All our most brilliant friends are doubting themselves.

Hello all! How the devil are you this fair Tuesday? I am decidedly comfy. Here are some pictures for you.

This is the first time I've used paint in well over a year, I think. Exciting! 

This is a sketch of the extraordinary burlesque dancer, Vicky Butterfly. Eventually I'll clean it up a tad and colour it. 

Finally, here's some hard-boiled type. I suspect that he has Woes. 

So it's to the gallows with the long lost Kingdom of Light.

I'm late updating because I didn't think I had any pictures to upload here. Clearly I am massively forgetful, because I do. Here are three of the better ones.

This is a quick cartoon of Rebecca, personal style blogger who has a website here. I've drawn her once before when I was first trying to work out how to draw again. My style has changed a fair bit since then, it's fair to say, and sped up considerably. (I mean, these two styles aren't really comparable when it comes to time, but in general...)

I drew this because apparently I draw too many skinny women. 

I then recoloured it, and it ended up like this. Which I prefer. 

"It definitely looks like they got in over this wall"

I don't really want to show anything from The Lost Emperor yet (not that there's much to show) so instead this update will be a few of my daily sketches. These usually appear on my tumblr as well.

I also thought it might be interesting to see the stages I go through when drawing, in this case, a fairly simple picture of a face. I'm still working out how to draw on a computer myself, so a lot of the time I'm making it up as I go along. The pictures should speak for themselves:

Not long after this Tracy J. Butler's guide to expressions did the rounds on twitter, and from there I found my way to the How-to-Draw and How-to-Paint sections of her website. I then had a lie down and have a bit of a cry. (In all seriousness though, how brilliant is that website? I don't even particularly like cats!)

I bought Marc Ellerby's latest Chloe Noonan book the other day, and enjoyed it a lot (you can buy it here), and so drew a picture of the titular character: 

The following pictures are just me trying out various things for the most part: 

Bowties are cool.

The yuletide brought with it, as it has done the past few years now, the Doctor Who Christmas Special. Which I quite enjoyed.

So I drew some pictures:

As companions go I like Amy and Rory a lot. Certainly more than any of the others since the programme restarted. I don't really remember the original run. 

Merry Christmas

Also here's Mike and Antonia: 

Man how we used to tear apart this town.

Here's a quick M. Ward, as promised, to complete the She & Him set.

Edit - I've since put the two in one picture: 

"She was not one for emptying her face of expression."

It was suggested I try draw a cartoon of Zooey Deschanel, and lo:

I think at the next opportunity I'm going to complete She & Him and draw M. Ward, because why not?

After that I may redraw Zooey with a better expression (an actual expression would be a bonus).

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

To begin, it is my brother Kieran's birthday today. Hopefully he'll have a terrifically acemazing day, but the poor chap's at school so who knows?

I haven't really drawn anything otherwise, as I've been dealing with this university thing. I do however have this to offer you, which is essentially a straight copy of this photograph. 

Hopefully I'll be picking up the pace now though, at least for a while.

Here is a colour practise I did the other day, with an old drawing:

I'm a bit rubbish when it comes to colours, if I'm honest. I usually know exactly what I want, but it's hard to find the colours in my head. Usually a fair bit of messing around is required. I've also found the actual application of colour to be difficult, quite often. 

In any case, I thought this picture was interesting as a comparison to the picture of the lady in the previous post. I think that picture, done only a few days later, and pretty rapidly, is already considerably better than this. Not good, by any means, but certainly better. 

Which is nice.

Kind Hearts and Coronets.

It's not as though I'm particularly a fan of the monarchy. Indifferent, for the most part, I'd say. In any event, everyone loves a good wedding, and I like silly things.

I should sell this on a tea-towel.

B-sides.

The last couple of days have brought only drawings that are utterly terrible. Here is a taster of them.

This is, theoretically, Aesop. Roughly based on a description I was given of him. It's a lazy drawing in a million different ways.

This was supposed to be Rafael Van der Vaart, but it just isn't. There are numerous other mistakes, but the main one is that is just doesn't look like who it is supposed to be of. 

This is, more than anything, a half-hearted attempt at trying something different. Realistically though, it wasn't different enough to excuse it being, frankly, rubbish.

Bits and bobs.

I haven't been able to get near my scanner the last few days (it's attached to a different computer than mine for space reasons) so I've not updated with anything in a while. Apologies.

As I was suffering from incredible bouts of guilt, I decided to quickly make a new header, up at the top there. After that was done I (very) quickly drew a picture of Sky Larkin on the computer. Why Sky Larkin? Because I was listening to them at the time of course.

I didn't really do them justice I am afraid. I highly recommend giving them a listen by the way, I think most anyone could enjoy their musical sounds. 

If you have Spotify you can listen to them here.

Page Four.

Previous pages can be found here. 

Completely drawn on tablet, for the first time. Not sure if I will carry on doing it this way or not. Apologies for the font, I'm still trying to figure out a good way of lettering.

All quiet on the western front.

Apologies for the silence that past couple of weeks, I'm trying to get myself onto a teaching course, as well as a few other things, so doodling has fallen by the wayside somewhat. The next page of my comic should be up soon.

This then, is a fill-in post, and not nearly as busy as the regular ones.

I picked up Manga Studio the other day, and have only had a very brief chance to mess around with it. My main intention was to add tones and so on to paper-drawn comics, but I may use it to draw on as well. I haven't messed around with brush settings or anything on there, and it already feels incredibly friendly and easy to use.


Compare the paper-drawn:

With the computer-drawn:

Clearly I have picked entirely wrong tones, and the font is utterly terrible, (we shan't even talk about the lady's shoulders/torso) but I feel like it has a lot of potential, particularly as the drawing was very quick.

Here's another quick example, the pencil-on-paper version is in a previous post: 

There's still all manner of mistakes, but I think I'm going in the right direction, and the ease is pretty phenomenal. 

Edit - I forgot to add the following: 

Oh, to be real.

Occasionally I'll do drawings direct from photographs. I'll try to put my own spin on them, or try to keep the lines specifically clean or messy, but the basic idea is a straight copy.

In this one I've tried to match the slightly more realistic sketchy drawings, as above, with my more typical cartoony ways. Not sure how successful it was. 

Very rarely I'll try to do them digitally. Even more rarely I'll try using colour. As you can see on the poor lady's face, colour is something I need to practise with an awful lot more.