Nate Van Dyke

I came across this cool video on youtube the other day by Nate Van Dyke a free lance illustrator. I can't say I'm a huge fan of his work but this clip gives a great insight into the way a professional works. I especially like how he makes it up as he goes along. The pencils are really just a guideline.

If anyone know what pens he's using I'd love to know. I need me some of those!

Old Cowboy 3

Through some other project I came into contact with luke Pickett and got him to do a little colouring work on the ol' timer.

Stage 2
2 different eye colours, 2 different coats and a couple other things changed.

I had a go at colouring myself with water colours. Still some more work to be done. Stay tuned for more.

James Andre on 3CR

Over the years I've done a bit of work for James Andre (a fellow Canberran) and heard him just recently on The Comic Spot on 3CR. He, Bernard and John gave me a nice little plug about my ability to draw monsters.
James Andre is proving to be a bit of a power house in Aussie comics. He is a writer and as such needs artists to illustrate his work. This isn't always the case with people who ask you to work for them but James publishes every line you do for his and he does it beautifully. This isn't sneaking the code to the library photocopier and stapling it on the floor amungst a pile of pages (which I've done). The is really nice stuff. Check out his stuff here.

Old Cowboy 2

As I said: on to the brush.

I was given a Pentel cartidge brush pen 12 years ago and ever since it has been one of my favourite tools. Almost. It has several major draw backs. You have to work slowly otherwise the line starts to break up, this can be useful for dry brush effects but i find it a bit of a bummer. You can't rub out pencils underneath, you rob out the ink too. Other than that you get a nice point, it feels nice and you can take it anywhere. So I gave the old timer a go with it seeing as I wasn't going to do rubbing out.

Stage 6

Stage 7

The Pentel cartridge brush pen didn't cut it so I moved onto another Pentel brush pen. A refillable one. These are great you can put any ink you want in them and like the other one you can take anywhere. The main problem with these is that the ink tends to rush out so the fine lines end up being just the opposite.

Stage 8

I've managed to get a bit a dry brush thing going on with the brush pen but the black is too black for my purposes so I've whipped out the white out pen. Good for stubble and hair. I also figured his hair was a bit lifeless so I put a bit of a wave into it.

Stage 9

I've ditched the other pentel and picked up an old sable, a bit too beaten up for really fine steady work but great for getting lines down fast.

Stage 10

Quite a bit more white out. It's nice o use white out as a drawing tool rather than a correction pen. You can get some very nice effects. I've taken away part of the top of the head and hair on his right. 

I'm pretty happy so now onto the colour!

Old Cowboy

Inspired by True Grit and feeling the need to do a bit of personal work I thought I'd do me an old cowboy. I also thought I'd show the process I went through and the various stages. So let's begin.

The sketch.
I wanted to just use my pen straight up so no pencils. It kinda frees you up if you dive right in. It's a bit like taking that first step over the cliff while abseiling: a moment of terror but then everything is beautiful. Your lines are free and interesting, there's movement.

Stage 2
Still mucking around, just putting lines down, making up a light source.

Stage 3

I've fixed up the wierd right eye (sort of).

Stage 4

He's got a coat!

Stage 5

I'm pretty happy with the image now. The right eye still stands out but not so much in the original work. Infact scanning this picture and cropping, straightening etc has given me time to look at the image objectively and I've managed to see a lot of things that have bugged me and get onto them before I decided the picture was finished and not wanted to work on it anymore. 

Now it's time to bring out the Brush!