What Ive been up to...

The blog was under siege from a zombie horde for a while, then I kinda slowed up on that project to focus on another. Colouring, something regular viewers would know I never considered a strong point of mines, but recently things have changed. I just needed the practise really.  I was waiting on the writer behind the project's Stephen Coffey to put these up online before I did, and proper order too. The first one here is from the story "Red Ghost" with fantastic artwork from Robert Carey  ( theartofmansloth.blogspot.com , seriously, check this dude out!!)

Secondly, the equally great work from Cormac Hughes from the story "Society of the remarkable suicide". 

"I'm not a procrastinator....."

Pomodoro sketch...

...pomodoro, you know that 25 minute time management technique I was on about, well done this well before the timer went off. I'm pretty slow drawer, and I'm always looking to improve me speed, so going to keep doing this as practise.

Skimming the archives....

.. archives, I like that word. Its as if I have a dusty old room filled with forgotten art locked away in cob web draped drawers, lit by a swinging bare bulbed light dangling from a low ceiling. Yes, it conjures up some imagery for me.  But in reality, archives are just a folder named " Kevins arty stuff ", and in there was the below pieces. The first is the pencils from a recent piece I done for the Eclectic Micks  birthday bonanza , click the link there to see the finished piece sitting nestled amongst some amazingly talented people.

Some of yous may have come across the story I done for the Talesofthe  Christmas season, below is the first  sketch I done for it. EMO kid, Elf, its already a dark christmas in itself.

And finally, these two sketches are different concepts of MARK, I cant tell you who or why he is yet, but in time...so stay tuned folks.

40 minute ink attack......

...Every now and then I like to leave the pencil and just try and throw something out in ink, its not intended to look perfect but rather to try a capture an atmosphere........

Page 4 coloured (finally...)

Some of the survivors...

These are they first attempts at some of the characters that will be appearing in the "Zombies Hi" story. I couldnt have been bothered with scanning each one so I just went down the much handier route and took pictures of them. These were done real quickly so some of the different profiles aren't exact but I'll sort that when i do proper data sheets for each of them. Done 4 of these on a3 bristol board, so there roughly a5 with a good oul pencil.

...and bats and hellboy, just cause their cool. ( they will not be in the story, unfortunately!!)

Productive productive... ( BIG RED )

What an evening folks. I've been using a time management technique for the first time ever, I seen Jim Campbell and PJ Holden talking about it on twitter - promodore, pomorodo, pomeranian, something with p,r, and o anyway. You get a stopwatch or any alarm device, set it for 25 minutes, work flat out, no lifting that head then when the alarm goes off you break for 5. For me its been great, it like your racing yourself to see what you can get done it the 25 minutes. Also it stops me from being distracted by the inter web, ill have 5 mins to do some mild coast the cyber waves. So using this, I got a page nearly fully coloured tonight plus 8 charcater designs done! For me this is muy mucho production. And just to wind down I done this uber quick wee sketch in manga studio.......BIG RED....

Sketchy fake possible cover...

Ties of Blood

Our story done for the "If stones could speak" anthology, written by Danny McLaughlin and art myself, and of course not to forget the wonderful Holly for putting up with all me photo ref torturing and doing the majority of the flat colouring for me, has went online. You can check it out by clicking here.

Creative Suicide- Number 3

This is alot sketchier than the others I contributed- its a time issue......

What lurks behind the cupboard door....

Theres this cupboard, right beside my desk. The mess of it was unreal, stray pages, forgotten sketch pads, abandoned stationary and much much more, I was always scared of opening it incase it came toppling out on to me. But recently its been really annoying me, so today when I got in from work I ripped everything out and organised it. Amongst it was a little A5 sketch pad from last year sometime that i had all but forgotten about. There was 8 pages in it, 8 pages I challenged meself to, one page in one hour. I remember doing this to see if I could tell a story without any direct dialogue, and to see if I could draw fast... so here they are ( rough round the edges but with a lively energy I like) .....

Page 3 finished!!!

Colourin page 3....

Been flat out this last week colouring, not something im very fond of. It always takes me awhile to get into it but then I stops being a chore and becomes enjoyable. I think part of the problem comes from tackling it all yourself, you get sick looking at it, but with page I found myself quite excited earlier. I was worried a week or two ago that my decision to not put in any blacks when inking was weakening the images, but now with "some" added blacks and a touch of dramatic lighting I can see it strengthening and am alot happier with it. So here what ive got done one page 3 over the last 2 nights....

On other news, Ive done a shot blog interview for Daniel Clifford along with several of the other artists contributing to the Newcastle based anthology "Sugar Glider" you can check out here.

Colour process...

Ive put up alot of processes on here, but all dealing with the line art more than anything else, and I was just sitting messing on photoshop, turning on and off the layers- I enjoy seeing it come to life and thought id share. Wile good of me I know....

...so you already seen the line art for this page, the first thing I do is flat colour everything, the colours at this stage aren't necessarily the finished colour but more for selection purposes ...

...cause this is a night seen I add a layer over the top filled with blue then lower the opacity to what I want...

...then comes some blacks to add more depth....

...add a midtone to the edges of the blacks, usually a 70% grey...

..then light it up...

Alien sketch...

Quick break time sketch from the colouring....well back to it then....

Preview....

Quick wind down profile sketch- Captain Nemo....

Getting there now....

I know for a fact that Im going to fly throw the next few pages. Doing this one was finding the way I wanted to do it as of course the colours I was going to use, so now that I have the most of that information I should be able to fly threw the rest. Plus the next few are dialogue heavy and just involve the 3 characters talking..... only one slight horde.

Jez,.... are you's not bored yet....

....yip, "more fracking zombies" I hear ye say. What? stop judging!! So I'm a slow worker, well its in half assed half finished technicolour so at least be happy with that. But, I will do a piece for the blog specific at the weekend. Promise.

I am a very unsure colourist, never had while good colour theory and I know its hard to say when this is work in progress but if anyone has any colouring advice or tips for me, please let me kow in the comments. Cheers.

The characters got ripped out from the top of the walls earlier, was not happy with the way I left them so figured, if I take them out I'll have to redo it better. The first pic there, page 3, have I put in too much in the second panels, opinions would be most welcome.....

Bits and bobs...

Sunday, Sunday....
I done a clean wipe of the laptop last and havent put back on all my files but when I do Ive got pages 3-4 fully finished of Zombies Hi, and hopefully some interesting news about it in the next few weeks. So today, computerless whilst Holly worked her computer magic I decided to get two tattoo designs out the way. The first is a redesign, the tattooist said there was too much detail and I had to strip it back, putting in more shading instead of lines. The scan of this looks pretty bert in comparison to the real thing, my scanner has been gradually degrading as of lately. Everything comes of so ragged and pixelly!  And the second was a real quick one, just to see if it was what the 'tattooee' wanted, ill get round to tidying it up if its ok.

And this next one is, well it says....

Also got my piece pencilled for the Eclectic Micks blogs birthday bash, so wish I could post it, had a lot of fun doing it but you'll just have to check their blog on the 24th February. Enuf said.

A charcater that will coma along later in the story.......

Just a quick screenshot....

Arrg...ahhh,...nahhh...fuck it!

ITs the bottom left panel, its just annoying me, think im going to rip it out at a later stage, right now I want to power on to end then edit after. This is just the characters, sweet thing about setting a book in your town is you can go get the perfect pic reference for it. Unfortunately I've been too busy to get near the town. Im currently working my through the inking of page 4, and everything else is top secret so your getting more zombies, and thats it. Ok.