Ive Printed 2 New Books Ready To Take To Manchester MCM Comic Con On The 19th-20th July. Giant Rhinos

I’ve printed 2 new books ready to take to Manchester MCM Comic Con on the 19th-20th July. Giant Rhinos In Space #2 and a open submissions Gorillaz Fanzine. I will be sharing a table with Sarah Fogg - we will also have some new free mini comics to hand out and the brand new summer pirate themed issue of What’s The Time Mrs. Woolf?

We have added a comics event over the summer - we will be at Comica Comiket at The British Library on Saturday 16th August 2014! (See the right hand side of the blog for current event list)

Giant Rhinos #2 and the Gorillaz Fanzine are now available to order through my Etsy Shop.

(Sorry about the hazy photographs - It’s very bright today and I tried my best with a phone camera and photoshop)

Some miniature paintings I doodled up to include with two recent orders from my etsy shop, to apologise for a shipping delay.

Maybe something for later in the year...

Only I can't tell which ones are supposed to be easy or hard?

WOW YOU GUYS So many people expressed interest in doing a daily draw group thing, made me totally excited, and when I get excited I blow things way out of proportion and therefore I have designed a new one hahahaha.

So the way this works is, each day will have 2 opposing prompts.  You can choose the one that is harder for a challenge, or the one that is easier if you don’t have a lot of time or it’s an off day.  I fully expect to be doing like half easy.  Also this is 20 days because 20 days is as far into the future as I can think without having an anxiety attack also April will happen.

Here are the prompts!

Portrait / Action Pose Interior / Exterior Black&White / Color Machinery / Nature Saturated Palette / Muted Palette           70 / 30 Rule  (Explained at about 5:35- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oO2J2ponho) Suit / Dress Full Page / Vignette Gruesome / Saccharine Industrial / Pastoral Little Kid / Old Person Open Space / Enclosed Space Love / Hate Pretty / Ugly Pattern / Random Form / Function Modern / Vintage Cluttered / Clean Monstrous / Cute Badass / Innocent

Odds and Ends:

- About once a week I’ll cross off the ones that we’ve done and reblog.

- Feel free to jump in AT ANY TIME! 

- Tag your sketches “Easy and Hard Challenge,” so we all know where to look!!!

- NEVER FEEL BAD about skipping a day!  Just jump on the next one you can fit in.  You can catch up if you want, but momentum is more important, that’s why it’s going to be so great to do this in a group.

OKAY WE START TOMORROW WITH PORTRAIT OR ACTION POSE!

This time it's a moth fairy! This is a birthday card I painted for my Grandma last week.

She's loosely based on the Venezuelan Poodle Moth picture that went round a while ago.

(I swear I am working on things that aren't fairies, they're just not ready yet.)

The Drawing Game

I want to tell you about The Drawing Game, it’s for everyone but mostly for people who have crippling sketchbook fear.  People who like to draw but as soon as there’s one ‘bad’ sketch in your notebook you cannot stand to see that notebook ever again. People who are so determined to create something ideal and perfect that they don’t even know where to begin. I was once one of these people too. So! I developed The Drawing Game to overcome these ridiculous fears and actually sit down and draw things. It started out as just trying to overcome a stupid fear but it quickly became quite an addictive game. I will describe the game as I designed it but feel free to edit bits to better suit you. What you will need to play:

A dice

A timer

A sketchbook /notebook

A source of images or objects  (Google Images, a magazine, the contents of a desk drawer)

A variety of mark making materials. (Pencils, charcoal, pastels, felt tips, crayons etc…)

In the game I designed there are 3 difficulty levels, easy, normal and hard. The difficulty is set by how many restrictions you set upon yourself. Sets of restrictions come in 6, and you use the dice to see which restriction you will end up with. Easy mode has only one restriction, normal mode has 2 and hard mode has 3. I usually play in normal mode, using a time restriction and one other restriction.

