So this is just a short one. I've got really into sketching recently. It's a combination of being super poor right now, spending a bit of time with a friend of mine, Otto, who is pretty awesome at it and, lastly, me being a naturally competitive ass.
I'm writing and illustrating a children's book called The Cloud Shepherd (because, you know, clouds look like sheep amIright?) and a lot of the sketches are me trying to work out how characters and scenes look before I try to write them. Anyway, the other day I lost one of my sketch books (I'll negate any would-be suspense right now by telling you I re-found it in my underwear drawer) and it sent me into a bit of a panic. So I decided to upload a few of the things I've been working on recently - it'd also be nice to know whether people like them and would be interested in seeing more - maybe with the accompanying text.
Here're some designs for the main characters. The first was a quick sketch in biro based on a picture by Shaun Tan (boss) called Portrait of the Artist. I then tried to emulate it in the second picture, changing the hairline and colour, rounding the face and changing the skin tone. I also added a sky-whale because sky-whale.
Here he is again, with another of him jumping for a cloud and wearing an overcoat, I'm not the best at legs so I'm trying to work on those a bit more - I'll let you be the judge over whether I manage to pull it off or not.
Here are the first sketches of the titular character, the Cloud Shepherd. He's a completely original design but I wanted to give him a monk type feel and I quite like the belt made of rope that you get in a lot of monks and priests (think friar Tuck in the disney version of Robin Hood). In the book his beard is quite cloud-like and tends to float off on its own a lot so he has to keep tucking it into his belt.
In the end I quite liked the fatter, squatter version. I played around with a few more ideas in a notepad before I went with the one below, giving him bigger ears, a darker skin tone and eyebrows to match the beard.
This one weirdly enough started out as a quick sketch of a house in between Westminster and Victoria (the one on the right). But I thought it'd look cooler as an underwater scene. (Yasmin if you're reading this there's a you-know-what on the left so you might want to skip this one - though you can only see half of it). The idea is that the world has flooded and a couple have come back as explorers hundreds of years later to try and learn about what life was like. I also have a life-long dream of becoming an underwater detective and this is what I imagine it to be like.
This one's super old. I did it... in India maybe? Anyway it was in a work text book and it's a sub-story in the main book. I'm not the best at shading and you can see how not a lot of the shadows make a lot of sense in it, but I've think I've made a lot of progression with some of the more recent ones. It's the castle of the raven king wooOOOoo. (By the way, Ravens and Crows are jerks - see blog post 1).
Lastly here're some random ones. The eyes and lips are ones I saw Otto doing a few weeks ago and thought I'd have a go at. Hers are better. Also more dinosaur detective sketches - GET HYPED.
If you've made it this far, thanks a lot! I'd appreciate the feedback, especially negative - I know I've got a long way to go so anything people can suggest would be awesome, even if it's just "dinosaurs are lame" (though, if so, you're only hurting yourself). But yeah.. George out.
I'm writing and illustrating a children's book called The Cloud Shepherd (because, you know, clouds look like sheep amIright?) and a lot of the sketches are me trying to work out how characters and scenes look before I try to write them. Anyway, the other day I lost one of my sketch books (I'll negate any would-be suspense right now by telling you I re-found it in my underwear drawer) and it sent me into a bit of a panic. So I decided to upload a few of the things I've been working on recently - it'd also be nice to know whether people like them and would be interested in seeing more - maybe with the accompanying text.
This is the final design for the main character. I gave him more sticky-outy ears because I tend to draw a lot of things like that... not too sure why... and rounded the face some more. I really like the paint apron as part of his design so I'll be keeping that and I gave him a cloud-dog to play with.
Here are the first sketches of the titular character, the Cloud Shepherd. He's a completely original design but I wanted to give him a monk type feel and I quite like the belt made of rope that you get in a lot of monks and priests (think friar Tuck in the disney version of Robin Hood). In the book his beard is quite cloud-like and tends to float off on its own a lot so he has to keep tucking it into his belt.
In the end I quite liked the fatter, squatter version. I played around with a few more ideas in a notepad before I went with the one below, giving him bigger ears, a darker skin tone and eyebrows to match the beard.
Here's a sketch with the final two character designs. I've played around with a lot of different versions. I didn't want to upload those because a lot of them are unfinished and messy. But anyway Yash and the Cloud Shepherd:
This one I did a while ago on the tube which explains the really crap shading in the sky. I was just playing with different cloud shapes and quite liked the idea that above the clouds you'd have a cool looking flip with the bright white below.
This one weirdly enough started out as a quick sketch of a house in between Westminster and Victoria (the one on the right). But I thought it'd look cooler as an underwater scene. (Yasmin if you're reading this there's a you-know-what on the left so you might want to skip this one - though you can only see half of it). The idea is that the world has flooded and a couple have come back as explorers hundreds of years later to try and learn about what life was like. I also have a life-long dream of becoming an underwater detective and this is what I imagine it to be like.
This one's super old. I did it... in India maybe? Anyway it was in a work text book and it's a sub-story in the main book. I'm not the best at shading and you can see how not a lot of the shadows make a lot of sense in it, but I've think I've made a lot of progression with some of the more recent ones. It's the castle of the raven king wooOOOoo. (By the way, Ravens and Crows are jerks - see blog post 1).
