Drawing My Arse Off

Phew!! Pretty knackered at the minute as I've been knuckling down and keeping to a pretty strict drawing schedule of about two hours a night of inking Monday-Thursday and at least a page of pencils a day over the weekend. Mostly this is fine (sometimes if it's a panel light page I can pencil or ink a whole page in just a few hours) but once or twice over the past wo weeks, I've stayed up really late (1.30 one Friday night after I got in round about 11.00pm!) to keep on this schedule, usually if I've lost a day to visit the cinema. Quality issues aside, I'm happy with the schedule and amount of work completed at the moment. I only have two pages on inks and one complete page of pencils and inks left and I've completed the Silver strip, then next month I'll knuckle down and start some more samples (if I can think what to draw!).

I still have to complete the cover to Pjang #3 too, which should be a fun job although I have to see if I've left enough room in the layouts I've started as I may lightbox things to move them down slightly. I've also said I'd do some artwork for someone working in our office. Adam's a great guy who is the local anti-social behaviour officer and a former comic reader, particularly liking Green Lantern and the Flash. I've turned him into a superhero called...Asbo Adam. The whole idea makes me giggle, particularly as this character will be run in the local full colour newsletter mag to all council tenants and will be involved in a competition and colouring activities for the kiddies (ahhh!).

I've done a few pics so far but this has led to two other officers requesting to be turned into super heroines! One requested a manga version (so it doesn't look like her, just like every other manga female really) and the other said she likes disco: resisting the initial urge to emulate Dazzler, the result was pretty similar anyway. Adm is also a comedy writer and has had interest in a few scripts and ideas he's written and I'll be working on a few illos for a 20-set hard boiled detective idea he's working on. Should be fun but I tried using a sharpie to see if I could emulate the heavy blacks of a Milt Caniff/Noel Sickles style strip but failed miserably so it'll be back to the Pilot pens for that.

I was also asked to produce a poster to go in our reception area, which will be printed in colour at A3. The good thing about this was I was given the necessary time to draw it in working hours so I was effectively paid to draw, so that was a welcome project. I came up with about ten rough variations on a theme, which were cobbled together and off I went. Drawing took from about 8.00am-10.45am (bar the odd interruption from intrigued co-workers) but I then coloured and lettered it at home, dropping in the required logo as necessary.

I scripted all but one page of Silver yesterday so hopefully, Silver, Pjang #3 and the detective illos will all be done within two weeks...

PS Uploading the third image above seems to have altered the colour drastically fr some reason, the original jpeg has all the proper colours..that bloke still looks like Vernon Kay though...