Nevermoor

I'd been reading Nevermoor, by Jessica Townsend, which is rather like Harry Potter, only without Harry - and as I always found Harry pretty irritating, this suits me down to the ground. It's the sort of fantasy kidlit book that makes me want to draw all of it, so I've been doing a few sketches:

"Suddenly that's what she was - a living tidal wave of rage and fear. She was not like him, she would never be like him."

"Morrigan stumbled backwards and instinctively threw up her arms, surrendering herself to the wave inside."

Building Practice #1

I thought I really should practice drawing buildings, which have never been my strongest subject. So, I thought, a good way to do this would be to take some interesting buildings that I photographed on holiday, and sketch them, starting with really old buildings, where wonky lines are practically required.

I started out doing black and white sketches, and then moved to colour. But for this post, I'm going to compile just the black and white ones:

Somewhere in Hampshire. We spent a lot of time driving around with our friends, and Hampshire has a lot of winding roads (with no names!) so sometimes I have photographs but absolutely no idea of where they are. Other times, of course, I know exactly where things are, such as this 16th century hearth passage house, which is opposite the square in Petersfield:

This rambling cottage is opposite St Andrews Church in Farnham, Surrey. We were there on our last day in Hampshire, to hear our friend sing in a choir concert in the church. 

And this little place is on North Street in York. York is fabulous for wandering down roads and finding ancient buildings.

All of these were done on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro, using Adobe Photoshop CC2018, and Kyle Webster's 'sketch pencil rough' brush. 

Goggle Eyes

Here's a piece I did for my Middle Grade portfolio, based around Anne Fine's Goggle Eyes, which is a fabulous book. If you haven't read it, you should - and if you've got an Audible account, do yourself a favour and get the audiobook, Jane Asher does such a great job.

"I know!" I cried, "I know why you're so upset. I know why you're crying your eyes out. I know why you don't want to be sent home!" She lifted two fierce, red-rimmed little eyes that burned through the cupboard like live coals. "Your Mum's going to marry that man with grey hair."

Her mouth fell open. I felt like Sherlock Holmes on a good day. "And you think he's a proper creep. You've thought he was a creep all along, but being the sweet Helly that you are, you've been too gentle and polite to say so, and now she's talking about your happy future together, and it's too late to explain that you don't like him."

She twisted her fingers so tightly, I thought they would snap. "Don't like him?" she repeated in a cold, low voice. "I can't stand him." and all the colour drained out of her face.

"Helly?" I flicked the cupboard light switch. Luckily for her, it was the dimmest lightbulb ever seen. I slipped inside and dropped on a pile of old gym shorts and woolies. I pulled the door closed to shut us in. "Listen," I said, leaning towards her, "No need to tell me about this sort of thing. I am the World's Great Expert, Helly Johnston. The stories I could tell you!"

She looked up. "Go on then," she said, still ashen. "Tell me."

***********

I didn't actually plan the image out as square (I want it to look like an illustration in a book, after all). The space above is for text, voila:

As I was suddenly super busy when Colour Collective rolled round, I slapped on some colour (fortunately the 'Delft Blue' prompt was a convenient colour for school uniforms!) so I'm adding that here, although I prefer the black and white version. What do you think? Colour or black and white?

Adobe Photoshop CC2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro.  Not sure how long it took, I worked on it over quite a stretch of time.

Matilda

We watched the movie version of Roald Dahl's Matilda, so naturally I got my copy of the book off the shelf and did a little sketch:

I had fun drawing some 80s clothes. Matilda was published the year after I was born so I can juuuuust about remember people dressing like this.

Adobe Photoshop CC2018 on a Wacom Mobile Studio Pro.

Misc Sketches

Here are some miscellaneous sketches I've done this year:

Katia, the protagonist in the picture book I did for my honours project in Uni. I'm fond of her, every now and then I dust her off:

I don't know if this girl is hiding or discovering something. It's up to you:

There are more below the cut!

The Pirate Stall

'Are you looking to buy.... or looking for trouble?'

Here's a black and white piece I did for my Middle Grade portfolio a little while back. I'd been mucking about with pirates for my nightly sketching, and came up with this little character, who I rather liked. I had fun filling her stall with lots of different wares, and at the suggestion of a friend, I gave her a pet ferret to guard the money. People should think twice about stealing from her now!

As you can see, I'm still working on being sketchier with my final pieces and not getting too hung up on tiny details. What are your thoughts on this?

