Adam Foster-Fahy

SORREL on the GRID

2010-11-11T21:35:00.004Z

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Sorrel has been misbehaving recently, and I did warn her not to continue....in the end I had to put her on the grid. As the old expression goes, "You can put Sorrel on the grid, but you can't separate Sorrel from her rats." And that's how come she ended up with a little mini Barnabus buddy with her.

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Dark Forest

2010-11-10T16:19:00.003Z

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Hunting in the forest, the Partisan watches a pair of enemy soldiers from hiding. This image was a fun exercise in drawing rough, impressionistic foliage and building layers up to form pictorial depth.

Werewolf Rampage

2010-10-31T18:54:00.004Z

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Here is the werewolf ripping his way through an entire base of soldiers. The US army doesn't issue it's infantry with silver bullets, so the soldiers are totally defenceless against the rampaging hulk of teeth, claws and muscles. Bullets rip through the beast's flesh without even slowing it down.

Here's a quick little gif to demonstrate my process.

The Partisan

2010-10-28T10:13:00.002+01:00

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Another sketchbook page scan showing a couple of drawings of The Partisan, one in colour, and the colour version of his patch. The gun was fun, rather than just copying the coolest gun I could find on Google, I delibertately designed it based loosely on several different guns. It was fun trying to think of the form follwing the function, imagining the kind of requirements The Partisan would need from the weapon he took with him. Considering he's gonna Wolf-Out when he gets toi his mission, it was fun coming up with the kind of weapon needed for self defense/small skirmishes en route to the bloodbath showdown.

Text taken from the page: "In human form, the werewolf is an Eastern European mercenary I have dubbed The Partisan as he is involved in a guerilla resistance movement against the occupying American forces. He hasn’t been a werewolf his whole life but he has been one for long enough to be weary of the constant struggle and is a deeply lonely character. Before he became a werewolf he had a family, which he is now unable to lead a normal life with due to his uncontrollable monthly lycanthropy. Angst, man!"

More to come!

Just for a change, some more Werewolf stuff...

2010-10-26T10:35:00.002+01:00

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Another sketchbook scan, more werewolf hijinks. The partisan creeping around the shadowy woods silently despatching enemies with his blade, and another version of the transformation.

The Partisan

2010-10-21T10:28:00.002+01:00

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A sketch from yesterday of the Partisan, which I doodled during lunch break then painted today before getting ready to go out to work. As well as to further practice drawing this fairly generic "tough guy with a 'tache" character, the other focus of this sketch was to further examine the way he attaches his survival knife to his backpack strap. The answer....sticky tape! But it's also important how the knife is angled away from the body, both for practical reasons for the character to be able to access and unsheath the blade quickly, but also for aesthetic reasons - it gives the character a more interesting shape, and the blade tip ending above the shoulder would also add to the character's silhouette.

Transformation

2010-10-19T10:21:00.002+01:00

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A simple step by step demonstration of the transformation of my werewolf guy. As well as incorporating the bone lengthening and contortion similar to other werewolf transformations, this werewolf sloughs off his human flesh in blatant excuse to draw disgusting ripping things. His skeletal system twists and stretches to assume the wolf's shape and increased size, but the hair doesnt simply sprout from his normal skin as it does in An American Werewolf In London.

I am amused that stage three looks a lot like Tom Cruise.

Illustration Friday: "Spooky"

2010-10-18T13:28:00.003+01:00

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I am still working on my WEREWOLVE$ project, and this sketchbook scan has also been submitted to Illustration Friday for the spooky forest concept in the top left. The werewolf ripping it's way free of the soldier's meat is also quite appropriate for Halloween...?

The story takes place in an undisclosed Eastern European country. This post-soviet state is suffering under American occupation, and our hero is a partisan who has been despatched to engage an American military base in guerilla warfare. The reason why this lone-wolf assault on an entire American military base isn't a suicide mission is because the lone wolf is literally that: a werewolf soldier.

More to come....

Werewolve$ Character Sketches

2010-10-14T09:38:00.004+01:00

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Have been tinkering with a Werewolf story idea under the working title 'Werewolve$' with reference to the John Steakley book Vampire$ of which I am a massive fan. Vampire$ is a book about a Vatican-funded team of vampire hunters, which makes a passing reference to a similar group of people charged with tackling werewolves. Steakley's own personal demons prevented him from ever expanding this werewolf concept into a full blown story (or as I am led to believe, a film script) but ever since I read about it, it has been the first thing that comes to mind whenever I think about Werewolves.

My idea is based on a special forces soldier who is a werewolf. It would make him a perfect soldier, able to heal quicly and possessed on unlimited strength, speed and ferocity. Almost unstoppable.

But remember in An American Werewolf In London, he wakes up in the Zoo with no idea where he is, or how he got there? Same here. When he transforms into a wolf he isnt a soldier anymore. He's just a monster. A monster who care nor understands a thing about the mission. A almost perfectly useless soldier.

He has to strap himself with a metal backpack containing clothing and weapons for when he awakes. It is made of metal to withstanding the pummelling a night of werewolfing would subject it to. It has expanding metal staps like a steel watchstrap to accomadate the werewolf''s vastly increased physical proportions.

More to come...

