this northern boy

Illustrations for an imaginary age

Tag: castle

August blogfest – day 2

Yesterday’s work went pretty well. The sketch I was working on for the company in California has been approved, so that can get drawn up a little neater and inked. The tattoo commission is coming along nicely, although I put that to one side for a while  – it’s sometimes good to take a look at your work with a fresh pair of eyes after a few hours away from it. I’ll finish the inking of that today and it can go in the mail tomorrow to Connecticut.

Once the tattoo is out of the way I’ll work on some ideas for the branding project. I’ve already jotted down some stuff in my notebook, so I’m not starting from scratch on that.

While I’m working on all those things, I’ll be trying to think about my website. Currently I don’t have one, or I do, but it’s a holding page that hasn’t been updated in six or seven years. I’m planning on designing something simple, that just links to my social media instead of having a gallery I’d have to update regularly. I’ve asked Jon, who I work on the North v South podcast with, to build it for me.

And finally, I’ve just been commissioned by a new illustration magazine to work on a step-by-step tutorial article for them. Nervous and excited about that in equal measure. It’ll probably end up being similar, visually, to this post. It’s a sci-fi themed illustration, so it’s right up my alley. I’ll probably start work on that later in the week.

IMG_6811

Illustration sketch.

Crenellations!

I’ve been to both York (my home town) and Windsor in the last couple of weeks, both boasting more crenellations than you can shake a sword at. I always try to take plenty of photos when I’m visiting historic places, just to add to my reference folder. You never know when you might need to draw a castle.

Build! A Knight’s Castle.

Earlier this year I worked on the illustrations for a children’s activity book, published by Ivy Press, all about castles. It was a huge amount of fun, and allowed me to work on a real variety of subjects – skulls, castles, knights, medieval soldiers, siege engines…

A huge thank you to all the staff at Ivy Press that worked on this with me, and of course to the author – Annalie Seaman, and to Charlie Simpson who created an amazing paper craft castle. I’m really pleased with how the book turned out!

The official description…

Think like an archaeologist with this fun paper-craft title! Readers are given information about how archaeologists uncover remains, and use secondary sources. They are then given visual and textual clues about the site of a medieval castle, which was the location of a sieged battle. The final part of the book contains the press-out pieces to recreate a paper model of the castle and the historic battle, complete with siege engines and defending and attacking forces. The reader must use their new-found knowledge of how the castle was laid out, and what siege engines looked like to figure out how to piece the paper scene together.

Build! A Knight’s Castle is available in bookshops and Amazon now.

Here are a few of my illustrations from the book, all drawn by hand.

Cover.

Cover.

Battle.

Battle.

Heraldry.

Heraldry.

Portcullis.

Portcullis.

Siege Tower.

Siege Tower.

Trebuchet.

Trebuchet.

Skull.

Skull.

Imagined Places

I’ve drawn a fair few cityscapes and imaginary places over the last few months, some of them purely personal, some have been commissions, some have been posted here before, some haven’t, so here they are collected in one place.

The first, City on the Edge of Nowhere, is one of my favourites.

City on the edge of nowhere.

City on the edge of nowhere.

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Some recent commissions

I recently started taking commissions, on the themes of robots, spaceships or imaginary places. It’s been a pretty good response so far, and it’s been really enjoyable creating work to order – but on subjects that I love.

Here are a few recent illustrations…

The Towers

I’ve been working on a couple of illustrations of medieval(ish) towers over the last couple of days. I have a little project that I’m thinking about – and these fit in to that in some way.

Drawn on cartridge paper, using Copic Multiliners and Staedtler Pigment Liners. Coloured using Copic Ciao markers.

 

The Towers

The Towers

Sentry in clour

Sentry in clour

Watchtower in colour

Watchtower in colour

The Tower

An illustration based on the Guinigi Tower in Lucca, Italy.

Drawn with a 0.03 Copic Multiliner and a 0.3 Staedtler Pigment Liner in an A5 Moleskine sketchbook.

The Tower

The Tower

Details…

Details…

Mountains, moors and make-believe

There is something magical about creating a place or a world that previously only existed inside your own head. It’s impossible to draw (at least it is for me) an imaginary landscape without wondering about the people who inhabit it, or the history of it, or the flora and fauna that fill it.

Some of my landscapes are very much rooted in the real world, the lake district is never far from the tip of my pen, while some have only the loosest foundations here on earth.

Only one of my landscapes exists as is, Slater’s Bridge in Little Langdale in the Lake District. I really must get back there with a sketchbook. It’s an amazingly beautiful place.

Slater's Bridge

Slater’s Bridge

People are very rare in my drawings, partly because I’m pretty terrible at drawing them, but partly because I want to be the person in the picture. I don’t want to share these places with anyone else. Extreme escapism for me would be stepping into one of my illustrations and exploring what’s beyond the edge of the page.

Not a happy place to live…

Sometimes, not very often, a doodle becomes something surprising and cool. I started sketching the other day, with no particular aim in mind, and quickly roughed out the shape of a skull. A few minutes later, again with very little thought, a city began to grow…

I’m really pleased with what this little doodle became…

Skull City

Skull City

Walking City

There’ll be a longer update (or updates) from me later this week, but for now here’s the latest illustration I’m working on.

It was inspired by thoughts of all the incredible buildings and settings in the Lord of the Rings, and also memories of reading Mervyn Peake‘s Gormenghast trilogy a few years ago. I love the messy, organic way that old medieval towns grow, so adding that to a stone mountain that walks didn’t seem like a big jump.

Pen illustration image

Walking City

A lot of people have said it reminds them of work by Hayao Miyazaki and the output of Studio Ghibli, the amazing Japanese animation studio. Oddly, although I know of Myazaki and Ghibli, I’ve only ever seen about five minutes of any of the films. I really should make an effort to see more.

UPDATE: Thursday 5th December.

I think I’m just about done colouring. I’ll step away for now and see how it looks in a few days.

Final (probably) coloured version of Walking City.

Final (probably) coloured version of Walking City.