New Year Fitness Resolution

I was worried that the gym I go to in my lunch hour (I typed 'munch' hour first, but I suppose that's what it is too) would be overrun with keen fitness boffins come January - they didn't materialize, though. Anyway, I still came up with this gag!

Not sure why I coloured it in these pale blues and pinks - it reminds me of toothpaste or something. I like the crispness of black and white cartoons, but I also like some sort of toning or colouring of some sort - will experiment with this kind of thing more!

Mind the Step

More gags as promised! I was trying to come up with some cartoons that would work in Welsh as well as English - whether that be because there's no dialogue or text, or whether it's because any text would be easily translatable. This gag falls into the latter category, so I have a version which reads 'Cymerwch ofal o'r step'. The goal is to send these out to local Welsh mags and papers and see what the feedback is!

Haircut Gag

Happy 2008! I'm making it my goal this year to really work on some cartoon strips and gags. My style tends to gravitates around certain similar themes depending on the subject matter or type of gag, but I'm always looking to nail some sort of style that I'm happy with that suits the kind of things I come up with that's a bit more consistent.

Anyway! After much doodling (and pouring over cartoons on the interweb) I came up with something like the above, and I'm quite pleased with it, I must say.

More rubbish gags and strips to follow!

Merry Christmas!

And to one and all a happy new year!

Bears in Ill-fitting Hats

I love online group sketch idea things!

This one is for a group on flickr where you submit bears in ill-fitting hats - my effort is above, and a link to the group is here:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/bears-in-ill-fitting-hats/

This one was a very quick sketch (about 10 mins) in Painter, roughed out with the 2B pencil, 'inked' with the scratchboard tool (found under 'pens') and coloured with oil pastels. A bit of blending with 'just add water', a couple of gradients to fill out the background and I'm done!

Train Ride

An illustration for a History Books project - this particular page needed a train cab from the late 40s / early 50s.
There's some more detail in this one, as requested by the clients - but I've tried to strike a balance between suggesting everything and painstakingly depicting everything. I tried instead to give an overall feel of detail by including some in appropriate places, and hoping it all adds up to a satisfying image.

Pilate

The things you have to do, eh? I was working on a series of presentations involving 'hands' and needed to find a copyright-free image of Pilate washing his hands of responsibility - or something. Anyway, could I find one? Well, no. So I had to rustle up a quick illustration using Painter, and here it is!

I'm pretty pleased with it - I like the general tone and colours, though I think it needs some extra bits of detail here and there. I used oil pastels and the 2B pencil (and some graduated fills).

All in a day's work! (Well, about an hour or so).