Well, it’s still droids. Working in London is leaving me with precious little time to draw, and as I committed to drawing a droid every day for a year – that’s the one thing I will squeeze in.
I’ve been asking on twitter and Instagram for suggestions for film, TV or book droids or robots to draw.
Here are three of my favourites so far…
Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet
R2-D2, surely everyone’s favourite
K-9, Doctor Who’s faithful companion
Day 40 of my droid a day project. Here’s a selection of my progress so far, along with some of today’s sketches.
Just over half of the droids so far…
Some of today’s sketches – hands and feet.
I’ve just started a new project, A ‘Droid a Day, on Tumblr. I love robots, so it seemed to make sense to set myself a little challenge of drawing and posting a robot every day. They don’t take too long, and they’re fun, so it should be something I can keep up.
The first couple of drawings are already up, and I’ve included a few more sketches below.
I have a thing about drawing fish. You should know that already, because this is the second time I’ve started a blog post with that line. The first fishy blog was more about the illustrator Ian Miller and his continuing influence on me. This blog concentrates on the fish.
I’m not really sure where this fishy fascination comes from. I did have a tropical fish tank when I was a kid… but my drawings very rarely resemble guppies or neon tetras. I do like the mystery of those fish that swim in the deep oceans, I even love the names of the ocean depth zones – bathyal, abyssal, hadal. Hadal in particular, named after Hades. Pretty appropriate for some of the demonic looking fish that live there.
The first of my recent fish, isn’t that deep living. It’s more carp like, maybe with a little Piranha thrown in. It started as a pretty rough sketch done over lunch one day, and at that point I wasn’t really sure if there was anything worth pursuing. I did nothing for a few days and came back to it and began inking in some outlines.
Things progressed reasonably smoothly, if slowly, until I came to the scales. No matter how many times I pencilled in the pattern, it just didn’t look right. In the end I resorted to drawing a criss-cross pattern on the back of my hand and then twisting and turning it until it looked vaguely like my fish.
It’s still not right – definitely something for me to work on – but overall I’m pretty happy with the way things turned out.
Fish two is my Angler Fish. One of those curious deep ocean dwellers with the illuminated lures that dangle over a jaw full of sharp teeth. Nothing too unusual about the drawing itself, but I definitely made a painful decision about cross hatching the background. Sometime you just have to bite the bullet though. I think it took me over 20 hours just to complete – and a rough estimate of around 35,000 lines of hatching.
I’ll think twice before I do that again.
I have a thing about drawing fish. I’m not afraid to admit it. It’s not my fault, it’s all Ian Miller‘s fault. When I was a kid I loved looking at the illustrations he’d done for comics and graphic novels, but it was his work in a book called The Guide To Fantasy Art Techniques that really got my attention.
The book featured eight fantasy or science fiction artists and illustrators, showing some of their work and getting an insight into how they went about producing these amazing images.
The chapter on Ian Miller had a profound effect on my drawings for years to come. His work is described in the book…
Delicacy of line and intricacy of detail typically characterise Ian Miller’s work, though his subject matter and technique often vary greatly. Equally at home with complex machinery or living creatures of various guises, his illustrations range from loose figure sketches in pencil and charcoal to pen and ink drawings of complex artefacts, twisted trees or winged insects.
One of Ian Miller’s beautiful illustrations
Armed with an expensive handful of Rotring pens I set about mimicking Ian Miller’s style. I drew insects, fish, even a self portrait for college in his super-detailed and nightmarish style. Eventually my work became more personal, but I was left with a love of drawing fish and deep-sea creatures.
The picture here is from my time at art college in Cumbria. We were told by an illustration tutor that it wasn’t possible to produce a decent illustration using Rotring pens, and that real illustrators used dip or quill pens. Well, that was a challenge right there, so using nothing but a couple of those lovely burgundy Rapidographs I drew the Big Fish, Small Ship. Eighteen years later I’m still happy that it’s a decent bit of work. Although, for some reason I never wrote the title in the box I’d left for it.
Big Fish, Small Ship. My response to a challenge by a college tutor.
this northern boy 