Spaceship Drawing Time-lapse
I’m planning to do a lot more process videos this year. I’ll have to get a proper rig set up above my desk, rather than just using a GorillaPod.
this northern boy
Illustrations for an imaginary age
Tag: sketchbook
June 1, 2018
Cloud Mining
Sorry for the lack of posts recently, I’ve been pretty busy balancing freelance design work with illustration, so haven’t had a lot of time for the blog.
I’ll try and post a little more regularly throughout the summer.
I drew this cloud mining station (think the dirty underside of Bespin Cloud City) a while ago, and it proved pretty popular on instagram, so I decided to add a little colour.
I wanted to keep the colour palette pretty muted, so just stuck to oranges and some grey tones.
Hope you like it!
Drawn in a Moleskine sketchbook, with Copic SP Multiliners and Copic Ciao markers.
You can also find prints of my work here
And you can find more of my work online…
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March 28, 2018
Sketchbook Spaceships
If you’ve been following my blog for a while (or following me elsewhere on social media), you’ll know I love to draw spaceships. I always have enjoyed drawing everything to do with space, ever since I was a little kid, but in the last couple of years I’ve begun to build a little fleet of ships to inhabit my Asteroid Belt Blues universe.
I’ve managed to fill a few sketchbook pages with ships in the last few days, and I dare say there will be a lot more to come in the next days, weeks, and months.
Pretty much all of them are drawn with Copic Sp Multiliners in a Moleskine sketchbook. Colour, as always, is added with Copic Ciao Markers.
If you like them you can buy them as postcards or posters over at my store.
You can find prints of my work here
And you can find more of my work online…
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March 29, 2017
Updates…
It’s been a while since I blogged – work and holidays have both combined to keep me from doing so.
Over the last couple of months I’ve been working on getting some artwork ready to sell online as prints – should be ready to go in April – which is very exciting. I’ll be launching with five or six different illustrations, most of which will be available to buy at a couple of different sizes. When everything is confirmed I’ll post here about it.
I’ve also completed a couple of commissions and worked on some concept art for a couple of clients – I can’t share any of that just yet though.
For now, here are some of the sketches I’ve done over the past couple of months.
Sci-fi freighter.
Fish sketch.
Flyers.
Sci-fi sketches.
Tick Bots.
Jellyfish sketch.
Flyers.
Orange ‘things’.
Orange Bots.
Sci-fi haulers.
Bug Bots.
Sensor Bot.
Sci-fi freighter sketch.
Orange Ships.
YelloBot.
September 17, 2016
The Inspirational Art of Jared Muralt
A growing Muralt collection.
Jared is primarily self-taught, and he developed his precision and skill through the careful study of books as diverse as those pertaining to anatomy, art history and comics. Muralt is co-founder of BlackYard studio, a Swiss illustration and graphic design studio.
That’s the simple text about the artist Jared Muralt that is printed on the belly bands of his two new sketchbooks, it barely tells you a thing about how astonishingly good an illustrator Jared is.
I first saw his work on Instagram, beautifully drawn images of angler fish, assortments of characters in period costume, floating ocean liners, and squadrons of WWII bombers. That precision, mentioned in the text above, really is one of Jared’s traits, but it comes with huge amounts of charm, and character, and interest. There’s nothing cold about the precise way he draws at all.
It would be easy, as an aspiring illustrator, to be daunted when you see the work of someone as accomplished as Jared, and to simply say – “I’ll never be as good as that”and throw your pencils away, but Jared’s sketchbooks, and his Instagram feed, really are testament to the value of practice. He draws a lot. He draws from life, out in the countryside sketching the mountains and meadows of Switzerland, he draws character studies fastidiously, practising the details from every angle. Rather than be daunted and overwhelmed, you should be inspired and enriched by his work. Stimulated to grab a sketchbook and draw.
If you draw or illustrate for a living, or just as a hobby, you really should buy one of Jared’s books. The sketchbooks are amazing, and Hellship is a wonderful graphic novel. The End of Bon Voyage is for me the real star, a magical, poignant, wordless story with the most beautiful drawings you can imagine.
In Jared’s new sketchbooks there’s one image in particular that grabbed me, this drawing of a man, curiously and noirishly lit. He looks like one of the characters from Fritz Lang’s ‘M’. Fantastically unsettling.
Jared can be found on Instagram and on Twitter, and if you’d like to buy (you’d be mad not to) one of his books the BlackYard shop is here.
September 14, 2016
Cloudtop
High up in the clouds, buoyed by anti-grav generators, floats the shanty town of Cloudtop. Scratching a living from processing rare elements from the atmosphere, or providing weather data, a community of brave souls lives at 55,000ft. Engineered through black market gene therapies to be able to survive in the super thin atmosphere of the stratosphere.
Drawn with a Carbon Platinum fountain pen, and Copic Ciao Markers, in a Moleskine sketchbook.
More of me here…
August 24, 2016
August blogfest – day 24
Well, I almost forgot today, so this will be brief…
I’m working on an article for a new illustration magazine called Graphite at the moment. It’ll be a process type thing, showing how I work through a brief from initial thoughts and sketches to final, inked artwork. Today I finished the drawing stage so tomorrow it’ll be on to the inks.
Graphite magazine is published by the talented people at 3DTotal, and the first issue is out any day now.
Scribbles on the brief
Initial thumbnails
Getting there with composition
August 20, 2016
August blogfest – day 20
Tired.
Caffeine induced insomnia kept me awake until gone 3am last night, so today has been a bit of a blur. I don’t drink caffeine, but every now and again, if I need a bit of a kick when I’m busy, I’ll have a proper coffee. I always regret it later when I’m wide awake in those quiet, small hours of the night.
I did manage to draw a nice little robot today though.
Little orange robot
Drawn in a Field Notes Brand notebook, with Copic Multiliner, Copic Ciao Marker, Kuretake No8 brush pen and a white Posca marker.
August 11, 2016
August blogfest – day 11
I’ve just decided that my stack of identically black, and identically plain Moleskines needed a little organising. Only a little. I wrote vague contents description on the covers and spines, so that’ll help a bit when I’m trying to remember where I drew something.
Vaguely organised Moleskines.
I also made a little video of a leaf through one of those Moleskines…
The music is Drawn to the Blood, by Sufjan Stevens.
August 9, 2016
August blogfest – day 9
If you follow me on Instagram, or are a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know I have a thing for weird tentacled islands. There’s just something very cool about a seemingly idyllic little place – but underneath the ordinary facade there’s horror!
I did this sketch last night in my Moleskine using Rotring Tikky, Copic Multiliners and Kuretake No 8 brush pen, and there’s definitely a bit of influence from Notes from the Shadowed City – it’s a bit blacker and more angular than my typical stuff. As always, something like this is a lot of fun to draw.
The Thorn Tree.
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- The Thorn Tree, moleskin sketch
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- More tentacles
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- Rocks and thorns
this northern boy 