Birthday times

This weekend I plan to have an epic three day party to celebrate my birthday! The weekend will be full of Adventures, magic, music, and lots of things with some great friends and I can't wait. I get to see some of my friends who live far far away, all visiting AT THE SAME TIME!


The only downside to this is that I'm full of cold and feel terrible so I'm chain Lemsip drinking in a massive effort to be better. Regardless of this I'm determined to have the best time ever.


This weeks been a pretty bad week, not just because I'm ill... but you know what, it doesn't even matter!

Because I'll be with the people that do.


This is how we celebrate

I may have a few days off updating this, I'm going to be pretty busy BUT I have lots of ideas and will be back to share all :-)

Hit and Run

One of my friends Sam got run over last week, not funny under normal circumstances!


However, this wasn't your normal Hit and run accident. You see, It would be fair to say my friend is a big lad, at football we nicknamed him the Juggernaut because there's just no stopping him when he gets going.


This is his story.

So basically he pretty much wrote the car off, got up and walked off, given he was a little sore in the pub that night but still.


Sam is Unbreakable.

Tuesday Trail #003

Is it really a whole week since Tuesday Trail?

If you fancy a recap the other pages can be found here

Tuesday Trail Archive
- Tuesday Trail #001
- Tuesday Trail #002

Here are pages 5 and 6

Check back next week for pages 7 and 8

Now thats Teamwork!

Last week myself and my good friend and graphic designer Jonny put our heads together and came up with some ideas for my business card. I thought it was about time I got some made up, they will no doubt come in handy.

Here's the final design:

Feedback welcome, do you like it?

I got all the drawings ready and did some quick thumbnail sketches and Jonny sorted all the layout and type and generally got it looking better that i visioned.

We thought it was important to make it a bit quirky, not just your standard corporate business card, hopefully to give a good impression of what i can do. The Idea with the contact side of the card is to make it tie in with my online profiles by using the same recognisable avatar.

They also make really cool posters if you print them out big!

You can follow Jonny on Twitter (here)

I spent some time reading through some teamwork quotes, They can be quite inspirational. I wish more work places could see the value of teamwork, it shouldn't be restricted.

Here are some on my favorites

"Coming together is a beginning.
Keeping together is progress.
Working together is success. "

~ Henry Ford

"Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships. "

~ Michael Jordan

"It is amazing how much you can accomplish when it doesn't matter who gets the credit. "

~ Unknown

"No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it. "

~ H.E. Luccock

What's my age again - Comic

I don't get asked for ID a lot these days, which should make sense really since I'll be turning 26 next week. Although there is the odd occasion when it does happen. I never know how to feel about it, should I take it as a complement?

Here is a comic based on a true story, this really happened to me last year!

Don't you just hate it when some kid who's barely old enough to have a job is asking you for ID, I find it very difficult to take them seriously.

I think beards should act as a genuine form of ID, even for females. I remember a friend of mine years back trying to get on a service bus for half fair by hiding his beard under his scarf and talking in a squeaky voice...didn't work!

Incidentally, if i was to shave my beard off I would look no older than 12 years old myself.

I had a play about with some screen tones/patterns in this comic, I'm not sure how i feel about them. I think I would get better results when working in black and white, may be something to look into for my next print work.

In other news, Boobies do defiantly get hits! This was confirmed by record breaking stats yesterday although the competition didn't so so well.

The comments section on my page seemed to have broke down, my apologies to anyone who sent in an answer that didn't get recorded!

I've added a new comments widget below that is much better, I messed about with some of the Html code and it all works now (Didn't have a clue what i was doing) You can even comment using your twitter log in which is pretty cool!

Have a nice weekend!

Boobies get Hits!

I thought I'd do an experiment today and find out how much the title of my post actually affects how many visitors I get that day. I think Boobies will get Serious Hits.

Sorry no boobies today but before you close the window I do have the next best thing!

Anyone that knows me well, or even just a little bit will be aware of how much I love Phil Collins!
Sometimes people cant decide weather I am genuine or joking when I talk about this ...But Seriously, you can take me at face value these are my True coloures.

