Glamorous Freelance Life...

I needed a makeshift blind in the studio. This will have to do until we get some blinds put in...

Just another day in the studio...

Important work to do today but this guy keeps bugging me.

New Studio!

We've just had a conservatory put onto our house that is now me and my husband's new studio! Very pleased with the new set-up and there's also room for a dining table which makes the room multi-purpose!

Experimentatering...

 

Just having a play about with no line art. Hoping to hone the textures a bit more but I really have my doodle doods to thank for being able to try out a few new techniques I would have given up on before :D

Distractions...

Playing video games and working from home is not a great combination when you have deadlines. I think too much about playing games when I need to be working.

Sometimes it's hard to get going.

Photoshopping and sketching!

Comic WIP!

Looking back at photos from my trip to the Toei Studio Park in Japan for this one...

Comic Page sneaky peek...

New Small Press Book!

I've been drawing a lot of comics lately and for a good reason! I'm collecting a series of one-page comics into a book which I'm going to get printed in the New Year. For the time being, I'm not going to post any more of them just so there's something that people wont have seen online. In the meantime, here's a couple of WIP pics!

 

 

The extent of my planning...

 

Inked panel!

Mr Tiki Head enjoys his walk home from work.

I've always enjoyed adding my characters to photo backgrounds (see I know Sasquatch!) and lately I've been watching a lot of The Amazing World of Gumball, which is brilliant. Gumball is an animated show with awesome character design and mostly photo-realistic backgrounds. It works so well and it's given me the bug to start doing it again. Expect a barrage of these over the next week or so! :P

My Desk: Sketchy Idea Time!

During work, my desk gets very messy. My desk is always messy - I occasionally snap and give it a blitz but it's not long before it's a tip again. I kind of like it cluttered though! Interesting fact: The little blue rabbit in the top left corner is one of my baby toys that I kept after a loft purge from my childhood home.

Sneaky Peek...

Here's a very vague sneak peek at one of the kid's books I'm working on at the moment! I've finished 2 of the 5 I have on at the moment, but still have 3 to slog through before the mid-Feb deadline. I'm getting there though! :P

My Desk: New Book!

I'm going to Devon for a week today so I thought I'd watch a film (Dawn Of The Dead) and start sketching my new small press book! I'm taking all the work with me, but seeings as how there will be a dog in the house, I don't trust how much work will get done...

My Desk: Book shelves!

A peek at one of my desk shelves. Needless to say, they're getting a bit crammed...

Sneak Peek: Farm Book!

Here are a couple of sneak peeks from the farm activity book I recently finished. I can't wait to see this one as I drew the whole thing rather than just the single-colour line art. I used a mix of drawn and photo elements in this book as the series has mixed media throughout. Hopefully it works! I really enjoyed drawing this book and will hopefully be starting another one quite soon...

Doodle: Angry Robot

In a bid to stop myself going mad/stare at a drawing I'm stuck on for hours until I get fed up and hate myself for wasting time/just to draw something new everyday, I may scribble one of these into Photoshop at some point each day. We'll see if I make it a week!

Too much papers! Not enough hiding plants!

Well, after drawing a book a month since January, sometimes a couple overlapping, I've finally gotten quite ill. I think my body has finally gotten fed up of me waving away people's suggestions to "take a break!" and basically decided to learn me a lesson. Sickness and exhaustion aside, I'm still having a great time with all the books I'm drawing. Even though I STILL can't say anything about the books I'm working on for an American publisher, I can say that I'm really REALLY excited about the series; the covers are being designed at the moment and it's suddenly made everything a bit more real! There should hopefully be some excitement involved with the books next year when they are released. When I can finally talk about them, I you wont be able to shut me up.

I'm also very close to finishing my 6th book for Carlton, the awesome publishers that I drew all the single colour line art for 4 activity books last year. I'm particluarly excited about this book and I'm doing all of the artwork, including all of the colour pages. It's a really nice lttle book and I'm enjoying using a different kind of technique for the colour stuff; hopefully I can post a sneak peek over the next week or so!

I'm gearing up for the MCM Expo at the weekend, for which I'm hoping I'll at least be able to stand up for. Apologies if I spread any of my germs to anyone; I'm overdosing on Vitamin C and as many cold and flu medicines as my body can handle!

Childhood Influences: Garbage Pail Kids

Gross things fascinate kids. I'm still kind of fascinated by gross things although I shouldn't admit it but I think I can say that Garbage Pail Kids had a hand in that. I still remember my brother's huge collection of them (still much coveted but apparently he gave me lots of swaps years ago which I then lost - I have no memory of this) and he refuses still to part with the 60 or so cards he keeps with his Micro Machines and M.U.S.C.L.E Men (I'm nearly 32, he'll be 30 this year). Every now and then I will try my luck with him and ask if he wants to give them to his loving sister - along with an original Skeletor figure which he insists is his but was bought for a birthday gift for a friend and never given, therefore is NOT his -but he remains unshakable. So imagine my immense delight when I found this book the other day:

This amazing book collects all of the artwork for the first 5 original Garbage Pail Kids trading cards. What's so great about these? They were gross and brilliant. I can still remember looking at certain cards for ages, thrilled at the grossness of the pictures. It's no wonder parents wanted them banned - they really pushed it in terms of decency! I mean, look at Ned Head (below) - he was one I always remembered and still think is pretty bad taste. But these things left a lasting impression on me as a youngster; they were pretty popular at school which I guess would have been about 1988 even though the cards came out in 1985. I can't be totally sure, but I think teachers started to boycott them in our school. I know they were definitely frowned upon.

As an adult (I use this word in the loosest possible way) I still love these things; to me the artwork is gorgeous; I love the painted style that artist John Pound used and it wasn't totally lost on me as a kid that they were a parody of Cabbage Patch Kids. I also love that they hark back to the days when stuff for kids was a bit less "contains mild peril" and a lot more risky. They certainly made an impression on me and I can still remember the taste of the horrible hard stick of bubblegum that would come with every pack. The designers of the book have made a nice nod to this, not only by putting an image of a bubblegum stick on the hardcovers but also by making the dust cover from the same weird greaseproof paper the cards came in. Genius.

They're disgusting and immature, sure, but children still love stuff like this, no matter how much their parents wished they didn't. I still revel in the books I loved growing up and several of them feature potty humour and even now, working in the children's book field, it's still pretty popular; one book I nearly drew but which sadly got cancelled would have been an activity book about gross stuff for kids. My art director excitedly said in an email "We get to draw poo and snot!" which made me wonder if she liked these as a kid too.

All Kinds Of Stuffs!

No-one can say that 2012 has been a dull year for me so far and it's only the end of March. I drew two kid's books over January and Feb and I've just finished the major story art for the first of four kid's books for an American publisher (20 pages with 48 separate full-colour panels in just over a week). That's pretty much a book a month; no wonder I'm so tired! XD I've also got some cons coming up so I need to get stuck in with making new prints, keyrings, stickers and hopefully, if I get time, a new small press book to go with my Lovecraft book. I have 2 weeks off of work now for Easter so let's hope I can cram in as much as possible! I've also got the next three books in the American series to do over the next few months as well as another activity book starting in mid-April. Come August, I'd have drawn 7 children's books which is a huge accomplishment for me; I'd always hoped I'd get this far and being the pessimistic, under confident person I am, never thought I'd be able to do so much work alongside a part-time job. It's a good job I don't have much of a social life to go with all this! :P