4 Diamonds

Here's the final set of eyes from the 'eyeball sketchbook', it's the Diamonds from Steven Universe, of course. The Diamond Authority is still my favourite part of that cartoon, so I'm happy to finally have a canon character design for all four.

I will admit to being slightly disappointed that White Diamond wasn't a point cut, since it would have been neat if their cut of gem got more modern and refined, but also smaller, as you went down, but oh well.

The previous sets from this sketchbooks were horror deformations, some sci-fi characters, and some fantasy characters.

4 Fantasy Eyes

I realised I had just enough pages left in what has become my 'eyeball sketchbook' to do two more sets of four eyes, so here's four fantasy characters for one of them. An angel, a demon and two fairies.

Previous sets include some horrible eye deformations, and four sci-fi characters.

4 Sci-Fi Eyes

I wasn't sure if the top two should count as one or two eyes, since they're the same person.

Apparently I hadn't got all the eyes out of my system, so here are four more. These are three aliens from a story I don't think I've ever shared before, so I suppose this can be their first introduction! All of them are members of a royal court in the far future, far away from Earth.

Top to bottom these are: Jothan, a Perevin courtesan (both relaxed and agitated); Susu, a Shyskish courtesan; and 'Sapling', the Dai Empress.

Fret and Larkspur

At long last, pictures of Fret and Larkspur in colour, so you can all actually see a major part of the character designs I never, ever show! Also, I’ve finally worked out how to get muted colours out of my coloured pencils, it’s only taken 18 years…

Sympathy with their environment makes elves of their type rapidly change appearance to match the plants and light where they live. Fret lives in a birch grove and therefore resembles a birch tree, Larkspur once lived in a beech forest and looked very different, but now she lives in a fetid marsh and appears sodden and mud-flecked, with hair like reeds. Fret had spent a century believing she had burned to death with her forest, and didn’t recognise her at first.

Welcome to Volleyball Hell

Daichi Sawamura, Tetsurou Kuroo and Yuu Nishinoya from Haikyuu!!

Yes, it's true, I am one of those women who watches sports anime. Lately I felt like doing some pencil colouring and had seen some nice fanart of Daichi, but none showing the massive bruise he must have after the Wakunan match and one thing lead to another and now I have embarrassing sports anime fanart in my sketchbook.








Can you tell I really enjoy drawing bruises?

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.

Sabriel

This is an illustration I did based on Sabriel, by Garth Nix. At some point I’d like to do a whole series, but I’d need to have a lot more free time.

I also realised after finishing it that I've managed to contradict the text, which is something I try very hard not to do. (Sabriel climbs steps on the way out of the valley, but not into it.)  I'm pleased with the light effects though.

Rooftops

This is a little painting I did for my Grandma, on account of being a terrible granddaughter who forgot to make her a card this year. I wrote her a letter on the back.

I also remembered to scan it at various stages, which is something I've been meaning to do for a while. You can see the original idea doodle and thumbnail on a sketchbook page, and then the sketch, ink and paint stages of the finished piece.

I'm not completely happy with the colours, I think I inked it too heavily and made the whole picture too dark. I'll do better next time.

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.