Halo: Beardy Spartan

2010-09-26T16:30:00.006+01:00

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Whilst Sorrel is in the front room smashing never-ending grunts in the face with the butt of her Assault Rifle and sticking plasma grenades to the mandibles of every Elite she comes across, I am in the office listening to Doug Stanhope stand up and painting myself as a Spartan. What a pair of twats, eh? We should be doing something productive with out time instead :(

Cloud Atlas

2010-09-13T19:58:00.003+01:00

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Just finished reading David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas and really enjoyed it. Am thinking of doing a few drawings of this book, I found the storyline and characters very emgrossing, and the structure of the novel was a little bit gimmicky but was very powerful in it's simplicity. Obvious the layout of this illustration is an reference to the interrupted/continued structure of the novel.

John, Richard and Emma

2010-07-26T13:01:00.003+01:00

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A picture of my younger siblings, done as a gift to the two on the right as it was their birthday recently. They both like video games and Emma's particularly fond of Final Fantasy, so this is them as characters from Final Fantasy 7. John (on the left) isnt really as muscular as Barrat, but he's just started attending a gym regularly so he no doubt will be quite soon.

Illustration Friday --- DIARY

2010-07-16T22:03:00.001+01:00

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The latest IF entry I have ever done, this is actually last week's theme and I completely missed it. Like the muppet that I am, I still painted the damn thing up. Stupido!!

Immocalata sketch

2010-07-04T21:05:00.003+01:00

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Another sketch of a character from a Clive Barker novel, this time it's Immocalata from Weaveworld. She is a very interesting character, full of contradictions and mystery. Beautiful and terrifying, she is a fascinating challenge to capture in a drawing, as I demonstrate above by totally ballsing it up. Will be trying again, and trying harder.

Worked-up Work Doodle

2010-07-01T09:39:00.002+01:00

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Just a doodle of a girly that I doodled when I should have been doing what I'm actually paid for. Thought it was quite nice so I decided to paint it up a little bit. Think I will do this sort of thing more often , as I am always drawing when I'm at work but usually just end up binning them. It was quite fun smearing muddy, dark, ugly colours over a rubbish, cack-handed biro doodle. Makes me feel deeply depressed about my life.

Here's the original doodle too:

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Mousey Girly

2010-06-30T09:59:00.005+01:00

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Just a study which I've been tinkering with for the last coupla days before trudging off to my job-job. originally a pencil study from Sucide Girls, interesting shadows around the tummy made me want to paint this up a bit. No colour so sue me.

Mamoulian storms The Sanctuary -- Clive Barker's THE DAMNATION GAME

2010-06-03T09:59:00.003+01:00

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Another quick image of Mamoulian, doodled last night and painted this morning before work. I have spent about an hour on this so far. This is Mamoulian storming The Sanctuary, kicking ass along the way. I am eagerly anticipating reading the description of Mamoulian and his powers again so I can refine my design and maybe include some more specific details.

Mamoulian -- Clive Barker's THE DAMNATION GAME

2010-06-02T13:45:00.003+01:00

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I am currently re-reading Clive Barker's debut novel The Damnation Game and this is my initial interpretation of the villain of the piece, Mamoulian. I have read this novel twice already, the last time several years ago. In this current reading of the book, I havent yet met Mamoulian, so this drawing has been completed from my recollections and impression of the character from my previous readings. I am looking forward to meeting him again, and am looking forward to having a bit of a draw when I do ;)

Amanda Palmer

2010-05-28T23:16:00.004+01:00

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Amanda Palmer has split up from her record label, which means she needs to celebrate her freedom. This is how I would imagine rock stars celebrate things these days, with a rather reserved session of Bubble-me-Do.

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Illustration Friday: "Equipment"

2010-05-16T15:09:00.004+01:00

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One of the most defining aspects of Batman (besides the fact he's a fascist sociopath) is his gadgets, or eqipment. One of the most successful elements of the Christopher Nolan rebooted Batman franchise is the logical origins of all Batman's fantastical gear. This is how I imagine the scene would look if Christopher Nolan were to try and reboot this aspect of the Batman mythos in the next Batman film.

In case you have never seen the Adam West Batman movie here is a clip to elucidate the gag in my illo:

Still, I'd prefer the tried to work Shark Repellent spray into the next Batman film than work Robin into it!! ;)

A crop, for crop's sake.

Massive bloke with a bunch of guns...

2010-05-15T17:51:00.003+01:00

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My default setting when I want to do a drawing but am not working on a specific project or can't think of anything worthier. Was a bit bored today and stuck in a "I don't know what to draw!" braintrap, so drew a massive geezer covered in guns and had fun doing it.

I suppose in a way I was influenced by Illustration Friday's word of the week "Equipment" in so far as a soldier type guy has lots of it, but I might try and do something a little more focused for IF. I hate it when you see people drawing any old tat (or one of their recurring themes) and show horn it into IF's word. Kinda defeats the purpose of it all in my arrogant opinion.

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Kim Newman's Video Dungeon

2010-05-09T12:10:00.002+01:00

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Empire are currently running a contest to design Kim Newman's Video Dungeon. They have provided a few pdf photos of Kim to use. Despite these photographic assets, there's already a couple of other entries which are hand drawn/painted. Here is my entry, not a particularly good likeness but I'm quite happy with the overall image.

Persons Reported: Flame Test

2010-04-01T20:31:00.002+01:00

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Thought I'd blog this quick experiment I did today. Was trying to figure out what approach I should take to create flames for my upcoming comic Persons Reported. I don't want them to be photo-real renditions of flame, otherwise I could just use a photograph rather than spend hours painting them. I'm trying to create a graphical, dynamic design element to them whilst still keeping a hand drawn quality to them.

I used a varitety of brush and lots of Liquify and a heavy handed amout of eraser to get the above results. Still not satisfied so any comments/feedback would be appreciated.

The above image is in colour even though the finished comic will be black and white.

