Sketches in pencil, ink and brush, copic marker, digital colour.

Digital painting (Photoshop).

Writer and model Candice DeVille runs a wonderful lifestyle blog at http://www.superkawaiimama.com.au It’s full of amazing vintage goodness.
These sketches are based on and inspired by the photos on her site.

This is my entry for the Paper Wings Wacom Challenge.

Title: Weird Austen Tales
The brief was to create a piece inspired by a quote from a famous artist. There were three quotes to choose from and I went with “Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery” by Jane Austen.
You can now see my entry on the Paper Wings website where you can begin voting on it in a few hours. If you like it and want to vote just click the Facebook “Like” button. I appreciate your support.

Check it out here:
http://www.paperwingspodcast.com/2011/07/weird-austen-tales-by-crosby/

Development Process

My first idea was to have Jane Austen surrounded by ghouls and monsters. The Elivra lookalike is trying to interest Jane in her manuscript. I scrapped this idea once I thought about doing it has a 1950′s horror comic inspired by titles such as EC’s Weird Fantasy and Tales from the Crypt.

Here’s my first attempt at inking it, using sable brush, brush pen on bristol paper (and plenty of white out). I tried to show the severed hand writing her name but it didn’t fit into the space.

The final inked drawing cleaned up in Photoshop and converted to a bitmap.

Played around with various colour schemes and eventually went for cool colours in the background with warmer colours up front. Then used this excellent tutorial to achieve the mis-registered old comic look.
http://jonnycrossbones.com/tutorials/how-to-color-like-a-little-old-lady/

For the worn paper texture I made my own “black paper” on my laser printer, then repeatedly creased and crushed it and scanned it back in.

Various logos and type I recreated for the cover. All the elements were then assembled in Photoshop.

Sketches of Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) from the original Star Trek series.
Medium: Brush, FW black ink, micron pens, watercolour inks.

Hand drawn illustration. Digital colour.

This is my entry for a “design a superhero” competition announced on Jonathan Rector’s blog. Check it out here.

This involved creating a superhero and writing a description including name, superpowers, and traits. My character is a small town hairdresser that has the power to change into crusading crime fighter.
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Pitch: A small town hairdresser is caught in a nuclear test explosion in Los Alamos, New Mexico and transformed with super human powers.

Name: Hairpin
Real name: Betty D’Angelo (hairdresser and proprietress of D’Angelo Beauty Salon)

Superpowers:
When Betty transforms into Hairpin her hair becomes a deadly weapon.
Her modest ponytail grows over 12 feet to become a lethal cat-o’-nine tails lash alive with an electric charge. All her senses are heightened. She gains strength, agility, and acrobatic prowess.

She compliments her superpowers with weaponry that she designs herself. Her favourites are a pair of modified hairdryers that can fire heavy ammo. She is also known to use a curling tong that can slice through metal.

Traits
Betty D’Angelo she is cool, professional, bright, ambitious business woman. She prides herself on being a great hairdresser with a loyal clientele.

As Hairpin she is sassy, head strong, arrogant, impulsive and sometimes over confident. She is more likely to fight first and ask questions later. She is also very sensitive about her hair or lack of it. Any comments about her baldness evokes her wrath.
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My development sketches (below).

For this self-promotion piece I went with a circus theme. My initial idea was to have a monster or creature standing behind the ringmaster with only it’s huge feet visible. That didn’t work because you couldn’t tell what you were looking at. Changing it to ape and revealing more of the leg made things clearer. I like the idea that you can only see a part of the ape and it adds to a sense of scale.

As for the style, my inspiration was mostly UPA animation and picture books from the 1950′s. I kept the drawing pretty simple with just enough rendering to show the form. Definitely tried to get away from the painterly look. You can see my development work below.

Redrew the ringmaster making him shorter and fatter and more cartoon like. The creature turned into an ape which seemed to fit the scene better.

My first attempt at the ringmaster (right) had him tall and elegant. In fact he looks more like an equestrian sportsman. I wasn’t sure what do with the creature either. I scrapped this version and started again.

Here’s a colour sketch of 1970′s Aussie soap siren, Abigail. This is based on the photo below. As you can see I began quite realistically but then progressed to a more stylised caricature.