Illustration: Pride and Prejudice

I found this lurking, half-coloured, in my files. I'd completely forgotten about it, so I decided to finish it off. You may remember the original sketch from way back when. Yes, it's been flipped in the meantime. =P  

"It is your turn to say something now, Mr Darcy. I talked about the dance, and you ought to make some kind of remark on the size of the room, or the number of couples."

I left this rather loose, with a background from cgtextures.com.

And tagging along we have a sketchbook page of random hairstyles. There is a regency hairstyle in there, so it sort of fits.... really I was just mucking about while watching tv.  

Pride & Prejudice in Adobe Photoshop with Wacom Intuos 3

Sketch in Moleskine Sketchbook with 0.5 #B mechanical pencil

Quotes: Pride and Prejudice

I'm in a classics mood, and it's a long time since I drew anything from Pride and Prejudice. 

This was started last night, while I was feeling very sorry for myself indeed with a bout of terrible hayfever – I didn't get much done =P – and finished tonight. I chose a random scene, which happened to be the dance at Netherfield. 

I used a photo from, I think, Becoming Jane as a basic pose starter. I've seen this dance step in a number of adaptations, and it seemed fitting. 

"It is your turn to say something now, Mr Darcy. I talked about the dance, and you ought to make some kind of remark on the size of the room, or the number of couples."

I was happy with Mr Darcy right up until I finished Lizzy... now I'm not so sure. I may go back on fix him up at some point, you never know. 

0.5 Mechanical pencil with #B lead in Moleskine Sketchbook. 

Illustration: The Bluestocking Firefly

A blog banner I did for my friend Makenzi. I was doing a new banner for myself (currently still awaiting completion) and since her birthday was coming up, I thought I'd do one for her at the same time, as her blog was bannerless. 

Her fabulous (but currently far too lonely) blog The Bluestocking Firefly is filled with excerpts from her lovely stories. (Go read them!) Many of them have an historical or olde world flavour, which is why I went with a bookish regency maiden, rather than an earlier concept of a firefly (suitably attired in blue stockings) writing on a scroll of paper. 

Below you see an animated progression of this piece. Stages shown are as follows:

Initial Concept Sketch > Pencil Linework > Digital Colour Study > Linework traced onto Watercolour paper > Painting Stage 1 > Painting Stage 2 > Painting Stage 3 > Finished Painting > Adjustments & Text in Photoshop.

I had a lot of fun painting the dusky light (a lot of Payne's Grey was involved) but although in person it looks dark enough, I adjusted the scan so that the text and firefly glow would stand out more. 

Winsor & Newton watercolours and Adobe Photoshop CS4.

The font used is the lovely Recherche – with additions by me.

Inking

Today, some very early brush inking practice, from December '09.

Having started out inking with ordinary felt-tips in highschool, moving onto technical pens, and then mastering the dip pen, I felt it was time to start using a brush to ink, and embellishing the results with greyscale watercolour.

My first two attempts were from earlier pencil sketches; a fisherman and a 30s glamour girl, inspired, I think, because I was watching The Alleyn Mysteries at the time.

And then I moved on to ink another earlier sketch, of my friend Makenzi's lovely character Ella:

Ella is copyright Makenzi Crouch, all rights reserved. You can also see her aged about 7 at my deviantart account here : Ella in the Cathedral