It has become a custom in recent months to dance into the light and finish off any night out of by listening to Easy Lover on the drive to take me home. I don't drink so I'm usually the designated driver, generally this will involve the windows being wound down fully, volume turned up with everyone singing along. It is the best thing ever and something I look forward to.

I am cool because i love Phil Collins.

I thought it was a bit strange that I've never drawn him before. I seem to draw everyone else so figured I'd see if I could do the great man justice!

Going back I can't even remember when or why I started liking Phil Collins, it defiantly wasn't something I got from my parents. I remember years back when people used to buy me random Phil Collins gifts, this hasn't happened for a while. Phil Collins related gifts are welcome!

Also, his birthday is the day before mine or something, we should have a joint party.

I've only shown this to a few people so far and have already had interest and requests to draw portraits of other peoples favorite musicians for print. This is something I could do, I think I'd actually quite enjoy it so I'll do them pretty cheap!

Oh yeah, I've added a new button to the right hand side of my blog to make it easier for you to subscribe using your RSS Reader if you use one!

10 Cool points to anyone that can count the correct number of Phil Collins references I used in this post (Other than his name) There may be a prize for the first person to reply with the correct answer!

I bet no one can find them all!

Hello, I must be going!

Camping it Up!

.... No, I'm not coming out of the closet whilst singing R-Kelly, I mean Camping as in sleeping outside, in tents obviously!

Here's another commission I did a while back.

I did it for a new friend of mine called Dan, He wanted it to give his girlfriend as a Christmas present.







































I met Dan at a Cancer Bats gig through another friend and have seen him a few times since. Even though I don't know him that well I know  him well enough to say that Dan is the Man, as a result of this I am a fan.

The drawing is from a photograph of Dan and his girlfriend Jo at a music festival, hence the big pile of camping equipment at their feet. The canvas background is spray painted blue with white pencil highlight's. The drawing is coloured with marker pens and thick mount board is used to bring the image forward giving it a 3D effect.

Feedback from Dan and Jo was very good which is great to know.

I've been very busy this week with new ideas planning things and starting new work, very exciting!

Tomorrow I have something a little bit different to show you!

Tuesday Trail #002

It's Tuesday again and that means it's time for the next pages of Trail!

If you missed the first two pages you can find them here:

INDEX
- Tuesday Trail #001

And here are pages 3 and 4

So the birds didn't eat the snail after all but will they help him?

I decided to upload two pages again because one page just doesn't give enough of the story away. Check back next week for pages 5 and 6.

I don't like Mondays

So on Friday I shared an illustration I did expressing the feelings and connotations that come with a Friday, the 'Friday Feeling'

If you didn't see my blog on Friday you can see it (Here)

I also did a Monday version of this which has quite different feelings attached to it

This was drawn from the same study of boxes I piled up on my desk at work. This photo was taken from a lower angle making the box in question look smaller and more insignificant among all the other boxes. Different coloures are used with connotations connected to the Monday feeling or Monday blues.

Today the box feels like he's just a box.

I thought I'd add small images of both the Illustrations together so you can see the difference between them, I also don't want this post to be completely negative because even though it is Monday, it only lasts a day!

Both illustrations were drawn from photographs using a thick marker pen, then coloured on photoshop. I could do some prints of these if anyone would be interested.

I was slightly inspired by a photo that I took a few years ago.

 

I thought it was one of the best things I had ever seen. If you look closely you will see the faces on the back of the truck.

I think the Monday feeling has got me a bit this morning and I've had a bit of bad news so I need to snap out out of it.

 Look to the positives!

Friday Feeling!

It's finally Friday!

Everyone loves Fridays, Things always seem much brighter and better at the end of the week. I even play my music that little bit louder in my car driving home just to get my weekend started.

To celebrate the fact that Friday is the best day of the week i did an illustration to represent how I feel about Fridays.

This was a study I drew from a photo of some boxes that i piled up on my desk at work. It illustrates the Friday feeling but also has a lot of other positive connotations behind it. Things can get pretty negative where I work and it can beat you down sometimes. This image is about standing out from the crowd and rising above it all.

Sure he's just a box, but he's the best box!

