journal pictures

I've uploaded some more doodles from my journal, this time on horrible paper because I was using a horrible notebook. These are all from after I moved to Bath. Find them here.

This one is of me leaving Sammy in my metaphorical dust in the Paper People game.

Graham's ghosts

One of the first commissions I got after leaving university was to design a ghostly string quartet for an animated band. It was commissioned by a student called Graham Porter, and I has a lot of fun designing the ghosts. The commission included a painting to use for promotion, and some fairly detailed designs. These are some of the pose and expression sheets I was most pleased with, and a slightly terrible photo of the painting.

Guess where I was last weekend! Inspired Comics (from whose blog I have stolen the photo) got a table at Birmingham MCM, so I went along to help and to monopolize almost a third of the table with all my junk. I think it looks sweet all together though, all muted colours and soft toy mascots. (Fox!) You can see the edge of our latest anthology in the corner there. Remember the new Inspired anthology will be debuting at Bristol Expo on the 12th-13th of May.

Thinking of debuts, issue 3 of What's the Time, Mrs Woolf? was on sale, and is now available in our online shop. You can find information on our features and contributors this time on the zine blog, and you can buy it at Comiket later this month if you'll be in London. If you want issue 1 you'll have to be quick - sales were good at Birmingham, so there's only two left in the shop.

And thinking of shops, I now have an Etsy shop, how exciting! You can buy my postcards and miniprints there so far, I hope to have new products up soon, including some original paintings. This picture is the header, before I cropped it. Isn't Tabitha cute?

monster girls and paper people

Recently (before I went to London, if you're wondering) I was in a bit of a slump and I didn't seem to be able to draw anything. Everyone always says when that happens you should just draw loads of things until it goes away, so I used that monster generator that's been going around and drew monsters for half the afternoon! I got all girls, coincidentally. It worked very well, even if I did discover that I need to work harder on diverse body types.

Also Sammy got me with a paper person! Nooooo! I should have known she had an ulterior motive when she gave me those creme eggs.

The 'paper house' is the scrapbook I made to contain some of the paper people from years gone by. I decided to start documenting my end of the game, so I've made a flicker set showing some of Sammy's previous victories.

Giant Rhinos at the British Library

Today in 'Sarah draws fanart of comics that don't exist yet', Giant Rhinos, the best band in the world! Created by my lovely pal Sammy, who I saw yesterday in London. From left to right this is Terry (lead singer and guitarist), Carl (bassist and possibly backing vocals?) and Steve (drummer). I love these guys. I also love drawing Sammy's characters in general. My style is more detailed, but that makes it super-easy for me to draw the same attractive faces over and over. Sammy's style is more geometric, so translating her characters into my style pushes me out of my comfort zone.

Hmm... except with Carl maybe. That face is FIRMLY within my manga-influenced skill set.

Sammy drew my advice-giving house hob, Poppet, who is also the reason I am currently in the lead in the Paper People game. Sammy has kindly documented my victory in her latest blog post.

The reason we were in London was to go to The Art of Illustration, a talk at the British Library. I drew the guests on my notes. From top to bottom  - Quentin Blake, Posy Simmonds, Jamie Hewlett and Martin Rowson. They all told us about four of their favourite illustrators. It was mostly good, aside from an awkward moment in the question section, in which someone asked why none of them had picked any women. It was shrugged off and joked about in a way that suggested it wasn't important, and one of the guests joked that 'we could have picked Posy, but she's here' which kind of made it sound like Posy Simmonds is the only influential female illustrator in existence. That disappointed me.

Also we got to 'very awkwardly walk down the stairs by Jamie Hewlett in silence' as Sammy put it. Because we are the SMOOTHEST PEOPLE.

Zelda Valentines

'Tis the day for the whole internet to be covered in pink and red! However I went with mostly green. I made these as a present for my friend Nam, of the Nambots, who is a big fan of the Legend of Zelda, much like myself.

Also if you want to show how much you love me and Lily, you could buy a copy of What's the Time, Mrs. Woolf? through our new online shop! The second issue came out in January, and the first is still in stock. 

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.

Last journal pictures of 2011

Yea and verily I have finally got round to scanning these, so here are the last few pictures I drew in my journal in 2011. They got a bit lazier because I was not very cheerful at the time, but some of them came out pretty fun.

Sketchavember, completed!

