Bed time doodles in Clip Studio Paint… you should see the ones I didn’t includeThe colours did a lot of the heavy lifting on big chin here
Had a pretty good response to the Dredd sketch on bluesky, a big surprise really, I haven’t seen much reaction to anything I post there honestly, lucky to get a reply or comment at all. Haven’t drawn any Dredd stuff in years, the helmet is always tricky but this looks alright… it might even be a new favourite of mine. The Eastwood of this is entirely accidental btw, couldn’t resist adding a wee speech bubble nod to auld dirty Harry.
Not a great HB, but I like how the colours turned outBit of a wonky sketch but who cares right?! (I mean, I do actually, it’s bloody wonky)
Was in two minds about posting this Ultramega but I’ll let it slide as I’ve already put it on insta… that’s late night posting for ya. Someday I’ll do a decent drawing of this awesome character and melt some eyeballs.
Not much time for drawing but I’ve been adding to these larger pages of bedtime doodles, sketching some favourites and other stuff.
Love these lil guys from common side effectsWhole lotta skulls sketched at work on various scraps, adjusted in CSPSome fanart sketching for I took a hammer to hellAll hail the squeaky one
It’s been a fun exercise just sketching up some layouts of Absolute Batman for this challenge on insta. I won’t be entering but thought I’d post them here just to clear up some thinking space (the deadline is 27th Oct if you’re interested).
Rough thumbs with logo placement
I would have probably went with option one or two but they just feel too similar to a few of the covers I’ve seen so far… besides, did you see that Harren variant at the weekend? Holy crap!!
I should exaggerate these proportions even more, this guy should be massive, a brick sh*thouse!
I’ve been sketching in procreate more lately and some of the brushes have a definite Kent Williams/George Pratt/Jason Shawn Alexander vibe.
Which one do you prefer?
Probably overdoing it with spatter and rendering on this Batman sketch, have to remind myself to simplify and think in form.
I watched Aliens a few times after not seeing it for a good few years. It was one of the few movies I brought with me to watch while visiting my in-laws for two weeks over the summer (along with Mad Max: Fury Road & Across the Spider-verse).
I kinda want to draw dat queen!
I’ve been thinking about doing some more Aliens fan-art but I haven’t drawn anything for it. These are some of the first attempts at something (sketched without reference). Hopefully it’ll develop into a final piece/cover/pin-up, I’m pretty sick of just squeezing in sketches lately.
The comics machine Matt Garvey kindly asked me to provide a variant cover (my first cover) for the latest issue of Gangsters v Monsters. Look at that preview art by the awesome Andrea Schiavone! So good!
After sketching a few of the characters and initial ideas on paper I worked up a quick cover layout guide in affinity designer and imported the logo files. I then exported the guides to clip studio paint as a draft layer and scanned in some of my loose sketches.
I switched between procreate and clip studio to create the thumbnails, for some reason thumbnailing was just easier in procreate.
I liked all four of these and couldn’t really decide on a favourite, they all would have been fun to draw, honestly.
Initial set of thumbnails with roughly spotted blacks
After receiving confirmation from Matt on the second thumbnail I started inking the mummy head first, followed by the werewolf before tackling the rest. I decided very quickly to limit the brush size to 0.4, 0.8 and 1.0 for consistency. In hindsight I prob went a little overboard with the texture on the mummy in contrast to the other characters.
Rough sketch to final inks in clip studio paint
I haven’t really been colouring much this last year so took a few hours to refamiliarise myself with some basic techniques before flatting the file, practicing on this art from the previous post.
Flatting WIP, lotsa layers, some would say too many
I had a lot of difficulty nailing down my colour palette and worked up some rough options after finishing the flats.
Colour roughs
I coloured this over a few days so decided to create a reference page in clip studio to remind myself of the brushes and combinations used. It was very quick to put together and saved me a good bit of time in the end thankfully.
Colouring brush testsFlats to final colours
I had a blast on this and now that the project has surpassed its goal I’m really looking forward to seeing this in print come December.
Shout off in the comments if you’re getting a copy, I’d love to hear from ya!
Nope, not doing it, you can’t make me, what’s that?… you’ve made a list of prompts with vague references and obscure characters appealing to my unquenchable nostalgia… ahhhhh, hmmmm… maybe I could… just one a week… or maybe seven at the weekends and post them together in a batch… collect em in a zine… release it on gumroad… that could be fun… I could make it woargghhhhhhhhhhh!!! Damn yooouuuu October!!!! You vile cursed month! Every fraggin year!
Anyway, now that I’ve cleared that up, please enjoy these random drawings.
My old Belfast comics meet-up pal Stephen Downey turned 40 recently and I quickly sketched up some fan art of his latest @outsidergames project Tax-Force. It’s heavily influenced by the X-Men animated series which is basically all you need to know, go wish-list it on your computer.
Wee goblin inspired by @boe_ink latest posts on instagram, goblins are good craic.
Had a go at the new bats and that axe, lotta fun and it got me excited to pick up the first issue this week. Since reading it though I think these henchmen dudes are supposed to be wearing ape skulls, oh well.
Look… it’s been a long week and an even longer weekend, it’s times like these that the Jarbats will emerge in the sketchbook… meesa not sorry.
June is almost over so it’s time to clear out the iPad and share some sketches from May.
I attempted #draweurovision again
Really thought Windows95man/Teemu Keisteri (Finland) and alyona alyona & Jerry Heil (Ukraine) would have scored better in the competition, great performances and personal favourites. Would be tempted to do some proper fan-art of these artists at some stage, especially Windows95man… Bambie Thug would also be a lot of fun to draw.
Initial SW sketches and inks, that Yoda is suspect
Usually don’t bother much with #maythefourth but thought it’d be interesting to draw some SW characters quickly from memory. Considering how much of the star wars I’ve watched over the years it surprised me how these turned out without ref.
Only a month late this year, not too bad I guess and lets face it, kinda customary at this point. Started doing #alienday in 2019 and my approach to these creeps changes each time… still haven’t quite figured out that tricky Geiger anatomy but love adding all that unnecessary detail.
Some bonus sketches messing with proportion and design, pretty happy with some of these.Very quick colour rough using a marker, prob won’t spend any more time on this.Rough layout with spotted blacks.Initial pencil roughs scanned from my wee A5 sketchbook.
There ya go, another year, another #alienday, even came pretty close to finishing an actual page of comic art!
