#animalchallenge

After the Jackal and Magpie images I did for Secret7s I was eager to do more pictures of animals, but didn't want to spend hours browsing Google Images until I found one. Instead, I asked Twitter what I should do -- first answer back was 'A Liger' by Anxiety Decending and after 5 mins of Google (including double-checking that Ligers aren't bred for their skills and magic) came up with this:

A Liger

And since then (starting Friday lunchtime, writing now on Sunday night) I've done another 7 animals, including a Degu, a rat, a monkey, a turtle, a hippopotamus and an elephant.

I'm really enjoying it -- it's nice to have a change from the purely abstract, which is what I've been working on recently -- making cutups for 'the secret project'. It's like I needed to prove to myself that I could draw figuratively if I needed to, and a few of the images I've done so far have suggested I can. I'm planning to work a couple of these up to fit in with the Secret7" stuff I did, too.

As well as adding them as I go on Instagram and Twitter, I've started a dedicated gallery on my Facebook artist page -- feel free to like the page while you're there, y'know. If you want to.

Reptiloid-thing sketches

 Here's something a little different...

As many people know, I've got a bit of a 2000AD obsession going on, partly because of the general surge in interest becasue of Dredd 3D coming out. Mostly, though, I'm experiencing something of a semi-mid-life crisis, and falling back in love with the things I loved during my youth. Eventually, I'll get around to writing and posting my love-letters to Revere and Indigo Prime.

But, anyway. As part of the 2012 Thought Bubble Comics Festival, 2000AD are running a competition to win a chance at paid work in the comic. All that has to be done is to illustrate a 3-page Future Shock (the script and detail of the comp are here: http://thoughtbubblefestival.com/events/2000ad-portfolio-competition/). I thought I'd give it a go, to stretch myself artistically as well as indulge myself 2000AD-wise.

Unfortunately, I'm unlikely to actually enter -- I'm really busy with my real-life job and The Intercorstal, and I've just picked up another fun little project, so I've not got the time I'd need to focus on it. And even if I did start and finish the comic properly (which is difficult because I've not done anything like that before...) I don't think I'd be able to get up to Leeds to attend Thought Bubble anyway.

I quite like the sketches I've done so far, though -- working out how the alien characters in the script work physically, and also trying to work in some personality. And this, here, is those sketches.

Sketches for Cut-Click

I was asked earlier this month to provide an unpublished artwork for Cut-Click's first printed issue, and jumped at the chance. The brief was pretty open... A6 and portrait, which I misread as 'a portrait, A6 sized'. I did two portraits in the end, one of them a self portrait and one of my son Bill, and have sumitted them both, so I won't post either until the issue's out (if I've been accepted). However, before I settled on doing portraits of myself and Bill in the style that I did, I did a series of quick sketches to generate ideas... and here they are. I like some of these, they might crop up elsewhere.