Christmas E-Card 2019

Here is my Christmas e-card that I drew for some friends that I forgot to do cards for this season. It's been a while since I drew my own festive card, but I think I still got the knack to do such things. 

Inktober- Day 31- Study of Pinnochio's Coachman

Today wasn't the best day for me to try and study a scene from Disney's Pinnochio, as discussed in a tweet from Joey Waggoner. I didn't have much time to do, but I did say I wanted to try and study other artwork, but maybe THAT smile from that film's Coachman was an ambitious task.

Inktober- Day 30- Moomin meets The Babadook

Inspired by Erin Hunting's latest post of the Australian screen monster, The Babadook, I couldn't resist getting vibes of Tove Jansson's work when viewing in my feed. So guess what I tried to do? This! It was fun trying to draw them all, even thou the Moomin do NOT have nostrils. I don't know what I was thinking. I also found a medium ink pen to achieve some different inking over the rough pencil sketch. I'm not sure if I the tonal colouring of The Babadook, but I've been itching to try drawing those Moomin characters for a while since watching that very good British dub of MoominValley.

Inktober- Day 29- Doodles

Not much to say, but just some doodles did at a meeting, but I think I need to reboot my computer soon as I am having fun trying to run Firefox and Photoshop at the moment... at least there are only a few days left of Inktober to go through first.

Inktober- Day 28- Fon Fon Cover Study and Life Drawing

Managed to do a few pieces yesterday, with a study of a vintage magazine cover, titled Fon Fon, that a good Facebook friend shared the other day. I need to do more studies of other people's works just to fully understand how they are doing things on a constructional level, such the foldings on Father Christmas' sleeves.
The life drawing, en route to Oxford for another meeting followed by some open mic antics, is pretty good. 

Inktober- Day 27- Shaun the Sheep

The past few days have been a bit of a blur because of doing uncle duties, but that does mean watching plenty of contemporary children's programming, including Shaun the Sheep. So here's an off-model take on that titular character for today. 

Inktober- Day 26- Laundry Basket Character

Inspired by a recent behind the scenes video of an animator, Hombre_McSteez, bringing to life a laundry basket as an animated character, I thought I give that character a go. The perspective isn't good on the basket's interior, but I managed to get a reasonable likeness to that character.

Inktober- Day 25- Cookie Monster Display

Some of my Facebook friends have been this brilliant Halloween display over in Pennsylvania, and I couldn't resist trying to draw it from the news segment about it. It was fun trying to get the shadows into the scene as that made the Cookie Monster display give the impression of the iconic character's mouth shape. I need to do more studies like this as I tend to do just character-focused rather than environmental/architectural pieces.

Inktober- Day 24- Doodles

Didn't have much time to do some proper drawing today, so here's some doodles I did on a programme note for a film society screening. 

Beautiful animation about mothers | My Mother's Eyes by Jenny Wright | S...

There is plenty of clever imagery in this short film, with extraordinary use of economy in Jenny Wright’s mark-making for its character animation. Worth watching, if you ask me. 

Inktober- Day 23- Globox Doodle

Yeah, this was a little bit different for me to do, but over on Rayman Reanimated's Twitter page, they got The Globox Doodle Collab going. So I thought I give this a go, being inspired by this character's rain dance from one of his first appearances in the Rayman video game series.

They did say it was a doodle, so I went for a rough pen sketch before going over the in a thicker brush pen as I needed to erase the background to create a transparent PNG file for their use. Wish me luck!

Inktober- Day 22- Life Drawings

There were not successful, but then again, my mind on trying to do some errands, including being an extra for a film being shot that day. 

Inktober- Day 21 - Life Drawing

I drew this on the way to my first open mic night performance in Oxford. I'm quite pleased with the detail I got on the right figure here. 

Inktober- Day 20- Tico and Rigadon (Around the Word of Willy Fog)

I got inspired from Manue Illustrations' Inktober sketch of a couple from Around the World of Willy Fog, so I did ANOTHER couple from that show, Rigadon and Tico. I emulated what the hell was going on in that show's intro. I think I made Tico the stuff of nightmares with those staring eyes, but it was bloody fun trying to draw these two characters.   

Inktober- Day 19- MORE Life Drawings

This time, I think the smaller-nib piece was the more successful piece this time around.

Inktober- Day 18- Magic Towel

When your good creative friends, Sumita writes a fun episode to a pre-school series, there is only one thing to do; do fan art of it!
Magic Towel is a one-off character from Pablo, a recent pre-school series that has earned a well-recieved following for its application of tackling autism in all its many  aspects. This episodes looks into this mascot - who probably owns more to Mighty Mouse than the original aesthetics- that has an earworm of a jingle to their advert. Think Triple-Dent Gum from Inside Out, and you get a good idea without seeing the episode.  

Review: Room

Room by Emma Donoghue
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Room was an excellent experience to read, particularly for those that have seen the excellent Oscar-winning screen adaptation with Brie Larson. Those that have seen that film may already have a good idea on what will happen but will appreciate the detail that you could not get away with on the silver screen, such as the curiosity over the narrator's body parts.
The greatest achievement whilst reading Room was creating the inertia of this child going through 'room' with their natural-born curiosity and trying to understand why Mom goes through mixed emotions throughout the entire novel. Whilst there is a blip of reading through their ordeal in which you want an outcome soon, but when that hits you, the novel takes all the action into fifth gear and does not stop.
Room is definitely worthy of anyone that wants to read an unsettling, yet beautiful, novel written from a child's first-person perspective.