Persons Reported: Development Work

2010-03-07T17:28:00.004Z

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This is something I did today as part of the process I am working through before I begin work on the art for my next comic book, Persons Reported.

I thought it would be fun to submit to Illustration Friday too, this week's theme being 'Brave'. Smith certainly fits this description! ;)

'Persons Reported' finally back on track!

2010-02-28T14:56:00.003Z

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After a lengthy re-write of the script, I have finally got stuck in on the artwork for my next comic, Persons Reported. Here's a sample of the design work I am going through, developing the look of the final comic as I am laboriously ploughing my way through the page layouts and thumbnailing stage of the process.

Weekly Sketchbook Round-Up

2009-10-18T18:05:00.003+01:00

The usual collection of images from my sketchbook this week, anatomy and facial studies, this week I have also been studying more dynamic poses than the usual glamour photography that I usually work from. Very interesting and usueful to see what the figure looks like when muscles are clenched and the model is exerting physical effort (as in the Stone Nudes studies).

Nibru

2009-10-16T10:22:00.003+01:00

Over on the ConceptArt.org forums there is a thread which has had quite a lot of attention: NIBRU! The perosn who started the thread has a character called Nibru that he asks his friends to draw their own interpretation of. He posted a sketch and a few details of the character on the forum, and asked if anyone would be interested in doing a quick doodle of the character for him.

The response was incredible....

Instead of being met by howls of derision by the ConceptArt community over someone asking for 'free' work, everyone responded positively and posted their own versions of this character. Some were simply doodles, some were more elaborately finished paintings, some were accurate to the character description, some were humourous interpreations. Amongst the people posting their work in this thread were some of the premier concept artists working around the world, students, hobbyists, and even some people who had heard of the thread from Facebook and other places and just wanted to have a turn.

Here's mine ;)

Faces, Figures and Free Running

2009-10-11T14:39:00.003+01:00

My usual weekly update. This week I have been drawing a lot of faces from the newspapers, trying to work on achieving a likeness. Again, this exercise is underataken with my upcoming comic project in mind, where I will need to maintain consistent distinct likenesses of several different characters across multiple pages.

And as well as the ususal figure studies from Suicide Girls and vasrious other sites on the internet, I have also started to work my way through 'Creative Illustration' by Andrew Loomis. This is a very interesting book that has laready started to effect the way that I approach compostion and design in my artwork, as I beleive is evidencedc in my IF entry this week 'Flying', which I have included my sketchbook work for in this post.

Illustration Friday: "Flying"

2009-10-11T00:18:00.002+01:00

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Parkour is the closest thing I have ever seen to a human flying.

Painting Steps

2009-10-07T18:36:00.002+01:00

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Pencils from photo ref, painted up without ref. I was just doing some sketching from Suicide Girls, and really got into this pose. I decided to splash some colour onto it in potatoshop and got carried away again. I wwas working on multiple layers so did a quick GIF as a sort of steps animation.

Illustration Friday: "Germs"

2009-10-06T13:43:00.007+01:00

This week's entry is an animation, please watch it on the embedded Youtube player below. ;)

...and here's some supplemental material, the images that I used to create the animation.

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This week for Illustration Friday I took my inspiration from the 1971 Robert Wise movie The Andromeda Strain, based on the novel by Michael Crichton. It's the ultimate movie about Germs, the story concerns a super virus that hitches a ride from outer space to the Earth when it becomes lodged in a satellite that then crashes. A team of world class scientists try to analyse and contain the virus in a state of the art laboratory, but the super virus - code named The Andromeda Strain - defies modern science.

This animation is of when the Andromeda virus reproduces out of control and overwhelms the computer monitoring it, resulting in the computer crashing and displaying ther code '601' to indicate it can't process the deluge of information that it's being fed by the alien virus.

I didnt refer to the original film for refernce when I designed the visual displays, equipment or the lab, but I worked from memory trying to give it the same features but with a darker feel.

Weekly SketchDump

2009-10-05T11:24:00.002+01:00

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Not a huge dump this week. My new shifts leave me with an hour less every morning to work in, and my lunchtimes are occupied with immensely difficult/boring/necessary task of thumbaniling my next comic, so I havent got a great deal to post this week. With any luck I shall soon adapt to my new shift rotation, and will be able to pick up the pace a little in the mornings so I can get through more studies everyday.

Along with the usual poses and figure drawing, I have also included a painted sketch I did last night of myself wearing rubber gloves and breathing through a harmonica. This is something I do from time to time to let off steam. Sorrel and I were both sketching last night when this activity came up in coversation, we both quickly sketched it out as we were speaking. I painted mine and blogged it. I'm surprosed Sorrel can remember this at all- she usually represses the memory of things like this.

Art-Actuate: "Carnival"

2009-09-30T09:27:00.004+01:00

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My entry for this month's Art-Actuate sketchgroup challenge, Carnival. I decided to do a painting of a Pagan Festival, and drawing on months of research and pesonal experince I can say with not inconsiderable authority that all pagan festivals involve the burning of a policeman. In a big Wicker man.

I also include here the original line art, for your consideration. You can see the doodle of the policeman inside the wicker man, something which I eventually dropped from the final painting.

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Weekly Sketchbook Update

2009-09-30T09:06:00.002+01:00

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Not much to update this week, as well as having a stinky rotten cold since Thursday last week I have started my new shifts at my dayjob which leaves me with less time in the mornings to do my studies in. But the consolation is that the extra hour everyday is built up and I get a week off every 7 weeks. The amount of work I can get done in a whole week off is gonna be more than I can get done in that hours a day, so it should work out ok. I just have to make sure I get up earlier during the week.

