Illustration Friday - Storm

I just received some fantastic new inks in the post today, Distress Inks (by Tim Holtz). I had a play around and created this scene.

Illustration Friday; Ocean

This is one of my final pieces for my illustration course. I chose a favourite kindle book of mine to illustrate. This is a front cover design for Nimbus: A Steampunk Novel (Part One) by B.J Keeton, Austin King.

These are two images inspired by some of the scenes from the book.

I have been really busy the past few months studying an evening class at Edinburgh College of Art, 'Introduction to Illustration'. It has been a great course and very challenging with a new brief almost every week. I hope to put a few images up in a couple of weeks but as a break from my course work I sketched the above image using the 'Illustration Friday' word as my brief, 'Whiskers'.

I spent two hours in Greyfriars grave yard the other weekend listening in on tour guides telling stories about victorian children daring each other to knock on graves and the prisoners in the covenanters' prison. I did a couple of skethes whilst I was there and then developed my own version of the George McKenzie grave imagining George as a wee scottish dwarf who still roamed his tomb and looked at the stars with his telescope rather than the more scary version of 'bloody mckenzie'.

What little summer is over and now I am looking forward to a cold, crisp winter.

Air Balloon Graveyard

Edinburgh sketches over the fringe festival 2012

Festival time! the Fringe is underway

I have been on leave from work this week so have taken the opportunity to enjoy the festival (that should be festivals, plural). I love Edinburgh where else do you get different festivals overlapping. I went to see 'Cheer Up! It's not the the end of the world...' an exhibition at the Edinburgh Printmakers (part of the Edinburgh Art Festival). It is a very small exhibition but the work is fantastic, a great range of print work of very evocative subjects.

Here is a piece that is in progress inspired by some of the work.

And some Fringe photos - it is actually sunny for once in Edinburgh!

Digital art.

I recently read Nimbus: A Steampunk Novel (Part One) which along with the Mortal Engines series of books has inspired me to draw yet another air balloon at an empty air port.

This second image is of a city ruin after the planet has been abandoned. I don't really know where this idea came from, maybe I have watched too many disaster movies. I was researching etching hence why it is more of a sketch than a finished drawing.