View all my reviews

Inktober- Day 17- Doodles

Yeah, today wasn't the day to do too much, so here are some doodles I did during a film society screening on that evening.

Inktober- Day 16- Comic Colouring and Life Drawings.

Wow! I had a productive, and I'm liking what the marks are making that I did doing some life drawings today. The comic is for a potential paid assignment, hence the censored faces.

Inktober- Day 15- Life Drawings

I'm quite liking the marks I'm making when I do life drawing on the buses with this dual-head brush pen. I quite like the marks with the smaller nibs on this study.

Inktober- Day 14- Marvin the Parnoid Android

After one of my mates mentioned that the actor that played Marvin in the original Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galxy had passed away recently, I had to give drawing Marvin a go. I messed up the arms a bit, but I'm glad I got the detail on his torso well enough.
Below is just a rough sketch, with some ink marks to work out what nib to use on the final piece. 

Inktober- Day 13- Life Drawing

Yeah Sunday there wasn't much time to do any drawing, except this quick life drawing on the bus. Like how I got in the legs and the hands surrounding the hands of this figure.

Inktober- Day 12- Not Again Cartoon

One of my professional Facebook friends shared a cartoon from Vic Kasinja's Taxina series. I was inspired by the figure in the foreground's pose, I was inspired to create my own cartoon out of it... only with a more topical topic on a contemporary telly.

Inktober- Day 11- SuperMarioLand Meme Study

You've seen that meme featuring that vintage photo of an adult playing a Gameboy with children surrounding them? Well, they said it looked like a renaissance painting... and well my study ain't like that! 

Inktober- Day 10- Trigger Word Sketches

I thought whilst it was Inktober, I'll try and sort out how to model my next trigger word, being the word 'front' meaning "the part or side that comes first or is the most important". My initial idea was involving having a wheel missing at the front of a cleaning machine, but I decided for a more simpler idea of me noticing a stain on the front of my t-shirt - something I know too well of! 

Inktober- Day 9- Life Drawing and Script Doodles

Wednesday was another busy day with another thing on in the evening. Luckily, I managed to do a slightly more convincing quick life drawing of this figure on the bus, as well as do some doodling during my meeting. One of those figures doodled reminds of that footman from Jan Svankmajer's Alice.

Inktober- Day 8- Life Drawings

Tuesday was a bit busy for me because of work commitments so I did some life drawing on the bus. The top one looked too messy to read, so I managed to do just an ink drawing on the same subject. They are okay in my book, but not convincing to depict what the figure was whilst on the bus. Luckily I did a still life of this bicycle, but I wished I drew the background as well to give it context. 

Inktober- Day 7- Chris Croft

I've stumble on some free LinkedIn videos, hosted by this individual, who seemed quite a visually interesting character to draw. I'm sure he is a nice person, but I find him quite amusing trying to explain the importance of hand shakes with his performance in this instuctional video. 

Inktober- Day 6- Still Life of Lamp Post

Just waiting for my bus when I decided to try and do a still-life of this lamp post. When I pencilled it in, I was getting a lot more than when I started inking. So I guess the detail in is okay, but I wasn't happy with the perspective of the lamp post lights. Good thing I grabbed a cheeky picture on my smartphone to try and discipline with the perspective on that object.

Inktober- Day 5- Dancing Figures

I wanted to do some loose gestures after all that professional illustrative work recently. So doing this kind of imaginative gesture drawing was fun. I need to try more of this.

Inktober 2019- Day 4- Finalised(?) Censored Logo and Dr Oetker Cakes

Day 4 into my Inktober and I think I managed to finalise this logo for the client as I think the client hasn't given me any further feedback at the time of writing this blog entry. So with that professional brief out of the way... I thought I do this?
Remember when Channel 4's Great British Bake Off used to be sponsored by Dr Oetker? Well, here is an off-model attempt to recreate one of my favourites. Yeah, I should've looked at the original before doing this, but at least it was a bit of fun from some of the professional work I've been up to recently. I've also done some drawn inking, having just discussed this with an illustrator at a meetup a few weeks ago. I left it with the original pencilling because I like it.

Inktober- Day 3- Logo Redesign

I don't know if this counts as a different drawing, as I have to amend the colour scheme a bit of it. Not going to have to do much else now... but I might add some doodles to this post as I have had an exhaustive outing yesterday and it has caught up with me today. 

 I decided to upload last night's doodles on the programme note as I feel as I am not going to do too much on that logo on Day 4 than I am going to do so.

Inktober- Day 2- Logo Redesigns (Coloured, Traditional, and Initial Sketch)

Not going to get much done today, but I decided to go back to the drawing board, and resdesign this logo, so I wasn't forever revisiting the same files on a constant basis. 

Inktober 2019- Day 1- Logo Design Variants

Yes, it's Inktober again, and unless you want doodles from a meeting instead, this is probably the best I can offer today which is variants for a new client. I can't go much into the detail about this one yet, hence the censoring over the text, but I hope you appreciate how each design has changed over the course of an entire afternoon into the late evening.