Pocket Witch Vox

Do you remember the Pocket Witches? Introducing Pocket Witch Vox!

Before she took shape Vox encountered a little girl who loved to sing, she had no ear for music at all and was horribly out of tune, but she was too little to know it and loved to listen to the radio and belt out songs at the top of her voice, pretending to be a pop star. It made her so happy that Vox was able to take form from her happiness, and took the shape of a song!

Unlike the little girl, Vox is an excellent singer who can mimic any voice and change her outfit to match the song she sings. She likes to hang around humans who love music and sing along to whatever they’re playing, she doesn’t care if you’re any good, only that it makes you happy. Karaoke bars are her favourite place in the world.

White Horses

Is there still time for one more Mermay picture? This one is another birthday card, for a friend who loves the sea (despite not being able to swim). I really enjoy drawing the 'white horses' on waves.

Pocket Witch Gravity

Introducing Pocket Witch Gravity! Sammy has drawn a lot of free pictures for me recently (she's been offering commissions of things like 'you as a Pokémon trainer' and 'you as an Inkling' and I kept asking for them) so I offered her a Pocket Witch of her own in return. Gravity was very excited to meet Sammy and demanded a two-page comic to introduce herself.

The spot colour on these is actually neon ink, but that naturally doesn't show up in a scanned version so I'll post some photographs later showing the neon ink on the original pages.

EDIT: Here's the close-up photos showing the neon ink!

Inktober 2016 - Part 2

Here's the second batch of Inktober pictures for this year! I'm still finding it a bit harder this year than I did last year because my schedule has become very irregular, some days I barely have any time to draw anything (more than one of these was finished on a moving train), but I'm determined to keep going!

Day 11 - cartridge pen : Lena insists the fortune-telling works better if you use Nan's good tea set.

Day 12 - gel pen : The Crow Boy doesn't mean to be creepy, but he usually is anyway.

Day 13 - brush pen and coloured ink : I was out with a friend and she said "draw Poppet with a pumpkin", so here we are!

Day 14 - g-pen : Lena would probably have a whole wardrobe of dresses like that if she had the money.

Day 15 - gel pen : Tempting with fruit isn't the only way for a changeling to entrap unsuspecting humans. (Ely is also wearing her glamour like a sensible fairy.)

Day 16 - ink and water : Lena is able to use all sorts of tools for divination. She can get much the same results by scrying in a bowl of water, but a crystal ball looks spookier.

Day 17 - g-pen and grey pen : The Mirror Twins have an endless supply of creepy artifacts somewhere. That's probably some variant of a Hand of Glory, but let's not ask where they got it.

Day 18 - brush pen : I made a mistake with this one! I sketched it in the morning and did a first pass in mapping pen, then realised I wouldn't have time to cross-hatch it before work and also couldn't get away with bringing wet media to the library counter, so I had to re-do it in brush pen. Spider matches Nettle on day 4 now though, which is nice.

Day 19 - ink and water : Things look very different when Lucas looks through his bad eye. This is one of the ones inked on a moving train, I was at work from 10am to 9pm and I was determined I was NOT going to keep working on this at home when I really wanted to go to bed!

Day 20 - g-pen and markers : A companion piece for day 6. Child psychics can be a danger to themselves as well as others.

Part 1, Part 3, Hallowe'en

Marker Doodles

Here's something different, old marker experiments! When I first got my marker set I struggled with the limited colour palette (it's only a set of 36), and did quite a few tests before I found a method I liked. I stumbled on these the other day because I was trying to draw Franz (the blonde covered in blood) and I needed reference. Much to my embarrassment, this is really the only picture I have of him that has a good likeness and I have to reference it every time if I want my drawing to look like him. I'm sorry Franz, I try.

Pocket Witches: Humblebee and Liliwen

I said to look out for more Pocket Witches, so here are some! These were designed as a gift for my little sister.

The Pocket Witches now also have a fixed backstory: Pocket Witches are magical creatures about the size of your hand, who gain their powers from positive human emotions. They spend their time trying to make humans happy, and when they're born they take on the shape of something that brings happiness to a nearby human. They choose their names themselves, so they can be named anything from 'Lucy' to 'Paint Water' depending on what takes their fancy. If you're feeling sad, maybe a Pocket Witch will visit you and try to help!

