Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone enjoys the holiday season has a lovely time and gets everything they wanted.

Snowman Gang wars

Oh Its ON!

I joined forces with my friend Ben again for more sketchbook fun, this time something a bit more seasonally themed. We ended up with two Rival snowman gangs going head to head.

Rules? of course we had rules...

1) We each have a side of the page
2) Take it in turns to draw a snowman each
3) Each build an elite team of snowmen
4) Eat 16 Chicken Nuggets each

Once it was finished I inked all the lines and added some colour and shading on photoshop. My guys are the ones on the left sporting the blue and yellow winter wear. Ben chose red and Green for his guys, just think of all those great teams in history that wore red and green... yeah I'm struggling too!

The big guy on the left with the pipe, I named him Bubba, he's my not so secret weapon and kinda makes up for the alcoholic snowman (he's just a decoy, a distraction for the enemy)

Ben's little chav kid snowman looks a bit threatening though, the leprechaun guy looks mean too.

I'm not sure wether theyre about to have a Snowman dance off or a big snow brawl!

Who would win the battle? You decide!

Post-it note Comic and Christmas Jumpers

Following the success of last weeks sketchbook chronicles drawing look what happened... I teamed up with my friend Ben once again in another sketchbook joint effort.

The rules were simple:

1) The drawing will be a comic with a short story

2) Take it in turns to draw a panel each with no conferring

3) The story takes shape as we draw it, it isn't pre-decided

4) In keeping Christmas spirit we have to wear Festive style jumpers

... Ben broke rule number 4 but he still kept his head in the game so I forgive him! I however sported a lovely patterned cardigan number that would surely win me a casting in Bridget Jones's Diary.

I started first by simply drawing a man with a moustache, every one knows all great story's start with a man and a moustache right? Ben followed with Beardy boy bitches and everything took shape from there. We tried to keep it a simple art style so we could get our drawings looking similar and add a bit of flow to the story. Once we had finished I inked the lines and added a bit of colour making the boxes look like post-it notes stuck on a wall.

Good times, Great memories, Great success!

More people should get creative with post-it notes...

Sketch Book Chronicals - This City

This happened in my sketchbook... A joint venture between myself and my new friend Ben.

A bit about Ben.

Ben likes Rugby and plays in a 'Rugger' team scoring lots of 'Rugbhys' However when he's not playing 'Rugger' he likes to be creative, eat Beef Jerky and design things. For this reason we decided to make a challenge for ourselves, a sketchbook challenge.

These were the Rules

1) One person starts of by scribbling some colour on to a blank sheet of paper.
2) After this no more colour can be added.
3) Take it in turns to draw one building or landmark each until we have a city.
4) One person Ink's over it all and details it up.
5) Both people eat Beef Jerky

I did the inking at the end and we were both pretty pleased with the results. We tried not to worry too much about scale and perspective in the drawing, we thought this would give it a bit of quirkiness. The addition of the buildings being from all different time periods side by side helped give it the strange look we were after.

An enjoyable challenge of which I'm sure there will be more. We're already planning to have 'A Owl off'.... Make of that what you will!

Thankyou, Here's A Owl!

Last month I entered a T-shirt design titled 'Bear Code' into the All Tropical weekly competition. The design was also showcased on the Blog feed on Creative Review which I was delighted about, I've tried before and it's very difficult to get your work on there among the hundreds of submissions they must get each week.

Anyway, I'm pleased to announce as some of you already know, the t-shirt design won the competition and will be printed and available to buy in the All Tropical store in the coming months. (I'll keep you updated on that)

You can see the design by clicking Here

I'd like to give special thanks to everyone that voted and say Hello to any new readers that might have found their way here through Creative Review.

I apologise for how quiet things have been on here recently, I'm still here! My time has been spent working on other projects but with the Christmas break approaching I'm sure I'll have time to get lots of drawing done!

I already have one commission to get cracking on with and just like last year I'm now available for all Christmas commissions.

