Halloween Treat | 'Sbookies!' Full Page Comic

For those of you not in the know, today was originally scheduled for 'The Alphabet Challenge | V'. This piece will be posted this weekend instead and then the regular schedule for The Alphabet Challenge will be resumed.

In September, I created this little concept that I intended to share with you this Halloween. I am happy to say that indeed I will be sharing with you, a full page comic strip! I spent over a week's work on this one sheet so I do hope you enjoy this short piece.

For more information about this comic strip, be sure to come back later in the week where I will share some behind the scenes content for this comic. I am sorry to say that as of now this won't be a reoccurring series and it is a one off. However I am not against returning to this in time, and you may still see more of Mage, Silverside and other spooky creatures.

Without further ado, please enjoy Sbookies!

It's Halloween So Here's A Ghost

Before getting down to business, I would like to point out this the upcoming entry to 'The Alphabet Challenge' will not be posted this Monday, due to a special post taking priority. The Alphabet Challenge's V will be posted the following weekend and then the regular schedule will be resumed.

Nothing special so much today, I wouldn't want anything to be overshadowed by what's to come in the next week. So instead here's an old picture of something that was done years ago, and I might actually create an art piece for in future, bringing this unconventional ghoul to the world of fine arts.

Just what exactly is this ghost? I haven't a clue either! I remember having this Halloween themed art kit where you could make these sticky things that used (I think it might have been) marble ink to colour the stickers. The googly eyes were also included in the kit.

This was all that survived of that kit, either thrown out or just lost to the sands of time. In fact I don't think I have the ghost in my possession anymore either, only this memory of it. Maybe I should recreate the ghost before the Halloween festivities die out to make way for Christmas. What a busy time of year!

For something spooky and amazing, come back within the next few days to see that special Halloween treat only on this blog!

The Trotters [Only Fools And Horses]

After giving Uncle Albert some attention in The Alphabet Challenge, I decided to depict all four main members of the Trotter family. This consists of Del Boy, Rodney, Grandad and Uncle Albert.

For those of you who don't know what 'Only Fools And Horses' is, it is a comedy series by the BBC famous for it's hooky salesmanship family and their never ending get rich quick schemes in Peckham.

I'm going to be honest, this wasn't as enjoyable as I had hoped. For most of the sketching process I was enjoying myself but then the joy faded away. I have marched on regardless until this piece was completed, taking me about five days to finish it. Unfortunately the lack of joy in making this causes me not to feel so satisfied with the result, so I'll let you guys take total control over deciding how great it is.

Part of me doesn't know how this piece took that many days, I've clearly forgotten how I spent one of them! But it was the standard process of sketch, ink and colour. I used my pencils since they would provide me with an optimal variety of colour and allow me to make less saturated tones. For the most parts the colours are a decent match to those which are true to the costumes and actors.

My favourite things about this if undoubtedly the heads. Each head was modelled after each actor rather than giving them a standard head shape. This paid off particularly well with Grandad and Rodney, the latter I think is actually the better portrayed overall. Another enjoyable task was Del Boy's arms, giving him his cigar and a cocktail, which I've never drawn before so it was a nice first! The cocktail is modeled after one of many that Del has drunk in the show.

I think it will be a while before I do something like this again, simply because it lacked the joy I usually have with my art. I do hope I can be more passionate about my work if I do this again in future, especially if I draw the cast of Only Fools And Horses again.

Draw This Again | The Hoobs, Humanised

At least a year ago I was doing this thing where I was drawing several fictional characters, converting them from their known formations into human counterparts. It was a fun, creative project and something I might come back to or just restart. One entry back then that I wasn't purely satisfied with was my work on 'The Hoobs'.

Here's a brief recap for those who don't know who The Hoobs are. An alien race are sent by one of their own 'Hubba Hubba' to Earth in order to collect information which via a News broadcast, is sent back to their home planet to be stored in their database, the 'Hooblopedia'? And so four Hoobs, 'Ivor', 'Groove', 'Tulah' and 'Roma' come to earth and learn things that are coincidentally (of course) educational to children watching.

Now that we've got that out of the way, here's the original illustration.

Yes, it's just their heads. That's one of my biggest disappointments. I never intended to make full body designs, on screen the Hoobs were never shown in full due to being puppets. I also feel that these designs were rather lazy attempts to replicate the likenesses of each Hoob.

The materials used were at the time my standard fineliners and the felt pens from my 50 pack, I don't think I even had my Tombows at this time. I had used the colour of Tulah's skin before and could've sworn it wasn't so orange/red as it turned out to be, heck she looks like Starfire with a short green do! I decided on Ivor's skin tone being dark since out of all of the Hoobs, he has the darkest colour of purple.

And now on to the new versions, with a little more thought and effort put into it!

Much better. As I have said in the show, the Hoobs are news reporters so I gave them all the news reporter look, giving them all uniforms. I kept Ivor's dark skin tone and aimed for Groove's to be closer to the colour of his nose (Orange). Tulah's skin tone is the biggest improvement, resembling a much more genuine skin tone as well as her original fur colour. You'll also notice I've added one of the other Hoobs, 'Roma' doing a live news report as she would during the show.

