Ipad paintin'

Been able to get hold of a sensu brush and have been playing with sketchbook pro, It's great to be able to do photoshop style paints in front of the telly or a spare moment. Bush is better than the stylus that's for sure - still a lot of opacity changes as it's not pressure sensative. (it's still no cintiq but it's made it easuier for me to use sketchbook pro on the pad)

A quick study from some one else's image - I was liking the red/orangess in the skin.

Did this guy while watching the Snooker over the bank holiday at my parents as a sport it provides much time for drawing. (I think it's got a slight bit of Stapley/Scott C vibe going on here which I like) I have no significant interest or understanding about the sport beyond "Gosh, that was quite clever" but I just love the TV format, especially all the close up shots they do of men trying to figure out really hard angles...seems pretty surreal and comic to me. Will try and revisit as a theme I hope!

Sketches n' Studies

Generally my personal output has been very much the rougher sketchbook and development stuff recently, partly because there's a release dates looming so works getting pretty time demanding, but also amongst the creative team at MC there's been much discussion and exploration of our art and encouragement to go back and learn a few basics and break into some new habits (in my case anyhow)

There's been much colour studying going around, i've really negelcted to do these for some time so have really enjoyed giving them a go, trick is to keep doing a study a day according to Nathan Fawkes; these are just 20 mins each from movie stills, but i'll be doing whatever looks nice is suspect!

This time last weekend I was able to attend a sketch-crawl for a few hours in the Natural History Museum, so got a mix of sketches there. (Man was it busy)

Plus the pleasing Pangolins!  A few of us were quite taken with this curious creature, one can never really be 100% sure with the exhibits at the National History Museum, how much is down to it's naturally exotic form or just a Victorian taxidermist buzzing off his tits on Morphine. (see the stuffed Jerboa a few cabinets down)

Still the Pangolin is a very characterful fellow regardless...As a video games artist it just feels like someone has already designed this fellow.

Fun with life...

We had a fun life drawing model this week, who was really relaxed and imaginative we got a load of drawings done but towards the end just I started to have some fun with it. These aren't the greatest, but they're starting to get more expressive than my usual (probably as i'm around more gesture based sketchers at the moment) Still a long way to go before i'm confident that I can capture more of a figure (and it's intent) on a page but there's a touch of this (plus I like how i've managed to get a few more bits on the page.)

Weekend Sketching...

Been a little busy with work this past week, and doing a lot of stuff with Maya and Unity (still kind of at the basics with it but it's a pretty sweet bit of software) so hankering after some drawing and sketching massively.

Scored some new pencils and a few smaller sketchbooks in the hope I might be able to get a bit more done while waiting for things, also smaller sketchbooks just seem to make for pleasing artefacts.

Just been doodling after listening to an adaptation of Neil Gaiman's 'Neverwhere' on Radio 4 Extra (which I enjoyed.) Guess the idea of keys, rats and a subterranean city stuck with me for a while. I'd really like to do more narrative stuff in future too.

Been a plenty of really cool stuff going on with some of the (v.talented) guys at Mind Candy giving some insight to their way of drawing, painting, capturing figures etc. Including some gesture based stuff, I like the below as it incorporates a bit more force and flow in the figure which lends it a bit of weight my character bits sometimes lack. I've also been looking a little at Matessi's Force book but haven't fully embraced that yet, early days but it's good to acknowledge something new.

Shame I didn't finish the figure and get both feet and hands in - although I liked how it turned into the makings of a potential character (referred to as 'Blammo'); An obsessive figure perpetually wound up and ready to strike, but  kept eternally waiting for his varmint. Some of this comes from the pose which I may not have necessarily have thought to look at before.

Lastly just some Biro drawings because I bloody love a good Bic medium, and get a bit too much of a kick out of rendering things with them sometimes...

Just looking back at these I'm starting to see how nice smaller sketchbooks are for rapidly exploring different stuff in a sequence. Hopefully fill a few and post some more!

Old pictures of the day!

I've been revisiting my old sketchbook for scans recently - I love these old drawings - they're not the greatest but they're a lot of fun, dating back almost 10 years some of them, and sll pre-digital... I'm actually pretty envious about how stupidly carefree and silly these are...(or perhaps I'm just envious of how much free time I used to have to draw pointless guff?)

A Brief History of Fun 

Some Other Weird Stuff

That is all.

Space Travel!

Just an older piece I dug out for an ongoing comic project of mine -thought I'd stick it up here since I've been doing some writing for it again. I'm currently looking for 3 non current job images as part of an quick profile thingie for some of my colleagues, so may stick up some older pieces that i'd forgotten about up here...

Book Cover

Just a quick update on the cover illustration side project for a friends book - here's the final(ish) version. Being doing this around an awful lot of other stuff so glad to get it finished after a fair few months! It's been ages since I've spent such a long time on one image, but kinda nice not to be racing through it like with game concept stuff.