Illustration Friday: "Infinite"

2009-09-20T21:50:00.003+01:00

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One of my personal favourites, the Eat-As-Much-As-You-Like-Buffet! But imagine if someone eventually offered an Infinite Buffet!! Imagine how big you'd get.... imagine how harrowing it would be for your loved ones to have to watch you eat yourself into oblivion... imagine how exhausting it would be on the chefs!

An animated version, which I quickly produced to demonstrate the conveyor belt style table the FatMan is sat at. Stripped bones and mangled napkins glide out just as fast as the chefs can get the juicy, succulent food into his diabolical maw. But he can't stop now; if he eats infinte servings, he eats for FREE!! :D

The original pencils, presented here as an extra portion for your delectation.

Weekly SketchDump

2009-09-20T13:00:00.005+01:00

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This has been a busy week, and I have had to work weird hours that have disturbed my daily drawing regimen. Yet here is another splurge of the bits fit to print from my sketchbook this week. To start with, the stuff from my white A4 sketchbook is daily figure studies, with a few faces and bums thrown in for interest. The small brown sketchbook sketches are tonal studies done in black and white charcoal, and the yellow moleskine sketches were all dones yesterday when Sorrel and I went to the Birmingham Museum of Art and spent the day strolling around. We were both most impressed by Jacob Epstein's sculpture of Lucifer, and we bothed sketched it from different angles.

Weekly Update!

2009-09-13T11:27:00.004+01:00

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I have finally figured out what I was doing wrong when I uploaded more than one image onto my blog, so now I can blog my week's sketchbookery in one single post. Should make it slightly more accessible and easier to make comments. As ever, any feedback is greatly appreciated, good bad or indifferent it's all serves a purpose.

In this week's update you will find the usual mix of observational drawing from Suicide Girls and from the daily newspaper. Also there is the page of doodles from when I watched Unforgiven last week, which includes the original pencils for last week's Illustration Friday submission. There are also a few sketches of motorcycle riders, prep work for a project I am helping my brother John with. I am still loving my bigger sketchbook, is nice to have an A4 page to draw a single pose on, I can really get my fingers into it and get smudging.

Oh, I nearly forgot....!

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Some sketches I have done this week on midtone paper with normal pencils and a white charcoal pencil. This is something I have wanted to try for a long while now, and it has proven to be much harder than I expected. Part of the difficulty is purely technical, that the white charcoal will not draw on top of the 2B pencil, so my practice is being constrained by the process in certain respects. When I next do some of these sketches, I shall try using a soft black charcoal pencil for the dark lines, and see if the two different charcoal pencils are easier companions than charcoal and graphite.

WEREWOLVE$

2009-09-12T19:00:00.003+01:00

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One of my favourite books is Vampire$ by John Steakley. I have read it more than once and every time I think about it I feel like digging it out and re-reading it. Whilst I was studying for my degree, I based part of one of my projects on this book, some examples of this project can be found on my blog here. During this book, there is a very brief hint that within the same universe there also exists Werewolves. Whether this is just a subtle nuance in the novel, or the briefest glimpse at an as yet undeveloped companion novel is yet to be seen, but it doesnt stop me hoping one day John Steakley will published Werewolve$.

This illustration originally started as a doodle at work, and I have spent a few hours painting it up and making it pretty. I have also included the original pen sketches for extra added interest. Don't all thank me at once ;)

Yeah, okay, so it was a WIP not a speedy!

2009-09-08T09:58:00.003+01:00

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Couldnt stop thinking about this yesterday (especially after it nearly made me late for work!) and couldnt resist coming back to it today and finish it off. Tightened up a few details here and there and tried to cover up a few of the other sketches that were also on the page. I had a fiddle with a few custom brushes, but they were only really prviding surface details and fiddley little bits of flourish here and there. Soon I am going to try and tackle an entire painting without using the default hard edged brush, to see if I can resolve an entire illustration purely out of some of the custom brushes I have been playing with for the last few months.

Sketchbook speed paint

2009-09-07T11:56:00.003+01:00

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A page from my sketch book that I quickly painted, took around 20 mins to paint today, though I probably spent around as long the other day on the original sketch (taken from Suicde Girls, of course). I didnt refer to the original photo ref at all for the painting, worling purely from my sketch.

It's not wuite fair to say that this is a speed paint, as I am only stopping now as I am already late for work. I might come back to this later on, but I am not sure. Which is why I called it a speed paint and not a WIP ;)

Illustration Friday: STRONG

2009-09-06T20:02:00.003+01:00

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For the theme of 'Strong' I wanted to do something with a strong chiaoscuro lighting scheme, and the final result goes to show exactly how much I have to learn about painting. I was after a staccato relationship between the moonlight and the rest of the image, yet somehow loads of smudgey grey ended up in the picture too :( Was watching Unforgiven this evening, which is what made me draw a cowboy. As if that's any excuse.

Bigger sketchbook rant

2009-09-06T14:11:00.004+01:00

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Various phot ref'ed anatomy studies I have done this week. You can also see that I have filled my A5 sketchbook and have moved onto a new A4 one. It was quite an awkward transition, I had become so conditioned to drawing on small scales that trying to draw full figures on a larger format felt very unfamiliar and ungainly. It's nice to have an A4 sketchbook again, though; I have usually only used A4 but after having drawin A5 for the last few weeks I never appreciated the size of A4 allowed me so many options and really does give me room to breathe and move things around. Still drawing fairly small allows me to really fill the page.

