Hi all,
First post here. I've been a reader since day one but never got round to posting anything.
I took a week off last week and went out to Egypt with the family. I spent seven wonderful days with not a computer in site (well, apart from my laptop and my Dell Axim PDP and my PSP of course). I'm one of those artists that can't rest if I don't have a pencil in my hand so as you can imagine I tend to do a few scibbles whilst relaxing.
I decided to take 2 art pads with me this trip, my trusty A4 Ring bound, black backed sketch pad. These books are made by Daler Rowney and the paper is almost like a card (220 gsm). I have one of these with me everywhere I go, work play, everywhere.
I also took a solid pad of Windsor and Newton Smooth Surface cartridge paper, again 220 gsm so it's very robust paper and takes some hammer from me.
I tend to use a range of straight forward pencils whilst out and about. I use a 3 or 6H for roughing out shapes and ideas. I then firm these ideas into some sort of recognizable shape with a 2H or H and then and some definition with a 2B-6B depending on the need.
I do a lot of people watching and find myself sketching faces and heads a lot of the time. I use free time like this to work out ideas for projects back home or try new styles. I take ideas from anywhere, magazines, life studies, movies, things I see on a trip, anywhere really.



This next one was inspired by Hellgate London. I saw it on a game mag cover and thought I'd redesign one of the characters. This will be a great base sketch to start with in Photoshop. The scan cleaned up really well

These guys were all around me in the airport. I didn't get spotted doing them once.




I saw an image like this in a magazine in my hotel lobby.

This is what happens to a lot of my sketches when I get back home. This demon guy was another of the quick A4 sketches I did. He took maybe 4 or 5 mins to do but sometimes these quick sketches turn into cool little paintings.
The idea was a demon waiting for a bus home after a long day of soul gathering for the Bossman.


more soon. I hate scanning :)
http://www.southerngfx.co.uk