Pencils, inks and hungry witches

We had a two part series running on Tales of the... over the last two weeks. They're a couple of dark fairy stories, loosely inspired by Jim Henson's The Storyteller, the mid-90s television show, by the Henson company and written by the late Anthony Mingella. The first of them (Tales of the Storytide presents The Little King with No Son) was fun to produce - it's an audioplay, with a lovely accompanying illustration by Ruth Kelly.

The second (Tales of the Storytide presents The Prince's Smile) is a piece of illustrated prose, and presented an interesting opportunity for some artistic experimentation with my good friend, and fellow Tales of the... co-creator, Stephen Downey. I did some rough pencils for the piece and he inked over them. This marked the first time that he had inked another artist's work and the first time that I had my work inked by another artist.

And I think the results are pretty impressive, with Stephen's moody inks suiting the subject matter much more than my more cartoony, clean style. Plus, he fixed up lots of basic drawing errors. What's that? I didn't say anything.

Presented for your intrigue and, hopefully, pleasure is a comparision of the inked and pencilled pieces.  You can click on them to see them in all their unfettered glory.

Above you can see the first of them. If I had been inking them myself, I would have been using some brush pens and black drawing pens, whereas Stephen goes for ink and brush. Notice how he added a light source? I don't even need to pretend that I did that on purpose because that's something I usually decide on when I'm inking myself, but Stephen has much stronger shadows than I do.

 

I think the prince in this second image looks a little bit like Alex Willmore's work, which adds a nice symmetry or serendipity, or something beginning with s.

And here's the last image. I think this is the best one. Stephen took a very unfinished pencil drawing and turned it into something special. The moon was a lovely touch, and if you notice the mortar looks much less like an antwerp, which, for those of you familiar with the Quest for Glory series, will add a further degree of whatever word beginning with s was decided to be the best one. 

*looks at watch* I spent an awful long time farting around on photoshop arranging those tonight.

The future, for which I have really worked, is mine.

Tesla was coming at me from three different sources today, so I thought I would get my own back by drawing him.

Relocation, relocation, relocation

Hello! I have returned to my blog, which has become accustomed to my long absences. Much has changed. I'm now in London, and doing different things, so you'll be seeing considerably different stuff up here now. I've joined a drawing on location group, which is taxing my drawing in a much different way than I'm used to. It's been much longer than I'd care to admit since I drew landscapes and architectures. Here's some scans of my first couple of drawing trips.

First up is Richmond Park. This was the first landscape work I'd done in years and years, and it definitely shows. Pretty ropey.

Next up is another one near Richmon Park. There was a small fire which I exaggerated and added a spectator. Still pretty ropey.

I hadn't been extremely pleased with what I'd produced so far, so I decided to go for a more stylised approach, which I enjoyed a lot more, and I think is much more suited to my temperment.

I then stalked a squirrel for half an hour. I've got about 50 three second sketches of this little bugger. He wouldn't keep still.

What a difference two weeks makes. This is from my second trip with the group, down to Camden Lock. I was pretty pleased with this one. Still a ways to go but much better than the first couple of attempts. I spent much longer on this one than the other ones as well.

In other news, I now have an A3 scanner, so look out for me scanning in many big things and shrinking them down to fun-size.

AJC

The world's first completely silent runners

There's always music in the air.

These are quick two minute jobbies but that gum you like is going to come back in style.

Poison Ivy Sketch

Woops. Haven't posted since October. Bad Andrew. He will be punished.

S'Been a While

My weekly blogging has taken a bit of a nosedive of late but I plan to rectify that.

Had a very fun BICS at the weekend, where I met a lot of fellow Insomnia creators and staff which was great and some of Team Kronos City met for the first time. There was some bonding on Moomin love.

In Kronos City news, the first draft of the script has been finished!

Here's some pictures. Knock yourself out by looking at them. With your eyes.

First up is Guillermo del Toro looking worried.

The second should need no introduction. If it does, there's something gravely missing in your life.