I finally got round to putting my Sketchavember pictures on flickr, like I said I was going to ages ago! I drew one of my own characters every day, starting with the some of the oldest (created when I was 12 if you can believe it) and working my way forwards. I drew in really textbook shoujo manga style back then, so it was fun to try and make them all look reasonable in my current style. I realised early on that not only did I have a bad case of Only Six Faces, but I also never drew anyone who wasn't improbably attractive. I'm still not happy with how similar a lot of them look, and they're all waaaay too pretty, but I'm confident I can make them better - before this I wasn't at all sure it could even be done.

Anyway, I've posted them all with little descriptions of who each one is and how they've changed from their original design, so hopefully you'll enjoy reading about them.

If you're curious, the boy in the picture is Asmodeus, from day three, and he's the redesign I was most proud of. He used to have HUGE eyes and a little, childlike nose. Not to mention ears that were fairy-pointed instead of deformed-pointed. Turns out all this time it was mostly blushing that made him look like himself, I'd never have guessed!

A Christmas card!

As I've been so quiet this month I thought you'd like to see something. This is a Christmas card I designed for my Mum to use this year. I doodle angels all the time (especially in church) so I'm most proud of the star in the middle. Mum wanted one that incorporated the Star of David and a seven-point star, and I hardly specialised in geometric design so I'm pretty pleased with how it came out.

I've been soooo busy lately, what with Thought Bubble, making What's the Time, Mrs Woolf?, doing commissions, Sketchavember, applying for a million proper jobs and having horrible colds, so I haven't had much to put online.  Some of the commissions are almost done though, so hopefully I can show you what I've been doing all this time! Rest assured that at the end of this month I can at least show you my Sketchavember pictures, so you can all get acquainted with 30 of my own characters and laugh at how shaky my grasp of anatomy becomes when I draw late at night.

Seriously, it's pretty bad. It's like I forget that shoulders and hips are real body parts.

A Thousand Empty Heavens

I've finished my comic for this year's Inspired anthology, Science Fiction Octuple Feature. I posted a 2-page preview for Disposable People, so I thought I'd do the same again. A Thousand Empty Heavens is a pair of contrasting vignettes, so I've used the first page of each. I'm very pleased with how it turned out, although I did realise I've done a depressing sci-fi story twice in a row for Inspired. I'll have to do something cute and cheerful for the next one.

We're taking this to Thought Bubble, and you can also buy it online HERE.

Why I'm Afraid of Mirrors - Part 3

Two days ago I was afraid my reflection would move on its own.
Yesterday I was afraid my reflection would not be me.
Today I am afraid there will be something behind me.

Patience encounters the thing I fear most about mirrors - the possibility of seeing something behind me that wasn't there before. As a special treat, a shrouded figure is also one of the things I fear most in general. I am terrified that one night I'll wake up and see one standing at the foot of my bed.

Happy Hallowe'en!

Why I'm Afraid of Mirrors - Part 2

Today Patience illustrates the second-biggest reason I'm afraid of mirrors. Tomorrow, the thing I fear most in any reflective surface!

Yesterday I was afraid my reflection would move on its own.
Today, I am afraid my reflection will be someone else.

Ironically, I blanked on monster design, so that is basically me Patience is seeing in the window.

Why I'm Afraid of Mirrors - Part 1

Lots of my friends already know I have a terrible fear of mirrors. Hallowe'en is one of my favourite festivals, so to celebrate this Hallowe'en my lovely assistant Patience is starring in 3 illustrations showing the things I fear will happen every single time I look in any vaguely reflective surface.

Today, I am afraid my reflection will move on its own.

church doodles

I swear I have been doing something these past few weeks!

It's all very exciting, the Inspired crew have finished our new anthology, Science Fiction Octuple Feature, (which Sammy is taking to various comic shops and will also be available at Thought Bubble this November) and within a week of finishing my comic for that I got two very interesting commissions from people I don't know personally (and one from my Mum, which doesn't really count). The downside is that with all this group work and paid work, I've not got much that I'm at liberty to post online until later this year.

To prevent my blog being totally dormant, here are a couple of pages I doodled up during church. I wouldn't feel right doing paid work in church, so it's the only time I've been free to draw whatever I feel like.

Even if it sometimes turns out a bit weird because I forgot to bring a pencil and had to do it in gel pen.

I hope I'll be able to show you some of the paid work soon, it's very exciting for me to be getting work from strangers for the first time, instead of from friends or family members. (Or more often, friends of family members.)