100 Days of Drawing: Day 35

I work late nights every Thursday night at my retail job so I don't get home until 9:30 or so and I since starting this challenge I'm always up late on Thursday nights trying to finish my daily drawing. So as you can guess I'm usually quite tired near the end and this is a drawing of me falling asleep at my desk with the help of some doodles.

Mike

100 Days of Drawing: Day 33

I really enjoyed the style I did the character in for yesterdays drawing, so today I tried it again and experimented with it, by drawing my all time favourite superhero, Spider-man! I really like this style, I plan to do some more with it I think.

Mike

100 Days of Drawing: Day 32

Did some more experimenting today, this time with just black and white and I used some lineart fill techniques like hatching and such. What this is though? No idea, no deep and meaningful hidden meaning here folks, I just draw and it comes out.

Mike

100 Days of Drawing: Day 26

The final in my series of the Pokemon evolution from mudkip to marshtomp to swampert and I have writers cramp now from writing all those words! So something different tomorrow, not sure what yet, just have to wing it.

Tried ballpoint pen this time for the colour fills, by using only (except the eyes) the words: pokemon, evolution, water, ground, mudfish and swampert.

Mike 

100 Days of Drawing: Day 23

Sorry it's a day late, I had a massive day yesterday and had no time at all to do it so I did today instead and I'll do today's one a bit later.

Mike

100 Days of Drawing: Day 22

Lots and lots of cats! I am really having fun with this whole 'doodling' thing, although I really want to practice more as I know I can get really good at it and I can see where I need some improvement. I also want to try doing some pattern doodling as well, it's all so exciting.

Mike

100 Days of Drawing: Day 21

This is what happens when it's late, you're really tired and you listen to lots of Les Claypool albums....

Yep, you get a little weird....

Mike

100 Days of Drawing: Day 20

This is my first attempt at traditional "doodling" and I've got to say, I had a lot of fun doing it. I will definitely be doing some more of these for this challenge, I already have lots of ideas.

Mike

100 Days of Drawing: Day 19

It's my old friend Englebert! Yep, it was only a matter of time until he showed up as I do really enjoy drawing him and I'm sure he'll pop up again during this 100 Day challenge at some point.

Mike

100 Days of Drawing: Day 18

Whilst looking at some pictures for Monster University, this image of a monster came to me. I plan to come back to it one day and add some colour to it, I didn't have time today to do it any justice as I really like this drawing, so I want to do it properly.

Mike

100 Days of Drawing: Day 17

Today I once again combined to of my favourite things; drawing and video games, especially Mario. I'm a massive Nintendo Fanboy, have been since I was a kid and probably always will be. What I did for this one was sketch it in pencil then I did all the outlines with a Sharpie and then I did all the coloured hatching (I can't remember what this style of hatching is called) using a Bic RS2 Finepoint ballpoint pen.

I hope you like it, I'm really happy with how it turned out.

Mike

100 Days of Drawing: Day 16

100 Days of Drawing: Day 15

Today I was cleaning up around the house looking for something and I found a scrap piece of paper with a drawing of a dinosaur on it. It was from a couple of months back when I was at the doctors for one of my boys and in the waiting room they have all these toys and scrap paper and pencils to entertain kids....and dads ;-) So I quickly drew up a sketch of pretty much exactly what the drawing I today is, because I saw it and liked it so I redrew it. My wife who is also taking this challenge with me (see her on Instagram as drtupps) is using coloured pencil for a lot of her drawings. I honestly haven't used coloured pencils since highschool so I borrowed her set to add some quick colour, just for something different. So here it is:

If I'd had more time I would have coloured it some more with way more shading and such, but I only have very limited time and as I said I really need some practice with coloured pencils, it's been way too long!

Mike

100 Days of Drawing: Day 14

I was going to get out all the fancy gear and try and do all these perfect circles for this one, but it would have taken too long and I believe this whole challenge should be a "whatever inspires you, just do it" thing. So instead of stuffing around I just drew it all freehand with ink pens:

Mike

100 Days of Drawing: Day 12

I'm super tired today after my 2 year old kept me and my wife up most of the night, so I was really struggling to focus and think of something to draw today. Thankfully tonight I sat down and flicked through one of my art magazines and saw a picture of a kids with objects as heads and then this image kind of popped into my head and I went with it:

Something different, yet still retaining some of my style and things I like to do. Enjoy!

Mike

100 Days of Drawing: Day 10

Gotta say, I'm really enjoying this challenge it's giving me an opportunity to just go all out and explore my 'wacky art' side and just do whatever I think up on the spot. It is odd though, that most times what I imagine ends up looking nothing like what I drew....oh well.

Mike

Everyday Comics #1 (Special Features)

As promised, here is some behind the scenes stuff for last Monday's cartoon:

1) Once I had the idea or sorted I knew I wanted to base the image off and actual comic book cover, like what I did for the Wanking Dead comic. Except this time, I thought I'd try and copy the cover as much as possible and just add some details in there. Now it did take me some time to actually find a decent cover surprisingly, pretty quickly after I started I knew it had to me a Superman cover, as it just seemed to fit. Especially as a lot of earlier Superman covers seemed to be him just lifting and busting out of stuff. So after spending some time with my old friend Google Image search, I found this beauty:

Which was just perfect, especially the way he has his arms and hands positioned and I also knew I could pull this one off as the background was really simple!

