Recommendations – May 2020

Write it in Blood #1-4, Deficit one-shot, Long Rain one-shot, Big F#@k off Worms #1

First up is Write it in Blood by Rory McConville, Joe Palmer, Chris O’Halloran and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou. A fantastic crime noir set in rural Texas about brothers Arthur and Cosmo, two hitmen on one last job before retirement. The colouring by O’Halloran really set’s the tone, a limited palette and subtle texture throughout really gives the book an iconic look. I loved this miniseries, definitely one of my favourite titles of the year so far, Write it in Blood #1-4 is available now on gumroad.

UPDATE 01/09/20 – Write it in Blood will be published by Image.

Deficit is a surreal martial arts comedy from Joe Palmer. If you’re not familiar with Joe’s other brilliant creator owned comics such as Grind I highly recommend visiting his website and gumroad. Joe also posts amazing artwork regularly on instagram, his daily warm up drawings are all kinds of awesome!

Long Rain by Artyom Topilin is a tense and compelling adaptation of the Ray Bradbury short story that lingers with you long after reading. Simply brilliant, I can’t recommend this comic enough, make sure you grab a copy from his gumroad.

If you haven’t been following Big F#@ck off Worms by Matt Garvey and J Francis Totti, you’ve been missing out on a fun and frenetic daily comics fix during lockdown, it’s clear that both creators are having a blast on this.

Also, be sure to check out these two great comics by Asaf Hanuka and Jesus Alonso Iglesias… essential reading right now:

Drink coffee and draw

Totti (J Francis Totti) & Forpe (Darrell Thorpe) have been streaming their work daily on Twitch:

If you’ve never seen it they chat about all things comics while working on their latest projects Big F@#k off Worms & Baron and the Kat.

Here’s some fan art of the guys drawn in clip studio paint.

April 2020

#AlienDay sketches drawn in CSP using mostly default inking tools to get those nice chunky inks and colours.. that xenomorph blood sure is acidic!

April sketchdump… swamp guy, mister deaaathhh, dental dude.

Finally watched Primal!

sixfanarts 2020

Jared of OK Comics list for the #SixFanArts challenge was too good to pass up, I mean c’mon… Marv and an extinct shark together on one page! Pretty awesome!

I roughed out the basic layouts in procreate before going straight to inks in clip studio paint. I initially added some screentone but later found that greyscale shading just seemed to work better.

I really enjoyed this, a much needed distraction during the last few days.

Foodles

Jess Bradley posted some foodles earlier this week:

Super fun, right? I was itching to paint some of my own.

I started out with a simple lasso selection and painted lightly with a large brush before adding shading and opaque highlights on a second layer.

I laughed pretty hard when I added the lil onion tears.

Here’s some more…

March 2020

Been a hell of a month… hope you’re all keeping well, looking after yourselves and each other.

Drawing is my refuge in times like these so I decided to do something for #NationalPencilDay to take a breather, relax a little and get lost in some hatching.

I also drew a quick Buzz Chickson for a #drawthisinyourstyle challenge by Tim McCourt.

and some rough sketches…

Bags

DCAF Christmas Market Haul (2019)

Picked up a lot of awesome books and comics at DCAF this year, the first up on the reading pile is Bags by Patrick McHale and Gavin Fullerton. Gavin discussed some of his work on bags during a talk alongside Declan Shalvey and Phil Barrett at dcaf and I couldn’t wait to grab a copy after seeing some of the preview pages.

Such a great book, I just had to do some quick fan art sketches in procreate based on one of my favourite moments. It’s been a while since I’ve inked anything traditionally so I drew the layout onto watercolour paper before inking with a platinum carbon pen and brush for greywash and black fills.

December 2019

Hi Ho! Hope you’re all keeping well, not much happening in the sketchbook atm but here’s a few things from the iPad.

Glass Hood fan art sketches drawn in CSP.

Prey fan art sketches drawn in procreate, tried a few variations of the alien designed by J Francis Totti using different references and approaches.

Tutorials

I followed some clip studio paint tutorials by PJ Holden earlier today:

Featured in ImagineFX Magazine Comic Artist Volume 2 (2015)

I picked this up on a weekend break to Cork in 2015 for the Cork Comic Expo (still has the Eason price tag). The tutorials by PJ provide a fundamental breakdown of the techniques required to get started with comics in MS5 and there’s also a longer article later in the mag on How to create your own comic.

Here’s my notes from pages 20-23:

Despite my terrible lettering this has been a really useful exercise, I’ve got a much better understanding of how to colour in clip studio and I just love the simplicity of using less layers and following naming conventions.

If you’re not aware, PJ also has a plethora of fantastic advice and tips on his blog and twitter and I have every intention of trying each one.

In the meantime, I’m gonna go re-read Dept of Monsterology and then drool over PJ’s bits and bobs… er… I mean PJ’s Cork Expo sketchbook.

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday!

Dept of Monsterology: Monsterology 101 & Cork Scratchings: Bits and Bobs by PJ Holden

November 2019