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Tag: Black & White
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Cyber Tiger!
I’m going to work into this some more, probably with brush and ink. It’s intended as an enemy encounter illustration for a Fighting Fantasy style game book that I’m writing, […]
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Confronting the hunt
The last of my Hunt of Smoke and Shadow series, this is an illustration from the closing chapters of Nevermoor and I don’t want to add spoilers here. By this […]
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Escaping the hunt
What do you need most in an emergency? How about a giant clockwork spider powered by magic to escape in? Yep, that sounds good. This is the black and white […]
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The Hunt of Smoke and Shadow
Nevermoor : The Trials of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend has been a recent source of inspiration for me. The Hunt of Smoke and Shadow is a persistent threat throughout […]
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Airship
I followed up the Northern Lights drawings with this digital piece. Based on the airships in the story, I wanted an excuse to see whether I could replicate the style […]
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Drawing Excalibur
I’ll be writing a longer blog post in regards to Undiscovered Voices, but this is the work that got me to the final. I’d stumbled into this style by chance, […]
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Camlann
I completed two pictures from the Arthurian legends for Undiscovered Voices 2018, and this was the companion piece to my competition entry. I’d visualised the book travelling through the seasons […]
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Edmund and the White Witch
Drawn – appropriately – over the Christmas holidays, I’d originally planned to illustrate scenes from Voyage of the Dawn Treader which is my favourite of all of the Narnia books. […]
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Lyra
I returned to Northern Lights because it gave me an excuse to try a silhouette and cityscape combination – another experiment at backgrounds.
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Iorek Byrnison
An evening holiday drawing that earned enough good feedback to make it into my portfolio. I got some praise for the pen work at a recent review – enough to […]
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Toad hog!
My second Wind in the Willows piece. As well as captuing the action, I also wanted enough static detail to expand on the story – in this case, the relics […]
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At the bonfire
Another dark fantasy piece. This one was directly inspired by the Dark Souls series of videogames – itself inspired by the Fighting Fantasy books. I was particularly interested in capturing […]
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Brigand
My monster illustrations were a trip back to my childhood spent reading Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone’s ‘Fighting Fantasy’ series. The silhouette style seemed to lend itself to the European […]
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Red Riding Hood sets out
My final Red Riding Hood piece for now. This is close in composition (though it has fewer frames) to the drawing that started my whole ‘silhouette phase’ – a one […]
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Railhead – The Damask Rose
I’m still kicking myself that I met Philip Reeve and completely forgot to bring my copy of Railhead along to get signed. The sillhouette piece of the Damask Rose was […]
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Quidditch
The last of my Harry Potter images for now. This was another earlier piece that I drew to test out ideas for perspective and dealing with backgrounds – in this […]
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Perseus and Medusa
Intended as an interior book illustration, my intention with this was to play around with perspective using silhouettes. The scene shows Perseus watching Medusa’s reflection in his shield, standing amongst […]
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Expecto Patronum!
I returned to Harry Potter for an action based scene to illustrate. This one gave me the opportunity to play around properly with rendering specific areas light and dark. I […]
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History of Magic
Another silhouette piece and an illustration from Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets. I chose this scene because it’s character based rather than an action piece and I wanted […]
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Theseus and the Minotaur
Preparing for the 2017/18 Undiscovered Voices Competition (yes, I’m giving it another go), I decided to move my work in a new direction and decided that silhouettes were a good […]
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Going climbing
As well as my myths and legends illustrations, I also had a go at drawing some other children’s book scenes with brush and black and white inks. This one was […]
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Baba Yaga
One of the last of my Inktober works, I used my ‘Once upon a time’ poster as the jumping off point as I liked the rendering of Baba Yaga on […]
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Red Riding Hood Revisited
I revisited the Red Riding Hood story after completing my previous pen and ink drawing from the story. I much prefer the way that the softer brush work lends itself […]
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The soggy bad wolf
I was inspired by ‘Inktober’ last year, and started to work on a series of brush and ink illustrations. This was one of my ‘unconventional wolf’ designs – I quite […]
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Witch
One of my Inktober fairytale sketches. I was exploring ways of adapting the style that I’d been playing around with for …don’t let the dragons bite and also my Once […]
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Troll
Edited to add colour. Trolls and ogres are some of the most varied fantasy creatures in terms of artists’ and writers’ interpretations. Green skin or not green skin? Dumb as […]
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Red Riding Hood
My entry for the Tommie Depaola 2016 award. I wanted Red Riding Hood to have an eastern European look to her. The wolf is deliberately scrawny – it’s been lean […]
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Let’s dance
A return to Inn from the cold and a change of media. I’m probably going to have to digitally colour this one since it’s drawn on paper unsuited to watercolour. […]
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Broomsticks are so middle-ages
I probably shouldn’t have got my hopes up too high in regards to the SCWBI Undiscovered Voices competition, but of all my work, I thought that I’d at least be […]
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Bringing down the moon
Scattering is the working title for a series of illustrations exploring magical and mythological creatures inhabiting modern cities. Aside from being a project that I’ve always wanted to work on, […]
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Wraith
The idea for this wraith came from the description of the spirit stalker from the old Fighting Fantasy series – a breed of greater undead. I like the idea of […]
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Orc soldier
A more conventional orc – this one straight from my ten-year-old self. It’s nice to be able to go back and properly draw the creatures that I used to doodle […]
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Orc chief
This was my fairly unconventional (by the conservative standards of the genre) take on an orc chief. I’ve always associated the look of orcs with swine, and I love the […]
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Lizardman
I’ve always felt sorry for the lizardman in the fantasy genre as they always seem to be overlooked, despite being used to great effect in the Titan series by Steve […]
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Goblin Ballista
A non-character based fantasy piece, this was to illustrate goblin technology which I feel is criminally underrated by some scholars.
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Goblin Shaman
The goblin shaman was an early drawing for my creature encyclopedia. Goblins are great characters because there’s such a rich background to them. I’m veering towards the Steve Jackson/ Ian […]
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Iron Cat
I only had a couple of short sessions at John Scurr primary school and most of the workshop was drawing improvised picture book illustrations for an on-the-spot creative writing activity. […]
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Nephilim
Another charachter sketch from Gnosis. The nephilim is more of a concept than a character but I really like this pen and ink sketch.
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Paladin
I’d finished reading Game of Thrones when I started work on this with a mind to produce a series of collaged fantasy images. They eventually worked their way into the […]