Dice Roll 1: (Time)

1: 1 minutes

2 – 3: 3 minutes

4 – 5: 5 minutes

6:  8 minutes.

Dice Roll 2: (Mark making)

1: You are not allowed to use lines (only the flat side of a pencil)

2:  Any pencil you want.

3: Only charcoal/chalk/pastel/crayon.

4: You can only use lines (Pencil, Biro or any pen)

5: Close eyes, pick 2 coloured pencils. You can only use these.

6: Draw with your other hand.

Dice Roll 3: (Perspective)

1: You cannot look at the page while you draw.

2: Turn the image upside down and draw from it like this.

3: Turn the image side-ways and draw from it like this.

4: Pick the most detailed area and magnify it. (Try to fill  the page so the image spills off the sides)

5: Draw the subject extremely small.

6: You can only shade in spaces around the object.

For example you might end up with something nice like 8 minutes to draw with any pencil you want. Or you might end up with something nasty like 1 minute to draw with your other hand. Having tried and testing this game many times however, I find it’s actually the ‘nasty’ ones that produce the best results, while the ‘nice’ ones are more terrifying because you feel “It has to be good.”

Most of the fun comes from the initial starting point of not knowing what I will be faced with. I try to start the timer as soon as I know what I’m doing without leaving myself time to plan or think and I have to say I think this is ideal because it does not allow you time to panic or worry about your sketching fate.

The aim of this game is to destroy the overly critical voice in your head and to practice drawing different things in different ways. I often find I am surprised with what comes out of my hand in this game, it is usually better than I anticipate it will be and when it’s  really really not I have the fallback of: “Yer but I only had 3 minutes to draw this so it’s not a big deal.”

Here are some of my drawings from playing this game:

No lines eagle

Grey and pink colouring pencils raven.

No lines bat.

I got the 2 colouring pencil limit twice in a row so I drew one ontop of another to save paper, but it actually looks more awesome.

Tried drawing and I just coulf not get the shape of the face so I played this round twice to see if my second  attempt would be better….. and it totally was! :D

Biro mushroom.

Magnified lips in pencil and 2 colouring pencils.

Was not allowed to look at the page while I drew this one. I actually really like it and it’s one of my favourites.

As you can see some bits are awful while other bits are pretty good. I found that playing this game with myself changed my feelings about drawing from “Oh god it will go horribly wrong! D:” to “I’m really not as bad as I thought I was, even the mistakes are cool in some way :D”

Another important reason this game works is because believe it or not, but restrictions or limits actually increase creativity and lateral thinking. When you are faced with a problem and you can tackle it however you want it becomes so scary and daunting. Like when you are faced with a blank canvas, blank page or an empty Microsoft Word page and you need to start working your mind is suddenly filled with ‘blankness’. How do I start? Where do I start? How do I end up with the thing I want to end up with? Are all big scary daunting questions. Limits combat this because they change “Where do I start?” into “How am I going to do this?” It’s a subtle difference, but the restrictions act like a framework for the rest of your thoughts, like a set of obstacles to overcome rather than a MASSIVE blankness.

So if you want to overcome Crippling Sketchbook Fear, you just want an excuse to play a fun game, or you want to improve your drawing skills, this is the game for you. Also if you know someone who has Crippling Sketchbook Fear or Terrible-sketch-phobia, forward them the instructions for how to play. Let’s get everyone to draw more and enjoy drawing more! It would also be extremely cool to see other peoples restriction drawings so image respond if you can :D

Notes:

I plan to develop a digital drawing game version.

Plan to develop a Writing game version (for writing and poetry.)

Thank you to everyone who stopped by our table at BCExpo! It was nice chatting to friends again this year.

On Sunday we made had a house of cards battle with our free mini comics - Sarah won! waa!

The next event we’re attending is London MCM Expo! You’ll be able to find us in the comics village. So we’ll see you in a couple of weeks! We update the free mini comics every year so this will be the last event we use this set. 

Most items in the photo are available to order from my Etsy shop or Sarah’s Etsy shop.