Enthralled 6

I found some time to ink 'Enthralled'. Bearing in mind I want much of the form definition to be enabled by the central firelight, I had to rein myself in from overworking the drawing, particularly on the side closest to the light. I could happily ink trees for hours, but in this instance, they are lesser characters, so they get minimal treatment. I've used a heavier line on what would logically be the shadow side.
This is a detail of the centre of the piece. To show the whole thing would look a bit weedy.
The next stage is to firm up on my colour decisions and rough out a digital comp before applying colour to the art. I'm still undecided on the local colour of the audience, so some experimentation is called for. I'm looking forward to involving some colour.

Little Pig and the Moon

My latest children's picture book is taking shape. Little Pig and the Moon is the simple story of a piglet who wakes in the night to see a glorious full moon and wants to reach up to touch it.
This story, like many others, has sat in rough form in my notebooks for some time.

The illustrations are simpler than I'm used to, but it's been fun working with the different anatomy to show the gesture and movements of the character.

Thorn

Every once in a while, a simple doodle will blossom into something that makes me want to develop it further.

This young lady makes me ache to turn her into an oil painting. Though I love using them, I never use oils in my commercial work because of the practicalities of working with a slow drying medium, and it's a devil to scan! So, if I'm going to paint her, it would be something I'd have to slot inbetween 'proper' work. I'll add her to my pile of 'Things I want to do' and hope for the best.

I've even got a frame prepared that would work beautifully.

Warm-Ups and Cool-Downs

As a warm up, or even to kill time, I'll draw faces. Sometimes I'll set a challenge for myself, like portray a specific emotion or make a face based on a geometric shape. You can probably see there are a couple of triangles in the above image. Other times, I'll just play around and see what I can get away with.

The end of a day can also be 'face time'. I'll regularly begin switching off the studio lights for the night and pick up a pencil. Suddenly an hour has passed and I hadn't noticed.

Finding Miss Millerchip's face

In arriving at Miss Millerchip's features, I initially borrowed the features from photo reference, creating a kind of semi-caricature. I then in stages drew more distorted proportions to the point things got a bit too bonkers - always a fun process. I wanted a slightly androgynous look, and now, having created a sliding scale of deformity, I harvested the elements I needed to arrive at the face I was looking for. I do think Attila the Hamster is a great name.