Steward The Saw Whet

A panel from  Bera The One Headed Troll, a comic I wrote years ago, drew recently and pitched a week or so ago. I've had three publishers interested but that doesn't mean I'll get a contract. I'd love to keep working on this book. If a contract doesn't materialize maybe some form of self publishing? 

Bera With Just Watercolour

I thought I'd show the Bera artwork I posted yesterday, this time as it looked when I finished painting it. I find it really interesting to see all the changes that happen in Photoshop and compare the two. This lets me see how I can combine media better in the future. One thing I love about Photoshop is that it allows you to make dramatic changes with little risk. If you compare this with Friday's post look at the shadows on the dragon for an example. 

Bera The One Headed Troll Artwork

I recently sent out a pitch for my newest comics project, Bera The One Headed Troll and wanted to share some of the artwork from the pitch. It's a fantasy series, all ages but dark and with an unusual heroine. I wrote this story a long time go, I can even remember starting it on a snowy midwinter night over at my aunt's house, writing an art history essay about Canadian landscape painting for school (my computer was broken so I was using hers). I was staring out her back window, into the trees and I could see/imagine a small, stout troll walking between the trees, eyes aglow in the darkness.

Wish me luck on this! I'd love to do this book.

Troll Warrior

Yesterday I finally sent off my pitch for the comic book Bera The One Headed Troll, a character I've posted about a lot here. Above is a pen and ink sketch for the comic. I want to post the full 14 pages I did here soon. I did it in a very different mix of mediums than I usually do, lots of ink and brush and watercolour and much more digital than usual. Maybe I'll start posting tomorrow  It's so new to me and important it's a bit hard to share it. 

White Witch Legion Of Superheroes

Here's an ink and watercolour commission I recently completed of the White Witch from DC comics Legion of Superheroes. This was so much fun to draw. I don't think the scan quite captured all the nuances of the original but you get the idea.

In other news I managed to get a new comic book pitch completed while working on two contracts. Amazing what you can do between edits. I'm very, very happy with this pitch, Bera The One Headed Troll, and I sincerely hope it works out. Now that the pitch is finally done I'll start posting more about it. I finished a full 14 pages of art or it, none of which I've shared yet so I've got a lot of new art to share.

In other, other news we acquired a small parrot and he's ripped apart my keyboard, so I'm typing this with several missing keys.

Hope everyone is enjoying the warm weather, I knowI am. 

Flipping Through The Monster Manual

Sketchbook Sketches

I've been working on Photoshop all week and have had the internet off because it's too tempting to surf while I'm working on a computer. So, not as many posts as I like. Also, because I've been mostly doing Photoshop colouring work I've been starting every day by doing some fun, raw sketches. I like a balance when I'm o the computer a lot. The Gumball drawing and Optimus Prime drawing will coloured by my son. 

Dorian Grey

Dorian Grey for the upcoming card game Everything Vs. Everything. Watercolur, ink and digital. 

Pan

Another ink, watercolour and digital drawing. This one's for a very cool card game. Love Peter Pan, this one was a lot of fun to draw. 

Aladdin

For comics and illustration work lately I've been experimenting more and more with washes that are recoloured in Photoshop, which I learned from Jose Villarrubia is how he largely coloured Jeff Lemire's work in Sweet Tooth. Jose's colouring really blew me away in that book. I'm just wrapping up a pitch for a new comics series (above picture unrelated other than technique!) and I coloured it entirely with cadmium yellow and burnt sienna watercolours and I'll be extensively recolouring it in Photoshop. What's nice about this technique it leaves me with really nice originals that are quite different from what sees print. 

Bran Stark

A sketch book sketch of Bran from the TV series Game of Thrones. Pretty much perfect csting, I think. Very close to how I imagine him to look in the book. 

Colour sketch Of Bera The Troll

I'm not certain that I've mentioned this before but I recently finished inking a pitch for a Bera the One Headed Troll comic. It's a story I wrote some time ago but only recently have felt I can do the story justice visually. Wish me luck with this pitch, I think it'd make a really cool fantasy comic. I'd like to see people take more chances with fantasy comics.

This is all brush and India ink and coloured in Photoshop with a Cintiq.

Currently I'm thumbnailing  historical picture book and battling some kind of mysterious bug. I don't really feel sick but i feel like I could be getting sick. I'd really like to be in bed reading (night Circus!) but I'm battling on. So much to do! 

Radagast Doodle

A morning warm up doodle of the wizard Radagast from Lord of the Rings I did earlier this week. 

Glowing, Watercolour Eyes

This morning I got the go ahead on the newest cover for Christopher Edge's newest book. I have loved everything he's written so far and I can't wait to get to this. The publisher loves really lush inks, and i love drawing like that so it works out well! So, now I'm doing a pitch, an illustrated book and a cover. So stuff is a bit busy. We've canceled our usual annual trip out east, or back home as we call it, because of both our schedules and because my wife is hugely pregnant. I'm sad we're not going but I've recently been really into gardening so I'm excited about the idea of growing some food for the table.

Currently reading: The Night Circus (Wow! I'm about a third of the way through and it is fantastic)

And listening mostly to podcasts and some JS Bach. 

Bera The One Headed Troll In Ink Wash

I've been incorporating more ink wash into my work lately and getting some interesting results! I'm always keen to balance expressiveness with a certain polish and I think this helps to that end.