Random sketchbook nonsense from the past while:

I feel I’m sort of on to something with that last drippy woman; I’m going to blow her up and transfer her onto bristol to see what I can make of her, cuz it’s about time I started actually doing something with some of these rough doodles.

In other news, I got onto the Black Church Print Studio’s screenprinting course (by the skin of my teeth—those things are popular!), which starts in April. I’m really excited! I’m not entirely sure what I want to print yet, but I’m working on some illustrations that I’ll hopefully be able to make a small print edition of during the course.

Please, somebody tear me away from Open Canvas—it’s addictive. I’ve previously attempted to digitally paint in Photoshop, and the plethora of brush options always sends me into a spiral of indecision and frustration. OpenCanvas is an amazingly lightweight digital painting application; it has a teeny footprint with just the required amount of options, and somehow painting feels far more fluid and natural than it does in Photoshop. Part of the fascination is the option of exporting an ‘event’ file, which contains a complete playback of your painting process, and is totally fascinating viewing. I’ve been looking at event files from various artists and it’s a brilliant learning experience to see how they work. There’s also a networking option, which enables you to share the same canvas with other artists online - my crappy cup-on-a-string dialup negates this possibility for me, but I can’t wait ’til we get broadband and I can have an OC sketch session with someone.

Here’s an unfinished work-in-progress (Vulcan, the fire god, to be precise):

1. Original sketch:

2. Inked lines in OC.

3. Colours in progress.

The colour isn’t even nearly finished, but isn’t it crazy how much the drawing improved in OC? The original pencil sketch looks bizarrely awful to me now. The event file shows me running through about five mouth and eye permutations—I think I need to fill a couple of sketchbooks with mouth and eye ref drawings.

Speaking of digital painting - here’s another sketch I’ve been working on, but this time in Photoshop:

This is all making me realise how much I miss the process of painting. I’m seriously thinking about digging out my oil paints again.

JAMES JEAN

Yeah, everyone and their dog has heard of Mister James Jean, but that’s no reason not to heap even more kudos onto him. He makes me want to down all tools and never draw again, and yet, conversely, he inspires me to drawdrawdraw like there’s no tomorrow. Damn him. I think I might have to order his book. Don’t forget to check out his blog.

JOY ANG

Joy Ang has carved out an almost James-Jean-esque style for herself, but it would really be doing her a disservice to compare her solely to Jean, as her work is gorgeous and entirely her own. Check out her recent work Terrorsel, and her step-by-step description of her process on that particular piece over on conceptart.org.

WESLEY BURT

I remember being blown away by Wesley Burt’s sketch thread on conceptart.org years ago, and his recent work is just as gorgeous. Take a look at the old thread on CA and be amazed at how each and every page of his sketchbook is a complete work of art. He makes me want to eat his brain - in the very best and most polite way, of course.

ROLF HARRIS

I know! But I just saw an interesting documentary about his life, and I remembered watching Rolf’s Cartoon Club as a very small kid and the Rolf Harris drawing book I used to copy slavishly. Tony Hart always seemed faintly creepy to me, so Rolf was my childhood art idol. Yes, he’s cheesus maximus, and yes, his music is cringeworthy, but he seems genuinely lovely and he’s a hugely talented artist. I find it hard to believe that he simply quit painting for about ten years. His work may not be to everyone’s taste, but his enthusiasm for painting is infectious.

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In other news, I just sent off my application to the Black Church Print Studio’s spring screenprinting workshop. I know the demand for places is high, so here’s hoping I manage to get in. MmmScreenprinting.

I’ve been pretty busy with design work for the past couple of weeks, so I’ve barely had time to make more than a few cursory scratchings in the sketchbook. I have, however, been experimenting with bookbinding techniques, in an exploratory effort to design my own hand-bound portfolio book; this book was a huge help in figuring out the techniques and creative variations. Below, you can see the few samples I made with cheap materials to test different types of binding.

Tape Stitched:
I love the look of hand-made books with exposed stitching—they somehow seem more ’special’ than standard hardback books with spines. The boards were covered with black fabric (an old pair of combats!), the interior signatures were created with alternating pink and white heavy-weight paper, and the stitching was pink embroidery thread over black-and-pink striped ribbon.

Basic Codex:
This is just a very basic hardback book with a spine, and it was amazingly simple to make. I covered the book with fairly lightweight paper, which is not ideal, but is actually pretty sturdy. That said, I think fabric is definitely the best option for a covering material.

Codex with Wrap-Around Cover:
Here’s a slightly smaller version of the basic codex, with a little wrap-around hinged cover and button-and-velcro fastener. The boards are covered in the same black fabric as the first book, and I recycled a pretty paper shopping bag for the patterned endpapers.

I’m still not quite sure how I’m going to bind my portfolio book, but I definitely want to make a few editions of it, so it really has to be quite easily duplicatable and/or updatable. We shall see!

Tiphanie Brooke (AKA Antigirl) has some fantastic examples of her bookbinding and design work on her site. I particularly love the gorgeous portfolio-style sketchbooks with bra-strap clasps. Her work really showcases the professional quality you can achieve with hand binding; unbelievably, she created 102 copies of her Babylon Beware project by hand.

Christmas was a frenzy of cooking and gorging and comfort telly, so I didn’t actually get much time to draw anything; all I have to offer are a few paltry doodles from the sketchbook pages.

The last two are from reference: Tivka the white tiger from a crumpled copy of ‘Hello’ *cough* magazine (it was free!), and Hagrid’s hut, quickly sketched from Cuarón’s gorgeous ‘Prisoner of Azkaban’ on Christmas teevee. I grabbed the concept of the hut, and then….made up the rest. I’m not at all happy with it, but I’m trying to draw more than just the same old 3/4 view portraits. I’ve always loved layouts/backgrounds, and they’re something I really want to work on. Baggio is incredible at backgrounds, so I always get a bit discouraged when I try them, but I’ve decided to pick his brain, grab some books on perspective, and work my way through a box of pencils. Lots more in the sketchbook, but our cheapo scanner is hacking and wheezing and clutching at its metaphorical chest.

I don’t generally go in for resolutions but, for this coming year, Mr Baggio and I have made a pact to draw something every day.