If anyone has a special gift in mind for someone please get in touch.

In the mean time, I leave you with a drawing of A Owl... wearing a stripey jumper!

"Once upon a time, there were three bears..."

I've designed a new t-shirt which is up for voting in the weekly All Tropical design competition.

My T-shirt is titled 'BearCode' ... Clever eh? No? Ok.

So my thinking behind this idea other than sticking some bears on a barcode and calling it bearcode is that I could make the lines resemble trees. The lines end at different points at the bottom giving the impression the bears are walking through a wooded area, maybe in the snow.

This design is now up for voting, if you like it please go to this page http://alturl.com/fqja6 and vote for me. The winning design will be screen printed and available to buy on the websites store.

I did another version of the shirt in different colours which I decided not to use although I'm sure opinions will be split on which is the better design!

The good and the bad



So it's been a while since I updated here, A Lot's happened but Inkitout's been pretty quiet. In this time I've had some great times at a festival and been on a fantastic holiday in Greece. Myself and my girlfriend visited the island of Samos and had a nice relaxing time.

Above are two drawings I did taken from some of my favorite photos from the holiday. I had a go at using some textures, I think it's most noticeable on the straw hat. I'd like to try this more on different items of clothing.

The only bad thing about going on holiday is having to come home... and go back to work. I had a shocking first week back, wishing i was back on holiday then a friend of mine sadly passed away.

The next day I got food poisoning...

Things are looking up now though!

I have plans to work on a large scale mural in my good friends new home in the coming weeks so hopefully I'll have some new work to put up here soon.

You trying to mug me off?

I was thinking about having these mugs made, I'm not sure how many people would be interested in buying them though. I know of an online shop that said they would sell them for me... for a margin ofcourse, so maybe I will do it...

The Inkitout blog has been a bit quiet recently and I think updates will be pretty scarce for a while! I've got some real life big boy stuff to think about and it's a little hard to concentrate on drawing at the moment.

I do have some projects running in the background however, hopefully I'll be able to get a bit of work done on them and return with updates and good news and other marvelous things.

Until then I'll leave you with links to two friends blogs who recently did updates about ME!

Simon Fisher - Cool Warhammer person man:
A Taste of Musk

Michael Barnes - Twitter friend and Graphic Novelist
Elblondino's Workbench

Wedding Commission

Here is a commission I did last month for a lovely lady named Sandee a contact made through Twitter. The brief was to use a poem she had written to create a piece of artwork to be presented at a wedding. Sandee would be giving the drawing to her friend as a wedding present in a frame and possibly reading the poem out at the event. I had to incorporate an illustration of the couple looking like Lego men into the drawing, this would be a constant theme at the wedding.

The pink and blue colours represent the coming together of masculine and feminine, the couple are stood together at the beginning of a path ready to take the journey of marriage together.

A fairly large piece of around 10" x 10" which I really enjoyed doing.

I hope everyone had a lovely day and I wish the couple all the best.

Fear Me!

My good friend Simon did me a favour recently and apparently i owe him a blog post in return, so here it is! Simon likes warhammer, so i thought I'd draw him as a warhammer soldier thingy, he's like totally mean and stuff.

If your interested, Simon keeps a blog about warhammer and such things which can be found here:

http://simonfisherlol.blogspot.com/2011/05/wrack-and-roll.html

Like a vampire in a hall of mirrors!

Here is another joke that I have illustrated for comedy writer Bernard Morris, hopefully we will find a publisher for this one too after our previous success!

fingers crossed

Guess what I'm thinking

Here is a new avatar that I made for myself last week. I wanted to try out a load of new photoshop techniques I'd been trying to learn, this is what I ended up with. I wanted to make myself look cartoony and almost pop art Esq. I also added scratches and a photo frame to age it slightly, just an excuse to use the tools to be honest! I quite like it though, maybe I'll try changing the green to a different colour.

I've been added to the list of contributors as a cartoonist on the comic bible website along with Bernard in anticipation of the September issue we will be in. I used this picture to go along with my bio, although they seem to have sized it strangely.