Here she is all coloured up. It was always intended as a black and white illustration, but I was curious to see how she'd look in colour, so when Colour Collective came up with 'Wenge' as their prompt last week I took that as a sign that I should slap on some colour and see what happened. Wenge is a rather dark, dull wood, so I kept everything looking a bit murky and just slightly sinister. I don't think this girl is necessarily selling wares she came by honestly....

Which do you prefer? Colour or black and white?

Here's a progress animation:

As you can see, this started out as just a character sketch. I don't do fully detailed scenes for my nightly sketching, if I did I'd never get to bed!

Here are some other pirate sketches I did about the same time. I started off with this one, referenced from a photo of someone in the Weekend Magazine. He wasn't a pirate, I just thought he had an interesting weathered face that would be a good fit for one:

I then did this quick little pirate girl:

And finally this character. I see him as the brother of my pirate girl above. They steal stuff to sell on - but to do that you need to know a real jewel from a bad one! 

I did muck about with adding him into the pirate stall scene, but as I hadn't originally planned to have him in there, he really didn't fit so well, so I didn't keep him. 

I used his sister in a recent Colour Collective, which I threw together far too quickly. See? I flipped the image part way through and forgot to fix her eyepatch. 

Adobe Photoshop CC2017 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2. Not entirely sure how long it took me, probably around five to eight hours, with another two on top for colouring. I used Kyle T Webster's Photoshop brushes. I'm pretty sure this was done entirely with the Perfect Pencil and Fat Fun Spongy brushes.

Exploring

Here's a new piece for my Middle Grade Illustration portfolio:

This started out as a quick pose study I posted on social media. When there are good full-body photos of kids doing stuff in the newspaper, I often like to use them as pose studies, to kickstart some sketches in poses I might have trouble with, or not have done before.

Here is that original sketch: 

The girl I used as a reference did not look like that, she wasn't wearing that, she wasn't even climbing through vines - but she was useful as a starting point!

I asked what people thought she'd found, and was given the suggestion of 'a tree kangaroo'. I liked that idea, especially as I'd been thinking more along the lines of 'hidden civilisation' (always nice to get a fresh perspective with fresh ideas!), so I ran with it, and just generally had fun making everything really lush and jungly. 

Adobe Photoshop CC on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2, using Kyle T Webster's brushes - specifically the 'Perfect Pencil' and the 'Watercolour Broad Wash Grainy'.

Portrait: Kim Novak

Here's a new movie star portrait. I don't do many of these now, although they were the mainstay of my work when I was a teenager.

I'll be honest, I didn't like working on this, for reasons I won't go into here. But I never let that stop me from creating work as best I can, and I think the end result is pretty good.

See some of my process below the cut:

Mariella

Here are a few pieces I have done recently of my little ghost character Mariella. 

This was for Colour Collective's Lilac Grey prompt - obviously I had to do a ghost for that!

 

Mariella has a partner in crime - her phalene puppy, Verity. I like to think of them running up and down panelled halls, causing unexplained gusts of wind and shrieking/barking. This illustration did the best on twitter of anything I have ever posted, which was a (very pleasant) surprise. 

And here's last night's effort, done in record time (under three hours) because it's been one of those weeks.... This was for the Cinnabar Green Deep prompt. My squirrels are a bit wacky, it was down to the wire and I had 15 minutes in which to do them both, which isn't conducive to perfect furry creatures... It was originally going to be something quite different, I'm not entirely sure what happened...

And here's a sketch, part of a larger illustration, which started with this sketch and grew, and which will hopefully be finished at some point in the not too distant future. There is always so much to do!

All of these were done in Photoshop on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2. The linework is done with Kyle Webster's Perfect Pencil brush, the colours are done in a variety of brushes

Portrait: Gemma

This portrait of Baby Gemma has recently gone off to the commissioner, so it's time to post it here!

Gemma was a tricky baby to draw, as she is quite fleshy and rounded, which required a lot of care in the rendering to get both realism and a good likeness - I didn't want her to end up looking plasticy! 

My reference was a bit washed-out, but thanks to the wonders of Photoshop I was able to claw back enough detail to allow me to draw the embroidery on her beautiful blanket (with the photograph at its normal state I could barely see the flowers).

Here is a detail:

This portrait took me 15 hours, and I used a 0.5 Mechanical pencil with a #B lead, and blended with tissues, cotton makeup remover pads, cotton buds and blending stumps. I also used plastic, kneadable and electric erasers. For more information on my portraiture tools, head over to this tutorial. It's an A4 portrait on A3 paper. If you're after a graphite portrait, please contact me via my website for more information, I'm always open to commissions for both portraiture and illustration. 

