Over ten years ago (phew!) I painted a sky shark picture.

I recently joined Bluesky and I've been throwing my art onto there because I like attention. A few people liked my sky shark:

The comments inspired me to create a baby sky shark (this is just how my brain works). With floaties. Apparently when you're a baby sky shark, it's best to guard against mishaps in your early days of floating.

He looks so happy! Just looking up at this little guy makes me smile.

I finished the online digital painting course!!!

 AAAUUUGGHH!!!

I did it! I finally finished "Becoming a Better Artist", an online course that used to be run out of CG Workshops.

It took me a while, but holy cow it was worth it. It was the most informative and challenging art course I've ever done, covering all the technical aspects of composition, colour, lighting and textures (plus a lot of other stuff). The teacher, Rob Chang, is a super awesome dude who continued to give feedback to his students long after the course was over. Thank you so much, Rob.

I do still need to practise some things, but I know what I need to practise and how. I feel like I'm at the threshold again, ready to embark on a new adventure. I pushed aside my other projects to focus on this course, and now that it's done, I can focus my efforts elsewhere.

Anyhoooo, behold my final picture: two awkward monsters on a first date that is going horribly wrong.

More digital texture painting

I spent quite a bit of time practising texture painting. Here are the other two pics I was working on: a husky (for fur practice) and a cliff by the sea (for clouds, rock texture, and ocean).

The cliff was especially challenging. It looked finished to me, and then I came back to it a few weeks later and saw everything that was wrong with it.

At some point you have to call it 'finished' and move on. So, here's the husky (reference on the left) and the cliff by the sea (reference at the top, my work below).

Digital Painting Practice

I've been working on my digital painting techniques. It's amazing how you can read a lot of theory, and understand how everything works, and then not be able to actually apply it. The only way to close this frustrating gap between understanding and applying techniques is to practise, and that is a very slow and arduous process.

But, I'm getting there, and I'm happy with the results. There are two examples below, with the reference picture on the top and my work underneath.

I used Photoshop for the forest as I'm more familiar with that program and building brushes, and I used Clip Studio Paint for the chicken picture. I really like Clip Studio Paint; it has a stabiliser and excellent blending tools.

 

 I did some more fan art! This one is the knight called Perrane in his beast form, from the awesome webcomic The Forgotten Order.

As usual, I am a sucker for shapeshifters.

I did another fan art for the podcast, Hello from the Magic Tavern. Or rather, for one of their spin-off podcasts which is called "Earth Games", where the fantasy characters in a fantasy world play games from Earth.

In one episode, they played the New Yorker Cartoon Caption game. They described each cartoon on the podcast, and joked that "listeners should draw the cartoons and send them in to us" and so I thought I would do that.

But, because I am a smart arse, I thought I'd draw ALL of the cartoons in one picture, and include the fantasy podcast characters.

If this makes no sense, then please just enjoy these pretty colours.

I put down the graphic novel so I could concentrate fully on writing my fantasy novel (I thought I could work on two major projects at the same time, but I just couldn't). I wanted to keep my art going so I did some fan art.

I really enjoy listening to the fantasy comedy podcast Hello from the Magic Tavern, so here is Chunt the shapeshifter, who (for magical reasons) once turned into a seahorse with badger colours.

I listen to a LOT of podcasts and music when I'm doing art!

(I realise now that I did this piece three whole months ago. Oh boy, time flies on lockdown.)

Pencilling the new graphic novel!

I spent last year writing (short stories and a novel) so I've only recently returned to my next graphic novel, "Rumours of Wolves".

Here's the first page: layout sketch on the left, and pencils on the right.



This page was a horror to figure out, as it's an establishing shot and there was so much information I wanted to get in there. I used Maya to lay out the building, horses and people. 3D is more accurate, but my original rough felt more organic. I like to find a balance between "technically correct" and "looks nice", so when I do the inking, I'll freehand it over the 3D lines to get some wibble in there.