2) Once I had my image, I did a quick sketch to get the layout and text all sorted:

So you can see where I've played around with the "Everyday Comics" logo, and made a note that I'd have to do the "Shoppingbag" by hand, why? Well I honestly couldn't find a free font that was even close, which is odd.

3) Next I sat down in front of my PC with the original Superman cover on the screen and spent quite a while coming up with this pencil drawing:

4) Because I copied this as close as I could to the original I was worried that when I added the extra stuff in, like the shopping bags and logo, if I stuffed them up then I may ruin the whole thing. So to fix this problem, I grabbed some tracing paper, stuck it over the top and just added in all the extra stuff, which looks like this:

All I had to do after this if lay both the sheets on top of each other on my light box (It's a big box with two fluoro bulbs in it and a glass top so I can trace pencil drawings onto my good inkjet paper) and just trace both at the same time onto inkjet paper.

5) Once it was traced I then went and inked the image using various ink pens (Sharpie Fine Point, Bic Mark It Ultra Fine Point, Staedtler Triplus Fineliner and a Copic Multi Liner 0.1 to be exact) to come up with this:

6) Now is where the fun begins and the magic happens; I scanned this image into Photoshop and cleaned it up (I messed around with his face as well as I wasn't happy with it, in fact I'm still not) and coloured it and made the background transparent. I then imported the image into Illustrator where I used quite a few layers for each object. So all the text was separate, as was the background gradient and all those damn lines. Man those lines took some time and patience I tell you. So finally we get this:

I hope you all liked it, I had a lot of fun doing this one, hence why I'm now planing some more "Everyday Comics" cover soon!

Mike

  

The Wanking Dead - Special Features

Hello again, just thought I'd share some with you all how I created this week's cartoon "The Wanking Dead"

Once I got the idea, I did a quick Google search to find an actual Walking Dead comic cover to base the cartoon on and eventually I found issue number 30:

I'd loved to have it pretty much identical to this cover, but I'm not that good so I kind of just used it as a rough basis on the design and still did it in my style.

Here's the first initial sketch I did:

Initially the guy with all the porn looked kind of like me for some reason, I was going with the cliché fat nerd in the sketch. Once that was done I went ahead with the first pencil drawing:

So you can see at this stage I just changed the guy to be less of a cliché and more of a normal guy, which I'm not sure if this works better or not, it just felt like a better decision to me. The X marks were originally going to be the pure black spots, but in the end I ditched that and went for more subtle shades of grey in the background. And finally we have the final inked version:

So there you go, hope you found it interesting.

Mike

Domination Catalyst (Special Features)

Hello again and welcome to another Special Features, first off here's the entire page of the initial sketches I did for this week's cartoon "Domination Catalyst":

I did have some initial problems naming this cartoon as you can see, the first title was "Not So Cute Now Are They?". I did like that title, but I always try and avoid long names where possible, it just complicates things. You can see down the bottom where I've done a few quick cat sketches and decided to keep them simple and basic, which honestly helped a lot as I had to draw so many damn cats in the end. I also had the main villain cat in the background more animated with his arm up and doing a big laugh, but in the end I liked the more creepier, calmer type villain. So once I got the basic layout sorted I moved onto the pencil drawing:

I've been really disappointed with my lettering of late as I've been going for a more casual, cartoony style. But it's been all over the place so this week I went back to using my old tried and true method of ruling lines, but still handwriting the text to help with consistency. Still tossing up whether to just go back to doing it in Illustrator like I used to. Then we move on to the final inked version:

I go through phases with how I do my shading on cartoons, at the moment I'm purely doing it all in Photoshop, by using darker colours as shadows. Other times I use hatching and linework during the inking phase. For some reason I always jump back and forth for periods, so expect the linework to come back again at some point. Over the years I've experimented with lots and lots of different paper to use when inking my cartoons. I know a lot of pros use drawing board, but it tends to be expensive so I've always searched for more cost effective paper. The main issue I always have is bleed, I hate it when my lines bleed and cheap paper bleeds like a bitch. I've tried Bleedproof paper, tracing paper, you name it. The best paper I found for me? Glossy Laser Jet printer paper is awesome, not too expensive and doesn't bleed at all. For years I used to use Matte Printer paper, but it had a kind of coating on it that used to mess up all my felt-tip pens. Plus matte paper isn't very popular anymore and it's hard to find, but it made me find something better anyway. The only real issue I have with it is, that, especially with felt-tip pens, the back isn't very dark or 'black'. But once I scan it into Photoshop I just crank the contrast and fiddle with the brightness and it's all good. Try it, I'm a big fan of the paper and it's probably something most wouldn't think to use honestly.

Hope you enjoyed this behind the scenes look and found it interesting and informative, see you all again on Monday!

Mike

Friday Night Art 10

Just a quickie tonight, just thought I'd share the full body image I just finished tonight of my logo 'bert for the upcoming website relaunch:

What do you think? I've gone back to his more 'meaner' looking roots. And here's the pencil sketch of it:

See you next time!

Mike