Fill a page with ‘drawings without any plan or image in your head, just start drawing’. Our latest assignment on Mattias Adolfsson’s The Art of Sketching course is a challenge for me as I’m usually either drawing from life in my sketchbook or getting together reference for an illustration. To be sure that I wasn’t starting with a plan in mind I started with a shape for each of these: square, circle and triangle. A theme soon emerged of buildings on rocks.
For the first I was thinking of Greek islands and while drawing the second I found myself thinking about Scarborough’s Rotunda Museum. The third would be at home deep in a German or Austrian forest.
During his time at the Mission at Horbury Bridge, from 1864 to 1867, the newly-ordained Sabine Baring-Gould wrote the hymn Onward! Christian Soldiers, met and fell in love with mill girl Grace Taylor and wrote The Book of Werewolves (1865), which Bram Stoker considered the definitive account of lycanthropy (Bram Stoker had heard rumours that there was to be a sequel on vampires, but sadly that didn’t happen).
There is no evidence that Sabine had to fight any werewolves during his time as a curate, working alongside Canon Sharp, but how could I resist him as a subject for the latest challenge from Swedish cartoonist Mattias Adolfsson in my Art of Sketching online course. We were asked to show aspects of a character’s biography through tattoos.
Illustrator Alex Jenkins on today’s Adobe Live ‘From the Sofa’ session. I attempted to match his style in Fresco, using the Blake pen and the Natural inker but my line work is never as calm as his.
Alex said that his early influences included Robert Crumb. I was reminded of Glen Baxter and Gary Larson.
My initial sketch in Conte had a bit more life to it than the coloured version that I drew on the layer above it.
The Twitter feed: I stuck with the text of the original tweets.
My thanks to Suzy Scavenger and to her hen Garstang, the chicken with the twisted beak. This is the latest assignment in my Mattias Adolfsson online course, The Art of Sketching. We were asked to draw a comic featuring the self-portrait comic character we’d created.
The dialogue is taken from directly from an exchange of tweets between Suzy and I about the removal of slave trader Edward Colston’s statue from his plinth overlooking the harbour in Bristol. What could have been a serious discussion of whether it’s acceptable to destroy works of art has been somewhat undermined by Garstang, who has overacted in every frame she appears in.
Roughs: ‘Pencil’ blocking out (drawn on the iPad); colour rough (iPad); final rough (pen on paper, real paper)
“Marvellous!” said Suzy, when I explained what I had in mind for the comic strip, “Garstang deserves some recognition.”
As you can see for my Clip Studio iPad cartoon (left), all this celebrity could easily go to Garstang’s head. In my cartoon, she’s standing on a copy of the popular Victorian magazine Tit-Bits (which I remember still being in print in the late 1950s). A copy dating from 1895 was discovered hidden in Colston’s plinth.
Garstang drawn from a photograph Suzy sent me. Yes, hens do sometimes have long wattles.
Gavin Campbell, illustrator, on today’s Adobe Live ‘From the Sofa’ session, started his career with a series of portraits and photo-realistic pencil illustrations, ‘drawing’ with the rubber to create the highlights. Watching him working through a composition featuring multiple layers in Photoshop, I could see his pencil-drawing background coming through, for instance in the way he built up the tones. In places where some illustrators might have used a 3D mesh to create a contoured effect across the subject, he preferred a ‘liquify’ option which enabled him to create the same effect through drawing.
I’ve drawn this in Fresco on my iPad Pro, making a lot of use of the cross hatch brush which I was reminded of during one of the ‘Sofa’ live streams last week.
“You might not have heard of me, but you’ve probably seen my work.” said Martina Martian, illustrator, designer and lettering artist, on today’s Adobe Live ‘From the Sofa’ session. As her animated graphic GIFs have had 9.2 billion downloads, you have probably seen her work literally popping up on social media.
I’ve drawn this in Adobe Fresco, the iPad drawing program that she often uses for her lettering and design. After starting my usual pen and wash approach, I went for Fresco’s Conte Crayon and Old Bristles brushes.
In today’s ‘From the Sofa’ live stream, Tony Harmer gave us a masterclass in how to draw cats, using Adobe Fresco and Adobe Capture. Okay, mine didn’t turn out looking quite like Tony’s . . . but I learnt about masks and generating textures and I particularly enjoyed drawing with the Fresco ‘Cross Hatching’ brush.
Really appreciated the dedication of London-based Johana & Maxim Kroft, a.k.a. Idea & Maker, who are currently living in Vancouver getting up at 4.30 a.m. for today’s lunchtime Adobe Live ‘From the Sofa’ session.
