Patchwork Monster

Patchwork monster.

This piece, along with several others is available to purchase as a print here

The tentacled beast

The many tentacled beast, from my story, 'Danger! Do Not Read!'

The bath that went to sea

An illustration from my short story, 'The Bath That Went to Sea'. Originally done in pencil, then edited in Photoshop.

The house takes off!

Illustration from my short story, 'The Gateway'.

The wrong hat!

You should always double check that your hat is not in fact a Gribbleberk, otherwise this might happen.

The Door to Door Salesman

The Door to door salesman. What has he got in his suitcase? Do you care? What has he got under his hat? Well that is of much more interest.

The Gravedigger

The Gravedigger, from my story 'Gateway'.

Bionic beast

Angry beast

This beast is angry, I dont know why.

Answers on a postcard please...

Book Review, Dreamscapes: Myth and Magic

This is another book from Stephanie Pui-Mun Law’s Dreamscapes series. The title of the book indicates that it will be based around mythical beasts and magical creatures, once again all to be rendered in watercolour. It starts out pretty much the same as her other two books do and I was a bit disappointed to discover that the basic lessons section seemed to be made up almost entirely of content from her other books.

After the basics section the book is then divided into several smaller sections each dedicated to a different type of mythical creature or magical realm. Thankfully these are full with lots of original ideas and techniques looking at things like painting a daytime sky or creating cloud formations. The sub sections are each split into several subsections, beginning with mini lessons, tips and techniques before going into a more detailed step by step tutorial where you can put into practice some of the techniques learned so far. The book has lots of useful content, especially for the aspiring watercolour artist.

Stand out parts include the ‘moon’ section features painting moonlit clouds and different techniques for painting starry skies

The ‘witch’ section has a very good feature on how to indicate patterns on fabric.

The ‘phoenix’ section gives tips on painting flames.

The ‘tree spirit’ section has an excellent tutorial on how to meld flesh and wood.

As well as the sections mentioned above there are sections on ‘the bard’, ‘the trickster’, ‘the unicorn’, ‘the dragon’ and ‘the siren’. Each one is treated in pretty much the same way.

It’s another competent and informative book and when combined with the other two books they form a very comprehensive guide to rendering a fantasy world in watercolour.

Book review-Fashion Illustration by Anna Kiper

Fashion Illustration by Anna Kiper

This is the first book on fashion illustration that I have read for a long time and on the initial flick through the book I was quite impressed with the eye-catching art.  Before I even looked in the book in any great detail I found the artists own story, which was included as part of the introduction, inspiring in itself; a young Russian girl immigrates alone to the USA in order to follow her dreams of becoming a fashion illustrator.

The book begins with some important tutorials aimed specifically at the aspiring fashion illustrator, detailing the fashion figure, tips on proportion and form used in fashion design and drawing interesting gestural forms. The positions are kept realistic but interesting and emphasises the importance of supporting leg positions, the shape of the walking figure and the blocking in method to create interesting silhouettes. Also covered is the fashion figure in perspective and various rotations of the body.

She then goes into more depth when adding detail to the figure, focusing on faces, hair, skin tones and drawing the elegant forms of a fashion models arms, hands, legs and feet.

Next up is clothing the fashion figure and this fills the majority of the book. Particular attention is paid to the way that different clothes and materials behave on the body depending on the position of the model. There is a very interesting part included within this section which demonstrates how to build up layers of clothing starting from underwear through to overcoats.

A ‘Fashion Dictionary’ is included which basically consists of labelled illustrations of a wide range of clothing. The labels are particularly useful and aid the reader in identifying the names of different types of pockets, or shapes of lapels for instance. The author then demonstrates different page compositions and layout variations to assist in producing your own design board, coloured accents are featured to add balance and energy to your page.

There is a short section on illustrating children and men and looks at the types of clothing they may wear but the main focus of this book is on women.

Another section I enjoyed was on fabric rendering techniques which demonstrates the best media for illustrating particular types of fabric and also looks at using fabric swatches to inspire or accompany your designs. This then leads into the final section of the book where the artist explores a wide range of media.

I found this book to be useful and interesting but I would have liked it that bit more if there had maybe been some input from other illustrators just to give it more variation in style.

