unicorn

I am practicing drawing unicorns as it is one of the main characters in the story. I found a picture of a horse and stuck a horn on it. The drawing looked ok on paper, but after scanning it it looks shit. This has annoyed me very much.

scrawls

Scribbles. That's about it.

old drawings/sketchbook

I've decided that I am no longer going to use a sketchbook to present my work for this project, as I have come across the main problem which slowed me down in the past. I find it extremely different to start new pages as I am quite a perfectionist and spend far to long trying to make them look pretty and keep the pages running by using fancy backgrounds etc. This is taking me far too much time, and is stopping me from getting on with sketching and practicing drawing, as well as research. Instead, I shall continue to draw in my sketchbook but I shall scan them in and present them on my blog as it is much quicker.

Whilst looking for a blank page in one of my old doodling sketchbooks I came across a page full of scribbles which I had done before I started college and actually enjoyed doing my own strange work. I have cropped this page as it is not completely finished and this is possibly my favourite part.

toastycats

I recently spent a week up in Glasgow, in which I visited a couple of exhibitions at the Glasgow School of Art and also at the CCA. I shall explain about the exhibition at the CCA in a later post. 

In the small bookshop in the gallery, I found the first and second issues of a small zine called "Toastycats". Each one has 20 pages and is printed on thin paper, A5 in size. I bought the second issue as there was two of these and James bought the only first one. As with Fufurious, it is only the cover which is printed in colour, with the illustrations inside in black and white.

I really like this zine as Magda Boreysza, the author, has used many different styles of illustration which I find very inspirational. Over the summer I think I will try my hand at making a couple of zines, especially as I find it easier to draw when I don't have a deadline or a set topic.
Most of the illustrations are very cartoon like, except the story in the last few pages which is more realistic. I really like the style and shall apply a similar one to some drawings for Roy's book to see what they turn out like. Obviously they wont be as good as these.

kaugummi books

Whilst randomly searching on Google for he word kaugummi, I discovered an company who distribute books and zines made by multiple authors. As at the moment I am researching different styles of drawing I found this site extremely useful. Below is an image from the first issue of the Kaugummi collective drawing magazine, it particularly attracted my interest with the image on the right. An interesting concept which could be quite gruesome is drawn in a very childlike manner.

There is a link to the main page of the website here.

fufurious

In The Easter holidays, I spent a week in Berlin with friends to see the sights, go out in the evenings, and look at architecture and art galleries. Just out of the city centre we found a small French book shop, in which I found this small comic called Fufurious. It is aimed at on older audience as the main plot follows a bear "Grisou" and his heroin addiction. It also features the Beatles and Betty Boop ("Botty Glup") in a slightly twisted and almost unrecognisable form.

I bought this because I like the carefree style of illustration as well as the plot line, stuck inside the front cover there is also a colourful print of Betty Boop and Grisou which is very appealing. Below is the back cover showing the characters of the book, this is the only part in colour as the inside is all black and white.
Below is an example of what the inside looks like. Unfortunately opened out the magazine is about 2 cm too large for my scanner so a tiny part is cut off around the edges. The style is very rough and uses two thicknesses of line to define some of the characters from the background. I love the handwriting as it is very gracefully done, but saying that I love the French style of handwriting anyway.

ink

Even though I am ridiculously poor at the moment, I spent the last of my money on a pen and ink to try out a new style of illustration. These are just me messing around, and I am currently practicing drawing unicorns as I realised I'm not very good at drawing horsey creatures. Just some dinosaurs which came out of some scribbles, they are joined together like those little people you cut out of paper that hold hands.