Pages from my sketchbook.
Here I’m refining the design of the Icthyss elite guard and the crustaceans their armour is made from.
I’d been thinking about drawing a Sunken World Tavern scene for ages, it’s a Fantasy cliché but that’s fine, I liked the idea. Alongside a sneak peak at some special weapons for the Icthyss Shore Raiders there’s a cast of characters I’ve inked in.
Here are a few sketches from my A6 sketchbook which I use when travelling by train or bus. The first are ideas I had for my Icthyss (fish-man) elite body guards and executioners. Their armour
is made from crustaceans that have been thaumaturgically-modified to be tougher (by their Thulhid masters). I realise they are literally lobster-tailed pot helmets but I like that!
Lobster-tailed pot helmet on Wikipedia
The weapons are fearsome two handed bladed weapons (similarly created from mutant sea creatures) vaguely like the one the Ottoman executioner wields in Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988).
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen on Wikipedia
More on these creatures soon!
Next I’ve got an idea for a scarecrow miniature to lead a unit of zombies or skeletons, doodles of a wizard’s familiar (sort of a gecko/newt creature) and on the opposite page are some sketches of a Sunken World character, my Sea Ranger character I was working on. (Sea ranger sketches)
And my last of the three Space Pirates, the Captain himself. He’s possibly a former Imperial Space Navy Captain or maybe he’s taken the gear from one he’s slain. I drew a head without a helmet and an alternative rifle for him (a laser volley-gun which I thought was suitably piratical!).
The next space pirate concept is this wild-haired tough woman with an automatic shotgun, there’s an alternative head and weapon options.
Earlier this year I was contacted by a Russian fellow who wanted to commission some images of Space Pirates to turn into miniatures. As I had already sketched a few (previous posts) he picked three so this is the first one, a fat bo’sun who has to boss the unruly pirates about. I gave him some alternative weapons and a different head design.
I started with a rough pencil sketch, scanned the sketch in and worked it up in Painter and Manga(Clip) Studio.
And the last (for now, though I’m working on more!) of my Space Pirate sketchbook pages.
To follow: a full page Space Pirate concept design (black and white).
Here’s my next sketch of four space pirates. If they were going to made into miniatures I like to give them alternative heads! There’s a humanoid alien here too.
Boy do I not use this website enough, it needs a right old tidy-up. Anywaaaayy… here’s a page of some sketches from a year or two ago. They’re some ideas I had for that classic SF trope: Space Pirates! I was considering whether to design them as costumes for a film or miniatures for a game.
I incorporated some of the feel of late 1980’s/early 1990’s Citadel Space Pirates by Bob Olley and Bob Naismith (Bob Olley’s Space Pirates Bob Naismith’s Space Pirates) with some traditional piratical gear and other influences like the mercenaries from Riddick (2013), and the Ravagers from Guardians Of The Galaxy(2014) and Vol. 2 (2017). More of these tomorrow!
This is my final batch of 1990’s nostalgia, starting with this lively coloured page of daftness. First we’ve got more tubby jumper wearing middle-aged dude shooting fireballs from his eyes, Odin getting his credit card refused by the smug-faced character, a blue dog with a trumpet and some dip pen ink/Quink experiments on the next page. Vertigo’s House of Secrets’ Rain Harper can be seen at the top right. Rain Harper
More of a scene here though still a sketchy one, a policeman character and a possible scene with onion-head. Dip pen and rapidograph inks, though I think the dip pen is better here.
The next pages are me sketching some deliberately crummy mafia gangsters and some scrappy storyboarding.
More storyboarding on the next page also the debut of Shitefighter 7XA3D.
And the last pages of this sketchbook feature a full colour cartoon in dip pen, coloured inks, Quink and bleach; it’s a fight between Masonic Cop Ninja vs Onion-headed guy.
When I moved house last year I happened upon a box full of student artwork, much of it typical of your graphic design student not wanting to do the projects assigned by his tutors. Anyhow I scanned some of the better stuff in, so I shall share it here. I produced these during and after I went on my Erasmus exchange to Antwerp. I really got into comics there, buying them from the Stripwinkel (Mekanik Strip), these included DC Vertigo’s Hellblazer (art by Sean Philips, the King Arthur plot by Paul Jenkins) Johnny The Homicidal Maniac by Jhonen Vasquez, DC Vertigo’s House of Secrets (written by Steven T Seagle, art by Teddy Kristiansen) and of course Mike Mignola’s Hellboy.
The first couple of pages are cartoon characters I was doodling, including a swearing onion-headed man, a manic shoeless guy, a tubby, slightly sinister, jumper wearing middle aged chap who can shoot plasma balls from his eyes. Also a worried philosopher with a goatee and walking toaster.
Now we have a few more characters evolving from the messy lines: clones with barcodes on their foreheads, a viking, a caricature of a housemate from Plymouth who was into surfing, a scary punk (I avoided such a person once in Plymouth though he didn’t have nails in his head as far as I can remember) and there’s a self- portrait too! On the right page is a huge hulking chap who for no reason I’ve decided reforms his shape like the T1000 in Terminator 2, there’s an almost mask-faced character too along with lots of notes.
Next we have two scraperboard (or scratchboard if you’re from the US or Australia) pages of my manic guy with a hammer, lit by a window and troubled chap at the bottom of some stairs. I quite like the stark, scratchy scraperboard effect, I was considering using it for a whole comic but realised it would be very expensive!
A few more pages of character creation, there’s a dim fellow, possibly based on someone I knew, a one with a hemisphere head with mad eyebrows, a slightly gothy girl with a pet electric eel in a fish tank on wheels. The page of gore probably started as an ink sketch I wanted to obliterate. Rotring technical pen, dip pen and black ink was used for creating the characters on the next pages. The mask-faced chap is more Sci-fi now, I feel a bit sorry the sad clone with his mop and bucket. I’ve drawn one of my housemates of the time saving a cat.
And for the final of this trip back to the late 1990’s; I’ve almost got the hang of the dip pen and I’m using Quink ink to create the grey/turquoise effect and bleach applied with an old paintbrush to get the fleshy colour. There’s all sorts of silly ideas here too. More next time!
