Filed under: exhibitions, illustrations | Tags: art, cartoons, children's books, illustration
Just an illustration for an anthology being put out by the University of Leeds called Dreams of a Low Carbon Future. It shows a potential future scenario where parts of the population live in totally self-sustaining colonies of artificial floating islands in the sea.
It’s ink and watercolour. I thought about colouring it digitally, but the colours came out quite vibrant in the end and it means it has that natural, grainy texture that you can’t really emulate properly with digital colouring.
Along with other work, the original art’s going to be exhibited at The Cartoon Museum in Holborn later this year. Details in the next post.
Filed under: illustrations, my comics | Tags: art, cartoons, comics, graphic novels, illustration
In this illustration for the latest issue of LIVE magazine I’ve experimented with using pencil alongside my usual inks. It’s for an article about the possibility of a non-white British prime minister in the near future.
I’ve also been thumbnailing a new graphic novel project. It’s coming together rather well, story-wise, and it’s going to be a long one. Maybe not Habibi long but far longer than anything I’ve done before. I don’t want to give away any details yet; not even the title, since it’d be a total let-down if I decide not to take this to completion, but when the time is right things will, of course, begin appearing on this blog.
The process of ‘writing’ that first draft is always extremely intense. Once you have the first draft you have the scaffolding: a leg to stand on, but it’s filling those blank pages with the raw stuff of thought, with only research notes to shore you up, that proves to me to be equal parts terrifying and cathartic.
Filed under: breaker's end, illustrations, my comics | Tags: art, cartoons, comics, graphic novels, illustration
(Click the image for a larger version.) Just a recent scene from Breaker’s End. I thought this one would look nice with a splash of colour. I’m on chapter four of the finished art of the graphic novel now. It’s rather exciting.
Filed under: illustrations | Tags: art, cartoons, children's books, illustration
There’s an Isaac Asimov story; The Fun They Had, that I’ve wanted to have a go at illustrating for a while. It’s a kid’s story in many ways, but also a science fiction story that’s still relevant 60 years after it was published. Though it is certainly dated, you can’t blame someone in 1950 for not knowing exactly how computers would progress. It’s about two children in the future who come across a book. You can actually read the full text here, it’s not a long story.
Over on my portfolio page there’s another piccy for this story, plus two illustrations for another short tale; The Wall of Darkness, this one by Arthur C. Clarke.
Currently working on another short-comic for the Cape Graphic Short Story Prize, it’s about a post box. I think it has a lot of potential… It’s about a post box.
Here’s an illustration I created recently as the front cover for an archaeology thesis regarding North Norwegian gaming counters from the medieval era. I like how this one came out. It shows an archaeologist holding a chess king as found today, and a medieval hand using the piece as it would have originally been, painted and new.
And below, an unused alternative digital-painty version.
The above is a piece I call Mountains of Mars for a project called Vladimir which I can’t say too much about yet. The brief was simply an interpretation of the word ‘majesty’. An alternative version is shown below, with mountains from across the Solar System, however the artwork needed to be red, so this version remains unused, whilst an exaggeratedly red Mars was perfect for the project.
In other news, Breaker’s End is progressing to a very good point. I’m polishing off the ‘full-rough’ version and it’s actually shaping up to be quite close to how I envisioned it. I’m very excited about finally getting stuck in to the finished art so hopefully I will be uploading some soon.
One more thing: I’m to be a featured illustrator in How to Illustrate Children’s Books by Martin Ursell, published by Crowood Press. The book will show examples of my work and an interview with me about my working process and thoughts on illustrating novel-length books!
Filed under: breaker's end, comic artists, comics theory, illustrations, my comics | Tags: art, cartoons, comics, graphic novels, illustration
I’m working on chapter two of Breaker’s End at last, and really trying to pin down the right sort of style and aesthetic for the whole thing. I will eventually return to chapter one and redraw it, I think, since it was very much a rush job when I drew it last October.
All the images above from Breaker’s End are work in progress, only half inked with pencil lines still in there, but I quite like them in this state and thought I’d share. Oddly it does seem that sometimes inking a panel or page to completion can kill a lot of the life that was in the pencils. I recently read the graphic novel Local written by Brian Wood and drawn by Ryan Kelly. Kelly’s inking is very heavy and impressive, employing a wide range of techniques to get different effects, but at the back of the book, in a commentary about the art, he said something that rang true with me;
“Usually, my methodology follows something like this: I pencil out a face and it looks great. Then, I ink it and it looks like dook. Finally, I spend an inordinate amount of time nit-picking at the face with white-out, correction tape, and numerous power tools.”
