"The fat boy with the bomb and 299 more of the worlds craziest politicians"

It's been 3 months since my last entry and things have been crazily busy. I had planned to ink in past re-vamped work, start on some new submissions for 2000Ad and enter some competitions, but I only managed the  latter part of that due to some expected work. which I'll blog about next time

The unexpected work resulted from partnering up with a writer and illustrating a book that listed some crazy, eccentric, strange and often disturbing Politicians that are currently in power or working, some are well know, but many are not but are equally interesting.

The book is call "The fat boy with the bomb and 299 more of the worlds craziest politicians"

It turned out to be a really fun but taxing project. 300 caricatures plus some extras over the course of 2 and a half months.

It was pretty insightful too as I read about the politicians. Disgust, confusion, infuriating and uplifting are some of the words I would use to describe the politicians. There are more but I'll have to wash my mouth out with soap

The book should be coming out in November and there will be a book launch in Oxford, but the date hasn't been finalised yet.

Attach is few samples: Nigel Farage, Rob Ford and Janusz Palikot and yes, he really did hold up a dildo and handgun when addressing the press.

 

Time's flown by quicker than I expected since my last post, I've been very busy trying to drum up some work and started a few new projects.

Since my last post I submitted a new sample of work to 2000AD.

Again the works not quite there. I got a response quite quickly and they had some positives regarding the pencilling and story telling but was let down a bit by my figure drawing and composition of some of the panels.

It's a five page story which I really liked, but not really one you can work out with the pictures alone.

 

 

 

 

 I think I understand what's wrong, now I've had some time to analyse the work . More consideration towards composition and variation is something I definitely need to work on.

Back to the drawing board :)

Sample pages Re-done Pt 1

As I had mentioned  in a previous post, one of the things to do this year is to go over the art work of my first submission to 2000AD and address the criticism I got and learn from it. Due to other work, it's a bit of a juggling act but for now I've gone through the pencils with out changing too much as I was told I followed the script well.

This time round  I've paid more consideration to the shadows so hopefully it'll address the problem of the background and foreground merging when I've inked it.

Other noticeable changes is the Balung figure in the 2nd and 3rd panels of Page 2 and Napoleen's expression and her entourage has increased in page 3 and in page 5 I changed her figure, hopefully this will address the stiffness regarding the characters.

I plan on inking it with a brush this time to improve the quality of the line. I hope to complete this for winter time as part two to this post, though their will be other post between now and then.

Also I didn't make it to Bristol Comic con as planned (sad face), something threw a spanner in the works.

 

Dragon and princesses

While getting on with some submission pieces I decided to relax a little and practice a bit more with watercolour. I gave myself a goal so it had to be a finished piece (to a certain degree). And to make sure I didn't spend too long on them I gave myself a specific deadline which were based on recent birthdays.

The first one is a Dragon for an old friend.

 I experimented with a off white paper that isn't manufactured as an art paper. It makes the black ink bleed creating an effect that I like but it's not noticeable at this size. Maybe for smaller drawings it might make more of an impact.

Now the Princesses for my daughter

 

I used the same paper but combined the watercolour with liquid acrylic. I found it very hard to manipulate but on the plus side opacity was good and mistakes could be fixed as I was colouring.

I don't think it was as successful as the dragon but it was a good learning experience (and my daughter really likes it, but I suspect it's because of the subject matter).

 

Korky Paul course part 5

Well the course is finished now and I just failed to get the final DPS finished. Something came up and I wasn't able to put in the hours until a couple of days before the final lesson with Korky.

I came close I'd finished the final inks as shown below and also a preliminary wash with watercolours(not shown).



And below the finished one in colour completed the morning after the last session

 

 

The main difference between this and the rough from my last post is that I took out the sloth in panel two, it was a bit crowded, and the frog in panel four is holding it's leg as if something is wrong.

 

On the whole  I'm pleased with the results and using watercolour has also been a lot of fun and I will pursue this medium further. Coming from a background in oil painting I do find a lot of differences I need to get used to, namely the drying time and the way the each medium flows.  I may revisit the mole in the corner of panel three. He seems to stand out too much and could use a darker wash to knock him back a little. He's a character, to be introduced later on, that witnessed the frog's encounter with the witch.

 

Concerning the course it's been a very good learning experience and I feel it's given me a great deal to think about and a lot of confidence to move forward. In fact I already have plans for my next children's book project, but I wont be starting that until mid May. I'm trying to prepare some work in the meantime for the Bristol Comics festival on May 10th.

 

Korky Paul course part 4

Korky Paul course part 4

Running into the last couple of sessions on this course and things are going very well, I have two completed spreads and part way through the third He gave me some very good advice to improve my watercolour technique and how to manipulate the medium.

 

Korky seems happy with them and okayed me to start on the next one, so I'm trying to develop and finish this third and final one for the end of the course. Of course it doesn't really matter if I don't but I'd like to if I can.

 

The third one is going well Korky approved the final rough as shown below, though the frog going "plop"(3rd panel) needs a slight tweak as well as the one looking puzzled (4th Panel).



 

 

 

The first page of this spread is very different from what I posted before ( http://waivisuals.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/korky-paul-course-part-3-back-to-roughs.html ) and it's really down to the text. I initially intended a big fall from the frog but it seem to illustrate a "crash" rather than the subtlety of  "a bump and a plop" which is what's written. So I changed it.

It's also nice that Korky agreed with the change as he had a similar idea of the frog having a big fall as well.

 

One of the most positives I received was for the image of the witch. The inspiration for it is from a distant memory of the witch (Calypso) in Todd Macfarlane's spiderman story - Torment (early 90s?). I don't have the comic anymore and I googled the image but couldn't find the one in my head.

This one came up:

http://villains.wikia.com/wiki/Calypso_(Marvel)

but the one I remembered was really dark almost a silhouette.

 

I guess this is an example of drawing from memories of past images that I've seen. 

 

Anyway time's ticking to get this last one done



 

 

 



 

Korky Paul Course part 3

 

Back to the roughs, taking on board the previous criticisms, I went back to developing the opening image with the narrator/ sloth facing the reader and inking the images properly

 Korky was happy with it and so I worked this and the second DPS up in inks ready for colouring, He said he'd never seen this story broken down into a comic book format before and seemed really happy with the way it was coming together. I just hope the colouring works out better than my last attempt.

 

Overall I'm really happy with the way things are going, the words and pictures seem to flow well together and the art work, up to the inking stage, is consistent with my recent comic strips, http://waivisuals.carbonmade.com/projects/5043911#5.

To finish for now, here is my rough draft for the 3rd DPS. I think it's almost there with a few little tweaks.

 

I intended the witch to start out as shown above, kind of obscure, before being revealed in the next pages. But interestingly Korky really liked the way the she is depicted here and said she should be presented like this throughout the story.