The Sanctuary

Another illustration for Alaizabel, showing two of the main characters (Thaniel Fox and Cathaline Bennet) performing a rite.  It's interesting how infrequently they appeared in the end, even Alaizabel is only in about three pictures out of 29.

Thatch

Another illustration for The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray.  This is actually the title character, Alaizabel, but she's possessed by a ghost called Thatch.  We only ever see Thatch possessing another body, Alaizabel for most of the book, an unfortunate girl called Chastity Blaine nearer the end.

Stitch-Face

This is another picture from my current project.  A Jack the Ripper style serial killer plays a supporting role in the story.  He drives the carriage with the white and black horses.

Marey Woolbury

Since I've spent all day messing around with the layout on here (again), I thought I should probably upload a new picture too.  This is one of the pictures for my current university project, illustrating The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray by Chris Wooding.  I'm still working on most of them, but I'm hoping to get about 15 finished (of 29 possible images).

Nettle and Spider

This is Nettle (her real name, her parents are weird) and Spider (a nickname, his real name is Archibald so arguably his parents are weird too).  They're both gifted psychics and are very close.  They often communicate telepathically.

Nettle speaks with received pronunciation, Spider supposedly has a moderate Liverpool accent, but I think it's turned into a Manchester one in my head.

Olio work

These are the pictures from my most recent university project that I actually submitted for printing.  I didn't think they fit the brief as well because they're much further removed from a real-life event, but my tutor liked them better and she wrote the brief, so I just went with that.  The characters are called Mei-Lee and Lin, they've escaped from a factory where they were born.  Lin can't speak.

We could submit a cover for the book too if we wanted, so I did this - 

Patience is a Virtue

This is a little comic I made to send to the Festival International de la Bande Dessinee (which was the only full name I could find).  Pittville Press has a table there and a lot of people from our class make things to send there.  Only three or four students actually go (this year it was Sammy Borras, Gemma Sheldrake and Jamie Mills), but I had so much work to do this week that I'm quite glad about that.  I thought you might like to read it, since I doubt anyone who reads this blog thus far trekked all the way over to France, which is also why I don't feel bad about forgetting to mention it until after the festival.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it.  It's based on some stories I made up about my classmates.

unused work

   

These were for a project where the end result would be printed in a small book the university makes.  I couldn't decide which idea I liked better, so I did a finished painting of both and asked the tutors which one they wanted.  This one fits the brief better, but my tutors preferred the other set.  They would have been printed as one image, on a double page spread.

The brief asked us to work up images using our real experiences as a starting point, so I liked this one because it really happened to me once, albeit in an English Literature class rather than a cafe.

You might recognise Jemima from an earlier post.  The boy is her friend Franz, who hates his name and is difficult to draw because I designed him in shoujo manga style when I was about 15 and I still haven't quite worked out what kind of bone structure he should have.

More Poison

These are the three portrait illustrations.  One of my favourite things about them was the hatching on the backgrounds, but it takes so long to do that I haven't done anything in that style lately.  I should probably use it more.

Poison

I thought you might be interested in these, they're illustrations for Poison by Chris Wooding that I did on my art foundation course (2008).  They're still some of my favourites of my own work, even if the choice of 3 landscape, 3 portrait was ill-advised.  I'll upload the portrait ones later.

Shasta

This little guy was designed for a university project, as a sort of post-human.  In the end he was only about a centimetre tall in the final image, but I liked his design.  He lives in a post-apocalyptic world where the sky is permanently covered with red and black cloud.  His people have excellent night vision and no natural protection against UV.  Their world never gets brighter than a clear night with a full moon, and nights are pitch black.

He's named Shasta after the main character of The Horse and His Boy, because it's common for them to choose names from any remnants of the old world.

Nat and Jessie

These two are my oldest characters who still exist in their original form, I was probably only 11 when I first drew them.  They're brother and sister.  Sometimes mistaken for sister and sister.

Magpie

This is Magpie, a teenage superheroine that I designed when I was about 15.  She has power over anything that shines, and can make small amounts of solid, naturally-occurring shiny materials like obsidian, gemstones or metals.  I've been told that's a stupid superpower, but part of the point was meant to be that she has a stupid power and has to learn how to use it creatively.

She used to have a much more boring costume, which I can upload a picture of if anyone's specially interested.  This costume is only about a year old.

She can also get walnuts out of their shells whole, there is some debate as to whether this qualifies as a secondary superpower or not.

Hephzibah

Again, one of my own characters.  She's a witch who lives in a Puritan-esque community, often finding herself in a position where it isn't safe to go back to the village.  She was befriended by a flesh-eating fairy called Gorse, which made everything a lot worse.

If you're interested, her name is Hebrew and means 'my delight is in her', it's found in the Old Testament.

Coda

This is the girl that appears in the Butterflies animation.  She's a princess called Coda, about 11 years old, who suffers from an arranged marriage and a sort of uncontrollable clairvoyance, which causes her a lot of distress.