Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
I used the iPad version of Clip Studio Paint for this comic strip. In reality, the Shetland Pony has now dispensed with its pony blanket, although another pony in the field has taken to wearing a pink pony blanket and an insect shield hood over its face and ears. There’s probably another comic strip in that pink pony blanket.
Today’s Adobe Live ‘From the Sofa’ session is with branding designer and former musician Radim Malinic. For my sketch, I decided to go back to pen – Lamy Safari – and ink – Noodler’s Black.
Someone asks where Radim gets his inspiration. Perhaps from galleries and museums? No, he answers, he doesn’t create art, that’s something different, so he observes how people behave in shops and cafes. How they buy things, how they carry bags. To me it sounds very similar to the way many artists gather material and inspiration, observing the everyday world rather than being preoccupied with reacting to art history and commenting on it, which you can’t get away from really, even if you do decide not to visit galleries.
He describes how he used the process of writing and designing his first book as a way of coming down to earth, becoming more mindful, after an intensive period of work. His three books, bursting with striking artwork, describe his personal design process.
Radim Malinic’s Brand Nu website
My ‘pen & ink, bamboo pen, watercolour, a bit of gouache and a gull dropping’ drawing of Mad Bay, Skokholm Island, Pembrokeshire, dates from a week’s visit (extended by a day or two because of bad weather) in April 1980, but my first Skokholm adventure, ten years earlier, started, rather like a Sherlock Holmes story, with an urgent telegram:
I think that even today it would be difficult to arrive at Haverfordwest Railway Station at 6.15 a.m. and it proved impossible then. As it happened, the weekly boat to the island didn’t sail that day because of the weather.
Here’s my sketchbook from that stay on the island. I picked up the rope on the shore and attached it to the spiral binding so that as I walked around the island stalking seals and puffins, I could scramble over the rocks with both hands free but be ready to take out my pen and bottle of ink to start work.
While I was up in the attic looking for this sketchbook, I came across my diary for 1970, which I probably haven’t dipped into since then. I’ve forgotten why I was writing my diary in a Spicer’s triplicate book. I remember my time on the island vividly, but it’s interesting to put it in the context of my everyday life as a student.
On a boat trip to the neighbouring island of Skomer six years earlier, we’d called in at Skokholm on the return trip to pick up a small party of birdwatchers.
That day trip to Skomer gave me some of the material for my entry in the Daily Mail I-Spy Birds competition, which coincided with the launch of the RSPB’s Young Ornithologists’ Club. I was a joint first prize winner and received not only a welcome postal order but also a red feather and a personal letter from Big Chief I-Spy himself.
During the corona virus lockdown, I’m missing out on drawing in coffee shops – which sometimes seems to be the main theme in my sketchbooks, so I tried drawing the hosts today’s Adobe Live session with Katy Cowan of creativeboom.com
Behance: Adobe Live
I’ve enjoyed trying out the ‘Rough Wash’ brush in Clip Studio Paint’s ‘Realistic Watercolour’ section but, as Barbara commented, this is looking like something that you might see on a birthday card so, good-looking as these two guys are, this frame doesn’t express a gesture. There’s nothing to prompt readers to think ‘What happens next?’
Much as I like the ponies we see on our regular walks, I need to develop their characters to tell a story. I don’t need the full cast, and, in order for them to interact, characters that are, in reality, in fields quarter of mile away from each other are going to have to be together. So sorry pinto pony, you’re going to be cut: it’s going to be the elegant chestnut and the dark brown Shetland in the grubby mac.
Here’s my rough for a more cartoony approach:
Another approach to recording our morning walk around our local patch: I took a photograph of this old roadside quarry with my iPhone and, back in the studio this afternoon, I’ve drawn it in dip pen and De Atramentis Document Ink from my iPad.
Just the watercolour to add now. I’m so unfamiliar with using this larger Winsor & Newton Professional Watercolours box that I’ve got out my swatches as a reminder. As I was getting out my watercolours I was interrupted by a beeping: Barbara’s brother John, currently, like most of the rest of us, sitting things out at home, was giving us a video call on the iPad, something he’d never tried until last weekend. I get a lot of use from that iPad.
Another doodle, drawn to help me get familiar with the basics of creating a comic in Clip Studio Paint. This is from page one of an eight-page comic, but this is as far as it’s going, as I’ve already managed all the basics by adding characters, background, speech bubbles, call-outs and even a 3D object.
Basil is a neighbours’ Persian cat with Siamese markings who wanders ponderously through our garden and occasionally makes a run at the birds at the feeder. He flounces across the lawn towards them like a frantic feather duster, so the birds spot him long before he gets in pouncing distance. I like him as a potential comic character, but he’s a bit too close to Garfield at the moment.
Continuing with my Clip Studio Paint portraits, this is our niece Joanne from a ballpoint pen sketch that I made in the summer of 1984. I’ve closely followed the original because when I tried to elaborate details – for instance by adding a highlight to the eye – I found that I soon lost the expression that I’d caught in the quick sketch.
I’d describe that look as quizzically skeptical and it’s one that I associate with her late mum, Margaret, who, when I came out with some half-baked statement, would raise an eyebrow and ask:
“Do you think so?”
We were lucky to meet up with Joanne and her husband Paul recently, shortly before the advice to adopt social distancing. A week later the restaurant we’d met at was closed, along with all the other restaurants and bars across the country.
With all bars and pubs now closed until further notice, this Clip Studio Paint illustration was based on a pen and wash sketch from four or five years ago. As usual, as a drawing, I prefer the original sketch but I love the process of constructing a comic-style illustration, particularly when it gets to the final stage of dropping the tones in with the paint bucket tool.
I’m now onto the final part of my Clip Studio Paint Tips for Digital Outlining! tutorial by Eridey. I’m following a step by step demonstration of how to draw a female comic book character but basing my version on a 1985 sketch of Ruth, a communication design student at Leeds Polytechnic. I’m attempting to replace my tentative pen and wash with the graphic style of the tutorial, so my character is getting jet black hair instead of the fair hair of the original Ruth.
This is unfamiliar territory for me, so I’ll probably try working up several different sketches of people to get the feel of the process. Ultimately, I will use the techniques in my own way but first I want to understand how comic strip artists go about achieving their crisp and confident style.
I start with the G-pen, drawing the face and then, on a separate layer, the outline of the hair.
Next stage is to fill in the outline of the hair using the paint bucket tool. I draw the hands on another layer, on top of everything else, but initially you can see through to the layers below, so I need to create a layer mask, which in effect cuts a hand-shaped hole in the hair. It’s a technique that I’ve never used before, so that’s something new that I’ve learnt from going through the tutorial.
I then add individual strands of hair. The highlights are drawn using the G-pen loaded with transparent ‘ink’, rather than opaque white, so it’s like cutting into the area of black as you would when drawing on scraperboard.
Finally, on a base layer, I add tones of grey using the paint bucket tool. The simplified tones make me think of printmaking. But the original sketch is probably still my favourite!