on Batman and Catwoman. I usually leave the brush editor out so I can twist and move the brush

After I get to a point with the digital flats I bring up the opacity on the greys. After going back and fourth This was the final Black and White of the piece.

I turned back on the grey on the characters and played with the Bat Signal splatter in the BG. The whole idea about displaying the bat signal was even over the city Batman watches, Catwoman still has all his attention ( corny and sort of against the character but hey, this is a wedding present :P I can do this because artistic license and stuff!)

Here's the final piece, a colour change and a re-edit of the bat signal. 

I showed the piece to my friends last night, I woke up to a Facebook message this morning. Everybody's happy :)

I'll have another blog post very soon! Laters

Pics!

First post of the new year! Hope you're all keeping well.  These are a couple of presents I did for a few friends of mine for Christmas/Birthdays.

The first one is for a friend of mine who asked me one night to draw her a Panda. I was surprised how much a film like Kung Fu Panda had subliminally seeped a default Panda design in me, so when I noticed this coming through in my roughs I went right back to basics blocked out a tonne of new shapes, just really quick gestures. 

Best to keep everything crazy rough at the start so trying loads of new shapes and gestures is a good thing to do and it helps prevent you over working a drawing and falling in love with what should only be a preliminary sketch and never the final product. I always find that when the shapes/pose have been rushed and not planned out/experimented enough always leaves you with a product that lacks that special something and is usually riddled with mistakes. This is the longest part of my process. It deserves the time when this has been figured out the rest falls into place.  

This particular image was when I was playing with some dog-like characteristics and shapes with the Panda. I was told a long time ago that if you're trying to make an animal character likeable it really helps to add some dog in the design/character of the animal. It's something worth keeping in mind, it always helps me anyways. Here's what I came up with. His name is Peter Panda

 The next one is for my girlfriend, it went through a few iterations again. I knew immediately it was going to be a film noir style to it. I got to play around a bit with this one. The original pose of the woman in the pic I really liked but I kept on changing my mind about the environment. I eventually settled on the last. Got to play around with some new brushed in PS that I have been enjoying. I don't think I've gotten the best out of em just yet, but something is starting to click. This is Lady Fatale

One of the many iterations

Here's the Christmas card version

and here's the final one. My fav

And here's another, This is a Mouse Guard pic. David Petersen's Mouse Guard is class! If you haven't read it I recommend you do. This was a present for a few friends of mine ( They're married now so I can cheap out and get em one present :P Ha!) They have some great art hanging up on their wall and i thought that this would fit in with the rest of their original pieces.

Since they're a married couple I kind of liked the idea of couple of mice running away together and the scape of what is at a mice's disposal in these books is huge. I had a lot of fun working on this one too.  I find drawing a good set of wings extremely satisfying. Got to play with a few new textures in this one as well.

More to come soon getting to the other end of the to do list. Hopefully I'll have as much to blog nest time as well.

Snookered

Hellooooo,

I keep getting busy and leaving the blog idle, so I set myself a new goal. I'm gonna start blogging once a week, whether it's work in progress or fully finished pics it's going up. No excuses! The Internet knows no mercy and neither does my guilty conscience. Soooo I'm really gonna try and stick to this. This means 4 more posts before Christmas and I'm going to continue blogging during the holidays. So let's get started.

Almost as soon as I said that I'd blog once a week on twitter I immediately blanked! Perfect timing. I had nothing. What I was doodling was pretty dire and forced, I haven't actually had a block in a long long time just couldn't shake it off.

Yesterday I remembered that I started saving pics into an inspiration folder ( I hadn't used it in a while). It's full of stuff I thought was pretty cool and it inspired me, but I was too busy to do anything with it at the time so I kept the pic until I had some time to do something with it.  This was the pic I used a inspiration yesterday

It's Duffy. Something about this pic just really hit home and I was doodling ideas straight away. Much better ideas, stronger drawings ( anyone else think she kinda looks like a living Gwen Stacy? Just me? ).  So with Duffy in mind and a project I want to get off the ground next year with Gary Reynolds I drew this,

I'll get to colour this next week and I'll also want to draw something so there SHOULD be a couple of things on the blog by Friday 14th. See you all on the blog for them! Laters

Alright so here's the rest of this post, I started dropping in flats. This process usually takes me a while because I'm partially colour blind. But I have a umber of palettes saved for such an occasion. So I took from a couple of em for this one. This usually leaves me with a general early idea of whether the palette works or not. I probably spend more time on this than any other stage, other than thinking about what I'm going to draw. It's time well spent if you ask me.

This is what that stage looks like. I used to paint primarily in grey before I went to colour but now since I use a number of saved palettes i find it easier to paint with colour and cross reference that with a greyscale. I can then make changes in the greyscale or the colour version, whatever one I feel that I'll get the most out of at the time. Here's what that version looks like,

I think you can tell that in this greyscale I played around with a darker skin tone and black stripes on her top. Something about it just wasn't working for me so I ended up going right back to the drawing. I ended up taking out the dangling strap

I just wasn't able to see it in the colour version but when I brought it back to the line I really felt that the strap kinda ruined the whole flow of the pose. I was happy enough from this point on so I felt comfortable making any additional changes while painting.