Dracopedia book review

This is an art book with a difference- it has been produced to seem as though it is an actual scientific journal that has been compiled by studying different species of Dragon all over the world.

Each dragon has its own section where the author describes its biology and behaviour, all accompanied by some beautiful illustrations. The sections conclude with a demonstration of how to create your own illustration of the particular type of dragon.

I do feel that there isn’t enough emphasis though when it comes to the tutorials of this book. There aren’t really any step by steps for drawing the dragon although it does cover painting each dragon in some detail, albeit with a strong digital painting slant.

With this mixture of journal and art instruction the book sort of loses its identity and to me is neither one thing or the other. If anything it is more weighted towards the scientific journal which means that for me personally there is not enough tutorial content and with the books subheading reading ‘A guide to drawing the dragons of the world’ it doesn’t exactly do what it says.

The artwork in the book is very good and dragon lovers will get an awful lot of eye candy in here. It is ultimately a book for fans of dragons and dragon lore and even though I was disappointed with the art tutorial content I did enjoy reading about the ‘history’ of dragons.

In conclusion there are better ‘How to’ books out there but it was still an enjoyable read.

Mount Noshmore

This geezer forms part of the living hills, he likes to eat fell walkers for breakfast.

Making Faces book review

Making faces, by 8fish

This book is done slightly different to other instruction books I have read because it has been created by and contributed to by an art collective known as 8fish. This means that there are 6 different artists giving their input into one theme which results in many unique techniques and insights into the genre of drawing expressions for comics and cartoons.

It begins as most of these types of books do:- with basic lessons on materials and equipment, drawing and sketching and inking and shading to name a few. It also offers some interesting techniques for drawing mouths, eyes and noses.

Section 2 covers scenarios, (like Billy finds a flower). Each scenario has several demonstrations covering various expressions that may come about for the given scenario. For instance in demo 1 Billy is happy, demo 2 joyful, demo 3 about to sneeze. Each scenario is made up of step by step process along with other variations on the theme created by some of the other 8fish artists.

Altogether there are nine of these scenarios which cover a broad range of situations and emotions, and these make up the majority of the content of the book.

Section 3 is all about storytelling and more importantly how to make your artwork more interesting and exciting. It covers framing your image and body language. This is followed by a series of step by step demos including a zombie fighting a cave girl, noir interrogation, western standoff and a battle scene.

The book concludes with a gallery of work by the 8fish artists which illustrates the quality of their work.

This is the best book I have read when it comes to drawing faces and expressions. Even though it does have a strong comic book slant to it, a lot of the lessons can easily be applied to more realistic work or book illustration. I highly recommend it.

The Dog eater!

This monster doesnt like dogs barking at him, so he eats them

Shojo Fashion Manga Art School Year 2 book review

This is the follow up to the brilliant shojo fashion- manga art school. It focuses on modern looks and has been split into 8 distinct sections based on significant events and social environments.

The first section- Around the home looks at different types of everyday wear and gets quite specific on things like sleeves, collars and feminine necklines. Other interesting aspects of this section include maternity wear, baby shoes and drawing dirt on clothes.

Section 2-Hanging out, sort of expands on the casual wear theme but this time features character reference based on social situations like First date and Going steady.

In section 3 the clothing style becomes more glamorous as we go to the prom. Standout parts of this section are applying different beaded patterns to a dress and layering up a suit. It even gives an illustrated step by step guide to tying a tie.

Section 4 is all about weddings and features different styles of dresses as well as suits for all ages and bridesmaid dresses.

Section 5 focuses on drawing different styles of school uniform as well as clothing for sports and cheer squads.

In section 6 we get to see different types of work clothes relating to many different types of jobs. Unfortunately, as the book progresses the amount of step by step guides seem to reduce and we are just given finished references. This runs through to section 7 which looks at different types of sportswear and the book finishes off with seasonal clothing featuring items of swimwear, sunglasses and padded fabrics.

Although I found this book quite useful it didn’t seem to live up to its predecessor. I feel like it tries to cram too much different content into it covering all possible bases of a particular type of clothing but doesn’t feature enough step by step lessons. The first four sections could have been greatly expanded to fill the book and the final four, done more thoroughly could have another book in their own right. Obviously with the subject matter this book does seem to be aimed at teenagers but is very useful for anybody who wishes to illustrate people of that age bracket.

