a few random bits

This was originally meant to be Cohen, thats Detective Cohen, another of me and Danny's characters that I realised  hadn't been on the blog-sicle before.....but, I ended up with someone else, this ain't Cohen! its just some boy that was floating round me head that stole Cohens jacket and hair! The bastard! I'll call him- Pernell, the irish Cohen, why not! Done this with just brush and ink too see if it would give me a cleaner line when scanned- it did a bit.

This you'll have seen before, its the first page from my next story for tales of the, but it comes to you now in new greywash courtesy of photo-ma-shop........

Make sure to check out the tales of the website next week for the full 9 page tales, in fact get over there now a check out the lastest story from Andrew Croskery, who provides writing and pencils and inked my Stephen Downey.

The above here, is another product of Manga Studio. First of all it was really handy doing the face cause of the awesome tool which is -the symmetry tool. You only have to draw half of it!! The background is one of the preset backgrounds, which works for sketchy stuff but don't thing I would feel happy using them in print pieces. 

You've probably noticed that alot of my sketches are head and shoulders, so I've decided to start doing more full body, action pose stuff, and the best way I've figured is to draw up some already existing characters. So if you've any charcters you'd like to see me to draw just give us a shout in the comments. 

super sketchy batman

Done this the other day while I was watching some of the magic box with the pictures on it, had to put something up here it had been too long, and there was no bats up here so........its really rough, had to put a filter over it to make it half decent, think me scanners starting to act up, everything is looking grainy.

Who's there...

Another piece for the Nightmare Manor. Really like the creepiness the grey wash added to this piece.

squirmy wormy thingy.....

Return of the tree...

...so I've went back on my whole doing this digitally idea, I done six pages of rough work in Manga studio, but I came across tooo many annoying bits that counter acted the benefits of digital work- I will get there, just did some more practice. So what I done was I printed out my rough pages and used the light box to do tidier pencils, I wanted to use just the pencils but the scanner wasn't picking them up to well so out came the Indian ink and voila......

Nightmare Manor colour.....

Yo, yo yo. Just finished off colouring this. Had to do a bit of editing on this which I only noticed in the colouring stage. For instance the bleeding eyes I had just floating about in sky had to go, just looked wrong, and Larry told me that they were in the way of where the banner would go. Also, I should have put in a foreground, regret it now, but I tried to jazz it up with some grass and bushes brushes-that flows well- in photoshop. So let me know what ye's think..............

A bit of everything.....

All from the Nightmare Manor, these first couple are quite rough round the edges, but there just to give the woman making the costumes an idea what they want,.....

These next couple are for the advertising part, I'm not to sure about the colour behind the thing in the tube, so if anyone has any suggestion for me leave them in comments.

"Come in if you dare..."

The cook and the Graveyard

Sounds like a doctor who episode title!! These are more illustrations from the work I'm doing for the 'Nightmare Manor'..........

More Haunted Mansion stuff...

Heres an edited piece, I changed the child with the teddy bear to a couple and the seconds a simple illustration for the back of a map, I think its like a treasure map, can't remember....

Haunted Mansion...

I've been asked by the people organising the Haunted Mansion in the Richmond center at Halloween to do some illustrations for their flyers, more info on that at a later stage. They wanted something classic, slightly cheesy but still creepy, this ain't finished yet, there's foreground and backgrounds to go into it, but I wanted to get the main focus sorted first all. I done it with the Rotring pens as I knew they would give it a grittier feel which I wanted, going to gray wash it the mara, I'll post up the finished product in the next couple of days.......

The tree...

....that would be a working title. Got an email last night from Stephen at Tales of and he let me know that for the next seven weeks its no theme-open submissions. So straight away the brain started bubbling away, firstly I was thinking of something involving robots since I had been drawing so many lately. But, a wee gem crept into me head.Its short cause I wanted to do a comic this time instead of writing.  I won't say anything really about it cause I'll want you's to read it. I'm going to be doing it all digital cause its just the handiest, probably be five pages, also cause I'm doing it quickly and shortly I've changed my style on this, simplier and more childlike, so let me know what you's think of the first panel here........