Evolution of a simple BLM illustration

I've done a lot of illustrations for Blackline Master books in educational publishing. Here's a look at the process behind a simple BLM illustration:

My brief for this illustration was for the upper body of an traditional Australian Aboriginal mother holding a baby, for a section on totems in the First Contacts Year 4 curriculum. 

My first move was to browse google for a pose that would work. As I was drawing traditional Aboriginal peoples, I had to draw the mother and baby so that no 'naughty bits' were visible - this is for a year 4 curriculum, after all! 

I chose this image:

Image from shutterstock.com

I wasn't planning on using the reference exactly, really I was just after a pose that hid boobs and bottoms. Looking at the reference I sketched a really rough outline in purple, and then got rid of my reference, as I no longer needed it.  Previously I would do this stage on paper with a coloured lead, but I find it easier to draw directly onto my cintiq companion and it saves scanning. It was a little tricker using my Intuos, I found my sketching was much more stilted. 

Still using a purple brush, my next step was to refine that rough outline on a new layer. 

I then created another new layer, and started to digitally ink over my rough with a black brush. I got partway through before I decided that the baby was too old, so I did some rearranging to get the baby closer to a newborn. 

At this point I was mostly finished, but I didn't like the mother's hair, so I gave her a revamped hairstyle. 

My final step was to add some darker outlines, which is my standard practice for BLM illustrations. I feel the thicker lines give some definition to the main shapes, leaving the thinner lines to show the details, and it's less likely for everything to get lost in a sea of linework. I like things to be clear, and it's important that kids can see what's what at a glance. 

Here's the final:

Adobe Photoshop CC 2015 on a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2

Illustration: Gwendolen

I've been doing a series of black and white chapter illustrations for my portfolio, using Diana Wynne Jones' Charmed Life. This is the third one I have completed, but the first one I have blogged about. 

Here's the relevant text, from Chapter 8 of Charmed Life:

She was squatting in the middle of the carpet, beside a sheet of paper. At one end of the paper was a bowl of ingredients. At the other crawled, wriggled or lay a horrid heap of things. Gwendolen had collected two frogs, an earthworm, several earwigs, a black beetle, a spider and a little pile of bones. [...] 

Gwendolen began pounding the ingredients together in the bowl. As she pounded, she muttered things in a groaning hum and her hair hung down and quivered over the bowl. [...] Gwendolen at length sat back on her heels and said, "Now!"

She snapped her fingers over the bowl. The ingredients caught fire, all by themselves, and burnt with a small blue flame. [...] There was a fizzing, and a thick smell of burning. Then the flames leapt up, a foot high, blazing a furious green and purple, colouring the whole room with dancing light. 

Here are the steps I went through for this piece:

Step One: Rough Sketch

This is basically a thumbnail. For personal pieces I quite often dispense with thumbnails per se - I plan pictures out in my head while I'm walking the dog, and then do just one rough thumbnail to check that it works on paper. If it doesn't, then it's thumbnailing time! In this case, it worked pretty well first off, although originally I did have her squatting, but that was ambiguous with the shadows and not as aesthetically pleasing as kneeling.

Step Two: Draft Linework

Usually I will do this step in pencil, as I don't draw very well directly onto the computer - but I have just invested in a Wacom Cintiq Companion, and so I was able to do my draft linework digitally. I want everything to be as tight as possible so that I don't hit any snags while I'm inking. I like this sketch a lot! I think I need to do more pictures just like this - but as this image is part of a series, I couldn't leave it like that, I had to work it up to match the others.

Step Three: Tonal Study

I always do my tonal or colour studies on my draft, because I hate suddenly discovering that something doesn't work when painted while I'm painting. Here I just slapped on some rough tones in Photoshop. It's especially important to do a tonal study when the lighting is so strong and complicated!

Step 5: Inking

I print out my draft linework and use a lightbox to trace it onto watercolour paper, using a Pentel Brush Pen and technical pens (in this case, Copic Multiliners) for the smaller details.

Step 6: Painting

I painted this with black watercolour and black and grey Ecoline inks. My black Ecoline had decided to die on me, going very goopy and recalcitrant, so I was having a bit of trouble with it - because of that, I softened the edges of the smoke digitally after I had finished, as I couldn't get the smooth blends working in the way I wanted. 

