Coming Soon ....

The blog has just had its 4000th visitor!! That's worth celebrating with a new pic. Unfortunately l've only got something small to post at the moment. This is a sample of an illustration l'll put up soon on the site called "Monkey See Monkey Chew".

A Quick Sketch

Hey Cow

Things have been very busy lately. And as usual it is my blog who is last to receive some long overdue attention. This is an illustration l've done for a new venture which l will be announcing soon, l don't have all the details yet, but for now it's a sample of what's in store.

Wildebeast

(An old painter study l did in August 2006)

Calm Down Ladies

Painter Head

Another screen recording of a quick sketch, ...

Monster 2

I tried to screen record this one but l lost it, ....

Monster & the still life

I've never understood why people paint in Photoshop. I've always found it to be painful and set up badly for painting compared to Painter which is what l've always used for my digital paintings. The brushes are average, the smudge tool is annoying and there's no shortcuts for changing brush size. So when l found a Pshop painting tutorial on Dice Tsutsumi's site l had to try.

The apple was my first attempt, and then l tried to use the process on one of my own designs. Suffice to say, ..... l like it.

Boo Hoo!!

I've posted a couple of character designs for my children's book on my blog in the past, but l thought l'd like to put up one of the page spreads that l've done. I wrote my ill-fated story "The Muha Monster" sometime last year and put together a package to send around to a few publishers. I kind of hurried it a little because l was so eager and that showed by the fact that it hasn't yet been picked up. When l get some time l'm planning on revisiting it and working out a few of the kinks, but in the meantime here's the first test illustration l did for it. This is actually still a WIP - the intention is to have the illustration span both pages and the text will be worked into a large tree trunk on the left (It's unlikely l'll get to this anytime soon though, ...)

Screen Recording

I downloaded some screen recording software a while ago to record some of my illustrations as l'm working on them. I always find it really interesting when other artists do the same, its great to watch an image come together.

This is a very quick piece l did simply to test out the settings on the screen recording software when l got it. I did a couple of these so l might upload some more soon. They were interesting because l didn't plan what l was going to sketch. This guy came out of the silhoutte that l started with. The video is sped up, l think this took about 8-9 minutes to do.

Here's the final image, ...

... and here's how it came together, ...