John's Entertainment

Two people are having a pretty heated discussion out in the open. Meanwhile John happens to chance upon this argument and, not being a part of it, he decides to sit himself down with some pop corn and enjoy the action!

Droey comes along and sees John watching the commotion so he approaches to find out what's going on. John gives him the full story; Lexi is having her umpteenth tantrum at Gary, this time because she thought he was eyeing up one of the new neighbours. Droey asks about the popcorn and John explains he got it from the corner shop close by to enjoy while he watches. Droey is not impressed with John's idea of openly watching the couple bicker but John tells him that they should feel honoured to get front row seats! Droey attempted to drag John away but didn't succeed before Lexi drew her attention to them. Luckily no one was hurt but Droey felt it necessary to apologise for his friend the next three times they crossed paths!

You may recognise Lexi and Gary, they showed up a few weeks ago from the other side of a garden fence. If any of you have seen the art piece of a stripper mowing the grass, you may realise it was this couple passing by! When John found out there was a stripper down their road, he was amused and jokingly suggested Droey visit her!

I've been making art on this blog for over a year now and I think my explanation of the process for each piece has started to get a little repetitive. Of course each piece has it's own story but I don't want to tell such similar stories over and over. This isn't me abandoning this trend, I will still talk about the process, particularly if anything unique happens during. But I am considering putting stories with each art piece, since a picture is supposed to say a thousand words this is a good way to make use of that. So in future some Drawson style pieces may have their own little story, which means the OCs could see a little more development and their little world could expand.

Let me know what you think of this change in direction, are there any characters you'd like to see receive focus in any story based material? Are you even interested in the idea of having a story as well as an art piece, like the Santa and Elle series did? I look forward to hearing your views!

Looking back to Mermay

Mermay is an art challenge that takes place throughout May in which you are supposed to illustrate mermaids or mermen. I think it goes that you are meant to do this daily, but I didn't actually start until about a week in to the month and was creating content for the blog alongside Mermay, which I didn't so strictly follow.

The reason I didn't start straight away was because I had my May content already sorted and had decided I would schedule a Mermay for 2019, but a motivational response from a YouTuber artist persuaded me otherwise! And so, with thanks to DrawingWiffWaffles, I have a bit of Mermay art that I am showing you in August! Ooh I'm terrible aren't I!

This piece here is a ball point pen illustration of two mermaids just chilling out in a wrecked boat. Completed in probably an hour, this is one of my favourite pieces out of the Mermay collection. I particularly love how the red mermaid turned out. I was inspired by this illustration of a mermaid waking up in a rowing boat that had been washed up on the shore and decided to take a similar concept here. For those of you who follow my Facebook page, you'll recognise the red mermaid as I posted a picture of her on there at the time!

That's the only art piece I'll be sharing for now, since they were mostly sketches that I was doing in addition to my regularly posted artworks. You'll be able to see more mermaid content as and when, and I intend to dedicate next May to Mermay. How did you like Mermay, perhaps you've got some sketches you'd like to look back on or share! But for now, here's some pages of mermaid sketching among a few other things.

My Feet Are Off The Ground

I was motivated to draw some realism and there's nothing like a good action pose. Since I wanted to focus on drawing the body, I chose probably the only hero to currently wear a full spandex bodysuit and rock it, it's Miraculous Ladybug!

Sadly her foot did not make it onto the page, which I was a little disappointed about but aside from that I really love this! In the space of one day I had Marinette completely illustrated! I took reference for the action pose and then once it was done I illustrated Marinette's hair and facial features, applied the collar and her yo-yo, then it was a matter of applying all of the spots which took a little research!

The next day, the rest was accomplished. Hawkmoth was first after a fair amount of research in pose reference and Hawkmoth's design. After that was the unfortuneatley drunken looking Chat Noir and lastly was the sky backdrop in which I included a load of butterflies, Marinette must've had quite a busy day!