As luck would have it, the twitter Colour Collective theme this week was 'Lamp Black'. I finished this painting on the Friday, and was able to post it for that! You can see all the Colour Collective pieces on the Facebook group.

Ink, Watercolour, Ecoline, Copic Opaque White and Adobe Photoshop CC

Charmed Life is copyright Diana Wynne Jones, this is a personal exercise, no copyright infringement intended

Galileo's Daughter

About ten years ago I listened to Dava Sobel's Galileo's Daughter on audio. I don't remember much of the details, but the idea stuck with me. Midway through last year I worked up a rough sketch on the topic, which sat on my desktop until about a month ago, when I found I had some free time to work on my portfolio. 

Galileo had three children, the eldest of which, Virginia Gamba, corresponded with him from her convent in Arcetri (she and her sister Livia were placed in a convent as Galileo could not afford to raise them or pay their dowries) until her death. There is apparently some evidence that she prepared some of his manuscripts for print, and there are references to his work in her letters, and she appeared to be fairly well educated. The idea that Galileo must have shown her what he was working on seemed to me a nice topic for a portfolio piece, and I plan to do a few vignette illustrations to go with this full-page piece. 

This illustration is set in April 1610, when Virginia was 10. She would enter the convent when she was 13 and take the name Marie Celeste.

Here's a detail of the faces:

And here's an animated gif showing the main stages of my process:

I started off with a rough digital sketch. I used pose mannequins and the perspective rulers in Manga Studio to get the rough basics down, and elaborated on that in Photoshop. I then did a rough tonal study to get an indication of whether or not it would work in black and white. 

I refined my sketch in pencil, and then inked it and added watercolour and black pencil. I converted it to full black and white in Adobe Photoshop CC (it was painted in black and white, but there are variations in the tones of the different paints I used)

Winsor and Newton watercolours, Ecoline liquid watercolour, Copic Opaque White, Pentel brush pen, Prismacolour pencil on Moleskine Watercolour paper. 

Illustrations: Educational Publishing

I've been very busy lately creating blackline master illustrations for ReadyEd publications. Over January and February I did nearly 88 illustrations, most of those in January so the books could be ready for the start of the school year here. Working in Educational Publishing is very interesting, not least because you never know what you might be called upon to draw from one day to the next, although it's often tricky to fit in all of what has to be shown in the one picture. Here's a small selection (the more interesting ones. Several of the books I worked on were on Civics and Citizenship, so I drew a lot of voters and a lot of politicians =P)

A Japanese greeting:

A local Library:

A run-down park:

Fair-Trade coffee:

Grecian Democracy:

A selection of faces (not related):

Pollution in India:

All done in Adobe Photoshop CC with a Wacom Intuos 3.

Sketches and Sneak Peeks

Long time no post! I've been pretty flat out – for a couple of weeks all I was doing was waiting for work that was supposed to materialise, and then it all arrived at once, several projects within three days of each other! However, to prevent my blog from completely stagnating, here are some sketches I did a while ago, as rewards for working all day:

Mucking about with personifying my dog, Myrna – she's a cavoodle, so a mix of King Charles Cavalier and Poodle (hence the costume).

Manga Studio 5, 30 minutes to sketch, 30 minutes to colour.

A sketch of Eustacie in Georgette Heyer's The Talisman Ring, which I was listening to at the time. 

Manga Studio 5 and Photoshop, 30 minutes to sketch, 30 minutes to colour.

And here's a little peek at a few of the things I'm working on, which is currently ranging from portraiture to advertising to educational publishing to wedding invitations to Christmas cards. Plus a graphic novel test that I was putting together while waiting for work to arrive. I don't think anyone can say that I'm not versatile! =P

Silhouette Christmas Cards

And here's our second Christmas card design. 

This was a nice excuse to be a bit nostalgic and return to my Golden Age influences; when I did my honours project on the era I didn't get to do any silhouettes, but I love them. I did have grand plans to do the whole 12 Days of Christmas, but it became clear that I was going to run out of time, so I just finished off the first. I got about halfway through 9 Ladies Dancing as well, so hopefully I'll get time to finish that up in the near future. 

I put the design in a circle, to tie my two very different cards together. And then of course I added glitter:

I originally started without any clear idea of what era I wanted to depict, and did four draft silhouettes before I decided. Here they are, showing the 1780s, the 1800s, the 1830s and the 1920s:

Eventually I decided on the 1780s, as that's around the time The Twelve Days of Christmas was first published in England.

Adobe Photoshop CS6.