Who cares, eh?

Poses

2009-09-06T14:08:00.003+01:00

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Spending so long over the facial studeis this week has taken up a lot of my available time, so this week the poses uber-scan isnt quite as voluminous as it has been previously.

Head Shots

2009-09-06T14:03:00.003+01:00

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Using phot ref taken from http://www.characterdesigns.com/ I have spent a lot of time this week doing studies of differnt facial expressions. I need to spend longer on this, making sure that I can remain consistent in the facial proportions so I can maintain a likeness of the same face making different expressions - a lot of these studies look like they're of different people. This is somethingI need to address pronto, as in my forthcoming comic Persons Reported there are multiple characters whcih I shall need to ensure are clearly distinguishable at all times. In my rpevious comic, I only had 4 different charaters so it wasnt such a challenge.

Illustration Friday: MAGNIFY

2009-08-31T13:52:00.003+01:00

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Original scan, click to enlarge

I didnt want to do anything that involved a magnifying glass, so I was trying to think of other things that could be magnified. I wa thinking about doing a Cyriak style infinte zoom aimation of something, but I wanted to do a more detailed painting than you can have in an animation. So I did something rather obvious and hardly related to the word at all, an appaling abuse of Illustrtaion Friday to exploit it into just drawin some tough bastard punching another tough bastard's head off.

As it is, I have numerous anatomical issues with this character, the tonal range is a little bit shallow (not enough darker tones worked into the shadows) and the face is a mish-mash (but then again, he is a boxer so maybe I could pretend that's characterisation and not just shoddy painting).

I promise to try harder in the future ;)

More Painting practice

2009-08-31T11:16:00.003+01:00

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This was a speedy painting that I did yesterday from a picture from Suicide Girls.

This Week's Life Drawings

2009-08-31T11:14:00.003+01:00

Didnt get as mych done this week as I have in previous weeks. That is because I have a finite (and soon to decrease) amount of time to work before I have to go to my job, and I have been doing more painting and more gesture drawings (as you saw in the previous Uber-scan). It's still fun to get stuck into a longer observational drawing.

Poses/Gesture Drawings Uber-Scan

2009-08-30T17:22:00.002+01:00

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My favourite part of the week, uploading a massive compilation of the gesture drawings I have done before work . As ever, these simple gesture drawings are from photo ref from the newspapers, Suicide Girls and bits and bobs around the net. As a means of expanding my general drawing vocabularly and making my sketch book a more diverse place to visit, I intned to start loitering in public places doing some surreptitious sketches of people in cafes/pubs etc

HAIRBOT pt2

2009-08-28T11:19:00.002+01:00

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The second part of the HairBot illo I did as a quick study for how to paint hair. The result - I need to look at greter detail in my life studies at the way hair lies on heads, and the way that it clumps together into sections. At the moment, the hair looks very synthetic like a wig, the smooth /flat way that it hangs down. I need to try and builf more shape into the hair, by studying real hair.

When I realised how little visual vocabulary I had to describe hair I stopped working, but I was quite pleased with the custom brush I was using to paint the hair and the subtle highlighting I had achieved.

More studies to follow....! ;)

NOTHING TO FEAR available via Amazon NOW!

2009-08-28T09:51:00.002+01:00

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Available now from Amazon.com!

Tell your friends! ;)

HAIR BOT pt1

2009-08-27T11:02:00.003+01:00

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A WIP for a practice painting hair, of all things for a robot to have (!) I have been reading a lot about paiting hair, and I wanted to try and do some studies. For this, I doodled a quick 'blank' bust, that I slowly and inexorably doodled into a robot. I quickly rendered it today and am gonna spend a coupla hours tomorrow trying to give it a bit of a barnet. Will post the finished study asap.

2009-08-25T09:56:00.002+01:00

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This is a pen doodle that I painted in photoshop. I doodled the whole pose, but when I painted it I focused on the area I cropped.

2009-08-24T10:42:00.003+01:00

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Once again, another group of longer studies, maybe 20-30 minutes on each one. I have very loose criteria for selecting which poses I'll spend a longer length of time on than others. Usually they're an unusual pose or the lighting on a particular body part makes for a particularly sculptural form. This is one of the advantages of Suicide Girls' photosets-- unlike other fashion/glamour magazines/websites, the models on SG are decidedly alternative and so there is very little by way of airbrushing going on. A lot of the girls are shown warts, lumps n bumps n all.

2009-08-24T10:41:00.000+01:00

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Slightly longer studies, each drawing taking maybe 20-30mins.

2009-08-24T10:37:00.003+01:00

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A series of drawings of Priscilla, from her photoset of the day 'Empty Spaces' on Suicide Girls. This was a very intersting photoset, as it was less glamorous than other Suicide Girls photsets and had a more artistic appearance, with the model posing in a lot of typical life drawing-y poses that were a real benefit to me.

Gesture Drawing

2009-08-24T10:32:00.003+01:00

Click to enlarge

This is fun for Adams. Quick (5mins) sketches of full length figures, not paying too much attention to details and next to no tonal shading, just concentrating on how the figures plant their feet, distribute their weight and hold themselves expressively. The idea is that by doing a bunch of these everyday, when I come to drawing a figure from imagination my characters have less awkward puppety poses.

Poor Man's Life drawing

2009-08-24T10:27:00.002+01:00

Click to enlarge

It's not quite right to describe this as 'life' drawing, as they are studies taken from photo ref. But whilst I have to work a full time job to keep a roof over me head, I am unable to attend a regular life drawin class where I can study a real life model. Drawing from photos is definitely a poor alternative to actual life drawing, but is beats sitting around thinking about doing some drawing.

