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.