So here is Humblebee, who took the shape of a bluebell, and Liliwen who took the shape of a daffodil.

Pocket Witch Camellia

I'm very pleased to be able to show these to you! A while ago one of my friends was going through a rough time, and I designed this little mascot character to cheer her up. Originally I planned to keep her entirely private, but my friend actually encouraged me to share her in my portfolio, which was extremely kind of her! She also encouraged me to design more of the same type of character, so while Camellia won't be appearing again without permission, look out for more Pocket Witches in the future!

So here is Pocket Witch Camellia, appearing in 8 postcards sent to my friend, dispensing advice and encouragement. The advice itself was very personal so I've left the speech bubbles blank, but otherwise these are exactly as they appeared on the finished cards.

Inktober 2015 - Part 2

Here's the next few pictures from this year's Inktober challenge.

Day 11 - G-pen and brush pen. I was short of time so I went with a dolly-style picture again, this time Louise with a bonus Sweetpea.

Day 12 - mapping pen and markers. I hope coloured markers count as 'ink'. Visuk suffers from a skin condition that's a little like eczema and a little like herpes. Flare-ups last about two weeks. Meruch is there to make sure he doesn't scratch.

Day 13 - gel pen. I wanted to check I could still use gel pen reliably after such a long break. Nettle's effect radius for this sort of thing is more than a mile, but you'll be safe as long as she can see you're running away.

Day 14 - brush pen and grey markers. The process for this one went something like this: Brain: Okay, we're going to do something different, something subtle, with a proper background and- Hands: Re-hash a theme we already used with the heaviest pen we have and no background at all, got it!

Day 15 - ink and water. I don't think I've ever drawn the mirror twins in ink and water before, so it seemed a good time to give it a try. It's nice to make new friends. At the graveyard.

Day 16 - mapping pen. Sometimes you're tired and you just want to draw a big pile of hair. Andersen has the biggest hair among my characters so here he is.

Day 17 - ink and water. They're lost. I'm trying to develop a technique for doing decent backgrounds in this style, but it still needs a bit of work. The sky isn't bad I think.

Day 18 - brush inking and ink wash. Fun fact, that roof is the roof of my local church (from memory though). Rooftops and windowsills are the Crow Boy's natural habitat.

Day 19 - G-pen. I wondered what Ely and Trispin would look like in dolly-style, the answer is apparently 'like a much creepier Poppet'.

Day 20 - brush pen. I accidentally crippled my hand copying up notes and could only manage a line drawing. Violet has taught Khet and Vekh anime poses, but they're not as cute when you have terrifying goat eyes. Adorable vampire teeth are okay. These two are perfect for my poor, crippled fingers because as devout Khukh-worshippers (the vrega nature deity) they are forbidden from cutting their hair, wearing piercings, ritual scarification or any of the other fiddly details my vrega usually have. Violet likes it too, since they opted out of the Trial due to the ritual mutilation aspect, and therefore have no back-spikes and can give a decent piggy-back ride. At a relatively short 6', Khet also doesn't loom over her quite as badly as most of them do.


Part 1, Part 3, Hallowe'en

Fanart February - Part 3

Day 21 - Chihiro from Spirited Away. I only had a sort of flesh pink and this hot pink in my marker set, I'm still not sure I made the right choice.

Day 22 - Kiki from Kiki's Delivery Service. I understand the book is quite different from the film, I'd like to read it some time.

Day 23 - Ginta and Hakaku from Inuyasha, the last surviving members of Koga's wolf demon clan. They seem to spend their lives trying to catch up with Koga.

Day 24 - Haru from Free!

Day 24 - Toph from Avatar: The Last Airbender

Day 26 - Antimony Carver from Gunnerkrigg Court. I coloured her for marker practice, but I wasn't too pleased with the final result, so I also messed around with it in Photoshop and made two alternative versions.

Day 27 - Link from Legend of Zelda... um... Twilight Princess? I just wanted to draw an adult Link, so his face isn't right for TP, but that is where I referenced his clothes from.

Day 28 - Last but not least, Duo from Gundam Wing. Obviously I wasn't going to get through a fanart challenge without at least one picture of Duo and his stupid trousers.

part 1, part 2