Weekly Sketchbook Dump 5/5

2009-08-16T18:01:00.002+01:00

Click to enlarge

The final uploaded set of sketches for this week, another study from Suicide Girls. In the topmost sketch I deliberately avoided rendering the model's clothing which helped me concentrate on the model's anatomy. I included a couple of messy gesture drawing of other poses for extra interest.

Weekly Sketchbook Dump 4/5

2009-08-16T17:59:00.001+01:00

Click to enlarge

I found this a lot of fun to do. Each pose was 3-5 minutes, focusing on the gestures and proportions rather than the details.

Weekly Sketchbook Dump 3/5

2009-08-16T17:52:00.004+01:00

Click to enlarge

As in previous weeks, I have been doing a lot of observational drawings from Suicide Girls Photoset of the day. This is the first time I have ever tried to digi-paint from photoref. This painting took about 15 mnutes ans then I abandoned it (I had to get to work!) But I have learned that painting from photoref requires a lot of discipline, and after a while I became too dependant on the photo and my painting became even cruder than usual. Eye-dropper tool makes assessing the colours with your eyes harder too, and I will avoid it's usage in all future endeavors.

Weekly Sketchbook Dump 2/5

2009-08-16T17:51:00.002+01:00

Click to enlarge

Weekly Sketchbook Dump 1/5

2009-08-16T17:46:00.002+01:00

Click to enlarge

In an attempt to make each image clickable to enlarge it, I am going to do my weekly sketchbook dump as multiple posts containing ingle images, rather than as a single post containing many images. The reason for this is that Blogger on seems to let you upload one image as clickable to enlarge, and the rest break. If you try to upload them individually, they all break. Also, the user experience of scrolling down this weeks work wont be imparied at all by being made of mutliple posts, whereas the ability to identify which image you want to comment on (if any) would be an advantage.

It just takes me a whilte longer.... :(

Illustration Friday: Wrapped

2009-08-15T22:11:00.003+01:00

Click to enlarge.

Wrapped up nice and warm!

I wanted to spend as long on the atmospheric effects of being in a snow storm, and initially I planned on having little more than a silhouette of the figure, but I though that the multiple layers as well as the figure's posture indicated 'wrapped' nicely as well, so I worked a little more detail into the man too.

I found determining where to put shadows to describe the figure's form a challenge, as I wanted to convey the light as being ambient and diffuse, with the figure utterly lost in a snowy void.

Weekly Sketchbook Round Up

2009-08-09T14:00:00.022+01:00

Hello again!

I'm always dubious of artists sketchbook threads/blogs when they give you a weekly round up of 3 images, all nicely finished and rendered. For me, the point of a blogging my sketchbook is to become more objective about my work (cheers Badger for the vocab) and to invite intersting criticiscims and comments.

If I only post the best stuff then what will I improve from the feedback I receive?

So whilst this isnt everything that I have done in my sketchbook this week, I have tried not to just cherry pick the 'finished' drawings from my sketchbook. Some stuff I have chosen is not as succesful as others, but I am anxious to have feedback on all of it. Good/bad/constructive/offensive, let me have it all! ;)

***BTW***

The first person to tell me how to upload multiple images to Blogger whilst retaining the ability to click them to see an enlarged version of the image wins a signed copy of Nothing To Fear, my first self published comic book. My email is in my profile, top right of blog. Thanks!

A sketch of Rigel, from her photoset of the day on Suicide Girls.

A female pole vaulter, chosen for her athletic posture which I thought would help inform my drawings of Firefighter Rachel Smith, who I wanted to be tough and athletic but still feminine and attractive.

Glitch, another Suicide Girls photoset of the day. This is actually the first Suicide Girl I drew, deciding that the glamour photogrpahy from Suicide Girls would be a good resource for drawing female anatomy, with the girls tattoos and alternative apparel making them more effective character design than the models on traditional life drawing sites would offer. Also, the 'photoset of the day' feature on Suicide Girls would provide fresh material everyday, as opposed to the irregularly updated life drawin sites such as characterdesigns.com.

Bridgeman studies form lunchtime at work, and some photo ref sketches of male models posing with submachine guns, studies for the police in my forthcoming comic book.

Another model from Suicide Girls.com Lavonne, in her photoset of the day. I decided to do gestural drawings of several poses, whilst taking longer rendering and studying the forms of an unusual angle. The foreshortned legs were a challenge to draw, focusing on feet is something I have overlooked for many years, usually concetrating on making hands as expressive as possible.

A male model posing with a gund prop. The purpose of these wuick gestural studies - besides getting more ref of guys holding guns - was to spend sometime looking at how people plant their feet, and trying to make it look like the character is grounded in the drawing, and not floating in a white void.

The anatomical stuff is all Bridgeman studies from my lunchhour at work, slowly working through a page at a time is really helping to change the way I look at drawing the figure. The daily dose of Suicide Girls helps to flesh out the structural anatomy I'm learning from Bridgeman.

Gesture drawings from Suicide Girls.

Two drawings of Opale, from her photoset of the day on Suicide Girls. Above, the double page spread from my sketchbook, and below is a cropped close up of her torso/pelvis. This photoset was beautifully lit, and I enjoyed focussing on the chiaoscuro forms of light and dark that desrcribed the model's shape. As ever, trying to remember lessons learned through Bridgeman to study and analyse the model, rather than just copying the photo. ;)

And after Sorrel complained at me that all I'd been doing all week is drawing girls, and that my sketchbook was looking like an adolescent fantasy, I found a male body building website and found some meat-head-hypermasculine-gaylord to draw. I think that this might prove a usual exercise everynow and again, as the inhuman exageration of anantomy that these over-inflated idiots represent would help reinforce my understanding of the wedging of the muscles from Bridgeman, and might help improve my drawings of the male form.

