ink

Drawing Process and Play-Doh Penguin

Here are some photos that show my inking process, tools and work space for my latest pen and ink drawings. There are also some photos of a great Play-Doh penguin that Angie made for me :)

Inking and Play-Doh Penguin

Here I am working on the Ysbryd drawing with Angie’s Play-Doh penguin keeping me company. I’m adding the fine background lines with a 0.1 Sakura Micron.

Pencil under-drawing

I start my pen and ink drawings with a pencil drawing to lay out the forms and composition. Here you can see the pencil under-drawing. I use a click-pencil for this part of the process and the red one pictured here is a Niji Grip 0.5mm. The paper I have been using is Bristol Board which is a lovely smooth surface for pen and ink.

Inking the main forms

After the pencil drawing I ink in the main forms with a small nibbed pen and you can see the result of this step in this photo. The pen to the right in this photo is an amazing Japanese brush pen that my parents bought me for Christmas. It makes the most wonderful brush like marks and the ink flows really smoothly. I love this pen. You can see a close-up of its synthetic brush head below.

Close-up of brush pen

Workspace and tools

Here’s a photo of my workspace while I work on the insect pen and ink drawing. I work on a flat Ikea table that has a white laminate finish (it was really cheapâ€¦I think only $30). For the insect drawing I referenced National Geographic’s January 2006 issue that had a great spread on mantids and that helped me with the main character’s design, Trychfil. Usually when I work on a drawing or painting I work on character, prop and environment designs/poses in a ‘design’ sketchbook that I use solely for this purpose. You can see this design book underneath the National Geographic magazine with some designs for Trychfil and the tree branches. You can also see the pocket sized moleskine that I carry around to doodle in. This is where most of my characters usually start. Once I pick out the characters from one of my doodle books I usually play around with their designs in my design book. I try to keep my character doodles pretty simple and I draw them all in pen.

Angie's Play-Doh penguin

Here’s Angie’s Play-Doh penguin. Hope you like the photos and have a good weekend :)

Illustration Friday: Insect

‘Trychfil, Servant of Death, and a Hapless Grub,’ pen and ink, brush pen and Sakura Microns on Bristol Board, 6″ x 9″

Trychfil is the servant of Death and takes the form of a large mantis like insect. In this image, Trychfil has come to take a poor grub to the underworld.

Dark Heroes

Ysbryd, Prince of Animal Ghosts

‘Ysbryd, Prince of Animal Ghosts,’ pen and ink, brush pen and Sakuras on Bristol Board, 6″ x 9″

Like a lot of people I like films, literature and art that tell the stories of dark heroes. I wanted to figure such a hero in one of my pen drawings, so the above drawing is about Prince Ysbryd who roams the animal underworld. I think pen and ink is a great medium for creating darker images.

I may have been inspired to go darker after reading the great article on Camille Rose Garcia in the March issue of Juxtapoz. The interview with her is good and she talks a little about her process; her explanation of her characterization process is briefly explained, but very interesting.

Angie and I also saw two rather dark movies both of which I would recommend: ‘Memory of a killer’ and ‘North Country.’ ‘Memory of a Killer’ is a Belgian crime-thriller that tells the story of Angelo Ledda, a vigilante style dark hero (see Wikipedia reference). Angelo is an elderly hit-man suffering the onset of Alzheimer’s who takes on a hit job that prompts him to turn on his employer. The characters are somewhat typical for this genre, but they have enough twists to become compelling. To find out more about “Memories of Killer,’ visit www.imdb.com and to find out more about ‘North Country,’ visit www.imdb.com.

Instant Gratification

Brethren and Ms.

‘Brethren and Ms.’, pen and ink and Sakura Microns on Bristol Board, 9′ x 6″

These pen and ink drawings are coming together a lot faster than my paintings and I like the change of pace. When painting, I usually get to a point where my original colour intentions just don’t seem to be working so I begin to paint over large areas. From this re-paining the paintings start to come together. With the pen and ink drawings though, my process is more straightforward. The pen and ink drawings start with an image and narrative in mind and then I draw a scene in pencil with characters and props derived from my sketchbooks (although for ‘Hello Sunshine‘ I couldn’t wait to do the preliminary pencil sketch so I drew it all in pen in one goâ€¦it was sort of like a big adrenaline rush). This image, ‘Brethren and Ms.’ started as a very similar looking image in my sketchbook, as seen below.

Original sketchbook drawing: Brethren and Ms.

