Work In Progress

It's a logo idea, innit...

Garish

First completed S&P overview shot. Probably going to have to work on that background though...

Comfortable Shoes

Here's yet another comic concept I've started, though it's most simple one yet. Two old men in a pub chatting. Well they will be when I finish a complete strip (top one's full body of fella on left).

Bobby 'Fly' Posters

To hopefully make the cartoons easier I've started to trace the characters in illustrator, so I can start to build a library of elements that I can just drag and drop to create fresh cartoons. It's going to take a long while but I guess it's important to do it bit by bit. This is as far as I have got with Fly so far.

First full colour 'Stickers and Posters' one panel.

Right, finally got a finished piece done. I know, the humour's terrible, but it was about the process of completing a full work. I'm sure it will evolve and get better (hopefully) as time goes by.

Slipping

Been lazy again and forgot to post, here're two oldies.

The Manifesto

The past couple of days/week or so I have been a little lax with my posts putting little or no effort into the work I produce. This has been as a result of my getting bored and frustrated with the work I have produced.

As a result I have decided to go right back to basics with what I churn out, trying to rediscover what I wanted to do as a kid, which was to draw comic books. However as I got older I realised I probably didn't have enough talent to do this and so looked to finding employment that was more likely to guarantee income, hence the job in graphic design. Since then I've been trying to 'discover' what area of art/illustration I was best at and most enjoyed, and yet at the same time not really given myself enough time to explore these areas fully enough.

So now I have decided that I am going to go back to that dream I had as a kid and actually try to produce some finished comics, starting with a few basic three to five panel strips then maybe a page and so on. I'm going to first work on ideas that I have had already and take them further (for instance the Stickers and Posters strip). Because of this all my daily posts will be cartoon-centric and some will be step by step stage reports on various projects. Admittedly it's a change of direction for the blog which I set up to allow me to explore various ways of working. However, I feel I've very much started to become a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none.

So there we have it, the blog posts will still be daily but now focused on me trying to develop my ability as a cartoonist. I hope those of you that actually read this won't be put off and will continue to lend support.

Thanks, take it easy
Si

PS The guy in the image is meant to have his hand on his heart, see what I mean about lack of cartooning ability?

Profile pics

Profile pics of a couple of guys from work for the work website.

Sketchy

Poor photo of a poor sketch of a character for a comic I want to do.

Pull shapes

Had a busy weekend so haven't really able to get down to work, so here's a couple of images I did toying with basic shapes to create quite pleasing abstract images. I was working on some t-shirt ideas in this theme, because I like the simplicity and bright flat colours. Oh yeah, the black is what the colour of the tee would be, I think a shape in a square might ruin it a bit.

Wolfman

Finally...

This was what I meant to upload yesterday, Cyclops in the same theme as the Vampire and Minotaur (he's meant to be a bouncer).

Cogs

Nuts, utter fail again, forgot to upload the piece I did yesterday.
This isn't it, but was a fun piece nonetheless, did it for a competition (I didn't win).

Quickie

Just a quick sketch I did in the same vein as the Minotaur about a week back. Awhile ago I planned on doing a series of little illustrations transposing mythical creatures and monsters into modern day situations/environments.

This piece is meant to be a Hoxtonite style dandy vampire, I always saw them as a little fey, but charming. More will probably follow over coming days.

Done

Without spending another week (or more) on this, I think I have taken this piece as far as I can.

So here is the finished article for your delectation or derision.

Hard to see the changes

Made some minor tonal changes and added lots of line work, kinda need to see the real work to see the suble differences here.

Getting there

Making good progress, more tonal work on the face, and started to correct glasses, also started to draw in some shading detail in similar style to earlier work I have posted.

You may also have worked out by now I'm only going to paint his face, the rest is going to be done in a mixture of styles which will be revealed as the rest if the painting is done.

Part 3

Phew. Actually got a chance to work on the painting again today. Started adding a little more detail, but there's still a long way too go. I expect most progress to be made over the weekend.

Rubbish

I was working late tonight, so failed to get any further with my painting, however, to make sure I uploaded something I've put up an old biro sketch from way back in '07.

Stage 2

So here's the second stage of my painting 'experiment'. This time I laid down some rough midtones on the face, and it's already starting to take shape.

And now for something completely different

I"m trying something a bit different over the next week. I shall be working on one piece -a painting- and uploading images of my progress each day. As the piece is A3 and I only have an A4 scanner you'll have to make do with dodgy phone camera photos.

And for day one, the basic colours blocked in, hoping to do one of these larger scale pieces a month.

Utter Bull

It's a hillbilly minotaur. Woulda coloured it but it's getting late.