Here's some flats with a shadow thrown in. The shadow just helps me see the shapes better when I go to paint it, just I know the kind of brush stroke I'm looking for.

The first thing I do when I start painting is always the eyes. If I get this part right I have the character set, I'm happy. If I feel near the end that it needs another touch up, it gets one. I think the eyes are one of the most important part of the pic. It's where people are going to look, if the eyes don't rest there permanently they are def going to stop for a second or two or slow down before they look at the rest of the pic. I'm sure we've all heard that the eyes are the window to the soul, so give em some time to get em right.

From here on it's all painting and texturing. Going back and forth with greyscale and flipping the image so I know It's all working the way I want.

So this is it almost there.  Pretty happy with how it's looking and at this point its pretty much going to look this way at the end. I always feel like sprinting to the end when I get this far, that's when it's time for a tea break/sleep and come back at it fresh so you don't end up spoiling anything. I'm still fixing things at this point and adding in stuff so best not to spoil anything important.

The Thong. I was referencing a pretty unique thong. I thought it looked fancy, everyone else thought it looked wrong or it had fallen down so best nip it in the bud and make the change. Here's a thong we're all familiar with. I think it was the right call, looks better for it.

This is it almost there. I put up some wallpaper, threw in a few more shot glasses and yes the pool balls actually say 69, Hi-Oh!!

So after a few fixes and the final lights put in here's the finished version, beside the all important Greyscale version I use throughout painting it. I think it lets you see how one informs the other

I ran this past my girlfriend Amanda last night ( If you're into make up and similar stuff like that check out her blog here ), funnily enough she said, "what if she had a black top". I thought that was kinda funny since I tried a black top early on in the process. I shrugged it off thinking it cluttered the palette, but I'm willing to try anything at any stage if it makes what I do better and did up a black top version. I think she may have been right, I honestly can't choose between the two.

More posts to come real soon. I'm hoping to get one more out this week and I'll have another one for sure on the blog next week. Trying to do a lot more with the blog from here on my friend Peter McNally is knocking up a load of great posts over on his blog and it's inspired me to do something similar. Check out his blog if you haven't before it's one of my fav's

 I hope you all dig this I'll do more like it soon, Laters

HULK Test Script

Alright so As promised this week a new blog post. 

The DICE con is on this weekend ( If you don't know about the DICE con go here )so I thought I'd draw up some new pages.  It's from Marvel Adventures Hulk #6 -NAMOR. It's probably the only test script I have left on the computer so I'm gonna have to get some more and do a lot more of these of the next few months.  

Just worked on my pencils here as that's pretty much the gig I'm trying to get. I wanted to knock out another page but I won't get a chance before Saturday with my storyboard job needing some serious attention, at the moment.  Some of you might recognise the first page from ICN, just changed it up here, I think for the better. Also on 2nd look I'm not so content with the last panel on the first page might even just leave that page out, I'll try fix that up next week, time permitting.

Hope you guys dig, wish me luck. Laters!

Guest spot in Tommy Kelly's 'The Holy Numbers"

Hi folks,

Long time no post. Apologies I've been crazy busy lately buuuuuut I'll have another post next week of some new sample pages I'm working on. So I'm hoping these two quick posts will make up for the lack of posts lately, I'll get way more on top of that and post monthly if not every fortnight.

But right now, my friend Tommy has just put up the latest installment of his online comic "The Holy Numbers". A few weeks ago he asked me to do a Pin up for his next issue.  Here it is, I'm posting it up now as he has now put out the book which you can go here and pick it up. At the moment it's FREE I don't know how long it's going to stay that way so pick it up while the going is good!

If you dig Tommy's comic check out his work on the website above, you can find him on twitter and if you are a Reddit user you can get The Holy Numbers there as well.

See you guys next week when I put up the Sample pages. Thanks a mill for all the views I really appreciate it!

Ben

Sketches and Ms. Noir

hellllooo.

So here's my latest bunch of sketches, I've finished another sketchpad and thought I would throw them up on the blog. Anyone who follows me on twitter will have seen this figure studies and sketchpad doodles already, but true to past blog posts I'll put those drawings up here too.

Here's a pic I did on the train last Friday the 13th.

Here's a hipster I saw on the same train. Here I used sharpie, fine pen and because I have no grey tone pantones with me, pencil

Here's a guy I saw outside a bookies

Another guy I saw outside the same bookies

Just a guy walking down a street 

This woman was waiting for her kids to hurry up, she wasn't at all happy

Pretty sure this guy was actually a zombie, one strange looking dude

I think she turned out as the best figure study of the day

This was guy outside a café

Some heads of random people

And this is Ms. Noir.  It's a piece I did for an animation art auction that will be on in the Science gallery next Sunday. There's some AMAZING pieces up for grabs, from old school films such as The secret of NIMH, The land Before Time, All Dogs go to Heaven. Not all of it is drawn/painted either there's some amazing crafted pieces that have been stitched and stuffed and pretty much you name it its there. It's a very eclectic gathering off work. 

I think a big congrats is due to Bianca, Estrela & Simon for organizing the whole thing. It's shaping up to be a great day. All the pieces will be auctioned in aid of The Children's Sunshine Home & LauraLynn House. So if you're free on Sunday the 29th of July and you want to pick up an awesome piece of art you know where to go.


Until the next post. Laters!