WhitLit

Its a thrill asked to be a part of Whitstable's WhitLit festival this year. 

The incredible Marvel comic artist Laurence Campbell and myself will be doing a workshop on the production of graphic novels. From script to printed page.

Tickets available from The Horsebridge Centre in Whitstable.
The workshop is on Saturday May 16, 2 - 5 pm, at The Horsebridge in Whitstable. Only £4.

More details HERE

Mojo workin'

For this post, I thought I'd run through the process behind one of my latest illustrations - Jack White, for the July issue of Mojo magazine.

The brief was to do a picture of him based on the cover of "In the Court of the Crimson King" by King Crimson. Close up, cropped in close, screaming angry.

A tricky challenge because it called for a likeness without the usual signifiers of clothing, posture, silhouette shape, hairstyle, context etc... As well as getting a likeness in a particular expression and angle.

The feeling is important in anything like this, so the first thing to do was track down some of Jack White's latest music on YouTube, and turn it up loud. As it happens he had just broken the world record for fastest recording to pressing of a vinyl record so theres a great bit of video to get a feel for what he's doing right now.

Next I turned to the King Crimson album cover, and did a few thumbnail sketches, just in pencil, quickly to get the basic elements in. One difference is that the album cover is square, and the magazine page is rectangular, so I did a bit of fiddling, and decided to have a distinctive bit of triangular background above the head to suggest his wild hair centre parting. Sections in a picture like this can make all the difference to whether it works or not.

Next was tracking down some good photos of him on the web. Research is important, but careful of the never ending black hole searching for THE picture. A handful of live shots, and the occasional studio one did the trick. Enough to get a sense of the shape of his head, what his face does when screaming, and the shape of his teeth. All very important, especially when doing someone who is famous. Once you think you know what someone looks like it all starts to go wrong.... you must try and see with fresh objective eyes. Someone cleverer than me once said "draw what you see, not what you know". 

For this, I drew digitally on screen with my Wacom Bamboo. I've preset my own dip-pen style to the brush, for that scratchy, pressure sensitive nib effect. Superfast. Get the energy!

I nailed the main likeness, then worked into it with gusto. Especially the hair. I love doing the hair.

After a couple of failed attempts at digital colouring I moved on to watercolour on paper. Using my lightbox I was able to paint directly over a print out of my drawing. 

After scanning and positioning on screen it was a much better effect, and looks very similar to the undigital King Crimson image. And with a few extra bits of digital colour on the eyes and teeth and here and there, it was done!

I'd love to here your comments, or if you have any questions just drop me a line.

Big thanks to Wag at Mojo.

parrot

stray parrot finds a home here

slice of Slice of Life

Here's a glimpse into the weekly world of the Slice of Life illustration that I draw for Michael Hodges in Time Out London....

Wednesday is article day, when I get his words via email...

In this one Hodges finds himself in a moment of beautiful calm in a fish and chip shop along the polluted pissy road near Waterloo Station (Time Out issue April 14 - 20 2011).

My initial idea was quickly scribbled out........ I was thinking along the lines of Edward Hopper's Nighthawks painting, where the lit interior is isolated against the night closing in around. The article also reminded me of Charles Bukowski's Nirvana poem. Anyway these were my first sketches, which I scanned into photoshop. The first one is before research into the restaurant...

 ... and this is after seeing the front, and the particular shape of windows and door....

I took the little window with Michael Hodges from the first, and placed it into the other drawing, then plopped it into a page layout to show how it will look on the page, coloured it roughly and emailed it off to Sim Greenaway (art editor) and Hodges to see what they thought... I usually do this thursday or friday ...

... they liked the idea, so next, in the night, I drew all the different parts, people, vehicles, smoke, urine, blind man, etc on paper, and scanned them, and composed the picture on screen. Each element being on a different layer. Its a bit of a fuss doing them in pieces, but it means that its more flexible, and I can adjust the position and scale of each bit to just how I want it (and to fit the layout if I do something awkward with the composition). Sometimes I do it more traditionally as one single drawing. It just depends on the picture. Normally I do these inks on a saturday evening.

Sunday is colouring night. Heres the final drawing as it appeared in the magazine, with ink textures and flat colour added. Warm and nice against the choking street swirl yuppie yah.

.... and here are my original scans. You can see there are lots of passengers squished into the bus that you don't see in the printed version, and more to the buildings like the curry restaurant next door. Some of the drawings were done in pencil first, then inked up, and some of the figures were probably done straight off in ink, but I can't remember. Note my QW signature also drawn separately so it could be placed artfully somewhere! The final coloured artwork is emailed in for first thing monday morning.

There, I think thats it. Big thanks to Mr Hodges for writing such wonderful and mad articles that are a pleasure to illustrate. 

Make sure you read Slice of Life each week in Time Out London.

Any questions, please ask away!