Digital Watcher...

Still working away with manga studio, went a bit further this time and tried using it for colouring. It has a real nice palette, didnt do anything swankay just some flats more than anything...

Digital practice

Still finding drawing with the graphics tablet a challenge, but its something that I want to do cause of the benefits of its edit-ablity (thats not word? really?) So i took the idea of me robot thingy I done yesterday and attempted the manga studio version. I wanted to put up the process but I can't seem to find a way of saving the sketch layers, so this first one is a tidied rough sketch-there was 4 in total, from stick figure to rodo-dude. And the seconds slightly tidier. I'll come back to it during the week and really fix it up and add some textures and stuff..........

 

Robot-inspired.....

Watched District 9 there recently, and well don't want to spoil it for anyone so I'll just say there's a cool robot in it, also I've been playing the Rogue Trooper game and there are these robot guys you have to defeat at the end of the second level. Well anyway, it got me thinking about the robots I used to draw when I was younger and I realised I hadn't drawn a bot since, 'Quibic' which was about a year ago (if I get near an a3 scanner ill get that up here... so out cam the sketch pad and I came up with these quick doodles. Some standard issue robot design but i quite like them....

The Watcher

This is another character from Mithology, pretty boring front on shot I know but I went at this with only a brush. Its something I've been doing recently to try a build some confidence, cause I love the work that's brushed inked. Also I think by working fast, it puts energy into the piece which I know my inking lacks. But hey its all a learning curve. The greys were done using some Letraset markers I picked up recently, they don't have the wash effect I want but they'll do for quickies like this.

Mithology.....

...yes its meant to be spelt with an 'I'. Mithology is a long term passion project for myself and writer-Daniel McLaughlin. It is set millenia ago .I say long term because we know we got a good story, but we are aware ourselves that we have some learning in story telling to do before we fully undertake this bad boy. In my first post I showed two of the characters-Malic, and Pol. So I thought i put up a few more sketches i done of them recently ........

Bron. The strongman, as I so cheesily wrote beside the pic is the classic musclely character- meaning he's dumb as shit. He's the brother of Xon.........

   ...  he is a master of fire, which he uses to his advantage to become the first metal forger and creates great weapons, when war comes ago- cause it always does.

And Ti-ran,........ whats going on there?

Tales of the.........

'Tales of the' is great site, for artist, writers, musicians, film makers, everything creative. Every Sunday they post a new piece and this Sunday is my turn- Buzzing- I've written a short story (with the help of Holly) and illustarted based on their current theme- the undead. So I thought I'd put up one of the pieces here, I was going for a gritty style to complement the feeling of the story so I used dip pens and brush, then grey washed them digitally, quite proud of these...... so make sure to check out the rest hopefully this sunday.........

What to expect

Mostly comic stuff really, but in a variety of forms. Im not the type of artist who uses just one medium, I like trying a bit of everything, so hopefully that will make for some interesting viewing.....

....there will be some sketch work......

.........some pencilled comic pages, they be slightly rough round the edges as I do must of my tidying up in the inks.........

......some inks. These are from un  up and coming anthology 'if stones could speak.....' i've had the pleasure to add 12 pages to. Should be available in September.

 I try to dabble every now and again in digital colouring, more so now than ever before cause of me graphics tablet......

When I got my graphics tablet I also got a program manga studio, its a great program but im not very knowledgeable in it yet but I still try to draw in it. To practise with the program I dove straight in to doing a story, its about the hometown being under seige from a munch of zombies- pretty standard stuff......

and finally, for now anyway, I've started doing some tattoo designing recently, this one here is for a friends back. Its based on a shot from Neill Gaimanns 1602....