Inktober 2019: day 31 - mapping pen and ink wash

The Mirror Twins and their friend wish you a happy Hallowe’en! Be careful who you greet after dark.

I posted a terrible, late-night photo of this on twitter just to prove I finished it on time, because it was so close to midnight!

Inktober 2019: day 20 - mapping pen

It’s not clear to anyone why Coda attracts so many butterflies.

I went for something simple again because I’m tabling at London MCM this weekend and I’m starting to panic a little bit!

Inktober 2018 : Day 18 - grey and black fude pen

I’m really pleased with this one, but I might re-draw it later. I made a couple of small mistakes that are bothering me more than usual because I’m so proud of the concept. It’s partly because I used my fude pen when I shouldn’t have, but I realised I could do the whole thing with just that one pen so I wanted to try it! Ah well, I can do another pass some other time.

Crows

Here are some crows! The left-hand one was painted for a birthday card, the right-hand one was... well I traced the watercolour one and this is what it wanted to be I suppose. It's watching us all.

Address Labels

I’ve been getting a little bored of the stamps I use when I package Etsy orders, so I’ve made myself some address labels! The larger ones are for the customer’s address and the little ones are for the return address. (I did have to edit the top one slightly from how it appears here to give myself more space though.)

I was tempted to make more, but I’ll stick with these two for the time being. I have a bad habit of being over-enthusiastic when I make things and ending up with too many to use!

My shop: https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/sarahfogg

Inktober 2017 - Happy Hallowe'en!

Day 31 : brush inking and coloured ink

It's that time again! Tabitha and her coven are busily preparing for All Hallows Eve, when many spirits roam the village and magic is at its strongest.

In Tabitha's village some people still carve traditional turnip lanterns, while others have swapped to the new imported pumpkins, but this year her job is just to ensure they're all lit before sunset.

Happy Hallowe'en!

Part 1, Bonus Picture, Part 2, Part 3

Inktober 2017 - Bonus Picture!

Day 9.5 : brush pen and coloured ink - I convinced a co-worker to walk home along the canal path with me, and we happened to see a grey heron along the way. She knew I was doing Inktober and asked if I could incorporate the heron and some Autumn leaves into the picture for the day.

I suppose really the answer was 'no', since I always try to draw my own characters during Inktober and I didn't want to break my theme, so I ended up doing an extra picture rather than incorporating the heron into the picture for the day. She was still happy with it though. I scanned it with and without the coloured ink because I was worried I was going to mess it up!

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Hallowe'en

Inktober 2015 - Happy Hallowe'en!

Day 31 - brush inking and coloured ink. My last Inktober picture always doubles as a Hallowe'en picture. This year Tabitha is collecting branches for the bonfires that ward off evil spirits on this important night.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Kleptomania

I only made one new comic (so far) this year, so I thought I'd try something different and do all the comics in graphite. It's made in the same way as Flight, with four short comics based on one-word prompts. In order, these are Line, Place, Compulsion and Kleptomania.

The hardest was the last comic, Kleptomania, because I accidentally scripted a comic that was nothing but a long chain of things I can't really draw. Oh well, these are the ways we improve.

Oliver

Another baby portrait, this time with a jungle theme. I had a good time shading all the foliage on this one.

Goth Anthology - bonus design

While I frantically attempt to get all these goth comics done in… let’s see… 19 days, have a bonus character design! This is the support character for the magical goths. She changes her bow to match their outfits, in deference to their darker fashion sense.

What's the Time, Mrs Woolf? Spring 2013

This is my cover for the Spring 2013 issue of What's the Time, Mrs Woolf?, with and without the tracing paper overlay. We didn't set a theme this time, so I decided to go with a wolf (our mascot) and some Spring flowers (specifically wood anemones).

We took this issue to Bristol Expo last weekend and sold quite a few copies, so I'm quite happy with the cover. It seemed to catch people's eyes.

I've also started putting What's the Time, Mrs Woolf? up in my etsy shop.

I forgot I had more paid work to show you! I did this one a few months ago, it's a logo for a baby swimming school. I had no idea how you teach a baby to swim when they can't even walk yet, so watching the lessons was really interesting. Apparently there's a few tricks to it, like if you start before the baby starts trying to sit up then they'll be much more comfortable on their back in the water, and will have an easier time learning to float later.

The swimming school is called 'Dinky Dippers' and it's run by Nadine Santus, if you're reading this from the Cambridge area and you have a child under 4 who could use some swimming lessons.

