I am still drawing! See!

One more sketch - a little unplanned doodling that didn’t seem to want to stop. My camera phone camera is pretty shitty, but I think you can make out the gist of this picture. I want to plan to do something like this on a much bigger scale so I can just keep going and going!

I really need to get back on the ‘puter at home and start drawing up some more sketches!!! Frustrating.

Lunchtime sketch at work

Sketch complete!

Monday evening sketching

Above are two colour laser copies of ‘Aligned’. They were printed on glossy A4 paper and then trimmed to fit (so they’re a tiny bit smaller than A4 in height and width.

I’m giving away these two copies totally free to the first two people who post a comment on this news post. The first two people (basically, my 2 only readers)! Be quick!

You don’t have to leave a long message, but just something so I can identify you and sort out where to send the picture to. I’ll sign the back too if you like so that when I’m all famous, you can sell it and buy yourself and Ferrari F430.

Good luck!

Update - and they’re gone! That was quick! I might do this again some time. Who knows. Keep an eye out for future giveaways, and tell your friends!

This has to be, without a doubt the most time consuming and complex piece I’ve done so far. It’s taken just under a week to finish.

I actually made myself a little bit ill yesterday forcing myself to stay awake and work for as long as I could. It’s amazing how quick the hours go when you really get in to something.

I never did manage to finish the picture that night, but I did manage to give myself a massive head, neck and back ache that wouldn’t go thus resulting in another bad nights sleep. Thankfully, I managed to complete it today. The amount of shading and layers I had to work with made colouring the artwork very laborious.

Although I complain about how long I’ve spent on this, I really enjoyed the process of creating the picture. My biggest problem this time round was dealing with colour. The artwork looked really nice as just a 2 tone outline, and halfway through colouring, the picture started to lose what I felt was it’s impact. Maybe I’m using too much colour, or mixing too many pastel colours with strong primary colours - I don’t know. I’m still experimenting. But what I do know is my next picture won’t be as time consuming as this. Simply because this one physically exhausted me!

I think out of the 3 most recent pictures I’ve done, this one really deserves being printed up big as shrinking it down really doesn’t do it justice (hah!- get a load of my modesty!). I’m going to see if I can get this printed professionally. Maybe just a few copies at the moment around A2/A3 size to give away.

Okay, well that’s me done for tonight. I hope you’re enjoying my artwork as much as I am enjoying it.

Speak soon.

I’m happy to let you know I’ve finished my latest drawing! It’s called First Try.

I would say that this is another example of how I’m still finding my feet in terms of how I like/prefer to draw. About 5 years ago, almost all my pictures were started and completed using a computer. At no point did I ever use a real pen, pencil, paper or paint. I’m now spending a lot of time sketching on paper to the point where I would say the actual line work I’ve drawn in my notepads will be 98% what is then brought through on to the computer.

I think the transition from not depending on the computer so much has definitely improved my drawings! It’s also really nice to get away from a screen and to just relax while drawing!

I really like the busyness of the image. I do wish that I had filled the rest of the artwork area more, but this is a step in the right direction and overall I’m still happy with what I’ve produced.

I’ve already started work on my next illustration. It’s going to be a lot busier with more going on!

Right. Better get on.

Update: Comments are now enabled on the site! YIPPIE!

My computer decided to crash last night, taking away 2 of the 4 hours I had spare that day to colour in my latest illustration. I was angry, but I can’t be too mad as it could have been a lot worse. Losing the last save is one thing, file corruption or even, dare I say it, hard drive failure is another.

I’m usually really good at doing the old ALT-S save shortcut to avoid stuff like this, but I must have been really into what I was doing as it was the only time in the next 2 days I had to make some progress on the drawing.

I’m also forcing myself to get up earlier these days. At work, if we start at 8am (as opposed to 9am) we’re allowed to leave at 4pm (as opposed to 5). That extra hour when I get home to fit stuff in is crucial. Otherwise I’m never going to get any drawings done.

Lastly, in between the day job, and drawing at night, I’ve been borderline obsesses with a particular artist. I would say a lot of my recent inspiration has come from this persons work and attitude towards life. I’ll tell you more when I have time, but that’s going to have to wait for another day.

I’m hoping my next update on here will be me showing off my latest creation! If I’ve learnt one thing on writing blogs it’s not to promise anything within a specific timeframe as it will always take longer than you expect, so I promise nothing!!

Speak soon! BYE!

This is what I was working on over the latter end of last week for my girlfriend. It started out (like a lot of my recent illustrations) as a pencil sketch that I added bits to over the span of a few days.

I spent quite a while on shading this image. You won’t notice at such a small size, but I tried out a more natural, subtle shading technique for the baby’s face.

In relation to some other pictures I’ve got in the works, this image is relatively small, but was good practice for me! I’m still playing around with colour, stroke weight, and other effects to see what works and won’t doesn’t.

It feels good to have something to show everyone as I know I havn’t been updating my TOLI blog in a good long time (July to be exact).

I hope you enjoy it, and please post comments and let me know what you think if you feel you want to!

Speak soon! BYE!