For the last graphic novel, I pencilled on paper and then scanned it, did corrections, then inked digitally. This time, I'm drawing it all digitally---all on Photoshop so far, but I want to move to Clip Studio Paint as it has some really nice comics-specific features.

My awesome friend Grace Crowley who does the webcomic Magellan gives me feedback on my pencilled pages, and she suggested adding horse poop on the ground for realism. (Okay, technically she didn't say that the horses had to be in the process of pooping, but I couldn't help myself.)

New website!

At last! I've been meaning to update my website for a while with a pretty header full of fantasy bling, and now it's a reality!

I looked at using Wordpress, but I found the templates restrictive and annoying, and Wordpress has so much extra stuff that I don't really need. Also, it needs regular updates (and so do all the plugins!). I ended up just coding this thing with PHP so I could put everything where I wanted it, my way.

www.indigopuma.com

So, hop on over and have a look. All my books are listed there with pretty samples you can ogle.

You should definitely buy books. They're nice books. You will like my books. Buy my books.

*cough*

First pass of layouts completed!

Wow, so this next graphic novel is going to be 50 pages with 4 pages of epilogue. I had no idea how big this thing was going to be until I finished the first pass of layouts.

And here they are, below! That's a hell of a wad. (I really give myself a lot of work to do, don't I?)

I'm going to let it sit for a while and come back to it fresh so I can improve on it. In the meantime, I'll be working on my website.

New graphic novel: layouts

I'm now working on my next book, a fantasy graphic novel called "Rumours of Wolves". This story follows on directly from "The Penance of Borund the Bear", showing the fate of Duchess Karria.

The story is complete, so now I'm teasing the detailed synopsis into a script with thumbnails, and then into rough layout pages where I figure out the action from panel to panel.

Apart from close ups, each panel means answering a bunch of questions. Is it an establishing shot? How much of the environment do I need to show? Does the story make sense from panel to panel? Am I introducing a new character here? Can we see his face at this camera angle? Who's talking, in what order, and how much? (Even the dialogue balloons need to be thought out, so that I can place the characters the right way in a scene and with enough space around them for their speech.)

I use very simple models and mannequins in Maya to figure out the perspective and composition of the trickier panels. This lets me play around with camera views, and highlights problems I might not have considered (for example, thick stone walls mean you will have deep windows!). The more problems I solve at this early stage, the better.

Here's an example scene: three riders on horses, and a fourth character standing nearby. I have poseable 3D mannequins, but at this early stage, I don't bother posing them yet.



(Oh, and transparency allows me to see inside the buildings, too!)

The Penance of Borund the Bear is here!

The book is printed and ready for sale! Hooray!

Technically this book is number two in the "Bear Wolf Trilogy" (while "One Step Ahead" is book one), but this new volume is actually a prequel.

Also, after book three (coming next!) I am going to... add a book four. Because I am terrible at planning.

Anyhoo, here's the cover, and if you'd like to grab a copy then head on over to the Indigo Puma website. There you can see details of my books, sample pages and artwork, and the shop.

I'm planning a major rebuild of my website and shop, but in the meantime, you'll have to make do with Gumroad.

The Penance of Borund the Bear... Almost there!

Guess who just got a proof of her new book! Woot!



This is an illustrated short story, ie mostly prose but with 16 pretty illustrations throughout. Although this is book two, it's actually a prequel to "One Step Ahead" -- if you're wondering how Borund the Bear ended up with such a high bounty on his head, then here's the answer!

While all these books are printing, I'll be rebuilding my website and the shop so that you can actually grab a copy. I'll post a link when it's all done.

Illustrating "The Penance of Borund the Bear"

I've been working away steadily on "The Penance of Borund the Bear" and I'm on the final stages for the interior artwork. Half of the images are finished, and the other half are coloured but need lighting details added. In a week or two, I'll work on the cover, and then... Done!