I also did a Monday version of this which is very different, I will share this on Monday

I think these could make good posters

Something interesting

Yesterdays Blog post about Shaving (Click here if you missed it) created a whopping 90 hits for my blog making yesterday the busiest day so far.

The majority of you are from the UK but I also have a lot of visitors from America.

Yesterday I also had visitors from Australia, Denmark and France with other visitors from Malaysia, Hungry, China, India and South Korea through the week.

Pretty Amazing really!

Shaving must be something a lot of people are interested in

Welcome to you all!

Shaving Sucks!

Last week my friend Kevin came into work with his hair shaved up too high on one side of his head. Apparently he got a fancy new beard trimmer for Christmas but got a bit carried away with it, basically leaving himself with a bald patch on one side of his noggin. As a result of this he was almost in tears and had a desperate visit to the hairdressers to resolve the issue. Unfortunately there was little they could do for him other than even it up a bit, Luckily he has short hair and hair grows pretty quickly.

You might remember Kevin from an earlier blog entry, Click to see

I remember a similar thing happening to me years ago, I think it's probably something that's happened to a lot of guys.

I thought it might be a good idea to draw a comic about it!

Now that might be a very extreme case I've illustrated, this guy ends up with his sideburns pretty much inversed or inside out, very unfortunate. Admit it though, I bet it's happened to you? I'd like to hear about all your shaving incidents!

I've been playing around with my website and I've managed to make some really cool improvements. This should make it tie in better with the look and feel of my blog, it's a really satisfying feeling learning how to make my website do new things.

Take a look: www.inkitout.co.uk

I can draw you

Here's another commission I did for someone I work with called Pauline, It's a drawing of her Grandson which she gave to her daughter for Christmas. I was really happy with the result and apparently her daughter loved it which is really good to know.

This was drawn from a photograph and is on a 26cm x 22cm canvas.

The background is painted using green spray paint and the boy is drawn using a mixture of Biro, Fine liner and Pantone Marker pens.

The boy is raised from the canvas mounted on thick card bringing him forward and adding depth to the piece.

I've just purchased a load of new canvas' and I'm ready to start taking commissions again if there's anything anyone wants drop me a message.

I'm also offering to draw cartoon portraits of YOU from your photos again, this time on canvas.
Click Here for details.

Again if your wanting something slightly different or bigger in size get in touch.

I've also added badges to my shop

These are available for £3 including postage Here

I still have a few Christmas commissions to upload, I will be putting them up here over the coming weeks.

Tuesday Trail #001

Today is the first installment of Tuesday Trail which I wrote a little about in my blog yesterday.

Here is a brief description of what Trail is:

Trail is a series of heartwarming comics about a snail named Trail and his group of friends. Melvin the vegetarian spider, two dickey birds Peter and Paul and a boy named Billy. Reading Trail you can expect to find exciting and humors tales of friendship as the bond between the friends grows stronger with each adventure.

I will be uploading pages from the first issue of Trail which I self published and distributed around the Leeds area in 2005/2006.

Because this is the first Tuesday Trail I'm uploading the first two pages, following this I'll be adding one page a week.

What will be the little Snail's fate? Why is he sad? will the birds eat him? Do birds even eat Snails?

Find out next Week!

If you can't wait till next week to read the rest of the story, Trail issues 1 and 2 can be purchased in my shop HERE

Half man half biscuit!

I bet you opened this post hoping to find a comic about some strange mutant half man half biscuit super hero who shoots chocolate chips out of his mouth and encourages kids to eat un-healthy foods. Well unfortunately that's not the case, maybe an idea for another day!

I just thought Half man half biscuit would make for a good title, It's actually the name of a band. However, I do want to talk about biscuits!

Everyone loves biscuits right? but, Isn't it great when you bite into a biscuit to find that it's chocolate all the way through rather than the biscuit you expected, This does happen on very rare occasions, such a nice surprise!

This happened to me last week, two in a row! What are the chances? I felt the need to tell everyone all about it.

You would still be happy if your biscuit was biscuit.. but with hopes for chocolate, a little disappointed. My question is...How does this happen? I tried to educate myself to find out the process of events in making a biscuit wrong. Even google doesn't know, if google doesn't know it must be a secret because google knows everything!

