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!

So, it was Rob Chang's 40th birthday recently. Who is Rob Chang? He's the incredible teacher of this course: Becoming a Better Artist at CG Workshops.
He has an incredible commitment to all his students, so it was our chance to say "thank you" with a birthday pic. The theme was "surprise".
Being an animal nut, of course I went with... animals.

More work done for my animal drawing course: lions! I'm going to be doing a lot of lions at some point. And tigers. I did two skulls here from different angles to get a better idea of the structure.

The lion head source is from Hotnstock of Deviant Art and the skulls are from the amazingly awesome Bone Clones, where I would spend too much money if I had too much money and too much space. I hate telling myself that I don't actually need a full-size resin horse skeleton. It's hard. Really hard.

Today, dogs!

The skull reference photo is from Will's Skull Page
The dog portrait is based on a photo by Jaded-Night on Deviant Art.

Next up in the animal drawing course using photo reference... Cows!

The skull photo is by Jeidoll:

http://browse.deviantart.com/resources/?q=jeidoll#/d4t2z5v

The cow is by Casey in Deviant Art's stock photos.

I'm doing another CG Workshops course called Mastering Animals. Learning to draw animals means studying their structure, so that means drawing heads and skulls from photo reference. I'm also enjoying the digital painting! And fur brushes. Fur brushes are nifty.

I wanted a horse head and skull in a similar orientation, so I found the horse above on this site: Horse drinks beer to cure colic. (Heheheh)

 The skull reference on the left is by CitronVertStock.