Smile, just a little bit



I've drawn this for a friend of mine who is feeling a bit down.

I hope this helps a little bit

Ask a Robot

Blinky returns after being born from a cereal box a couple weeks ago (See here if you missed it)

Today's comic is a very geeky computer joke, Blinky often has people writing to him for help... because he does know everything, he's a robot.

If you look closely you will notice the wacky science lab in the background, this will be Blinky's home.

I hope like!

Visit the Zoo, set the animals free!

A few weeks ago I had an enquiry through my website from a joke writer called Bernard Morris. Bernard achieved some success in the late 90's with his jokes/comic strips featuring in titles such as Viz and the Daily Star. After being out of the 'game' for quite a while Bernard contacted me to see if I would illustrate some of his jokes with the aim to get them published.

The first joke I illustrated for Bernard is shown above, The style of drawing for these kind of jokes is usually a lot different to the type of drawing I do. I was pretty pleased that I managed to adapt my style slightly to make it fit without changing too much, you can still see my own style coming through in the drawing.

thus far we have had some pretty good feedback from the publications it's been sent out to. One publication, a stand up comedy magazine in the US has expressed an interest and would like to publish it in their September issue along with my biography. More to come on this!

I'll be illustrating more of Bernard's jokes over time, hopefully together we will achieve a small bit of success!

Gingerbread Man Superhero

Anyone who knows me, even just a little bit will more than likely know that I'm a really big fan of Gingerbread men I Effffin love them I do! Now, I have often professed to have my own Gingerbread man army ready and waiting to do my bidding. It is however very difficult to build up an army of Gingerbread men, especially when you like eating them so much!

Anyway..

I decided there should be a Gingerbread man Superhero, why isn't there a Gingerbread man Superhero!! Why?

I'm not sure what his super powers would be, Obviously he can fly, maybe he can shoot Smarties out of his eyes or something. He would have obvious weaknesses but i think he'd still be pretty rad, you wouldn't mess with The Gingerbread man.

What other professions could gingerbread men have? Let me know, maybe I'll draw them!

The Birth of a Robot

This is a new robot character I came up with when I was doodling, I decided to call him Blinky... I think it kinda suits him! I'll probably do more comics with him in so you'll get to know him better over time. With this comic you can expect very geeky humour, Blinky thinks he knows everything.


Also, I realise Rubbish is spelt wrong, that's how rubbish this box of cereal really is!


I'd love to get a robot in my cereal, I remember as a kid getting my mum to buy new boxes of cereal every week just so I could collect the toys, obviously I didn't eat any cereal. I had a right good collection of Monster in my pockets and scooby Doo hologram cards.


I remember opening the boxes as soon as we got back from the supermarket and emptying all the cereal out on the kitchen unit to find the toy. Mother not impressed!


I don't even know if you still get free toys in cereal, I hope so.


What was the best thing you ever got free in your cereal?

Wacky Science Lab

A couple weeks ago I drew this wacky science laboratory, I don't really know what was going through my head when I was doing it... there's an octopus?

I intend to use it as a background for one of my short comics.

I held off on putting this on my blog for a while because I wasn't really sure if I liked it! I showed it to a couple of people and some said in their opinion it was the best work I had ever done!? This confused me a little, I guess I'm just very critical of my own work.

I think I prefer the first one myself, it's a little more subtle.

There's been a lot in the news about the death of Ryan Dunn today and yesterday, although I wasn't a massive Jackass fan and wouldn't even say he was my favorite out of the gang I always appreciated his beard. He had a lovely beard.

Today is the longest day, I need more summer adventures.

Bear suit

Last week I took part in 'Grizzly Bear Thursday'

Basically one Thursday of each month is declared Grizzly Bear Thursday, a load of people get involved and send in drawings of grizzly bears. All the drawings are then uploaded on this page:

http://grizzlybearthursday.blogspot.com/2011/06/bear-suit.html

take a look, there's some really great artwork.