On a side note, I have never actually fisted the air and shouted Yeeeeeaaaahhhh! over a biscuit, I may do in the future though, especially if its solid chocolate.

Tomorrow will be my first 'theme' day, I have decided I'm going to upload the pages from my first printed comic for people to read on here for free. I worked hard on this comic so i figured that the more people see it the better.

I'll be uploading a page a week, follow the story... Check back tomorrow for 'Tuesday Trail'

The year of the Snood

For Christmas my girlfriend got a Snood, Speaking over the telephone on Christmas day she excitably told me about the Snood to which I replied.....What's a Snooooood? You might laugh but I honestly didn't know what a Snood was!

Now, to save anyone else the same embarrassment I'm going to give you a dictionary definition of 'Snood' Just so you all know for future reference!

–noun

1. the distinctive headband formerly worn by young unmarried women in Scotland and northern England.

2. a headband for the hair.

3. a netlike hat or part of a hat or fabric that holds or covers the back of a woman's hair.

4. the pendulous skin over the beak of a turkey.

–verb (used with object)

5. to bind or confine (the hair) with a snood.

Let's just ignore number 4. for now! It doesn't even mention it being a scarf which is what most people seem to be doing with them.

Snood's seem to be at the height of fashion at the moment, I think it's the year of the Snood, not the year of the Rabbit! During the conversation with my lovely girlfriend when I asked 'What's a Snooooood?' all I could think of was some strange creature, kind of like an alien aardvark.

Behold!

This is what the word 'Snood' makes me think of. I thought I'd give you a bit of background information about Snood so you can get to know him a bit better. Snood is the name of his species as well as his name, He can speak but can only say one word 'Snood' He's kind of like a cool Pokemon. He has one hand which is on his nose and he uses this to do everything. He likes to drink Tizer and eats liquorice, lots of liquorice!

I hope I have managed to change the image that you have in your head next time someone uses the word Snood in conversation with you, If I haven't done enough to brainwash you yet.

Here's a drawing of my girlfriend with Snood round her neck

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm thinking of Having a theme day, I'll draw something based on a theme every week for the year, themes seem pretty popular in other blogs and I think it could be a good idea. If you have any ideas let me know!

 

I'm still playing with the idea of drawing titles sent in by you... Make a title up for a piece of artwork and I'll draw it! we'll see how it goes! Challenge me!

 

Leave your comments or 'titles' using the comments section below.

Robot Graveyard

Today I have photos of A commission I finished over the Christmas period, This is the largest canvas I have done to date and was quite a challenge. I was pretty happy with the finished piece and I feel I learnt a lot from doing it.


Anyway, here it is!

The piece measures 1000mm x 400mm in total, I've named it 'Robot Graveyard' which is a title I had in my head before I began. I've done some close up images to try and pick out some areas of detail.

I did the piece for a friend of mine, Lisa. Her  only instructions being that she had a bare wall and a giant blank canvas. Her room is coloured black and white so the canvas must also be black and white.

I knew she liked robots and lets be honest, they're pretty cool to draw!

The piece was drawn entirely using marker pens so it would probably be fair to say i was pretty high whilst drawing it. (which is pretty evident i guess)

I wanted  give an impression of Nature and Machinery entwined together. The large flowers on the right hand side mimic the angle of the robotic arm.
 

The most difficult thing was only using Black, I knew from the outset i would have to be clever in how i used the negative space (The white of the canvas) to try and get some depth into what i was drawing.

The main thing I learnt from this piece is that planning is everything! It took me about 12 hours in total to complete 'Robot Graveyard'

Here are a couple of things I enjoyed while working on this piece:

1) Hot Chocolate, lots of it

2) Chocolate Brazil Nuts (Christmas present)

3) Nirvana - In utero

4) Kevin Devine - Make the clocks move

5) Nada Surf - The Proximity effect

6) Phil Collins - Greatest Hits (As always)

5) Match of the day

7) My Radiator (It's warm when turned on)

There's an sneaky owl hiding somewhere in the piece, 10 cool points to you if you spot him

A Comic about Hedgehogs

Over Christmas I spent a few days at my parents home in Hemsworth, We have part of a forest as our garden which I often explore with my dog Bosco. One day over Christmas whilst in the forest my dog found a Hedgehog. It looked well un-happy and tired so i assumed it had been waken up from it's hibernation, which my dog obviously found hilarious!

