This picture was drawn and coloured this week for the first ever Elfquest Fan Friday challenge at ElfQuest® the official page on Facebook. I don't normally do fan art, but when the subject was announced as Skywise, my favourite character from my favourite comic... ever - I had to do that! Everyone's got their price :)

First, I drew a black and white line drawing on paper and sent that in to the group, but later in the week I decided to colour it (in Photoshop, as I never could afford Copic markers).

My aim was to get a strong composition, foreshortened from above, showing a young Skywise and his wolf, Starjumper, in as close to authentic Elfquest style as I could manage. I decided to have Starjumper looking at Skywise, and his ears being back was a deliberate decision. Originally, I was going to render Starjumper's fur in black lines, but I think this works better.

Drawing these characters came very easily to me, possibly partly because I first drew them when I was young. My first encounter with Elfquest was via the original release of the first two issues, bought off the shelf at Space Age Books in Melbourne in the late '70s. Wow, that was a while ago.

Labels: Elfquest, Fanart, Sketchbook

This is an old picture that I did for a Mail Art Portfolio Swap project back in 2006, but I can't think of a more appropriate picture, although it should be pointed out that Illustration Friday have run this topic before, back in October, 2005.

The picture itself is a print composed of two overprinted pieces of artwork, one of which was a collage of painted paper strips with a pencil sketch, and the other of which was an ink line drawing. These two images were composited together using a photocopier on a reduction setting, feeding good quality paper through once on a grey setting, and then again on a black text setting for the line drawing. Each one of the 30 prints was different from the others, and each had their own character.




What no-one seemed to get, and which I'll now laboriously point out, is that my picture is actually a reinterpretation of the famous Australian impressionist painting, "Lost" (1886) by Frederick McCubbin.

So here it is again, for this timeless topic.

And, if you're wondering whether the lost child in the McCubbin picture ever gets found, then I have to say she has a good chance, given the broken sapling in the foreground - a good clue to leave as a trail for searchers.

Labels: Illustration Friday, Mail Art Portfolio Swap

This comic was drawn quickly today for the topic "Suspend" for Illustration Friday - it's more like "suspended" in this case. Hopefully, that same word is used for school suspensions overseas, or this won't mean much :).

I'm honestly not sure how pleased I am with it - it came out crueller than I intended and there's something about the flow of it that doesn't quite work. Also, the colours have suffered in the shift from CYMK to RGB. I welcome your opinions!

Labels: Illustration Friday, Miscellaneous comic pieces, Yin and Yang

Labels: Cartoons