Behance Portfolios - 2014

A round-up of images and drawing from the year that was, 2014, over at my Behance account.

Have knuckled down since the summer in keeping a sketchbook in my hipster-lite Moleskin sketchbook, it's been overall enjoyable and hopefully beneficial, at very least a good way to kill dead time such as travelling to/from work. Link to my first portfolio dedicated to sketchbook pages.

Illustration link contains a mix of comic book material, including cover and pages from my third and final edition of my 'Charlatan Tales' comic series, and one-off illustrative pieces as well first two pieces from ongoing series illustrating A-Z of personal music heroes.

Let's what's at the end of the line in 2015...

Sketchbook 025

December sketchbook pages. Final dump of the year...

Rockin' Robin

Sketchbook 024

Sketchbook pages from the month of November, had a bit of a slow start this month, felt a bit forced digging stuff out. Some pages are from the weekend of my first time attending Thought Bubble.

 

 

I'm having a recurring thing every month of trying out decent good pens then reverting back to using crappy cheap biros. I think because it's so disposable I've got no preciousness or hang ups using it and get some real free elastic linework and nice range of soft and messy build ups of shading, with no real fear of things going wrong or not working. Trying to think how I can use this to my advantage, maybe doing under drawings/layouts in biro then doing tight clean inking over it with a lightbox? If any ideas/tips/suggestions out there feel free to chip in!

Sketchbook 023

More pages from my sketchbook for the month of October.

Things I learnt this month; it's near impossible to use a brush pen on public transport. Also, after a month or so trying different pens, I realise that I really enjoy using cheap nasty crappy biro pens for sketchbooking.

 

Onward...

Saving Snowdrop

Here's a set of children's illustrations I created back in 2012. The client, American-based Learning Media, informed me not to highlight them online until after publication in 2014. Found out last week that the company no longer exists! So here they are...

It was a pretty tight deadline (surprising as it wasn't going to print until 2014?!) so they're pretty basic combo of ink line work and flat Photoshop colouring.

A - Z: B is for...

Following on from Aretha Franklin at the starting line, here's Black Sabbath...

Have really got in to 70's era Black Sabbath in the last few years. Really appreciate the really heavy unique sound they created, all done with real conviction and relish. More than that though, really appreciate the songcraft, melodies, light and shade that they offer, it's not just all one gear turgid heavy (something that I've got problems with with a lot of the sounds that stemmed from them). It sounds obvious to me that they really learnt from the songcraft of The Beatles before them, they just dragged it down in to a damp open grave.

 

This started off as an ink drawing with ink washes applied. It's been some time since I applied ink washes, happy with the noise and dirt they subtlely added to the mix, a sidestep from the usual combo of clean ink work then Photoshop colouring. Will definitely be utilising it more often, hopefully with more confidence, in the future. 

 

 

 

Not 100% happy with how Tony Iommi turned out, he looks like a random footballer from the 70's. I am happy though, with the background tower/bell, I like the hazy look of the ink wash without being supported by any heavy ink linework.

Flute Magic

What do you get your talented flute-playing 10-year old nephew for his birthday. Answer: Flute Magic! This was fun to piece together and helped scratch an itch to do basic, bright, elasticy kids illustration (which I haven't done in some time).

 

 

This was probably the equivalent of someone giving me a 78rpm shellac record when I was 10, but created a little cd package containing fun tracks that all have flute playing present in them.

 

 

Also, printed an A3 print complete with shaky googly eyes. These always make me laugh as they're so harmlessly stupid.

 

Here's the tracklisting...

Sketchbook 022

A bit of a scrappy month in the sketchbook. Tried out a few pens which led to Goldilocks moments: too thick, too consistent... Rarely felt like things clicked in to place and just flowed.

 

Life Drawing 004

First time I've gone to life drawing in some time. Really enjoyable there and then in the moment but when I got home pages looked dull, amateurish with no real insight or the feeling of things locking cohesively together in to place.

 

The life drawing class was 2 and a half hours in length after a long day at work so my concentration levels were flatlining as I got to the final pose below. The instructor (a really nice passionate old man) stood over my shoulder and called me up on everything, basically things I was just making do with rather than applying a bit of thought and concentration to: proportions, angles, planes, tonal weights. He explained 'jumping the lights' to me (using same tonal depths on two differing side-by-side planes which should have differing tonal depths to distinguish one getting more light than the other, causing confusion) which just crumpled me at that late stage

 

Ideally, I'd like to walk away from life drawing knowing that it feeds in to my own drawing and illustration. But at moment, it seems to have just widened the bridge in my head. The exactitude and technique needed for solid life drawing highlights how my own drawing work seems to be cobbled together from lazy stylization tics and papering over limitations. Maybe there's positives to be got from questioning and taking things apart in my head. Hopefully.