"The slow dance of the infinite stars"

I know, I know, two posts within a week. Alarming.

Anyway let's roll on with this. To begin, a commission I did for someone to give to their brother for his 16th birthday (16, right? Am I right Mike?). It's going to be printed A3 size, so that will be pretty great to see. 

I was also asked to draw an astronaut for a primary school display, and a "rafonaut" for a book review/community website that my friend helps with. (You can find it here). Obviously I took advantage of this by adapting the same image. I am not even the slightest bit ashamed. 

Astronaut: 

"Rafonaut": 

This is going to be on a t-shirt, so, you know, that's pretty cool. 

Also, whilst doing the pencils for this I couldn't resist turning him into one of those shadow skull people things from the library episode of Doctor Who. Revel in my geekiest moment: 

Oh, and finally for today, here's a very quick, scribbly drawing of a lady. I do like scribbling, I have to say. 

Most, if not all, of these have already been on my tumblr in the last day or so. I really want to make this blog a bit different, but I'm not wholly sure how to go about it at the moment. I'll have a think about it I suppose. 

Also, no, the title has no relevance to the content of this post. Nevermind eh?

One of those weeks.

I've been ill all week, so everything has a decidedly scribbled, difficult-to-pay-attention tone to it.

I've been mostly writing stuff for the comic, so every so often I try to make sure I remember how to draw the characters. This sheet was more miss than hit.

The rest are nonsense: 

I do a lot of these scribbly things without ever considering sharing them normally, but I think it makes a nice change eh?

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever---or else swoon in death.

Again, I apologise for being rubbish at keeping to a schedule. That said it's been a busy week that ended in some pretty good news, so it's not wholly my fault.

Just a quick few things to share with you, that relate to the heartiest of days. Here's a commission of Tom and Beth that I did:

And here's a photograph of it printed onto a canvas, that I was just emailed: 

It came out quite nicely, I thought. 

Finally here is a quick Valentine's Day card I made, for my own entertainment more than anything. You don't seem to get proper cherubs and so on on cards anymore, it seems a shame. 

As I was drawing this I was watching Run Lola Run (for the first time!), and it was fantastic. That said, watching a subtitled film whilst drawing isn't exactly ideal. This only took me half of the duration the film to draw (forty five minutes-ish?) but I probably should have done it in a fraction of the time!

"They must have veered off the road!"

I apologise for the lack of an update last week. I've had a bad hand/wrist, and so I've not drawn much. Next time I'll do something as a filler, be it words or someone else's pictures. Or both.

Anyway, as a result of minimal drawing time these are all very quick daily sketches:

This one is of Carys from La Ville Inconnue

All of these, and others, are already up on my Tumblr as well. 

"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: 

The Lost Emperor.

This is what I shall be doing with my spare time this year. I'm very excited about it:

(click to make bigger, as usual)

Here are a couple more previews. They're miles from being the finished article.

Love and Murder

Oh hello, I hope 2011 began in fine fashion for you. I intend to fill this year with some exciting things, and so I've spent much of the week having Ideas. A few of these relate to things I'll eventually be able to post here, but not all, and none are yet ready.

In the meantime, here are a few pictures:

There were three(!) new Marples on over Christmas and New Year. I not nearly so much of a fan of any of the versions over the years as I am of Suchet's Poirot, but I felt a quick doodle was in order anyway. For some reason, in my head, Marple should have very beady eyes; at least when she's sleuthing anyway. 

In this case I just felt like drawing something sincere. A little nervous sincere person to love you all. (Well, to love someone anyway). 

This is a very rough sketch done from memory of a photo I once saw. If anyone knows where it's from, or has seen the photo, it'd be great if you could let me know. For some reason her clothes fascinate me. (I'm not sure how accurate it is, so anything half-similar might be the picture I'm thinking of.)

These two come as a pair, and they are intentionally drawn and coloured in a simple way, particularly the chap with the green t-shirt. You'll see why soon. 

I'll be doing a new comic this year by the way. Adventures in the Airtrade, all four pages of it, isn't something that's going to take off (ahem) for me right now. I still know the story, and I'm sure I'll come to it one day, but there are a few things I didn't think through beforehand that I need to work on. It was, however, a great learning tool, and has helped me a lot when it came to writing this new story. 

The only thing I can promise so far is that I'll be breaking what seems to be one of the main rules of comics and doing lots of small panels to a page, Hergé-style.  Almost all of them will be rectangular. How you'll cope I can't imagine.