Time for some cute things!

Ta da! This is one of the commissions I've been working on. It's a logo and some decorative images for Kingsley's Cakes, a sweet little independent bakery. The image above is ever so slightly different from the one I used eventually, I took out a few of the finer details so it would look better when shrunk onto a business card and such. Below are some other pictures that should be going to decorate a new website. This is the first time someone has commissioned digital work from me, I'm very pleased with how it turned out.

Bonus feature! Some of the preliminary sketches. I thought it would be sweet to dress the mascot character in clothes based on some cake flavours, specifically cinnamon and ginger, rose and pistchio and mint chocolate. I was having so much fun I designed a bell-dress and a shift-dress for each one. The final design is a slightly different version of the rose and pistachio theme.

pigeons everywhere!

For your viewing delight, some sketches of fancy pigeons!

I took my friend Nam to an agricultural show my village hosts annually, at which I magically transform from a serious academic semi-goth to a lunatic in wellies getting excited about sheep. It's genuinely one of my favourite things about the village, they have rare breeds of sheep and pigs and sometimes Dales ponies and there are strange chickens and a pigeon show! There's a produce contest where people show off enormous marrows and a man who demonstrates how to shear sheep and spin wool by hand! And a Tamworth pig with a dozen ginger piglets!

My favourite part is the fancy pigeons. I love the 'blowers' best of all, with their enormous puffy necks. They always look so proud of themselves, strutting around their cages.

Yes, I am a country bumpkin. I've disappointed you all.

The Vixen and the Lioness

These are some illustrations I made for Ollie Tigwell, a graphic designer I know from university, to use in a small booklet containing the fable of the vixen and the lioness. I did them in a bit of a hurry, having been ill for a few days, so I was very pleased with how well they turned out in the end.

The fable goes like this, by the way:

A vixen was taking her babies out for an airing one morning, when she came across a lioness with her cub in arms. 'Why such airs, haughty dame, over one solitary cub?' sneered the vixen, 'look at my healthy and numerous litter here and imagine, if you are able, how proud a mother should feel.' The lioness gave the vixen a squelching look and, lifting her nose in the air, walked away, saying, 'Yes, just look at that beautiful collection. And what are they? Foxes! I've only one, but remember that one is a lion.'

I think the moral is meant to be quality over quantity, but I actually like foxes better than lions so to me neither mother came across very well. Woops.

Inspired Cover 2

I did two covers for the Inspired cover competition, the one I posted a few days ago drew quite heavily on the comic I'm submitting, so I also did this one as a more general sci-fi cover. I like them both, but I think I'm being biased towards this one by all the drawing for the internal comic. Anyone would get sick of beautiful, delicate robots after several weeks of drawing them.

Koga of the Wolf Demon Clan

I don't feel good about uploading the work I've been doing for the new Inspired anthology, since it's a team effort, but to wind down between massive inking sessions I've been doodling some fanart and this one turned out pretty well.

Koga's one of my favourite supporting characters from InuYasha, even if he did turn out to be bloody impossible to draw. Rumiko Takahashi's style is really hard to translate into other ones.

Also, turns out I can't really draw wolves, especially not extinct ones. Oh well.

P.S. I've only read up to volume 23, so nobody tell me anything that happens after that!

David Bowie, Jarvis Cocker and... Keane?

These sprang out of a brief conversation with somebody who involuntarily imagines singing animals whenever they hear music. They were embarrassed about it, but I thought the notion of Jarvis Cocker as a guinea pig in a leather jacket was something that needed to be put on paper.

Also, turns out I have no idea what Keane look like, I was imagining whiney-looking anaemic teenagers with floppy hair and a body type that suggested childhood Rickets.  I had to be rescued by google images.

yet more postcards

 These are some more postcards I made for promotional work, since I realised I had no black and white work in my children's style that wasn't incredibly old.  I discovered, to my delight, that the sort of hatching I used for Patience is a Virtue comes out really well with this line art, so I'm very pleased with them.

Incidentally, the foxes are from a story I very vaguely remember from my childhood, about a fox whose husband dies.  Her suitors all have more and more tails, but she eventually marries one with just one tail. It had beautiful illustrations, but we got the book from the library and none of us (me, my sisters, my parents) can remember what it was called or who wrote it.  If any of you know anything about it I'll love you forever if you can help me find it.