Sunday 8 July 2012

New comic and another new blog

I did another comic the other day. This is intended to be the first of many one-off mini comics in a series called "Explorers" featuring characters and events that neatly fit in with the theme of exploration, be it of strange alien cities, or of  deep sea trenches, and lots in between. While these will all be independent mini comics, they will often have connections with each other and with other projects I am working on. Think of it as establishing a mythology. Really it's just a way for me to practice drawing comics without getting too bogged down in a single epic narrative. The first one is quite Lovecraftian. 

So here is Explorers 1:
I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. It was my first time tackling a wintery scene with the watercolours. I was going for the whole "quiet mystery" thing with this, and probably will for many more to come too. I hope you enjoy it!

The other thing is I have set up a Tumblr account. I did this because it seemed to suit my needs more than Blogger. i will continue to post pretty much the same stuff on here as I do on Tumblr for now, but if it suits you, you should probably just go here.

Thanks!
Will

Tuesday 3 July 2012

A short comic and a birthday present

Today I mowed the lawn and something a little bit funny happened. I noticed that there were three slugs sitting happily on top of the lawnmower. I guess they must have crawled on from the trees as I was cutting the grass. I thought rather morbidly that while they may be thinking as true stowaways, hitching a ride to an easy meal, they were actually headed straight to the shed where we keep the lawnmower. So as I was mowing the lawn and thinking about these stowaways I thought it would be fun to draw a one page comic about it. So I did, here it is:

I'm really pleased with it! I need to practice shorter comics like these as I can see good results faster than if I slave away at a comic for ages and it eventually doesn't get finished. I can also now reveal a painting I did a while ago for my good friend Alison's birthday! We're both huge Alan Partridge fans so I thought it would be funny to paint a memorable scene from the very first episode of "I'm Alan Partridge". It went down very well indeed!


-Will

Sunday 1 July 2012

Spooky trees

Straight from the moors in the centre of Ireland's most unsettling fictitious island, here are a couple of paintings for my laboriously and yet lovingly ongoing project, Terra Mecha.




I'm pretty pleased with the way these trees look. I'll probably continue to draw them that way. I had a bit of trouble with drawing pine trees in the past. Which was a big problem, considering my adoration of spooky trees. Yes, I could go on for hours about the merits of spooky trees. 

I was looking today out the rear window of my house, looking down across the farden and over a field to my favourite spooky trees. There are three or four of them in a row, and there's nothing behind them so they are always silhouetted in a marvellously spooky way. It was sort of raining and that makes the atmosphere even better, I think. sometimes when I'm not feeling very inspired I just go down the garden to stand on the wall and gaze at them for a while. Invariably I get the urge to draw, paint, play music, whatever! There's something powerful about those trees, some kind of unearthly draw they have on me. Pulling me in, fascinating me and inviting me into other planes of existence. That's when I realise that in spite of most people's comments about this country, I have a lot to thank the irish countryside and weather for in terms of inspiration.

I wouldn't change it for the world!

Will