I thought I'd be a little different and draw a boy in a grizzly bear suit, I tried to keep it cute... I guess that's my style.

I tried out some new photoshop techniques that I'd been trying to learn here, I didn't quite managed to do what I was trying to but I quite like what I got instead.

Everyone would like to have a grizzly bear suit/onesie right? I know I would *hint *hint

*HINT!!

Tuesday Trail #21

So that's the end of Trail! I hope you enjoyed the little story about Uncle incie wincie, It's kind of a little background story to the bit where they mention him at the start of the comic. The last page is one of my favorite pages, I really enjoyed drawing it.

You can read other pages of Tuesday Trail by clicking here

You might have noticed I've re-designed my website and blog, please have a look around and let me know what you think!

Tuesday Trail #20

These two pages have been a a few anthology's and competitions over the years, some of you may recognise them.

To read other pages of Trail, Click the Tuesday Trail tab at the top of the page

Party time!

Last week a very good friend of mine got all proper married and stuff and became a real life grown up person. Lauren and Sean (seriously great guy) are now husband and wife.

I'm very proud of Lauren!

I was really excited when i received my invitation to their wedding party, Lauren asked me to make her an acceptance card so she could put it in her scrap book.

Not only did I make a card, I drew a picture on the front of me and my girlfriend looking a bit like Rosie and Jim. I do hope you all remember Rosie and Jim...The duck was always my favorite!

Anyway,

It was a really great night, every one had a good time.

Lauren and Sean both looked really happy! I hope they're having a great honeymoon.

Tuesday Trail #19

You can read more pages of Tuesday Trail by clicking the Tuesday Trail tab at the top of the page

Wizard week!

This week has been Wizard week over at Timothy Winchester's People I Know blog, basically he asked anyone and everyone to draw a wizard.

I contributed this comic which is on his site today:















    I knida figured that wizard is the next step up from Gnome, I bet all gnomes want to be wizards.

There's some really great contributions on there, check it out by clicking Here!

Good work Timothy!

The Sorry Entertainer

This morning I was delighted to receive a package in the post containing ten copies of the Sorry Entertainer Newspaper comic anthology!

I read it cover to cover straight away and have to say that Simon and Nick have done a great job putting it together, I'd like to congratulate them for all their hard work.

There's some great stories by a lot of great artists, it's well worth a read so if you get chance to have a look at a copy I highly recommend you do.

I was personally very pleased with how my strip in the paper came out, it's always great seeing something in print.

Here are some sneaky peek photos of what to expect inside.

Even better news is that I have ten copies of the newspaper to give away! That's right, they're FREE!

So if you want to get your grubby hands on one get in touch and you can have one! I do ask however that once you have read it you let a friend, your family, your uncles dog and everyone else have a read too! spread the word.

Tuesday Trail #18

So I'm off work ill today, drawings pretty hard when your ill!

You can read all previous pages of Trail by clicking the Trail tab at the top of the page

Tuesday Trail #17

I remember at the time of drawing these two pages they were my favorites in the whole book, I spent more time on them and played around with the perspective a lot, especially in page 11.

Anyway, I hope you like them and that Trail is still keeping you interested!

To read up on all the other pages of Trail click Here

I believe I can fly

More Melvin! woop! everyones favourite spider! (well mine at least)

I told you to expect bad jokes and puns!

Squeak Squeak (That's how Melvin really sounds to the human ear)

 

If I haven't told you the history of Melvin before then I will now. Basically ever since I was small I've had a toy spider which for some unknown reason back then I decided to call Melvin. He has an eye missing, I don't know what happened to it but i imagine it was pretty devastating. When you squeeze Melvin's abdomen he squeaks which is a bit strange really, I have a funny feeling he might actually be a dog toy that I adopted as my own.... but lets not speak of that!

Welcome to my new readers! I hope you will enjoy my blog.

