this northern boy

Illustrations for an imaginary age

Tag: sketch

Size Matters

Bigger is better. Or so they say. Particularly in Texas I believe.

When it comes to my work, I’ve never been into ‘big’. My work tends to be small, tightly controlled, detailed – rather than expressive and sprawling. I’ve recently begun working much smaller though, as way of getting more ideas down on paper – rather than worrying too much about the finished product. Some of these little doodles will stay just that, but a few of them may become something else at a later date. Redrawn at a larger scale, details added, lines refined – all the while trying to keep the essence of what it was I liked about the doodle in the first place.

All the following drawings were done in pen, so no pencil or rubbing out, and were begun with almost no thought in mind as to what the aim was. In terms of scale, the largest of these little doodles is about 25mm high.

Mechs, probes, flyers…

Mechs, probes, flyers…

Flyers, skiffs, speeders…

Flyers, skiffs, speeders…

Low altitude flyers

Low altitude flyers

Multi-legged mechs

Multi-legged mechs

Some kind of hovering probe

Some kind of hovering probe

Three-legged mech and pilot

Three-legged mech and pilot

Heavy transport flyer

Heavy transport flyer

Stubby little speeder

Stubby little speeder

One-man flyer

One-man flyer

These were all drawn using a 0.1 or 0.2 Staedtler Pigment Liner, on bristol board.

It’s good fun drawing at this scale. There’s no room for obsessing over details, you just have to get in there and create some forms and hint at structure. They have bags of character at this scale too – the challenge will be to capture that if I work these up into full-scale illustrations.

Black stripes

I don’t know why, but these big, black stripes have found their way into my work recently…

Fly Fishing…

I’ve found myself doodling fishy things again. This time, it’s not just fish illustrations, but flying fishing boats too. Definitely inspired by the work of Ian McQue, I’m utterly obsessed by the thought of these floating ships – where do they live, who skippers them, what do they catch…?

There will definitely be more to come.

I had to include the latest fish illustration here too, one of my favourites so far.

These are a few of my favourite things (robots)…

I’m now 145 days into my project to draw one robot every day for a year. It’s much more of a commitment than I ever anticipated. I’m pretty happy, generally, with my progress. Still a little inconsistent as I mentioned in my last blog post, but there’s definitely some improvement.

Here are some of my favourites so far…

 

Thanks for looking and for all the support here, on Instagram, Facebook and on Tumblr.

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.

Only one game in town…

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

Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet

R2-D2, surely everyone's favourite

R2-D2, surely everyone’s favourite

K-9, Doctor Who's faithful companion

K-9, Doctor Who’s faithful companion

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…

Just over half of the droids so far…

Some of today's sketches - hands and feet.

Some of today’s sketches – hands and feet.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A pencil sketch of an angry octopus.

It’s angry, and it’s an octopus.