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!

Gerhard is Amazing!

Do any of you out there follow The Comic Journal? I go there from time to time but the link I'm about to post I found on comic tools (no this isn't the link I mean). Comic tools is a great blog written by Matt Bernier who, while not the greatest comis artist ever, writes a fantastic blog about the technical aspects of comic creation. He has techniques, trails, advice and sometimes posts up links to cool things he's found: like this one (this is the link). The interview with Gerhard, of Cerebus fame,  follows his time on Cerebus: the way he worked with Dave Sim, his techniques and lastly what he's doing now.

The guy is amazing: the effort, the technique... amazing. This has rekindled my love of Cerebus and will be in the shops buying some very soon. If Cerebus is not you're thing read it anyway: you will learn something.

The List

It was way back at the first Doujicon that I met Paul Bedford and Hpop and introduced to The List. At that time Paul had a little photocopied book of about 10 pages which he was using to get everyone into the groove. I was most impressed. Paul, Henry and I started going to the Melbourne comic meets around about the same time and soon became friends. The workload didn't fit into Henry's schedule and Paul asked me if was interested in helping bring The List to the comic stands. After a shakey start, which involved me doing backgrounds (which didn't suit because of mine and Henry's different styles), we decided that I should ink the comic.
I illustrated the cover for part one and inking started on part two. I inked part two whilst in England getting thrashings from respectable comic creators and publishers. I learned a lot in a very short amount of time and while part two was my first full inking job I had had a bit of practice on a few other small things.
I am now halfway through inking part three and while I'm no Tim Townsend I have improved. Henry's work far tighter than my own work but the control I've learnt and experience I've gained has been invaluable.
Seeing as I've been involved in this project now for five years or so, it's about time I posted up some work. I won't show much and I hope I don't give anything away.

Another Review

Here's a review from Broken Frontier.

A Review!

I did ask for this but just because you ask some one to look at your work work and review it doesn't mean they have to be nice about it. Check out what Scary Minds wrote.