Illustration Friday: Impatience

2009-08-08T14:52:00.003+01:00

When you're holed up in the downstairs bathroom it can sometimes be difficult getting a decent mobile internet signal.... which is enough to make anyone impatient!

POLICE body armour design

2009-08-02T18:00:00.002+01:00

In my upcoming comic, Persons Reported, the police make an appearance at the climax of the story. In a typically even handed and rational manner for myself, the police in my story are violent, facist pigs. This is their body armour that they use to maintain corwd control.

Firefighter Rachel Smith

2009-08-02T17:01:00.007+01:00

This is my first painting of Firefighter Rachel Smith, the hero of my new comic Persons Reported. I have done lots of skethcbook work designing her, and am less than satisfied with this painting. I need to vary the brushstrokes of her hair to make it look more real and natural, and her face is a little swollen and overworked. Still, if you got everything right the first time round you'd lose all the satisfaction of improving.

A sketchbook page of Smith, trying to show differnt expressions and still keeping her likeness.

Firefighter Rachel Smith on the left, some pissed floozy sketched out of the newspaper on the right.

A Bridgeman study from lunchtime at work.

Some anatomy studies from www.characterdesigns.com/ Bridgeman is good for showing you how lumps wedge together, am still trying to figure out how curves fit together.

More figures sketched out of the newspaper.

Illustration Friday: Modify

2009-08-01T16:08:00.003+01:00

For the theme of 'Modify' I intensively researched (spent 5 minutes on Wikipedia) UK athletes who won silver medals at the Beijing Olympics. What sort of surgical modifications could they make to ensure gold medal winning performances at the London 2012 Olympics?

Germaine Mason won the silver medal for High Jump in the Beijing Olympics. After certain zoological-antipodean-surgical-marsupial-modifications he'd be certain to win the gold in London 2012.

After having webbed fingers and gills grafted onto her body, Keri-Anne Payne hopes her modifications will give her an advantage and win gold for the UK.

Whereas Phillips Idowu has taken a rather extreme attitude towards performance enhancing modifications. He hopes that by sacrificing his legs from the hips and replacing them with extendable bionic super-limbs will give him the edge it takes to win gold for the triple jump.

Rattus Roboticus - POSES

2008-02-29T15:26:00.003Z

A small range of poses from my character Rattus Roboticus. Since Sorrel and I shall be drawing alternating panels of the fight between our characters, she will have to have a lot of reference of my character to be able to draw it accurately and consistently. These poses combined with the turnaround will enable her to have a quick source for reference when she is figuring out what'll happen next.

Rattus Roboticus

2008-02-26T20:48:00.006Z

This is the design for my character for the new collaborative blog BATTLE RATS. Sorrel Sparks and I have each designed a character and shall take it in turns to sequentially illustrate a battle between them.

John Steakley's VAMPIRE$ Concept Art

2008-01-24T21:03:00.001Z

John Steakley's VAMPIRE$ is a phenomenally exciting book, which in 1998 was turned into the abysmal John Carpenter's Vampires. It is about a group of Vatican funded Vampire hunters, and their unenviable fatalistic lifestyles. Their lives fluctuate between bouts of superhuman alcoholism and nerve-shreddingly terrifying battles with superhuman Vampires. They all know that they're gonna die, and that when they die it'll be ugly and messy, but they also know that what they are doing is important, and once they have been let in on the secret that vampires are real they are all compelled to so something about it.

Vampire$, Inc. is the Vatican sanctioned company that battles the undead. Jack Crow is the charismatic leader of Team Crow, the guys that Vampire$, Inc. send out to kill the vampires. Jack Crow is a magnificient character, larger than life and twice as mean. He has had an unusually long career as a vampire hunter (just over 2 years) and the knowledge that his luck is surely going to run out any day now gives Crow an unhealthy relationship with alcohol and a fatalistic attitude towards his life.

When battling superhuman vampires, Team Crow need to arm themselves as much as possible and hope that superior tactics and weapons and luck will win them through against the incredibly fsat and strong vampires. Covered from head to toe in chainmail and wearing a crucifix of halopgen lamps on his chest, Jack Crow going into battle looks like a modern day Crusader (apt, considering the source of their organisations funds). Crow's pump ction crossbow is apable of propelling his baseball bat sized stakes through the chests of vampires.

The newest member of Team Crow, and Jack Crow's protege who he is seemingly grooming to assume leadership of Team Crow after his inevitable death. Felix is a natural born gunslinger, with all the superhuman speed and accuracy of a Sergio Leone character. He is a reluctant hero - torn between an overwhelming compulsion to run from the terror of the vampires, and a fundamental conviction that they must be destroyed.

Headshots of Felix and Crow. In all aspects of designing these characters, I was trying to find a 'modern day cowboy' look.

Sorrel's Dad

2007-12-23T15:44:00.000Z

This is an illustration of Sorrel's father for his Xmas present. It was drawn by Sorrel Sparks and painted by me. I would have preffered to have painted on top of the lines to make it more painterly (like the Ryan Reynolds study) but Sorrel felt that this would diminish her influence in the illo, so I painted purely under the lines (like our previous collaboration Georgia). I am quite pleased with the result, and think that between the two different inputs on the illo we have achieved quite a good likeness.