And then I can get started on book three!

Here are two images I recently finished. Borund the Bear is working as a palace guard on night shift so that he can fiddle locks and search rooms without anyone catching him. Unfortunately, he is about the open the WRONG DOOR and then... Things will go wrong.

And below is Duchess Karria, posing as a messenger so that she can escape from...

Well now, that would be telling.

I'm pretty much on track to get this thing finished by April, and then it'll be off to the printers!

Head sketches

I'm gearing up for book two: "The Penance of Borund the Bear" which will be an illustrated short story (mostly prose but with some illustrations). I'm doing the final edits to the story, so I'll be working on the artwork soon.

After "One Step Ahead", I just wasn't happy with how I was drawing faces, so I've been studying this book and doing some practice: Anatomy of Facial Expression.

This is an incredible book and I highly recommend it!

I started with bits and pieces of faces. Trying to do upshots and downshots of faces means fighting with your brain a lot. It's tricky.

After a lot of frustration, I started drawing faces from photo reference. (The weird-looking top left image is my loose, reference-free warm up. This helps to get started on a drawing session.)

Faces are such subtle, nuanced things. A philtrum curling inwards or outwards is the difference between a slight duck-face and a tight-lipped expression, and it really doesn't take much to change the face's entire mood.

Often I would find that the photo reference was smiling harder than my drawing, so I'd go hunting for clues to find out why: lower lid covering the lower part of the iris, wrinkles around the eyes, the cheek crease (caused by distortion of the malar fat pad, something which DOESN'T EXIST IN OTHER ANATOMY BOOKS, DAMN IT!), the stretch of the lips...

Faces are tricky, but I'm going to decode them! Or die trying.

"One Step Ahead" now with the printers!

OMIGOD! I uploaded my printable PDFs tonight, after so many colour tests and checking through everything so many times. It's impossible to know exactly how the colour is going to come out in the final print, so all I can really do at this point is hope. But, my printer did a beautiful job of "The Pique of Death" last time so I think this book will be in good hands.

Here's the cover! Now I'm going to go collapse for a while.

Almost done with the graphic novel!

Omigod, almost there! This afternoon, I finally finished colouring all 38 pages of "One Step Ahead".  (Well, 'finished' apart from any tweaks or fixes I missed!)

Next, I need to do the title page and cover, some colour printing tests, and then the book will be ready to go. After a couple of years of effort and a few downward anxiety spirals, it will be rather nice to have it done! Check out www.indigopuma.com where I'll put up more details once the book is available.

Here is the last page, minus dialogue (no spoilers!)

Colouring the graphic novel

Still not dead! I finished the pencils on my graphic novel early this year, then did the inks, and then spent the last couple of months panicking over how to do the colouring.

I finally figured out a nice colouring paradigm that is easy to set up, easy to change (because I'm fickle and fussy) and looks pretty. Here is page 4, raring to go.

I'm planning on getting this book finished by early 2017 in time for my 'convention season', so I can flog it a lot. Whee!

Working on a graphic novel!

Okay so, I'm not dead! I'm working (slowly) on my first fantasy graphic novel "One Step Ahead", about a bounty hunter on the trail of a shapeshifter. This is the bounty hunter's mule going a bit crazy and creating mayhem. I'm only about halfway through with the pencilling... so much work!

The Pique of Death

I've been busy! It was time for a new publication, so I repurposed a short story I published in an anthology in 2003, did some illustrations for it, and put it into its own pretty book.

Behold, "The Pique of Death"!
Cover:

Here is the double page spread in the middle (the main character, a retired mercenary woman called Graysil who took on a hobby of strangling people, chasing some constellations):

And a random illustration from the interior pages. This is a lion-head armrest, looking unimpressed.

I'll be selling these beautiful little books at the MCA Zine Fair this Sunday 25th May 2014, and at Sydney Supanova in mid-June. Also online on my Zeera shop page right here!