DAY 62 - Saturday 31st March 2012 - Minotaur

DAY 61 - Friday 30th March 2012 - Dave's Birthday Card

I turned todays picture into a card again for my friend Dave's birthday. He's into his punk rock so I've made him a card with Fat Mike from NoFX on it. Its drawn in pencil, coloured with markers, and the letters have bee cut out of card and stuck on for a 3D effect

Stand on the back

Coloured, before cropping and mounting

Pencil sketch

Here's the picture I was using as a reference

DAY 60 - Thursday 29th March 2012 - Mechanical Demon

DAY 59 - Wednesday 28th March 2012 - Chinese Dragon

DAY 58 - Tuesday 27th March 2012 - Ducati Motorbike

DAY 57 - Monday 26th March 2012 - Elephant in the Mist

Just a quick pencil sketch today

DAY 56 - Sunday 25th March 2012 - A Prison of Light

DAY 55 - Saturday 24th March 2012 - Let Sleeping Dragons Lie

DAY 54 - Friday 23rd March 2012 - Egyptain Tattoo Final Concept

DAY 53 - Thursday 22nd March 2012 - Egyptian Figures

As usual I've been in a mad rush today and have not had much time on my hands, but here's what I've got for today. It's a nice selection of Egyptian style characters and an eye of Ra. Just quick sketches, but I had fun doing these :)

DAY 52 - Wednesday 21st March 2012 - Praying Mantis

I just felt like doing something a bit different today so I went for a praying mantis. I've never tried to draw an insect before so this was tricky.

I didn't have much time for colour so it looks a bit flat, but with a bit of work I think this could look really nice

Before Colour

DAY 51 - Tuesday 20th March 2012 - Greg's Birthday Card

I've been working on a card for my friend Greg's birthday. I don't really know what he likes, but an eyeball on a stick always goes down well . . . I hope!

Cropped and Mounted

After Colour

Before Colour

DAY 50 - Monday 19th March 2012 - Kings Doodlings

I've been messing around with some doodles for my band Kings of Wishful Thinking. I've just generally been having a think about what you could put on a t-shirt and things like that.

DAY 49 - Sunday 18th March 2012 - Girl with Bucket

Bit of a random one here! Not quite sure whats happening, I just wanted something in that space and thought a spilled bucket of water would be cool

DAY 48 - Saturday 17th March 2012 - Mother's Day Card

Here's a card I made for my mum. It looks like my flowers need quite a bit of improvement! I drew this straight with markers and added the black pen in later to get a rough sketchy look

Before Cropping and Mounting

DAY 47 - Friday 16th March 2012 - Pencil Korean Dragon

Pencil sketch of a Korean dragon allegedly! I think that's to do with the number of toes :)

DAY 46 - Thursday 15th March 2012 - Friendly Dragon

Just a quick biro sketch of a Chinese Dragon, but quite a friendly one :) I wanted him to look happy to see you

DAY 45 - Wednesday 14th March 2012 - DNA Serpents

Here's a pattern I'm messing with of making snakes and dragons into DNA. Just a bit of fun

DAY 44 - Tuesday 13th March 2012 - SPEED DRAWING Gen 7 Celica

So I've been out of the office today so not had a chance to draw my picture at lunch time. With that in mind I've had another go at speed drawing. This picture took about 15 minutes maybe and was copied from a picture I found on my phone of my car. just trying to get the general shape down. As you can see I still really struggle with cars. I think its because they have to look perfect, there's no room for error like there is with a person for example

The photo I copied from

DAY 43 - Monday 12th March 2012 - Circle in the Clouds

This is supposed to show dark clouds parting to form a circle of bright light in the sky. I'm really keen on this idea so you will probably see various iterations of this concept as time goes on.

DAY 42 - Sunday 11th March 2012 - Anime Girl

It's my Dad's birthday today so I've not had much time on my hands. With that in mind I've just gone for a quick sketch. This probably took about 30 minutes

DAY 41 - Saturday 10th March 2012 - Pouty Girl

I've gone for coloured pencils on this one rather than my usual markers. I quite like this one :)

DAY 40 - Friday 9th March 2012 - Cycling to the Finish

Here's a picture I've drawn of a cyclist heading for the finish line. This is for my dad's birthday card as he is into his road bikes big time.

I've taken out all the pencil lines leaving just the markers. What I've tried to do is really capture the speed and the movement of a sprint, rather than drawing hard precise lines which I think would make the picture look very flat and undynamic

 

With Colour

 

Before Colour

DAY 39 - Thursday 8th March 2012 - Motoko

A quick biro sketch here of Motoko from Ghost In The Shell

DAY 38 - Wednesday 7th March 2012 - Get Well Soon Card

I'm making a get well soon card for a friend who has toothache. Here's the pictures in various stages and the finished card

Before Colour

DAY 37 - Tuesday 6th March 2012 - Dragon of the Mountain

Today's picture is a pencil sketch of a dragon. This was copied from a picture I found on Google :) Looks like I wrote the wrong day on it though!

DAY 36 - Monday 5th March 2012 - Ghost In The Shell Innocence

Here's a quick head shot of one of the artificial bodies from Ghost In The Shell Innocence

DAY 35 - Sunday 4th March 2012 - Speed Drawing

Like yesterday I haven't had much time on my hands as I've been working on the project for Thursday the 1st of March, so again I've done some speed drawing (sub 10 minute sketch)

This is a guys face in reverse perspective. Again I'm more interested in trying to get the shapes down than getting any detail in there

DAY 34 - Saturday 3rd March 2012 - Speed Drawing

I've not had much time at all on my hands this weekend so what I've had a go at doing is speed drawing, i.e. spending less than 10 minutes on todays picture. This is to try and learn a bit about shape and get rid of some of my perfectionist tendencies

Here's a car which I've just made up. Clearly my cars need some work, this is all good practice though :)

DAY 33 - Friday 2nd March 2012 - Lauren's Birthday Card

Here's a picture that I've turned into a birthday card for my friend Lauren, so this is the first picture of the day which isn't in my little note pad. It's not necessarily supposed to be of her, although it does bear some kind of resemblance, plus she is always smiling so I guess it could be! I've cut the picture square, mounted it on purple card, and cut out the letters fro pink card. The shadows are in black pen :) Hopefully she'll like it!

After Colour

Before Colour

DAY 32 - Thursday 1st March 2012 - Link on Canvas

So I knew it was a friends 23rd birthday coming up and since I think he deserves so much more than something you can buy from a shop I decided that I would try paint him a picture. I have not tried painting anything like this for at least 10 years so I knew it was going to be a long shot! I had an 8x8" canvas and a much larger A3 sized canvas which I was hoping to use for the final picture. I decided to experiment on the 8x8" canvas so I didn't ruin the bigger one, however in the end I ran out of time so I did everything I could to make this small canvas look like I wanted.

This is of Link from the game Zelda which I know is a favourite character of his. I did a few sketches and sent them over to his girlfriend to see what she thought. She came up with the great idea of adding some poetry or text of some kind. Once I was happy with the sketch I aged the canvas with tea and coffee, did a rough sketch of what I wanted on the top and then got painting. This has been done entirely with acrylic paints. I've uploaded pictures of the painting at various stages so you can see how I got along.

Overall I'm really pleased with the results, especially since I'm pretty rusty with a set of paints. My friend seemed really happy with his present too which made all the hard work worthwhile :)

The Finished Piece

Before text and final aging

Partially painted

Aged canvas with sketch ready for painting

Final Sketch

 

Concept Sketches