Drawings and How He Does It

These are scans from the A5 Daler-Rowney sketchbook I am working in for the new 'A Life of Magic'. I rough out the panels with a blue 0.7 propelling pencil and then draw the line work with an Artline Calligraphy Pen 2.0. The page is then scanned b/w at 600 dpi. In Photoshop I change the mode to Grayscale and apply the 'Cutout' filter, to smooth the line work out a bit, but not too much. I keep a copy of the Grayscale version in a separate folder and create a new file at 300 dpi to colour up. And now you know all my drawing secrets.


You can see the coloured versions HERE.

New 'Life of Magic'

Here are few pages from the new 'A Life of Magic' diary comic. Well, to tell the truth, they are the only pages from the new 'A Life of Magic' diary comic. I am excited about getting into the diary habit again, after what seems like an eternity of angst and mis direction. Hopefully I will continue until I have enough to publish a physical comic or even a Pdf version.

I have had a busy few days so I do need to catch up with the comic version of my lifes highlights. Thursday I was rushing around with work, Friday was Helen's birthday at the Andy Goldsworthy exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and Saturday friends whisked us off on a magical mystery tour of North Yorkshire artists studio. I am tired and just want 'to make the drawing'.

WIT (Writing and Illustration Team)

I have just finished a 'blogspot' for me and my friend Steve, with samples of some of the stories we have worked on over the years. You can get to it by clicking HERE.

Images for my Next Business Card

And so following on from my inner turmoil of not knowing 'what I want to draw' and 'what style do I draw in' state of mind, I settled down with my old favourite, disposable, drawing impliment, the Artline 2.0 calligraphy pen, and a cheap set of water colour paints. I have this idea for my business card, John (that's me), welding, geddit?Sparks flying out the end of a pencil, type thing, as a symbol of my creativity and all round drawing abilities.... okay, like I said, it was just and idea!!

I enjoyed using the calligraphy pen and water colour and it made me think about starting my diary comic again, in this style. That is something to think about. Seriously.

Treading Time With Doodles

I have been doodling a lot, which goes to show just how much 'proper' work I have on at the moment. Ah well, 'tides change', 'the rough with the smooth' and all that. The light and dark side of my mind is reflected in these pages, one minute it's all lite and fluffy and Quentin Blake children's books, the next, horned demons, Battlestar Galactica " I want to work for 2000AD!" (only joking). The good news is, things do seem in balance to me. At the moment!

The customer is always.....?

This is the original page of drawings I did for my 'consumer' run in with a clothing store in Wakefield. I got into an argument with the cashier and a security guard (funny how they pop up) over refusing a plastic carrier bag, in the end I did walk out with a long sleeve t-shirt and a plastic bag. The incident got me thinking about where I shop, click here to find out more. I took the t-shirt back the next day for a refund and got rid of every item of clothing I had bought from the shop (about £140 worth) at one of those donation bins outside a supermarket. It's charity shops for me from now on.

Telephone Doodle

I was speaking with my friend Richard on the telephone today. With one thing and another, we haven't talked for a long time, so we had a lot to catch up on. He draws and publishes books all the time and has quite a few to his name. Richard has a 'naturalistic' approach to drawing, his drawings are done with a relaxed frame of mind, I'm sure it's not that easy though. I have had it said to me, admittedly by children and cats, that "You draw good mister". Not to diminish their sense of awe, what people don't see is the twenty (or in Richards case 40) years of practise that enables an artist to do that 'natural talent art thing'. Anyway, as we talked I was unconsciously doodling on a piece of paper, getting all enthusiastic about a website called Poptech and an Artist/Engineer called Theo Jansen.

'Telephone Doodle' Blue Biro on Paper 104 x 147mm