Riding The Niner: A Repairman Jack Comic

2007-11-24T10:53:00.000Z

This comic is based on one of the opening scenes from 'Hosts' written by F Paul Wilson. I chose to adapt this scene into a sequential illustration because I thought it has a very simple three part structure that would work well as a stand-alone story.

I thought that having an ancillary character narrate the action was interesting, becasue of the nature of Repairman Jack's character; he is always a part of the crowd. I hope that anyone unfamiliar with Repairman Jack would not even realise who the hero is until he strikes.

Painting Skintones

2007-11-11T23:47:00.000Z

This is a drawing of Ryan Reynolds, who has recently been announced as the actor who will play Repairman Jack in the upcoming movie. I am doing studies of Reynolds as character design for the short comic I am producing, based on one of the Repairman Jack novels.

Following on from the crit I received for Georiga, and after having read several online tutorials in how to paint skintones, I decided to take this study and make a painting of it. I began by painting in black and white to fix the tonal range. I then went over it again with colour.

I am not sure how well it turned out. It is a very different process than the simpler one I am used to , but I think that with practice and after doing more studies from life I should see some improvement soon.

Georgia

2007-11-07T16:36:00.000Z

This is an illuatration of a character from Joe Hill's Heart Shaped Box, and it was drawn by Sorrel Sparks as part of her current self initiated project. I was impressed by the clarity of the line work and the natural pose, so I decided to colour a version myself. Most notable in this illo from my point of view is her hair; whilst this was mainly painted with a mouse, the hair is the first time I have used a graphics tablet to achieve more painterly effect.

ALTIOR calender submission

2007-10-28T23:06:00.000Z

The legal training company Altior gave my university course's degree show fund a generous contribution in return for us doing some illustrations for their calender next year. My submission is based on the idea of Time Management, and my illustration is a parody of Lewis Hine's iconic image of masculinty Power House Mechanic working on a Steam Pump.

Star Wars sketch

2007-10-28T22:47:00.000Z

Star Wars was on TV tonight, and I doodled this in a corner of my sketchbook. I was interested in the thick sleeves of Luke's tunic, and the way that the little flappy bit below his belt looked. I then did a super-quick colouring job on it, mainly interested in how different layer blending modes effected photographic textures. I think the most interesting aspect of this sketch that I'd like to explore in a later illustration is the idea of looking out from a dark are into a bright area, and the effect the contrast has on the drama in the image.

2007-10-28T22:39:00.000Z

A selection of my life drawings from the last couple of weeks.

ECLECTIC - cllub night logo design

2007-10-28T22:33:00.000Z

I was asked by a friend to try and come up with a logo for his upcoming 'eclectic' club night. The idea of the night is that he's going to be playing unusual covers of famous songs. Because of the idea of blending different musical styles together, I came up with the idea a cassette tape with a vinyl and a CD instead of spools.

I also drew the lettering, mixing different fonts to help reflect the blending idea again.

Rakosh Feeding

2007-10-28T22:29:00.000Z

This is a illustration I did for the boarders at www.repairmanjack.com. One of Repairman Jack's main protagonists is this monster, known as a Rakosh. I had never seen an illustration of a Rakosh that I felt was accurate to their description in the books (neither on the book covers or anywhere else on the internet) so I spent a lot of time narrowing down the design before beginning my painting. It got a thorough thumbs up from all the people in the official forum, and I even had a nice approving message from F Paul Wilson him self, author of the Repairman Jack books and creator of the Rakoshi.

HERO - collaborative project with Sorrel Sparks

2007-10-28T22:22:00.000Z

This is my finished image for the HERO/VILLAIN collaborative project between myself and Sorrel Sparks. The idea was that we'd each pencil one and then paint the other's pencils, so we'd each have had a hand in both aspects to the project. Pencils by Sorrel, painted by myself. Whenever Sorrel gets around to painting my pencils, I'll post the finished result here.

Illustration Friday: DISCOVERY

2007-07-15T03:44:00.001+01:00

Sorrel doesnt spot the critter in the cupboard, proving that some things in life are yet to be discovered. . .

Done in a day, a collaboration between my partner Sorrel Sparks and myself. I directed the camerawork, painted the little monster, animated him and I integrated the cartoon and film elements with After Effects. Sorrel did all the hand drawn typography, designed and animatede the monster and made all the tea ;)

A R A C H N I C I D E

2007-07-12T11:20:00.000+01:00

This is my first ever animated film, which I did for a project for Uni.

It was all hand-drawnbefore being scanned into the computer to be coloured with Photoshop, animated with After Effects, and then edited together with Premiere. The music was composed and performed by John David Smith.

Illustration Friday: Geek

2007-07-10T11:02:00.001+01:00

Playing on his computer all alone, sat inside during the daytime with the curtains closed and about to bite the head off a chicken . . . surely this has to be the ultimate geek?

Gorilla Life Drawing.

2006-05-28T19:53:00.000+01:00

For my first post I have put up the only decent drawing I have hanging around my hard drive at the moment.

This illustration was done as a memento for my friend Maria, who will be heading back home to Spain in just a couple of weeks.

I asked her what sort of thing she liked, and the only english word I picked out of her spanish babbling was 'gorilla'. It being that I look a fair bit like an ape, I decided to draw myself as a gorilla. I scanned in a life drawing and superimposed it on the gorilla's easel.

That way, my friend Maria got 2 illustrations. The mini-version of one of my life drawings done in acrylics, and the semi-self portarit of an artistic gorilla done in pencils and digital media.