Mythical Creatures from the Orient

I had to take a break from the mma caricatures recently. I had a sudden request from Brian (fat boy with the bomb author) to do some work for him and when that was over it was time for a quick holiday in Wales which was really nice and the weather was fantastic.

Since returning I'd been getting a portfolio together for the London book fair, which I went to on Wednesday. The place, Olympia, was huge and I bumped into an illustrator friend of mine and we visited the exhibitions together and made new friends. It feels a lot less daunting when in a group.

Now back and getting ... ahem... organised, I thought I would pin up a couple of line drawings.

 

The dragon was drawn a while ago and I turned it into a water colour that can be seen from a previous blog entry. The second, although more recent, is a follow up on a similar theme concerning oriental myths.

Monkey annoying the kylin

 

I know the kylin is supposed to have hooves and a deer body type but I wanted to give it claws and a more powerful look. I'll try and complete the set when I can.

Rickson Gracie caricature

I started watching martial arts events and sports back in the early 90's there was a lot of it shown on some satellite channels such as the eurosport. I remember the first match I saw was Kyoshi Tamura vs Mathew Saad Muhammad.
Muhammad was a very good boxer but lost in about 40 seconds to a choke. To be fair he was very near his career and I don't think he was prepared properly.
Though I was interested in MMA, it wasn't some thing that really caught my eye until around 96 or 97 when I bought a vhs of the documentary "Choke" about a Brazillian fighter named Rickson Gracie (pronounced Hickson).

 





He's a very enigmatic character. He's kind of a legendary figure and how good he is seems to be from testaments by some top fighters and grapplers who've trained with him. At the time he seemed very unique in his mix of jujutsu, yoga and gymnastics.  He has this mystical guru, yogi type vibe about him and the info out there seemed to encourage this image. He even had a cameo on The incredible hulk film starring Ed Norton playing, basically, himself as a martial arts/ yoga teacher.

There use to be a saying  in the forums when some one would ask who would win between (named fighter) vs (named fighter) and no matter who was mentioned someone would eventually say, as a joke, "Rickson by armbar"

Oddly enough he only has two finishes by armlock. The next character I'm drawing will be someone who's made a big splash with lots of wins by armlock.

Chuck Liddell caricature

 



 

Following on with the MMA caricatures I picked a more recognisable, though no longer active, fighter. This was a fun one to illustrate but I wasn't sure how to portray him so I ended up doing two contrasting versions.

 

Chuck Liddell is a former UFC light heavy weight champion who was known for having very heavy hands. Before his decline he used to finish his bouts in devastating fashion which won him a great deal of fans.

My next one will feature the fighter who first got me interested in this sport back in 1996.

Lyoto Machida

Just as a break from working on the comic book pages I thought I'd have some fun and keep my hand in on the caricatures.

 The problem was who I should base them on?
I decided to focus on the sports and hobbies I enjoy and I like watching fight sports, boxing, muay thai, judo, kendo, all sorts, but for now thought I would focus on mixed martial arts for the time being.

Quick bio of Lyoto Machida:
 Former light heavy weight champion in the UFC and middle weight contender. His background is in Shotokan Karate before mixing in all the types of training.

Lyoto is difficult to draw because there's no real distinguishing features that make him stand out.

I'll pick a more distinctive fighter next time

DeadMoth Comic

This is title page for my comic strip  that came about from a previous illustration course. It's planned for an anthology of comic strips by different artist/ writers local to oxford that should come out soon... hopefully.

Contributors are:
Charles Cutting& Richard Hayes
Matt Lewis
Andrew Stillborn (Stilly)
Mark Fox
and me

Two of the comic strips ( mine and Matt's) came about from the comic book course I attended in late 2014 run by Charles Cutting.

It was started purely as an exercise to include specific elements that were discussed that would make a comic strip interesting and lead the reader on.
Some of those elements were setting the mood and changing it, how to convey characters when in dialogue,  introducing new characters, both supportive and antagonistic, while adding various twists and turns and a cliff hanger ending.

From the discussions and results of the exercises Charles came up with three basic storyline ideas. From this we picked one and developed it  further with the plan of keeping it between 6 to 8 pages.
Since finishing the strip there's been ideas of concluding the story and as I had never intended to do so I needed to put thinking cap on. After working out the conclusion I decided to add two more pages to the first part. The first is to give it a title/ splash page because I felt it needed it and a second page I inserted when there was a lull in action, to help with continuing the next part of the story ( not shown).
So this title page is one of 9 completed pages for the first part of my contribution. The second part should be about 8 pages and will conclude the story. I've pencilled four of these pages and after finishing them will move on to the rest.

festive fun

 

Happy Christmas

 

 

 

Karate Santa

Ragtag

I can't believe how quickly the years have gone by. I drew this motley crew, must be around 2007/2008 in black line with the notion of adding colours digitally not too far in the distant future.... oops, that didn't work out

Then I had to redo one of the caricatures as it was originally drawn standing not sitting and that kind of put me off finishing it as I hate redoing work.... Bah!    (though I find it less of a chore now compared to a few years ago).

Then eventually everything else got in the way..... Gah!

But now... with a bit of down time....It's done!  :)

Hope you guys at Ragtag Developments Ltd like it.