For all you regular readers, if you haven't done it yet head over to the inkitout facebook page and click like now. Click Here! Do it! or else I'll set my army of gingerbread men on you!

You will get up to date news, drawings and comics in your news feed.

 

Invite all your friends and help me take over the world... with my army made from gingerbread men.



Tuesday Trail #16

If you would like to read previous pages of Trail you can find them by clicking the Tuesday Trail tab at the top of the page.

He's Back! Back in....Purple?

I've noticed that my blog has become a bit black and white recently with the projects I am working on, I'm missing working in colour so hopefully this can be the balance!

I've been thinking for a long while about my web comics, what the format should be, the style and how I can keep them consistent. I've decided that I want to try and do some three panel comics, like the old school ones you find in the back of the newspaper. Funny comics that tell a simple joke or funny pun, Kind of inspired by the old Garfield strips.

So I've decided to start off by doing some strips with Melvin (from Trail) as the main character since he's my favorite! You should expect some terrible puns and cheesy jokes.

Also, I made the decision to freshen up Melvin's image and make the drawing a little simpler to suit the comic style. I've given him a fancy purple coat which i think works well, I hope you like his new image!

I'll be doing a few different strips centered around different characters in this format too, possibly one about a robot! Keep an eye out.

Tuesday Trail #15

I hope some of you remember the Incie Wincie story from the first issue.

If you would like to catch up on other pages of Trail you can read them by clicking the Tuesday Trail tab above.

The Sorry Entertainer

I believe I may of mentioned the Sorry Entertainer comic anthology before, well now it's in the process of being put together and I will have a story in it.

Roll up! Roll up!

We are raising money to print a high quality, tabloid-sized newspaper, chock full with comics by artists from all over the world. These contributions aren’t your usual superhero fare – they’re specially commissioned works of underground, alternative and small-press storytellers, spinning yarns of sad theatre performers, blackmailed entertainers, plane crashes, wrestling matches gone wrong, flatulent stand-ups, persecuted human statutes and of four eyed-wonders – plus a whole lot more besides! If this sounds like the kind of thing you’d like, READ ON!

Who’s in it?

The Sorry Entertainer features the work of…

The Dynamic Duo: Messrs Andrew Cheverton and Rol Hirst

The legendary Lord Brad Foster

The ineffable Master Christopher Fairless

Mr Dangerous himself, David Ziggy Greene

The mysterious Dr Thom Ferrier

The curious case of Jarod Rosello

The wistful Master Jason Martin

The card-shark stylings of Messrs Jordan Collver and Richard Worth

New York’s finest tumbler, Miss Lauren Barnett

Florida’s own Ringmasters, Messrs Loren Knack and Ron McVicar

Argentinian mastermind, Loris Z

The stage-ready Mr Matt Reichmann

The ever-suffering Master Nick Soucek

The despairing President Noah Van Sciver

Buskin’ Paddy Lynch

The Inky Devil, Robert Malkin
The excitable Mr Peter Batchelor

Master of Northern wit and ice-cream salesman, Rob Jackson

Diarist and humourist, Mr Sam Spina

…and Simon ‘just whose idea was this anyway?’ Moreton

The guys organising this, Simon and Nick have set up a IndieGoGo site for fundraising towards the printing costs, so if your feeling generous please help out!

http://www.indiegogo.com/The-Sorry-Entertainer

When it's printed I'll have a few copies to distribute, they will be free so if you would like one, let me know!

Tuesday Trail #14

I wonder what the fly is looking for??

I hope everyone had a nice bank holiday weekend and is looking forward to the next one!

In other news, my Bruno Mars comic is slowly getting towards 1000 hits! I find this very intriguing...

If you want to read more Tuesday Trail you can read all the previous pages by clicking the Tuesday Trail tab at the top of the page.

Tuesday Trail #13

It's that time of the week again and that means it's time for more Tuesday Trail!

Catch up on the previous pages of the story here

INDEX

Trail issue one
Tuesday Trail #11
Tuesday Trail #12