Here’s today’s cartoon.
Not really sure if it works or not. I think the execution isn’t great but the concept probably isn’t totally flawed. What do you think?
Ink and nib, coloured with ink wash on Bristol Board.
Author: Jemima
Flying dog: the less publicised early years
Here’s today’s cartoon.
This one presented a lot of challenges. With the basic idea I had to find a way to make Flying Dog a wimp, but it’s hard to do without the idea that people are about to die horribly in a fire. Sarah saw it and said I hadn’t got that across well enough initially and so I got the mouse to say it had called 999. If I’d designed that in earlier it probably would have been better placed on the page.
Compositionally, I think it would have worked better to have the title at the bottom so you’d see the scene, read the words from Flying Dog and the mouse, and then get the title of the scene. I was trying to incorporate it into the picture but I don’t think it really works there – too many things fight for your attention at once.
The final challenge was the technical one of drawing it and making it look right. Check out that perspective on the house! I really struggle with this but it’s getting better. The colouring doesn’t come out terribly well on the scan which is annoying because it’s quite subtle. I erased the background on the speech captions after scanning, but I couldn’t get a similar effect on the title, whereas the original does have a lighter background there to pull out the text. I could probably do with either buying or working out how to mix a more dog colour for the dog. I like dogs in blue, but I think it detracts from the outfit here.
Nib and ink on bristol board with ink wash colouring.
And an added extra:
This was an experiment to see what would happen with nib, ink and markers. The result: smudging. Hmmmm.
Monday sketch – Monmouth coffee shelves
Monmouth coffee has a really nice decor, including some shelves holding beautiful coffee paraphenalia – jugs, filters, sugar and chocolate. Under the shelves they have pastries and there are tongs that hang from the shelves for people to serve themselves.
Rotring Artpen (F) in a small Moleskine sketchbook. And a cappuccino.
Tiger
I’ve been really trying to get my head around the nibs recently. I drew this tiger toy and coloured it in with Faber Castell Pitt pens.
Trampolines, dogs and birds don’t mix
Here’s today’s cartoon.
I used my new nibs and ink and coloured it with brush and ink on Bristol Board.
Dog yoga
Here is today’s cartoon. I’ve been trying to learn about nibs and ink and bought a collection to experiment with. I’ve never used nibs like this before and I really enjoyed them.
Yes, I went to yoga today.
Details of the pic: Pencil on Bristol Board (A4). Penciled first and then inked with a couple of nibs. I then coloured it with ink and brush. I had to try some correction stuff with opaque white – it didn’t work very well, but a good lesson to learn.
Palestine by Joe Sacco
Part of my learning about drawing and cartooning has inevitably led into the world of more serious comics. One of my favourite books in this genre is Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, but I’ve just finished reading Palestine by Joe Sacco. It’s incredible.
I actually bought it a while ago, and had been put off reading it because of the heavy subject matter. What’s clever about it, though, is that although the subject matter is very serious and enlightening, Sacco balances it well.
His illustrations and page compositions are compelling, and his writing draws you in and along.
This is a subject I knew very little about and the book has opened my eyes to how very little I still know. It must be a good sign that I am now curious to find out the current situation and follow the news about peace talks that bit closer. Sacco has very successfully brought a situation to life in a way that I hope stays with me.
Why Lassie isn’t a cat
Here’s today’s cartoon.
Drawn a3 on marker paper with fineliner and markers.
Heads, hands, feet and penguins
Today I totally lacked inspiration for a cartoon, so I practiced heads, hands, feet and penguins. I started by reading Jack Cole’s instant cartooning course and drew these as a result.
The course recommends working on hands and feet a lot, so I tried drawing some hands. This is my hand.
And this is a sort of copy of my drawing of my hand, which isn’t so good and shows that it’s not drawn from life. But nice in pen.
Then I tried some feet.
Another foot from the front. Drawn with a Rotring B nib pen.
That’s enough of that! Let’s draw a cat!
Oh, ok, here’s my hand again.
Yes, that’s a little penguin next to it. A friend linked to a how to draw penguins course on the Guardian site. So I tried some…
We can do both at once, though, right?
Reworked bad cat
I decided to try to rework the quick sketchy comic I did the other day.
This is a challenge and I often struggle with final versions of pieces – I find it hard to get the quality of line I want, and the colouring to look solid enough.
I’ve a theory that ruled lines around the boxes make for a far better finish, but today I tried a new approach – I ruled the lines in pencil and then went over them freehand in pen. I quite like the result, but I think ruled lines are probably better. I used the brush pen for the cat and various fine liners for the other line work. I was going to use the Rotring pens, but don’t trust them enough – I can’t always get a clean line.
I sketched this very roughly first, but probably should have worked it out a bit more before inking. I think I’d have got better cat expressions if I’d done that.
The major new thing here is that I drew it a3 – I know that creating these larger and reducing gives more opportunities for a clean result and I think that has pretty much worked.