Ink and Crayon

More messing about.

More Illustrationy based stuff

Playing around with Black and white, charcoal and ink. Very sketchy.

The Snowmen

I've been doing a few paintings to muck about with and somehow this happened, a completely different style to what I was doing at the time. This painting has something like 12 layers in Art Rage 2.

Expanding visual vocabulary

I recently bought a book by oliver jeffers called "The Incredible Book eating Boy" and I just love it. This guy and Shaun Tan are now my favourite children's book illustrators. Since the last post I've been doing more fiddling in Art Rage 2 and done several sketches, most of which I've been too lazy to scan in yet, but I will. Here are some recent works, quite messy but there's something about them that appeals.


The cat I've drawn a few times now. If I can get the look of it right I might do a short story based on it. The previous story has hit a problem in that I can't work out a good way to illustrate a cat eating the sun. I can think of lots of bad ways, nothing seems right.

Also had a chat with Paschal and Ian at work. I need to work on colour and construction, and also composition. I got a brief perspective lesson too.

More Concept Cats

Some more concept cats done in AR2. I'm still playing around with a story and a style. I quite like leaving the sketchy black outline in.

Acrylic - Art Rage 2 comparison

I did the Acrylic first so this might not be a very fair comparison, however, you can easily see that the precision and colour choice and composition is much worse in the acrylic.


The Art Rage 2 painting is much more vibrant, controlled and slightly better composed. I've still got a lot to learn about colour obviously, but it seems to me it's quite cohesive. The ground colour is a bit sickly.


The Art Rage Painting took about the same time to do, didn't use up lots of expensive paint, has better colours, was much easier to use, and had a more versatile tool kit. I don't think there was anything I could do in acrylic I couldn't do in Art Rage 2 but lots of things I could do in AR2 that I couldn't do with the acrylics. Maybe once I get better at painting I'll change my view on that.

Not from life

I'm still enjoying playing with Art Rage 2. I've bought some acrylics and have been learning how to use them and the other day my mum came over and taught me a few a tricks (she's an art teacher). I bought a wonderful book by Ashely Wood which is full of sketches and paintings he'd done and we tried to copy one of the illustrations, which wasn't easy. I'm still useless at painting and find Art Rage 2 much easier to get things done with. Below is a quick 30 second painting done in it. I don't know why I gave her such a large belly.

Here are some sketches I've been doing trying to find a style I like.

I painted these characters in acrylic and hated the results. I just couldn't get colours I liked or any precision with the brush, so I did it again in art Rage 2.

From the Park

More sketches of people in the park. I'm doing these fast as I seem to be better either quick sketching without thinking or taking lots of time, anywhere in between is usually a disaster.


This one is the same as above but done in 10 seconds.

This fellow I drew starting with the negative space between his arm and torso. I'm still never really sure where to start. Normally I start with the head.


Three girls sitting in the park. The left one is the same girl drawn at different times.


An old couple on the bench. Just trying to draw shadow on this one and avoiding doing outlines as much as possible.


A few studies of a guy reading on a bench, a young girl and an old guy sitting on the bench. The bottom left one is my favourite here as it's almost all just shadow drawing, but I'm not sure it'll be obvious what the drawing is of.

More practice

More drawing today, this time Jon came over and we set up a still life to draw. In case it's not obvious, this is a drawing of a Volvic bottle of water, and apple a cap and a knife on a white cloth
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Two strange creatures. I messed up the second one, I shouldn't have started shading it.

A Portrait

Today I met a lovely dentist girl in Jesus Green called Karla and she let me draw her while she read "Kafka on the Shore". Finally, a drawing that resembles the subject!

At Tim's house

Today I went to Tim Mews' house and sketched his new dog Sophie...


A sketch of a photo of Apple (Happy Birthday for tomorrow Apple)...


A portrait of Apple who sat very still for a long time (and who is much prettier than this makes her out to be!)...


And a metal tortoise.

Evangeline Lilly

I've just seen a bit of Billy Connolly's Worlld Tour of England, Ireland and Wales where he sat for an artist and it showed the progress in stages as the artist painted him. It was interesting - although I wasn't keen on the finished product - and so I thought I'd give it a go. Here is my attempt at the lovely Evangeline Lilly from the T.V. series Lost.

And there's more

My eye up close. Paschal recommended I do a study of the eye. I think it was helpful, but I need to do a lot more. I need a model, drawing my own eye isn't a lot of fun.


Concept mice. For some reason the image of these fellows popped into my mind and I had to draw them.


quick sketches of an old guy waiting at the Round Church in Cambridge. Mostly unfinished as he kept moving.


Rubbish pictures of the cat 'Terror'. Terror has a lot of character and I haven't captured any of it.


A pocket opener. I did this to sort out scale and angles. It's quite close to the real thin in proportions.

More sketches

Bit of a gap while I've been doing work, sorrting out tenants and such. All the pencil/charcoal drawings I'm trying to do fast at the moment as I need to increase the speed of my drawing and get less tied down to detail. My focus at the moment is on geting relative sizes and angles correct.

Here's the latest batch:
A church tower, it got quite smudged, charcoal gets everywhere.


A guy on the train. I drew him on my way to London for a meeting. the top sketch was far to tall/narrow so I started again.


Some keys I drew while at Scarlett and Faith's house. I tried to draw a matchbox before this but it was very difficult. I kept getting the proportiona and angles wrong because there was a shortage of references. The keys were much easier.


A boy in the park.


A lamp in my room.


A few more to come...