Fan Art Friday: The Legend of Zelda

Yesterday I got a letter from HMRC. I also went to the Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddess concert in the evening. I combined these two things to draw a quick bit of Zelda Fan Art...

Comic Gosh!p

Comic Gosh!p is a monthly comic book discussion group that takes place at Gosh! London. Each event will normally includes one mainstream comic book and one small press book which is then discussed and dissected. Next month is a bit of a comic strip special, and we'll be looking at Krazy Kat by George Herriman, Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson and Lucy the Octopus by Richy K. Chandler.

I actually hadn't read any Krazy Kat or Calvin and Hobbes before, although I was aware of them both, and it's been fun to finally have an excuse to give them a read. Although as much as I've been enjoying them, I couldn't help but feel a little bit disappointed that we weren't looking at another classic comic strip (and my own personal favourite)...

Happy Birthday Chantel

It was my friend Chantel's birthday a few weeks ago, but she only just got around to celebrating it this weekend. She loves Pokémon and even has Pokémon tattoos, so of course I drew a picture of her and her favourite Pokémon: Bulbasaur...

Happy Birthday May!

Last week it was my friend May's birthday. May works with me at the National Gallery, and we'd been talking the week before about The Arnolfini Portrait by Van Eyck (which is in Room 56, in case you were wondering)...



I would like to point out that May would never actually drink wine in front of a painting! ;)

Happy Birthday Judy!

Last week it was my friend Judy's birthday. Ever since she moved to Angel, Judy never let's me forget the fact that she loves Angel, so I thought this t-shirt would be perfect for her. She also loves Pizza Express dough balls...

Happy Birthday Anna!

It was my friend Anna's birthday last week, and here's a card I drew for her, based on her Facebook profile picture...

Happy (Retroactive) Birthday!

May is a busy month for birthdays and I have quite a few cards to post in a while, but first, I've got a few cards that I never got round to posting before...

Firstly (and also the longest in time since her actual birthday) is this card I drew for Jess, who makes AMAZING cakes! Her birthday was actually last December, but for some reason, I hadn't actually scanned it before giving it to her, so couldn't upload a picture before. Thankfully, Jess took a photo of the card, so I can finally post it here...



Not quite so far back, it was Alyana's birthday in March. I drew this picture of her...



Also in March, it was Celine's birthday. When I was chatting to her online, she said something about this being her 30...something birthday, and I liked the phrase...



Getting a bit more up-to-date, it was Camila's birthday in April. Camila works in a comic shop in London and I drew this picture of her reading an Adventure Time comic...



And finally, at the end of April it was Mel's birthday. Mel is a massive Star Trek nerd fan and even went to the World Premiere of the latest Star Trek film in Sydney, so I drew this picture of her all Trek'd out...

Life Drawing

Last night I went along to a Life Drawing class, something I've been meaning to do for a while now. The last time I did any Life Drawing was back during my A-Level Art class, and I was glad I made it along.

We drew various poses, ranging in time from 10 minutes to 5 minutes, 3 minutes and 1 minute, as well as experimenting drawing with a continuous line, not taking your pencil off the paper. I felt a little rusty at the beginning but was pleased with some of the drawings I produced, and definitely plan to attend another class soon.

Here are a bunch of my drawings from last night...

Star Wars Day

It's that day again...

Process: Optional Exercise #1 (Casablanca Comic)

I started going along to Process, a monthly comics workshop/discussion group set up by Steven Walsh and based at Gosh! Comics. It takes place on the first Wednesday of every month and prior to this month's meeting Steve posted an Optional Exercise online for people to have a go at: to adapt the following scene from Casablanca into a comic.



I wanted to give this a go, although because I didn't have much time to work on this before this month's meeting, I decided to focus on part of the scene (from 1.44 in the video). Because Process is partly about "How" people make comics, I thought that I would also include my step-by-step process here.

So after watching the scene and deciding that I wanted to do it as a one page comic, I found the script online and drew a rough thumbnail sketch...



Because that part is filmed from a fixed camera angle, I wanted to replicate this, with only changes in facial expression and some minor changes in the characters movement. So I drew a sketch of the panel and then copy and pasted it on the computer to set up the page before printing it out and drawing in the additional panels and writing in the dialogue...



I then drew over this on a lightbox and then scanned and coloured the final page in Photoshop, colouring in full colour and then converting the file to greyscale. And this is the final page: