Austrian trip

Liz and I travelled over to Austria (via Switzerland) recently to visit family who have upped sticks and moved to a lovely house in Austria. So, one morning with nothing much else to do, I sat myself down in their garden and drew this scene (which is only a small part of the spectacular view from their house) in a sketchbook I had with me. Should do more of this really as it was very enjoyable....

Comedian Jack Whitehall

I spent some time during the recent Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival talking to the caricaturist Jonathan Cusick (follow link to his blog at bottom of this blog) and we got talking about decent sketchbooks. I should point out that most cartoonists/caricaturists don't use such things and so it was good to discuss such nerdy topics with a young professional! In the course of the evening I complained about the lack of weight in most available sketcbook papers as they always 'cockle' i.e. buckle when the watercolour is added and doesn't smooth out again which is REALLY irritating. Anywy Jonathan promised to forward links to various art suppliers with decent weighted paper in their sketchbooks and I recently bought a new book. The quick caricature of the comedian Jack Whitehall is the first one in the book and, hoorah, not a cockle in sight. Thank you Jonathan!

Sketchbook sharing..

I've been fairly busy recently with live events and studio work etc and so I thought I'd put up a few pages from a sketchbook. The first image is a quick sketch of the view from my bed - this is how I started the day or did I end the day by drawing it......erm....



The next image is just a page a general doodling:

Now that I'm back

I've been away for a few days taking a well deserved break from work and spent a few days at a brilliant B&B down in Kent called The Linen Shed - take a look at this reveiw:
http://www.wealdentimes.co.uk/house/wt90_house_of_linen.asp
Anyway, since I've obviously not been doing much work I thought I'd share some previously drawn images with you. The first is a simple set of drawings from my sketchbook:


Not sure what I was trying to do but it just shows the doodling stuff I trun out these days.....
The image below is one I produced as a wedding present for a happy couple - I hope they liked it!

Character development

This is something from my sketchbook - some design work for a children's book.

Sketchbook image

I thought I'd dip my toes in the seemingly warm waters of blogging and, albeit deep waters, I've decided to show examples of some experimental work from my sketchbooks. Caricatures (well, in my case anyway) have been the result of re-working the image until I think the likeness/caricature is correct but it often unfortunately results in a 'dead' image where the life seems to have been wrung out of it - it's lost it's spark! Live caricaturing forces the artist to capture the likeness in a matter of minutes but I think it also has a liveliness to it and so I thought why not try this in the studio? So, below is an example of a caricature drawn without any initial pencil work i.e. it's drawn straight onto the paper and if it doesn't work then start again! It's a caricature of the pin-eyed BBC's Political Editor Nick Robinson. It's caricaturing by the seat of your pants......