I returned to my method of inking a bad colour and then applying shading with the pencils, excluding the sky backdrop. I allowed myself no more than three colours for Hawkmoth and Chat, while allowing myself only red and blue for Ladybug. Given that I have wrongly ignored my realism for a while, I am thrilled with how Ladybug turned out and might even give it a shot for doing an action pose dedicated to Chat Noir.

Are there any spandex wearing heroes that you're into? If you're looking to do a piece with focus on anatomy, I'd give this sort of thing a try, be it Spiderman, Batgirl or even an OC, give it a shit and see how it turns out!

Using a stripper to cut the grass? 12+

The content in this post may contain content that is unsuitable for young children. Please proceed with caution.

Although to be fair I've done worse, I just think it's necesary to inform you just in case,

In a gardening related discussion, someone incorrectly said 'stripper' instead of a 'strimmer', thus allowing me to take advantage of this mistake to make a humorous art piece!

This is the first time I have drawn anything gardening themed. ... It also happens to be the first time I've drawn a stripper. No I didn't go looking for references to draw the stripper, not even for the pose! I did however look for references for the lawn mower and rotary washing line. I decided to keep this piece a little Egyptian in style as to how there is little to no perspective and a demand for seeing the side view,

My characters however did not abide the laws of Egyptian illustration and allowed the piece to look a little more three dimensional. I stuck to mostly dull or natural colours everywhere on the illustration except for the stripper, being a little out of place given that she is seemingly gardening while she works!

Indeed this was a humorous endeavour and on a level of adult humour close to the park bench illustration last year! I hope this was able to brighten up your day and that you now have something to smirk or laugh about as you go about your day.

April and the Turtles

Got some new pens recently, a little collection of ball point pens. They make sketching nice and colourful and it's also good for aiding confidence when making lines. On this occasion I may have gotten a little carried away and made a full art piece.

So I was thinking of doing some Apritello fan art (for those not in the know, April and Donatello from TMNT) and wanted to make my own design for April. I do like the 2012 design, hence it's heavy influence on my own design, but there are some elements that I wanted to change to honour previous incarnations of April. This included the darker hair colour, the number six on the shirt and a colour scheme closer to her 1987 jumpsuit design. The elements of blue are based on the mirage comic April's costume, which was completely blue!

As for the turtles, I just drew them in the style at Leonardo was seen in about a year ago. Their colour schemes while using colours from the 2012 incarnation are based on their 1987 designs, including the initials on their belt buckles.

To my knowledge this is the first piece I have done for the blog with multicoloured outlines, which is quite a breakthrough! It made this piece feel more vibrant and while I'm used to using black for outlines, it's good to know I now have a variety of colours capable of the job.

What is your favourite version of the Ninja Turtles, and do you have your own designs for these characters and perhaps the others? I'd be interested to see what you have come up with!

Did Hurt break his hand?

So the Dr Men book series is seemingly completed with a set of twelve books. But there are two more incarnations of The Doctor officially, so how would they look as a part of the collection? Let's find out!

Firstly is the John Hurt doctor, which surprisingly didn't get a book! I suppose it wouldn't have been easy to write a child friendly story for a doctor who spent his time fighting the time war, but that's not to say there was nothing to work with.

I gave War Doctor an orange skin tone since only Doctor Fourth had orange skin, and additionally the orange suited the flames of the time war. I took a little inspiration from Mr. Grumpy for the body type and nose while taking Dr. Ninth's shoes since they were a part of Hurt's costume.

His right hand was meant to be scratching his head as some Mr. Men tend to do when they worry, but as you can see I stupidly got the hand the wrong way around! My only saving grace is that he could have just wiped his brow due to stress caused by the war.

The other incarnation that was missed out and unsurprisingly was the upcoming incarnation played by Jodie Whittaker. Perhaps in a couple of years we could see a Dr. Thirteenth book once the audience know her Doctor better, but I couldn't wait that long to see her join the Dr. Men and so she is given a design by myself.