The materials used this time consist of ballpoint pen, brush markers of multiple brands and watercolour paint. There's a story as to why the latter is included. I had found some old acrylic and watercolour paints that I had stored away and was testing them in order to see if they were still effective and how I worked with them. I had done this on the page next to his piece in my sketchbook and so when I accidentally dropped the brush at one point, I got a single irremovable splodge on Roma's report!

I was able to fix this with a little bit of thinking. Because of the shape of the splodge, I was able to create a few more to resemble leaves blowing in the wind. So now this piece has the story of the Hoobs learning about either wind or just Autumn, whichever one explains the wind carrying leaves. I hope up until this point you were convinced of such.

So which version did you prefer, and do you reckon I should come back to this and make a third one some day?

PG | The Five Types Of Art Students

WARNING

ADULT SUPERVISION MAY BE REQUIRED FOR THIS PARTICULAR ENTRY, PROCEED WITH CAUTION

I had a watch at LavenderTowne's video about five different types of art students and thought I would give them a draw. And if you're wondering why I put a warning on this blog post, you can blame the shock artist.

Here is the illustration with the original designs for these five students.

It was just a fun rough illustration done in ball point pen, I would definitely like to draw this again with their finalized designs, and I would most probably exclude Shock's use of the middle finger with something a little tamer, but hey! She's here to shock so why not?

And now you may see four of the new designs, coloured as well!

So from top left to bottom right, we have the 'Art should be this Artist', 'Shock Artist', 'Zombie Artist', 'Can't get anything done Artist'. You'll notice I gave them fairly monochromatic colour schemes, but that I just mean grey-scale with a particular colour to make them stand out. Between the four of these, choosing colours to represent them was no challenge. You'll also notice that for the most part these four remain just as they did in original illustration, however that is not the case for our fifth artist.

Here is the 'Weeaboo Artist'. I felt that while her original design did resemble the anime art style, that I could have done a better job of it, especially with the hair. Her new hairstyle is taken from legitimate Japanese hairstyles, exaggerated to some extent and given a pink dye with white highlights. As I am typing this, I've realized that I've forgotten her blushies, goodness knows what Mark Crilley would say if he found out!

So how about it, do you think I made decent interpretations of these artists? I'm by no means competing with LavenderTowne, it's merely just having a go at it myself. Chances are you'll see these five artists again, and perhaps an expanded world with more artists? We'll see in time!

The Alphabet Challenge | U

U is for Uncle Albert

Most of my entries for the Alphabet Challenge have been cartoon characters, Uncle Albert is one of those characters chosen to break the mould. Only Fools And Horses is an icon amongst British comedy and Albert is one of the main trio (in most of it's latter years), providing tales of his eventful and unfortunate days participating in the war.

This entry was a return to my coloured pencils, which had not been used since my 100th post. This was ideal because with the pencils I have a wider variety of colours than with any of my other mediums.

Designing Albert in the Drawson style was a fun process although a quick one. I think had I taken more time on the head, giving it a new shape, the result could have been better. But all the same, his fluffy white beard doesn't look so bad!

I might bring the original Trotter Trio to the Drawson style, I was originally going to include them in this piece, but decided against it in the end.

Have you seen the letter T? If not you can check it out via my page for the 'Alphabet Challenge' as well as previous entries. Look out for V coming soon!

Chemical X - The Powerpuff Collection

I'm hoping that two weeks of work have paid off. No I haven't been at this for two weeks, but it has been two weeks from start to finish, finding time was a complication.

So this was recently after 'The Power Of Four' came out, and thus I was still slightly attached to the theme of PowerPuff Girls, this is the masterpiece that broke me from that state of mind.

I set out to draw every cannon 'PowerPuff' or counterpart that I knew of. I know there was an episode where some guy called Dick made tons of them but I did not count that. And so from top to bottom (and left to right) is a list of everyone here:

Bunny - From 'Twisted Sister'

Dynamo (The Magzord of Townsville)

Princess Morbucks (has been a member on multiple occasion and intended to join the team in her debut)

/Mojo Jojo - From 'Mr. Mojo's Rising', my first and favourite episode

Bliss - From 'The Power Of Four'

Boomer, Brick and Butch the RowdyRuff Boys

Bullet - From 'Stray Bullet'

Bubbles, Blossom and Buttercup the PowerPuff Girls

This piece was done with watercolour pencil and my micron fineliners. For the most part I had a blast with this project, particularly when putting them to paper for the first time. After that the fun stopped until it came to giving them colour. While unfortunatley Buttercup looks a little radioactive, I am proud of how the colours have turned out. It could be a sign of improvement for my use of the watercolour pencils!

But now I think it's time to give those pencils a little break and return to my other mediums, old and new. More to come in the next week!