Dragonart Ultimate Gallery book review

Dragonart ultimate gallery review

 

As opposed to her other books that are based around art instruction this one is a showcase of artwork by J “Neondragon” Peffer.

It is well presented and produces with a hard cover and printed on good quality paper. Unfortunately  this is where the good points end. I personally do not feel that Peffer’s work deserves such a showcase for it. The main reason for this is the colouring technique as it appears that everthing has been coloured digitally. I am quite a fan of digitally produced art and do despair when it is used to create the flat, layered effect that Peffer seems to employ on every piece featured. To me, this technique gives digital art a bad name. Also there is no usefulness with this book as far as I am concerned, I would not refer back to it for anything whereas her Dragonart collector’s edition was full of great tips and tutorials.

On a plus side a lot of the images are accompanied by comments from the artist stating techniques, processes and inspiration involved in the piece.

My dislike for this book is mainly due to personal taste so fans of the artist or this flat digital aesthetic may find entertainment and inspiration here. For me the Dragonart collectors edition is far superior as I find her techniques and processes are much better than her actual finished pieces.

Dragon art collectors edition - book review

This book begins as most art instruction books do- with the basics. The basics in this book, however, are different to the standard ones that seem apparent in most instruction books. It covers topics like using different colour groups, applying overlaps in perspective and drawing braided hair, all of which were refreshing to me.

After this the book remains in familiar territory and part 1 is comprised of several step by step tutorials of how to draw fairy tale based creatures such as sprites and elves. These are interspersed with feature demos on fairy wings, dwarf beards and orc tusks. Parts 2 and 3 follow suit with more tutorials based on other fantasy realms. These are followed by part 4- fashion central, an informative section demonstrating how to draw clothing and accessories to adorn your creatures with.

It isn’t until part 5 on page 113 (fantastic dragons), that we see a dragon and with the book being titled Dragonart I did feel slightly misled. The tutorials are varied and thorough though, breaking a dragon down into its separate component parts to ensure the reader gets to grips with every aspect of a dragons anatomy. This section ends with several step by step full body demonstrations of dragons.

Part 6 continues on the dragon theme and concentrates on unique details to add to your dragon drawing to really make it you own. Details like spiralled horns, types of scales and tail ends were particular stand outs for me. This section is sadly ended rather abruptly and with it the theme of dragons as we come to part 7 and other fantasy creatures. This section takes us through to the end of the book.

Overall I enjoyed the contents of this book but did find that with not even half of the books contents being dedicated to the dragon genre the use of dragon in the title a bit of a miss sell. Don’t be put off by this though because I did find the drawing tutorials in this book to be some of the best and most simple to follow that I have seen in a book of this type for a long while.

Shojo Fashion- Manga art school

Shojo fashion- Manga art school   Irene Flores   Book review

I am not really a fan of the Manga look, apart from a couple of exceptions, but this book interested me with its approach to drawing clothing. In my own illustrations clothing is something that I find tricky to draw realistically but this book is one of the best guides to doing so that I have seen.

The first section of the book features drawing bodies, heads and faces- all in the manga style- so to be honest I wasn’t really interested in this section. However I had a read through and the step by step tutorials seemed to be very informative and covered quite a bit of ground including facial expressions.

The following section on drawing clothes was what I was most interested in and it didn’t disappoint. It began with looking at different types of fabric and materials and explained the best way to draw them. As the section progressed it went into further detail on as many different types of clothing as I could think of including skirts, sweaters, shirts, jeans and coats. These were interspersed with mini tutorials on things like drawing ruffled skirts and quilted fabric. As well as the extensive range of clothing there were also lessons on drawing many different kinds of accessories.

The back end of the book gives you a few double page spreads of different types of manga characters and what to outfit them in giving you a chance to put all the previous lessons learned into practice. The final section demonstrates how to set a scene for your characters to live in and covers perspective and adding props.

Overall a very good book and not necessarily limited to fans of the Manga genre



Monster Friday

Pink blobby guy