New Year's resolution

Why feel guilty about my pleasures?

'An it harm none, do as thou wilt.'

Chinese gouache and opaque markers in handmade paper journal.

drive by sketches, colour

A little cleanup, and more legible captions, and these could make decent postcards--maybe for people who actually live here. London is bigger than its landmarks, and this looks more like home than a tourist attraction.

blast from future past: Treasure Planet

Treasure Planet was in 2002, for goodness' sake, and I still can't get over James Pleiades Hawkins and his 90s hairdo and ridiculous face.

I kind of want to draw his adventures at space academy. Scratch that, I really want to draw his adventures at space academy. He'd fall in with a lovable bunch of misfits, only a few humans but mostly alien races, and they'd get far better results than any of the legacy kids, and at the end of the third year there is an attempted pirate takeover and they foil it, and that's pretty much their graduation.

Yes, I have put too much thought into this. That's why it would be amazing.

moleskine sketches

From some pictures I took of Bergdorf's windows when I was in NYC a few years ago.

A little sketch for the merboy story. It is driving me nuts that I still don't have a name for this thing.

the other green-eyed monster

Feeling frustrated this week. Collage journal.

Hulk from Jung-Geon Yoon's cover of Avengers World #2, cut out from Previews Magazine. No actual comics were harmed in the making of this image. Winsor & Newton inks and watercolours with Sharpie on a handmade paper journal my friend Jamie gave me.

merboy story, interior sketches

Some sketches for Fionn's house and his modifications. I didn't have any references on hand so had to work from memory. The rest of the house is based on Abbasid architecture but Fionn's room is more conventionally Medieval English.

Pencil with Neocolor II acquarelle crayons.

drive by sketches, day 4

I accidentally wrote 'day 3', because it was page 3 and I was distracted by trying to draw and write on the bus. Sigh.

This is actually 2 bus rides, because I was going to Trafalgar Square to meet my friends instead of to work. I had a little more time to draw the man with the cool 80s-futuristic hearing aids because he was sitting in front of me.

I got off at Trafalgar Square, but spotted the giraffe head and just had to draw it. The giraffe head is off of South Africa House (not Africa House, which is near Holborn). Yes, there is an elephant head next to it. I can't remember if the third head was a lion, but I would not be surprised.

all change, please

Breaking news: I have moved to a new, closer location for work and a more regular time. On the plus side, I can wake up later, come home earlier, and my bus ride is shorter. On the minus side it's now split into two, which means the drive by sketches will have to stop for now. I will get some colour into them in the meantime.

On the other other hand, I now have more time to do things like this:

drive by sketches, 2

Day 2 and 3 (which were, um, actually a few weeks ago).

 

I only posted it now because I decided to start adding colour to the entries. I think these would make some fun personalised postcards, although I need to clean them up and replace my wobbly bus handwriting.

drive by sketches, 1

So I haven't posted for a month. This doesn't mean I haven't been drawing, just that I haven't been drawing for myself. I was getting a little frustrated, being busy with the new job and one or two projects that aren't going quite the way I wanted them to. And then I found this:

An Illustrated Journey: Inspiration from the Private Art Journals of Traveling Artists, Illustrators and Designers. This is a sequel to An Illustrated Life, a book of artists' journals, and I really wanted that...before I saw this.

I borrowed the book and have been reading through it the way I usually don't with these books. When I own them, I reach for them casually, flipping around pages, browsing and stopping wherever I want, hunting out favourite artists and ignoring others. I am going through this one like a proper book, reading from beginning to end, discovering artists and styles one by one.

I love travel journals and always wanted to do one, but have never had the time while I was travelling. Italy, Singapore, New York, all failures; I was enjoying myself too much rushing around to sit in one space and patiently commit it to memory. Looking at this set something loose in my resolve; I am now living in one of the most beautiful and famous cities in the world and not drawing any piece of it. In the end the frustration was too much. If the only travelling I do now is on my bus ride, then I will draw my bus ride.

So here it is: day 1 of the Drive By sketches. Begun on my best friend's birthday! Copic .01 micro liner in a Scout Books pocket notebook with a lemur on the cover, by artist Meg Hunt. I'll scan it for the next post.