OC : Star [from 'Beware The Box']

In the last week I made a post about a mysterious box and two characters who encountered it. I can happily introduce you now to one of these two. This is Star the creator.

Since this time I actually focused on her design rather than her basic attributes, I believe I have resulted in a decent design. Star retains her round head, star shaped hair and baby blue skin.

So what's new about Star? Well the primary change is that she is no longer naked. I have star a dress that would match with the hair, and gave it a few ancient Greek attributes, as a reference to the Greek story on which her adventure is based on (Pandora's Box).

Around her back is this cog shaped piece that holds together the material connecting the back to the end of her short sleeves. I chose the cog symbol since it relates to the concept of creativity, the way in which the minds works to create. Additionally Star has a new necklace that is separate from the dress. This is so as to make her head more of a light bulb shape, an item also related to creativity. And if you don't know how, then I doubt you have ever watched a cartoon.

That's quite simply all there is to it, Star is a character to creates and looks like that. If you don't understand anything about this box I refer to, then I recommend you check out my post from last week titled 'Beware The Box', where you can also see Star's original appearance.

Beware the Box

I love how this piece came to be. I'm not going to explain everything, but you will get some answers.

After using my watercolours for the 100th post, I wanted to recreate that same lighting effect from the light bulb but use it for a different, possibly more epic scenario. And that's when I found a video on YouTube about Pandora's Box. I was aware of this myth to begin with, but actually watching and learning about the story motivated me to make this piece.

There are two general ideas of the story. The original where Pandora is an evil girl who promptly releases the evils from her box when given as a gift by Zeus. The more contemporary version depicts Pandora as a curious girl who is tempted to open the box, with much regret afterwards.

I decided to create a Pandora's Box scenario (so to be clear, this is not the actual myth I've drawn) and divide Pandora into two, the evil and good depictions being present at the opening of the box. This became two completely separate people rather than two sides of one identity. The box is being opened in a cavern and the evil one is maniacally laughing with triumph while the innocent is struck with regret.

The blue girl will be making a return next week when I reveal who she is, giving a little more insight into the world of Droey's Draws. As for the man in white, I'm afraid he's going to remain a mystery for a long time. Come back on Friday to see who this blue girl is and learn a bit more about what's happening in this picture!

Marker Test - WHSmith 12 Pack

I was recently shopping and took opportunity of this offer in which some pens were being sold half price in this new set up promoting artistic exploration. Along with something you'll see in the future at some point, there was a pack of 12 dual tip brush markers, so I thought 'why not?'.

Below is what these markers are capable of. I made use of half of them to create this lady holding her phone.

Based on what I did for this piece, I was satisfied with them. They brush well and for the most part their colour remains flat rather than layered (as would be the case with felt pens). I doubt that they are capable of blending, I did try with the skin tone and pink. But I have yet to blend any marker ink, (in hoping  to buy another park with a blender before I try at it). In hindsight, while it would have cost more I feel I should have got the 24 pack so as to get a wider variety of colours. I'd say if you want to get started with markers, these aren't a bad first step.

Drawing this girl, I sketched her using  my mechanical pencil, not focusing on the details so much but the shapes. After that I erased the pencil so that it would be just visible enough to trace with the markers. These pens are good at cell shading, I was able to make about three or four layers of colour in some places, particularly on her top.

Her hair was where I took caution. I would be layering my black marker over the brown in order to create her black hair colour, leaving some hints of brown where lights could be shining on it. This allowed the skin and hair to look separate, but when layering the skin tone, I think the brown marker got a bit too dark, I only added one layer on top of the original.

Be sure to try out these markers or some of the other stock going on in this art deal, it's pretty good and I'm tempted to return for more!

The Alphabet Challenge | T

T is for Tarzan

Without a doubt, my favourite Disney film is Tarzan, and I'm not the only one in my family who would agree. In both his film and television series, Tarzan had our attention. Just everything about it is so great (at least that's how I see it). So here I am making this dedication to him by including him in the Alphabet Challenge.

Since I haven't used them in this challenge since the Letter N, I wanted to return to the watercolour pencils to bring Tarzan to life. The colouring for this worked out rather well and came out close to how they appear in the shot that I based the illustration from.

For those who don't know, this is based on the title sequence from 'The Legend Of Tarzan', where at the end he can be seen making his war cry from the ledge of a waterfall.

As far as drawing a realistic human goes, I'm impressed with the result. I find the arms to take away from that quality but besides that Tarzan seems anatomically and proportionatley correct.

I made a few sketches of this particular shot before I made the final result (the sketch on the far left I think had a better turn out than the final piece actually!), this was primarily so I could have a recap with anatomy and with how the head particularly would look at the angle shown.

A few days later and the final result was finished. As far as my Alphabet Challenge has gone, I'd call this one of my better entries. It was a learning curve that provided me with satisfactory results, and that's the kind of art I feel I'll benefit from the best.

Have you seen the letter S? If not you can check it out via my page for the 'Alphabet Challenge' as well as previous entries. Look out for U coming soon!