Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
The flat colour that I like for my figures and cartoon animals doesn’t suit the straightforward natural history I’m including in the comic, so I’ve gone for gentler watercolour effect in Clip Studio Paint. As the colour is on a separate layer from the line drawing it’s easy to start again with a fresh layer to try alternatives.
This Sketchboard Pro, which arrived this afternoon, is a big improvement on the drawing board propped up on an offcut of decking that I’ve been using.
To test it out, I drew one of the frames for my Bilberry Wood comic. It holds the drawing board at just the angle I like and it’s so robust that it doesn’t slip around slightly, like my previous makeshift arrangement.
I’m enjoying adding the colour, and I think the flat colours are going to work. The Ruskin panel will be just 7 cm (2.75 inches) across, so, as I said yesterday, it shouldn’t be too fussy.
Darwin’s fossiliferous strata in this panel remind me of when I worked on Yorkshire Rock, and make me think about tackling something in similar style.
Adding flat tone, texture and colour: as this is destined for an A5 sized page, flat tone might work better than subtle effects, but for now I’m leaving these frames as they are. If any one of them stands out as looking out of place on the final spread I can go back to it.
After so much drawing on the iPad, it’s a good feeling to go back to pen on paper in my pocket-sized sketchbook.
Chris and Fiona get the cartoon treatment in the final panel of ‘Bilberry Wood’. For colouring I’ve discovered a useful new (to me) tool in Clip Studio Paint, the ‘Direct Draw, Lasso Fill’.
A special guest artist in the Bilberry Wood comic today: instead of drawing my version of Ruskin’s illustration from Elements of Drawing, I dropped in a scan of his original.
But I redrew Charles Darwin’s sketch of his Tree of Life. This is the inking stage, colour to follow.
I’m at the inking stage, drawing with my Apple Pencil on the iPad Pro, using the ‘Real G-Pen’ in Clip Studio Paint for images and lettering. I’m trying different styles, so I’ve gone from a cartoony approach in panel 2 to something a bit freer and messier in panel 3. I’ll decide which I like when I see the final coloured version.
I’ve dropped the speech bubbles, panels and frames into the layout of page 2 of the Bilberry Wood comic. All that I have to now is draw the final artwork . . .
I spent the morning researching connections to Chaucer, Ruskin and Darwin for my Bilberry Wood comic strip but it’s not a thesis, it’s a double-page spread comic, so I’ve roughed out some ideas to work out how I’m going to fit it all in.
Low winter sun and a sprinkling of snow bring out the colours of the winter walk at RHS Harlow Carr Gardens.
The red and orange stems of dogwood glow against the dark of the conifers.
But perhaps because it was so cold, I couldn’t pick up any scent from the spidery red blossoms of a wych hazel.