40 days of droids…
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.
this northern boy
Illustrations for an imaginary age
Tag: illustration
August 17, 2013
A ‘Droid a Day
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.
Blindly drilling where no droid has drilled before
Curious little droid, with pretty cool wheels.
A few random robots.
April 25, 2013
A thing about fish…
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.
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- Outlines
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- Details emerge
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- Tongue action.
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- Filigree fins
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- Figuring out the scales…
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- Finally finished fish.
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.
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- After a rough pencil sketch, the pens come out.
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- Adding texture and general gnarliness.
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- Is this really a good idea?
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- Much hatching
I’ll think twice before I do that again.
February 6, 2013
Angry Octopus
Something a little different from my usual doodles today. An angry octopus, as yet unfinished. It’s about to get an ink version I think.
It’s angry, and it’s an octopus.
February 4, 2013
The Other Side of the Street
It was pointed out to me that Doodle Street was missing a few crucial amenities. Notably a flower shop, a pie shop, and of course a pub.
This oversight has now been rectified.
Who says the high street is dying?
February 3, 2013
Imaginary idyll
I’ve taken to carrying a sketchbook with me over the last few months, particularly if I’ve been working at a client’s office. It’s nice to get out on a lunchtime and doodle while I have a bite to eat.
This landscape is the product of a few lunchtimes in a pub by the Thames. It began as nothing but a doodle of a rock…
First doodlings
It took a couple of days, but only an hour or so of actual drawing, for it to progress into a landscape…
Work in progress
The final drawing. Could be the lake district, or possibly somewhere east of the Shire in Middle Earth.
The final sketch
UPDATE:
I’ve realised that this drawing reminds me of the drawings of the British walking book author Alfred Wainwright. His Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells are full of beautiful renderings of the Lake District.
February 1, 2013
Doodle Street
Doodles often end up being much more, which is sometimes a problem if I’ve started doodling on a scrap of paper, or if I’m simply sketching in a corner of another drawing. However, yesterday, my doodle simply evolved to fill the space available.
I began scribbling the beginnings of a house on a folded piece of paper I was using to keep another drawing clean while I worked.
Initial doodles…
I quite liked where it was going, so I carried on, and on. Eventually filling the space I had with half a street’s worth of buildings.
More building work on Doodle Street
I added some background, and extended the street with a little tudor building to the left, worked in a bit more detail and the pen work was finished, just the colouring was left.
Ready for some colour…
I use photoshop to colour my drawings, using multiple layers to build up the colour and detail. The final version of Doodle Street has over 80 of these layers. To show how this builds up into a final illustration I made a process movie…
The final image is shown below…
The builders have finished, Doodle Street is complete.
January 29, 2013
The queer worm i’ tha well
I woke up a few mornings ago with a vague thought in my head about a dragon coiled around a hill, and I thought it would make a fun illustration. I knew it was a folk story from England but couldn’t recall anymore. As soon as I was at my desk a quick search on wikipedia filled in the rest.
The Lambton Worm is a story from the northeast of England about young John Lambton who skips church one day to go fishing. He catches a lamprey, but can’t be bothered to carry it home so he throws it down a well. Years later John returns from the crusades to find the lamprey has become a monster terrorising his father’s estate. The worm is now so large it can wrap itself seven times around the nearby Penshaw Hill. With the advice of a witch, John Lambton eventually slays the worm, but at a terrible price.
I love English folk tales, so I started to sketch out some ideas of how this worm might look. In the song the worm…
An’ grewed an aaful size;
He’d greet big teeth, a greet big gob,
An greet big goggly eyes.
…so I had something to go on. I wanted to keep something of the lamprey about the creature too, so it was definitely going to be eel-like with the distinctive lamprey gill pores along its side. My first sketches weren’t promising though.
Lambton Worm initial sketch.
I decided that rather than try to depict the entire beast, in a fight with John Lambton, or coiled around Penshaw Hill, I’d use a more graphic composition.
A more promising composition
Happy with this, and with the more stylised version of the worm, I worked on a detailed pen drawing. Even though there are lots of straight lines, I shy away from using a ruler as it just gives too sharp a line. Drawing freehand creates a bit more character, and with a bit of practice you can do pretty well without the ruler. The patterned background allows the worm itself to stand out, ready for colour.
Finished pen version ready for colour.
Colouring the worm was reasonably simple using Photoshop. The colour palette was always going to be a dark aqua-ish background with a much more vivid worm. The shading and patterns were built up layer by layer, about 30 layers in total, the eye alone having over a dozen layers.
The final illustration.
I’m pleased with the final result, and I think it’ll be the first in a series of three or four illustrations of English folk tales. Next, either Jack in Irons, Recdcap, or Peg Pawler!
this northern boy 