While it may not be so easy to see with her hair in the way, I have given Dr. Thirteenth a semi-circle shape like Mr. Chatterbox, a shape which none of the Dr. Men have used. Whittaker also has a pit of ears, her boots and some high socks. Her skin tone is a shade of violet though I think it's a little close to pink for my liking. I'm not sure if this would be her official colour, I'm not entirely sure how the choosing of colours for the Dr. Men went down for the other twelve but this is just what colour I assume she would get.

Of course, they are not the only Doctors not to get a book, for if you go beyond the mainstream Doctor Who, you'll find there are several actors more who have depicted the Doctor, including Peter Cushing and Rowan Atkinson. Be sure to let me know if you'd like to see any of the other doctors depicted as Mr. Men, I'd gladly give it a shot!

Knuckles and Rouge

I watched the Sonic Mania shorts recently and they got me hyped to do some Sonic fan art, but I also considered converting one of the Sonic characters into the classic style. I ended up choosing Rouge and this is the result.

I wanted to redesign Rouge to suit the classic style Sonic stuff. Her design is better suited to the modern style and her body type certainly is not conventional of the classic style so this was s fun challenge. My decision was to give her s full sleeveless jumpsuit with s heart emblem. I think the idea of the design was a sensible change but I forgot when colouring that I was going to make her jumpsuit purple to contrast the wings!

As for Knuckles, it was simply just looking up his classic design and drawing it. The Master Emerald was drawn behind with the proportions shown in the Sonic Mania Adventures, though I've never been through the struggle of shading an emerald gem before. Suffice to say it's not been shaded to match the shape of the actual Master Emerald.

This piece didn't meet my hopes but I don't often draw characters other than Sonic himself, at least not these years. Perhaps I'll get better at Sonic characters again in future, but I'm not so fussed in the mean time.

The return of the Spiderman!

Over a year ago I created a man/spider hybrid, though I can't remember if I gave him a name. In any case, he is back thanks to a little something I found out one morning.

Apparently there is a domesticated bond between a particular breed of spiders and frogs in which the frog is treated like a house pet. The spider catches the flies and feeds them to the frog while the frog, at least I think, protects the spider. Either that or it is the other way around. Whatever the chemistry it inspired me to give our spider man a pet frog to go after little bugs. So introducing Venom the frog!

Those of you who remember our spidey will notice that his design has altered to suit the Drawson style! Yes I am considering him a part of the Droeyverse, Venom as well. So you might even see these two in future pieces alongside Droey and Co! Look out Agrius, there's someone in town with even more arms to work with!

Cowboy Versus Ninja

I had a watch at a music video that I hadn't seen in a long time. It was my favourite masterpiece by Jervy Hou, titled 'Gunman Style' which has a sequel equally brilliant titled 'Gentleman'. They were parodies of Psy's songs which took a Wild West spin on the original music videos. I was inspired to make an art piece out of these music videos and so here is the result.

I now have fine liners in sepia tone! While they don't overlap so well, creating a series of much darker marks when they do, it certainly creates a more refreshing result than the typical black outlines. This was the perfect piece to use sepia tone on and allowed my colour theory skills to come through, at least I hope so!

The cowboy design is heavily based on Jervy Hou's cowboy costume while the ninja was an original design to feel less out of place. Ninja now has a clan logo stitched on his costume, the emblem meant to resemble the big toe. I gave him a dark red colour to wear instead of black since I didn't want any black in this piece. Additionally I read somewhere that ninjas are less likely to wear black since it makes them stand out even more. So western ninja now has mahogany clothing.

I returned to realism for this piece and I have absolutely no regrets! This piece, slightly reminiscent of Mac and Quaid's debut, turned out a true beauty and made the character's designs all the more appealing. Watercolour pencils were used to colour this piece, using only shades of red, brown and yellow. This set the sepia tone effect in stone and did wonders in combination with the outlines made in brown.

I can't be certain of when I'll need to use sepia toned line art again but I know that I've got the pens for when I do need. Maybe a number of flashback pieces for Droey and Co. would be a good idea. If you have any ideas I'd be glad to hear them, or even see you try them out for yourself! Let us be proud of our sepia tone artworks, and here's to making more of it.