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...