This made me want to draw Hedgehogs, as if i needed an excuse?

Seriously, what would you do if you had ten angry hedgehogs ready to finish you off? Also, what a coincidence that they all have the same name! Now maybe your counting the hedgehogs and saying to yourself 'but there's eleven hedgehogs' That's because the first one isn't called Dave, he's not in the Dave gang he's called something else, he's called ..... Collin!

I've just updated my shop (Click here) 

I've added a bit of background information about my Trail comics since I realised it wasn't clear what they were. I know quite a lot of you own or have read the first installment but probably didn't know about the second one. I feel the second comic is far superior to the first one.

I have some pin badges I'll be adding as soon as i take a good photo

I've also added some prints that I had made, go on, have a nosey!

I'm thinking about setting up a etsy shop although I'm not quite sure if it's worth it, if anyone has used it before your comments wold be appreciated!

Tomorrow I have something special to show you, excited?

#Oneaday!

I decided to make this blog part of the One a day project. It makes sense really because I do intend updating this with my drawings, comics and projects regularly. I intend to update at least every five out of seven days of the week.

This should encourage me to keep drawing, which can only be a good thing!

If you don't know  #Oneaday is about a bunch of creative people blogging on a regular basis, some every day in order to get sponsors for two very good causes. Cancer Research UK and To Write Love On Her Arms.

You may notice I've added a new Tab on the right hand side of my blog, you can donate by clicking there.

And here's a picture of a Dog I drew!

I drew this as a small Christmas commission for someone at work

It was a nice change from drawing portraits of people.

I think i did her pet justice, I'm sure he'd be happy with his portrait. although I forgot to ask what his name was, he kinda reminds me of Eddy the dog from Frasier. Great program!

Yesterday I had a very productive day, I got up early and set about drawing my strip for 'The sorry entertainer' I got most of the pencil work done and wrote the script. I'm quite excited about how this is going to look, I put a lot of time into detailing the drawings. and I'm really happy with the basic story and script. I also did a little comic about some hedgehogs which I'll probably upload tomorrow.

In the meantime please take some time to look at the #oneaday site and read some of the other blogs, there's some really good stuff on there!

New Year, New You

...So this is the New Year, I don't feel any different

I did a t-shirt design to celebrate the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011. I've entered it into a competition and the winner is chosen by YOU!

The kitten is thinking about it's resolutions for 2011 and this year wants to be more like a Lion

The winning shirt will be screen printed, made all pretty and sold on the All Tropical website, also I'll got some monies for having the best design!

Soooo, could you all vote for my design please!? Click here to vote!

You will have to create an account to allow you to vote but it's very quick and easy honest! I already know this will put most people off :-(

I think it also counts as a vote if you add All Tropical on facebook and click like on my design.


I've been thinking about my plans for Inkitout over the next year, I've done so much with it in the last 3 months and things have moved pretty quick.

Here are a few goals I want to set for 2011

#1 - Finish and print a short graphic novel (This is actually more realistic than it sounds)
#2 - Visit more comic conventions and try get my own stand at atleast one convention
#3 - Keep updating this blog regular with what I'm doing
#4 - Draw more web comics
#5 - Send something out to a list of publishers with the un-likely hope of getting something printed
#6 - Try to do as many commissions as I can
#7 - Promote myself as much as I can
#8 - Contribute to as many anthologies and zines as i can

I've already started with number 8, I will be contributing a short comic to an anthology titled 'The sorry entertainer' I have a February deadline for this so that's a fair bit of time to sort it out. I'm thinking of doing something with Mimes in... sssshhhhhh!

I've also been toying with the idea of doing something similar to that of Exploding Dog. Basically, I'd get you lot to send me a title, for example 'New Year, New You' and I'd do a quick drawing illustrating it and post it up here.

Also, good news! Lisa loved the Giant canvas commission i did for her, I'll update with a photo as soon as i have a good one.

I wish you all a great 2011.