Dino doodle.

Tinyfaces

A few sketchbook scrawls.

Comp

My Rocky comic entry was one of the 16 to make it into the mini-digi edition of Little White Lies, which is here. Pretty chuffed with that, particularly as there were some really good and witty entries. Have a look!

Canal, pens

I splashed out on a some new drawing pens the other day. And a nice fat marker pen too, one that doesn't even bleed through to the back of the paper. I got pretty excited about these.

These top two sketches were scrawled with an old marker pen though.

I'm going to be buying some new paints soon. VERY excited about that. : )

This is my 50th post on this blog, which is pleasing. And this year I'm already well past my total bloggaging for last year, oh yes.

Background

I posted this painting a few months ago, but I've just gone back and repainted the background because it was just stupidly too dark, to a ridiculous degree. And it makes such a difference instantly. While I'm not particularly fond of this painting, it does look so much better with a sensible tonal balance. I'll learn eventually...

Doing this brought to mind another obvious lesson that I often forget, that being to simply mix enough paint. Mix too much paint. Because if you run out half way through, you're gonna have trouble mixing it the same. It'll dry. It's going to look a mess, and you'll only end up using more paint than you would if you'd done it properly in the first place. I guess this is more important with watercolour painting really, where if you run out of a colour halfway through a wash, the piece is pretty much KO'd. It's just common sense, probably the first thing to tell someone who's about to start a bit of painting. And mixing decent quantities of paint is fun anyway. But I often don't do it.

Mental note for me: mix too much paint.

6 Panels

The results of the Little White Lies Kick Ass comic competition came out the other day. The winner is a real stunner, take a look. The winner and 2 runners-up (not me) have been announced on the Creative Review site, a long with a few other favourites. Mine can be seen along with a few more on the Bleeding Cool comic blog (I found this through Andrew Waugh's blog, so thanks for that), which has run a feature on the competition. So I'm crossing my fingers I might still sneak into the selection published in the mag's digital edition, out on friday.

There were some really stunning entries, I've got to say, and a lot of different approaches. Go and spend a while checking 'em out!

Statue

I went with my girlfriend to check out the newly reopened Medieval & Renaissance galleries at the V&A on saturday. It was ace (although a room or two were still closed off). I'd thoroughly recommend taking a look . Managed a couple of sketches: the first is of a cast of Donatello's Judith and Holofernes, the second is a renaissance statue of Apollo.

Boxhead 'roo

Rose

I did this for a book cover design competition run by Venus Febriculosa. My design is inspired by gothic architecture and scholasticist philosophy, which lies at the heart of Eco's novel. I think I could've done something nice with the concept with a bit of time to fiddle and try things out, but it was a major rush-job again really.

But I guess it was useful to use Illustrator a bit for once, and I hadn't done anything design-related for ages. And one of the things I really love about this whole 'Illustration' idea is getting to learn about new things: I learnt a lot about medieval architecture, churches, 1300's philosophy and Italian Gothic while researching this.