Nevertheless, Breaker’s End is fully thumbnailed and I’ll be working on it steadily throughout the year. It’s shaping up to be quite close to how I envisioned it when I originally dreamed up the idea, so I’m going to keep working at it and see it to completion, come hell or high water.
I’ve also just illustrated three articles for the coming Spring edition of Live magazine, one called ‘Culture Awards’ about upcoming cultural events in 2012. Above you can see a couple of cartoon illustrations for that piece. On my portfolio you can see all the little illustrations for that article plus images for pieces about an agnostic visiting different religious buildings, and Facebook bullying/addiction.
Finally, I’ve been doing some work on a short film called Frank Filleh, about a great man who, working his way through solving all the world’s problems, loses his genius. I’ve drawn images for a magazine and book covers to be used as props in the film.
Filed under: comic artists, illustrations | Tags: art, cartoons, comics, graphic novels, illustration
A few days ago I went to see Craig Thompson in discussion with Marcel Theroux at the St Alban’s Centre in London. He gave a talk about the research and creation process for his book Habibi. The inking style Thompson uses in Habibi is something I’ve been trying to use in my own drawing. He beautifully combines thick and ragged, dry lines with fine little areas of hatching. I’m particularly enamoured with the way he renders trees and rocky cliffs, seen here on the lower-right in a panel from Habibi. On the left is a recent illustration of my own on the subject of technological singularity (predicted to occur in 2045!) which features a cliff in an attempted Thompsonesque style, with the robot atop the peak being rendered more smoothly and carefully. This black and white version really shows the lines nicely, but there’s a full-colour version in my portfolio.
Recently, whilst eating my breakfast, I’ve been copying images from the sizeable collection of art books we have in our house in order to try to learn something by drawing in new ways. Above are a couple of simple Van Gogh studies in fine liner. I’ve never been much involved with fine art (like, I think, most illustrators and cartoonists), but I’ve been growing to love some of the work by those ubiquitous modern masters Van Gogh and Picasso (for Pablo, mainly his early period of work). For composition and line quality, one can find ways of thinking and working that illustrators don’t often use and perhaps find some unique qualities to put in to illustrations. After all, most new developments in illustration spring from developments in the fine art world. Elements of expressionism and impressionism are now widely used in illustration and comics without a second thought, and cartoons themselves seem to me to have been influenced in their course during the 20th century by abstract art and cubism. More than anything, though, one can just learn from the beautiful drawing. Van Gogh’s hard but dynamic outlines are akin to the line an illustrator, working in ink and armed with a brush or nib, might use.
Filed under: illustrations, my comics | Tags: art, cartoons, comics, illustration
The LIVE magazine winter issue is now available across Britain with the front cover courtesy of me! This issue focuses on the youth protests and uprisings that have taken place over the last year in Britain and across the world, and it has numerous illustrations to reflect that, including my comic After the Protest.
You can see my cover illustration by itself as well as other LIVE magazine illustrations over at my portfolio.
I’ve got two big comics projects in the pipeline right now, which are both in the planning stages at the moment, but which I should be able to get stuck in to drawing come the new year.
That’s all for now!
Filed under: exhibitions, illustrations, my comics, the beauty of the dead | Tags: art, cartoons, comics, graphic novels, illustration
New Blood came down… and up went New Designers. After being told the night before that we had a spot at the show, we had one hour to set up our exhibition, which was to open at 9am. We managed it though, and it turned out to be a great show, thanks mainly to Shane Noonan, who fronted the effort. New Designers is a huge show set in an enormous, St. Pancras-like building, and it mainly showcases industrial design, interiors, and so on, but there was a small section tucked away at the back for us illustrators. That’s the end of exhibiton season for me.
More recently I’ve produced some illustration for London’s big youth magazine, LIVE, with controversial themes and a bright yellow colour scheme. They will be published alongside articles concerning piercings and growing up too fast. The Beauty of the Dead is finished and printed into a promo-book along with other stories. Above is one of my favourite panels from the comic, and you can view more at my portfolio.
Since then I’ve been drawing out a lot of science fiction stories, most of which have gone well, but none of which I have ‘typed up’ into finished artwork yet. I’ve been reading Isaac Asimov and also Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy in between my scribblings, which offer great inspiration to the science-enthusiast in me. They, along with a great deal of non-fiction science reading, have borne the basis for quite a strong science fiction novel within me. Though I seem to be busy all the time, I hope to find some spare days to beginning drafting out my ideas.
Right now though, I’m working on the design and art for a new computer game. Can’t say too much yet, but it’s bound to be a challenging and exciting project.
Corban Wilkin: Illustrator 
