Summer '14 Leftovers

Here are pieces that I have made but for one reason or other didn't blog at the time of working on them. Enjoy!

Zine: "My Failed Youth"

After spending some time over summer with my friends and reminiscing about our wayward years of late teens/early twenties I've decided to make a series of zines about some of our stories, albeit greatly exaggerated.

I explained to my pals how I always over think my illustrations and try to make them something different to what is natural so my friend suggested I just draw; don't worry about making it amazing looking. Just draw and get my story done...

So that's what I'm doing. Here is a few examples of what I've done so far:

Gotta say, the illustrations look scruffy as hell but I am quite excited by the outcomes!! I Feel like I've really broken through a personal barrier!

Zine: "Red"

Over the past few weeks I've been working on a zine idea. After creating two pages for it I have to say I'm still not feeling the design or story as much as I'd like. I'm going to put it on the back burner for a while as I'm spending far too much time thinking about the style and aesthetic and not enough time enjoying the process itself.

Here are the pages and process thus far:

Although I am not entirely content with the style I've used etc I am quite happy with the colour scheme that I used within the pages. I hope to take this experimentation further in Level 5.

Early Starts

My girlfriend has now started working as a primary school teacher. That means early starts of 6.30am. To help get me ready for the new academic year I've decided to get up at the same time as her and wow, what a difference it makes! I forgot how much you can get done with an early morning start as apposed to getting up near midday.

Yesterday I managed to tidy the entire house before midday even rolled round so treated myself to an afternoon of reading comic books and doodling. I ended up making this piece of my characters Kate and Red looking all happy and in love (aww etc).

Zine: The First Page

So I've been working on the first page of my zine for a few days now and boy is it giving me a headache. It needs to really pop and draw people in as soon as they see it and my designs just aren't doing that.

Here is the page layout with quick alterations to give myself an idea of how it will look

Here is one of test ideas for the page. I think I need to lock down what style I'm going to use to illustrate before I push any further with it.

My girlfriend suggested I take a step back and leave it alone for a while. I'm going to heed her advice and leave it. I may work on some later pages first or work on character designs some more...

Rocket Racoon

I saw Guardians of the Galaxy last night and thought it pretty impressive. My favourite character was Rocket Racoon who to be honest I had the most doubts about going into the film (largely as I know Bradley Cooper was voicing him). I enjoyed his character so much I spent today making a piece dedicated to that performance.

New Macbook Pro and Wacom Tablet

My Mac Mini has been playing up for a few weeks now. It kept freezing and crashing, eventually to the point where I had to get inside it to have a look. One of the Ram ports appeared to be broken resulting in me having to remove the ram from that port completely. The Mac is now only really good for social media use at best. Sad face.

SO we headed to the Apple Store in the city centre today in search of Mac prices/deals. I found out that I can get my 15% student discount in store however I couldn't get my 10 months free finance there. They checked to see whether I could apply for it anyway which apparently I couldn't as I am an unemployed student.

I left somewhat disheartened until I remembered I have a credit card. I don't like to use my credit card for such large purposes usually but I need to work. So I brought a Macbook Pro and got a free £60 'student back to school' voucher with my purchase! With this I brought a Wacom tablet. Wicked!

I used my new Wacom as soon as possible an knocked up this page layout for the first page of my zine.

Kirkstall Abbey

Today my girlfriend and I went for a wonder down the road to Kirkstall Abbey a structure that I'd only seen briefly on the bus one day. Wow. What an awesome place! Unfortunately we couldn't get inside so we had to settle for just looking round the outer areas.

*Amendment - apparently you can view inside the castle on selected Saturdays! We may have to visit again at some point.

Illustrative Work

Over the past few weeks I haven't had much time to draw but have tried to as much as possible.

I continued to think of this Red character and pictured a scenario for her. I'm very passionate about equality. I feel that you shouldn't be judged for being a different sex, gender, race etc. The topic of equality is in the papers a lot at present also.

http://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2014/jul/10/mentoring-women-workplace-equality-education

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/letters/article4117212.ece

So I've begun working on a Zine idea about a girl (Kate) that meets Red and falls for her, however Kate's been raised to abhor homosexuality. The story will be about how Kate comes to terms with her feelings and flourishes as a person due to it.

Here are some character designs for more of the characters within the story such as her brother Mark and a local bar owner called Hilda:

Birmingham Wildlife Conservation Park

One of the more fun things my girlfriend and I did when we went back to Birmingham was visiting Birmingham Wildlife Conservation Park. It's a great place to view more exotic animals in Birmingham.

As I went round the park I began to actually feel quite sorry for the animals. Some of them just didn't look at all happy and the constant screaming of children and road traffic mustn't be too nice for them. I found myself taking more pictures of the greenery of the area than the animals themselves.

I've decided that I don't agree with zoo's and such. Animals should be free.

Centre Parcs Woburn

Wow. Thew. Back home. I'm kind of glad. The past few weeks, although fun, have been very exhaustive. Literally haven't had any time to myself in around two weeks and I'm tired.

Centre Parcs Woburn was ace (somewhat unfinished though) but ace. Rented a bike and cycled everywhere. I forgot what a fully functional bike rides like (my bike usually tries to kill me). There was loads of stuff to do there such as archery (I was awesome at it btw), badminton (I was awesome at that too btw) and in the evening we played cards and such as a family (oddly enough I was awesome at that as well!). I went with my girlfriends sisters and dad, his girlfriend and her kids so it was a bit weird at first but we felt very much like a family near the end.

I'd highly recommend Centre Parcs. Five Stars.

Doodling and Gardening

This morning I spent my time doodling. I drew my 'Red' character attacking a lizard man. The lizard man was loosely based on the Creature from the Black Lagoon as I think the monster is pretty cool. I imagine Red saving someone from this creature.

I would have carried on drawing today however the sun was out in force again so I decided to whip out my new lawnmower and cut the grass in my front garden for the first time. Crazy.

I'm off to Centre Parcs and visiting family in Birmingham over the next few weeks so doubt I'll have chance to do much in the way of drawing but I'll try.

Red Headed Woman

After reading Jane, the Fox and Me I've become quite inspired. One of my biggest problems is that I worry that I'm not good enough due to my inability to make intricate, detailed illustrations. While this is still an issue reading Jane, the Fox and Me has encouraged me to just draw for fun. So I did this today.

One piece that I liked was a character I created and have aptly named Red due to her red hair. I like the idea of having a character (possibly for a zine) who continually changes her hair style or appearance as the story goes on. I ended up creating multiple hair styles for this character by looking on the internet for varying women's hair styles.

Game of Thrones House Banner

My friend's birthday is coming up in a few days and being that I'm poor I've decided to make him a house sigil based on the designs from HBO's Game of Thrones of which he is a big fan.

I know that his favourite animal is the tiger so chose that to be the animal of his house sigil. I began by sketching out a tiger head from stock internet images before tracing over it using Adobe Illustrator.

After this I copied the image over to Photoshop to add a worn effect to it. I don't think its the best illustration I've ever made but it was a chance to use some of the skills over the last year. Most importantly, I know my mate will like it.