After setting the composition and roughing the outlines in pencil I lay out the major forms in a small nibbed pen (size A-6) working from top left to bottom right so as not to smudge any wet ink. Then I go over some of the lines with thicker nibs (size A-5 and A-4) and after this stage is dry I then add detail with both the A-6 nibs and 0.1 and 0.5 Sakura Microns. At the detail stage I usually just make the detail up as I go along to retain some spontaneity.

Sometimes I like the instant gratification of finishing something quickly. At times I don’t really want to paint because I don’t feel like working 3 days on a painting. Usually when I feel this way I still work in my sketchbook, but now I can also create finished pen and ink pieces which feels different than working in my sketchbook. I find that the more I create the more I want to create. When I stop it seems that there’s a certain amount of inertia or something that begins to build up which makes it harder to start creating again. Anyway, if you’re like me and sometimes like to read inspirational article’s to help get you going there’s a good article I read by Keri Smith that talks about recognizing our weaknesses/limitations and how to turn them around into strengths. You can find the article at www.kerismith.com.

Illustration Friday: Tea

Even prickly monsters like tea…

I finally managed to enter this weeks Illustration Friday (and get something new up on my blog). I really enjoyed working in pen on the piece for ‘Hello Sunshine‘ so I decided to create another pen and ink drawing. Instead of simply using Sakura Microns, I used pen and ink to create more line variations with different sized nibs.

This piece is 6″ x 9″ and was created with Higgins India Ink and pen, and Sakura Microns (for some of the little fiddly bits).

In the photo below, you can see my collection of nibs.

Ink pens and nibs

Have a good weekend.

Hello Sunshine

We moved and are all settled in again. This is the final move before we move again in the autumn. Say what you will about Ikea, but their furniture is really great for breaking down into small, moveable bits and it made our move a lot easier (though it was still stressful). One thing that is always good about moving is that it forces us (me) to pare down our (my) stuff. I have more things than Angie as I tend to be a bit of a pack rat and sometimes keep things for sentimental reasons or because I think something will be a good resource for a drawing etc. For example, I have a small, but growing, collection of dead insects and insect bits that I have found on walks. During this last move I tried really hard to be ruthless about my possessions and got rid of quite a few boxes of stuff. I did get to keep my insect bits though.

During the move I listened quite a bit to the Super Furry Animals, a brilliant Welsh band who even sing in Welsh. When I was listening to them I started to put images to some of the songs and decided to create one of the series of images in a comic strip format. These images go along with the song, Hello Sunshine, off the album Phantom Power. The images were drawn with Sakura pens on Bristol Board (2 boards, at 9″ x 12″).

Here are the lyrics to Hello Sunshine by Super Furry Animals:

So hard to say goodbye
Meaning it today
I’ve said goodbye before
Leaving you alone
By the sea
So hard to say goodbye

Hello sunshine
Come into my life

In honesty it’s been a while
Since we had reason left to smile
Hello sunshine
Come into my life

I’m a minger
You’re a minger too
So come on minger
I want to ming with you

In honesty it’s been a while
Since we had reason left to smile
Hello sunshine
Come into my life

You’re not so innocent
You’re a disgrace to your country
If you fled a million miles
I’d chase you for a day
If I could be bothered

Hello sunshine
Come into my life

To learn more about Super Furry Animals, visit the official website at www.superfurry.com. They also have an informative entry in wikipedia, that can be found at www.wikipedia.org.

Blue Cage

blue cage

I’m still working on my college applications (lots of writing…), but here’s a sketch book image I did today as a break from writing. Acrylic and pen on paper.

Something Old: Drawings of Dorsington Manor

I’ve been busy with college applications so I thought I would post something old.

My Dad has always drawn and when we used to go on family holidays my Dad and I would sometimes draw together. The top drawing is my dad’s drawing of Dorsington Manor and the second drawing is my version. I think I drew this when I was 11 or 12 years old. Anyway, my dad and I sat on the lawn together with our rapidiographs and sketchbooks and drew the manor. I loved to draw with my Dad and always tried to copy his meticulous style (with varying results).

The photo on the bottom left is the manor and the photo on the bottom right is me as a kid painting.

Blue Jellies and Green Jars

blue jellies

green jars

Two sketches from my sketchbook. When I work on a painting I try and use up any leftover colours on my palette by creating coloured grounds in my sketchbook. These are two such coloured grounds with drawings overlaid in pen.