You haunt me with your violent heartbeat at night.

Every so often I'll take a long, hard, look in the mirror and say "Liam, you're getting stale. You need to up your game."

For a moment I'll look quizzical, confused even, before forcing determination into my face. I will then say something along the lines of "Liam, you need to draw...a bicycle".

And lo!

There are also days when I decide that certain people just need to lighten up, to chill out. Sometimes the people in question are fictional. One person that really needs to calm himself down is Batman.

Finally, my friend Amanda (previously seen twice in this post) got in a fight with the sun this time last week. It's fair to say that she lost, and has since sacrificed the use of her legs to the burn god. She is, essentially, half-mummy. 

Bonus track! Unfinished panel of short secret comic: 

To a rainbow like you.

I've been trying out a couple of new things this week, some of which have been pretty successful. (Remember that you can click on images to make them bigger).

I have a tendency to shy away from drawing backgrounds, as I am wont to overcomplicate things before losing interest. Here I kept things intentionally simple, leaving me free to try out some new things with colouring. For the most part I'm extremely pleased with how this came out. 

Twice these week I've decided not to colour a drawing. This was the first, and it was largely because I wanted to mess about lines-for-shadow a bit. This, like the majority of my pictures, was drawn in Manga Studio. 

This, on the other hand, was drawn straight into Photoshop. I usually use Photoshop just for colouring, and after this experiment it is likely to stay this way for a while to come. Despite messing about making brushes and so on, I just found the whole drawing and inking process incredibly laborious. I know of several people that work exclusively in Photoshop, and I wish I knew their approach! 

As a wee lad Luke Skywalker was my favourite Star Wars character. It seems obvious really; after all, he was the hero! The jedi! No amount of whining can detract from the classic farmboy-to-saviour role when you're a child. 

I’ve never much understood the people who say (claim) that, for example, Boba Fett was their favourite. You’re talking about Star Wars friend, it’s not gonna make you cooler no matter how you approach it. 

Han Solo is, of course, entirely understandable. 

I've got sunshine, on a cloudy day.

I've had these pictures sitting around for about a week, but life kept getting in the way of me sitting down and actually putting them in a new post.

It was my brother Ben's birthday* last week, so I drew him this:

It's good to see that I'm improving at this scribbling lark, considering that last year I drew him a picture based on this (I've lost the final version):

The last pictures on here are based on photos I am afraid. Just stuff to try and keep me fresh. The first one was based on this photo and, I think, was a bit of a success:

The second was from Calivintage, and I didn't half have problems with it. Looking at it now I know some minor alterations I'd make, but I think I'll just move on. The first colour looked like this and was such a mess that I decided on a very stripped back recolour. 

My summer job finished today, so hopefully you can expect some more pictures soon.

*alliteration station

"Organizer of public gaiety, curator of a richly encrusted happiness"

 Saturday Special!

I really love the Instagram app. This isn't just because of the various filters, which are excellent, but also because of the way in which it lets you share your images so easily to various social media accounts whilst maintaining its own community.

In any case, I recently decided to stick a through of my recent drawings through it and see what come up. Some, I think, worked better than others, but all are pretty interesting!

"I want to give a party where there’s a brawl and seductions and people going home with their feelings hurt."

The cricket in the last week has been pretty exciting eh? You...you do watch cricket, yes? No? Oh well, just take my word for it.

In any event, here is a drawing of a cricketer:

Sadly this was the only "proper" drawing I had time for this week, so the following three are all quick little numbers: 

This is a super-rapid drawing of Emma Watson, based on this photograph. I love just scribbling sometimes. 

A scowly young lady. 

Just messing about with a new way of drawing/colouring. Not bad for a quick picture! 

See you all next week. 

With a smile on your face, and a tear right in your eye.

You have probably noticed that the blog looks a bit different. I've also redesigned my tumblr and twitter pages. Still not certain if this is a final design yet, so you might see it change further before too long!

The really neat idea I had the other week still isn't finished, mostly because I got myself a second job, so ended up much busier than expected. In any event it's coming along nicely. In the meantime may I present to you the following:

I have a confession, I mispronounce Rapunzel all of the time. I am corrected every single time. I will then proceed to say it wrong the next time it comes up. 

In retrospect it's surprising how often Rapunzel comes up in conversation. Huh. In any event here is a picture of the lady in question. She's a bit grumpy because, well, wouldn't you be? 

I also thought I would share with you the original line work, since I was very pleased with it. Particularly the hair. For whatever reason I always really like drawing hair. 

This is a picture of my friend Anna. Anna is enormously cool for a number of reasons, but a prime one is that she runs a bookshop. She also really likes olives, which is why there's a glowing bowl of them here. It made more sense at the time, I swear. 

This is a five minute doodle of a situation I found myself in when I got home the other day. It was so hot.  So hot. I let Stephen Fry read me stories for a bit whilst I just stood there, unable to finish getting changed, just sort of laughing at myself. 

Finally here are some free tester business cards I had made from moo.com! They seem really good, so I'm going to look into perhaps buying some. Need to finalise what goes on them though. 

"Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!"

Hey everyone! I hope you've all been enjoying the manic sunshine/crushing rain.

I'm pretty pleased with my offerings this week, I have to say.

I drew a Harry Potter in a cynical bid for Tumblr popularity. It didn't work out even a little bit, but I do not mind. I'm extremely happy with it. One of those moments where I feel I've "moved forward" a step.

I'd love to tell you that this is a damning social critique, but really it's just something that would absolutely terrify me. I don't think I could cope if I woke up one morning as a puppet. 

I made some slight changes to the colouring on the Middle-Aged Superman from the last entry. I think it looks better like this. 

I'm working on something as I type that I wish I could share with you, as I think it will be pretty good when it's finished, but there's no way it will be done this evening. Hopefully for next time!