My Arty-farty Blog!

Long time no post! Sorry guys! And sorry to everyone on Facebook that’s already seen this, but wanted to add it to my blog as well!

So, I’m now a graduate and currently in a mix of doing the odd commission, working on some ideas and plain playing about with my work. THIS is one of my ‘playing’ works!

I recently bought Manga Studio Debut 4 and Poser Debut - I’ve always had a love of manga, both to read and to draw, but I’ve had a lot of people say “It’s not art!”. I say, it is - people work really hard on it and it IS illustration, otherwise there wouldn’t be comics and cartoons and merchandise etc! And I actually have an idea for a manga comic that I will reveal when I get round to it more, so for now I’m keeping it hush-hush! So Manga Studio will be great for helping me practise applying tones and colour that feature in most manga comics, as well as laying out the boxed pages and speech bubbles! I can even draw in it, so this will be good to play with!

Now, onto what I used to create the image above! I have had a play with Poser before at my uncle’s when I was a lot younger, but when I saw a Poser programme for cheap, I thought hell yeah! So after much confusion and thinking “I can’t do this!”, I managed to figure out what I could do. ‘The Bear’, which I am calling this piece, was made with one of the ready figures and the bear figure, and I did use one of the female’s ready made poses (I keep twisting her arms in some horrifying contortions manually!), but I moved the head and the bear myself and played for a while on adjusting the face just how I wanted it. All these wonderful options hidden away that I was looking for! You can do pretty much anything! So I’m pretty proud of myself for a first proper try! I wanted to add a background but I’m still working on how to do that!

I will be adding my ‘play’ art on here as well as my proper stuff, so I hope you enjoy it and if anyone has any tips for either of these programmes, do let me know, that would be great! :)

Work in progress - final image for the under-the-sea double spread! Apart from trying to get an even colouring for the blue (still a base at the mo) I am really happy with how it’s looking! Can’t wait for it to be finished! Think I will include this as a print in the auction were having to fundraiser our course soon! Yaaay!

My uni studio space! I’ve finally made some mess (as per usual!) that I don’t feel so uncomfortable being in. If I work in the studio by day, I can have me time by night! Current work in progress shown, actual photos of them will be up when I receive them

This is an old update before I put any new work up (which I’m being sent) Here is my initial rough final image try out of the little girl and the cat imagine playing in space. From my crit, it seems the black needs to be not so…black! But I have been shown a children’s book illustrator (sorry can’t remember the name right now) and her style is very washy but still makes the image look whole and she is very good! For now I am ignoring the space image despite its my favourite double page spread, but I wanted to give some other pages a go first for a change. It’s going well! I will post again with them in progress when I get the pictures! But I like the detail on the girl here so I’d like to keep some of that, definitely (watercolour and w/colour pencils)

Hello and thank you for checking my blog! (This is actually a thank you card for family members but I thought it was actually quite sweetly appropriate as a first post!) 

I have been severely neglecting my arty blog, but now I intend to try and post something weekly with old and new work, starting more with old and giving a mixture. Please feel free to comment and give feedback, it is much appreciated!

But thank you again and keep checking back for any new (or old-new) posts of work!

(And Jerry the cat says hello and thank you too!)